The term 'Sindhu' is used in Hinduism, although it is not used in the same context, and scriptures feature 'Sindhu' as part of their title; these are the Bhakti-Rsamrta-Sindhu, Nirnaya Sindhu, Dharma Sindhu, and Sindhu Jnana.
The Brihaspati Agama says:
हिमालयं समारभ्य यावदिंदुसरोवरम् ।
तं देवनिर्मितं देशं हिंदुस्थानं प्रचक्ष्यते ।।
"The land created by the gods which stretched from the Himalayas to the Indu (i.e. Southern) ocean is called Hindusthan."[3][4]
The Persian term was further loaned into Arabic as al-Hind referring to the land of the people who live across river Indus, and into Greek as Indos, whence ultimately English India.[5] By the 13th century, Hindustān emerged as a popular alternative name of India, meaning the "land of Hindus".[6]
The term 'Hindu' occurs sporadically in some 16th-18th century Bengali Gaudiya Vaishnava texts, including Chaitanya Charitamrita and Chaitanya Bhagavata, usually to contrast Hindus with Yavanas or Mlecchas.[7] It appears in South Indian and Kashmiri texts from at least 1323 CE,[8] and increasingly so during British rule. It was only towards the end of the 18th century that the European merchants and colonists referred collectively to the followers of Indian religions as Hindus. Eventually, it came to define a precisely religious identity that includes any person of Indian origin who neither practiced Abrahamic religions nor non-Vedic Indian religions, such as Jainism, Sikhism or Buddhism, thereby encompassing a wide range of religious beliefs and practices related to Sanātana Dharma.[9]