- The oldest references to firewalking go back more than 3,000 years, when ascetics in India walked on embers to test and purify themselves.
- India is the largest producers of films in the world. Over 800 full length feature films are produced every year in 14 languages. This amounts to more than TWO FILMS being produced EVERY DAY!
- McDonald’s India doesn’t serve beef — only chicken, mutton and fish. Holy cow!
- Approximately 3 billion movie tickets are sold in India every year.
- The only country in the world that has a Bill of Rights for Cows is India.
- Bananas were discovered by Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. when he conquered India.
- India has the most post offices in the world.
- The Indian election in 1984 was the largest election of any country.
- The material to build the Taj Mahal was brought in from various parts of India by a fleet of 1000 elephants.
- India used to be the richest country in the world until the British invasion in the early 17th Century.
- Barbie’s boyfriend Ken was not sold in India until recently because it clashed with the traditional arranged marriage.
- India can be divided into three distinct geographic regions: the Himalayan region in the north, which contains some of the highest mountains in the world, the Gangetic Plain, and the plateau region in the south and central part.
- The republic of India was once referred to as ‘Aryavarta’. The phrase went out of usage long back, though its occurrence is common in ancient texts. Aryavarta means the Land of Aryas, Arya in Sanskrit meaning Noble.
- Bhaarat, the official name of India, has an interesting etymology In Sanskrit, “bha” means knowledge or light, and “rat” is a verb for ‘doing’. Bhāarat is thus ‘the one in search of enlighntenment or knowledge.’ Bharatavarsha also means The Land of Bharata, and The Cherished Land. The name Bharata means The Cherished One in Sanskrit. The name derives from the times of Vedic civilization after King Bharata, who also finds mention in the Abhignana Shakuntalam
- One village called Mattur in Shimoga district of Karnataka, India still uses Sanskrit as the primary spoken tongue!
- The word shampoo entered English in the late 1700s, with the meaning “to massage” with its origins in Hindi where “champna” or “champo” implies to “press or to knead.”
- The game of snakes & ladders was created by poet Gyandev, in the late 13th century. The original name for the game was ‘Mokshapat.’ The ladders in the board represented virtues and the snakes were vices.
- The word ‘Khakhi’ originates from an Indian word for mud. During the 19th century, British soldiers stationed in India noticed that when their white service uniforms became stained by a type of mud there was a tan, camouflage effect. The term was coined from the natives word for that particular mud.
- The great Indian epic, the Mahabharata, traditionally believed to have been dictated to Lord Ganesha by Ved Vyas, is eight times longer than the Iliad and Odyssey combined.
=>Malayalam is the only spoken language in the world whose name when spelt in English is a palindrome.
- The oldest surviving written grammar for any language is believed to be the Tolkāppiyam (தொல்காப்பியம்), a grammar of the Tamil language, written around 200 BCE by Tolkāppiyar.
- 1650 is the approximate number of dialects in India.
- 22 languages are officially recognized by the Constitution of India.
