The term _Hindu_ refers to one of the Indian religions, the religion of the great majority no doubt. It is not now a national or geographical term. Practically every Hindu is an Indian, and almost necessarily must be so, but every Indian is not a Hindu. There are Indian Mahomedans, sixty-two million of them; Indian Buddhists, a few--the great majority of the Buddhists in the "Indian Empire" being in Burmah, not in India proper; there are Indian Christians, about three million in number; and there are Indian Parsees. A Hindu is the man who professes Hinduism.[31] [Sidenote: Where is Hindustan?] _Hindustan_, or the land of the Hindus, is a term that never had any geographical definiteness. In the mouths of Indians it meant the central portion of the plain of North India; in English writers of half a century ago it was often used when all India was meant. In exact writing of the present time, the term is practically obsolete. [Sidenote: Who speak Hindustani?] Unfortunately for clearness, the term _Hindustani_ not only survives, but survives in a variety of significations. The word is an adjective, _pertaining to Hindustan_, and in English it has become the name either of the people of Hindustan or of their language. It is in the latter sense that the name is particularly confusing. The way out of the difficulty lies in first associating _Hindustani_ clearly with the central region of Hindustan, the country to the north-east of Agra and Delhi. These were the old imperial capitals, be it remembered. Then from that centre, the Hindustani language spread--a central, imperial, Persianised language not necessarily superseding the other vernaculars--wherever the authority of the empire went. Thus throughout India, Hindustani became a _lingua franca_, the imperial language. In the Moghul Empire of Northern India it was exactly what "King's English" was in the Anglo-Norman kingdom in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. French was the language of the Anglo-Norman court of London, as Persian of the court of Delhi or Agra; the Frenchified King's English was the court form of the vernacular in England, as the Persianised Hindustani in North India. It was this _lingua franca_ that Europeans in India set themselves to acquire. [Sidenote: Urdu literature] Continuing the English parallel--the Hindustani of Delhi, the capital, Persianised as the English of London was Frenchified, became the recognised literary medium for North India. The special name _Urdu_, however, has now superseded the term _Hindustani_, when we think of the language as a literary medium. _Urdu_ is the name for literary Hindustani; in the Calcutta University Calendar, for example, the name _Hindustani_ never occurs. [Sidenote: Hindi language and literature]