This area is centered on the knobby Kathiawar Peninsula, which is bounded by two areas of the Arabian Sea: the Gulf of Kachchh(4) and the Gulf of Khambhat(5). Beyond the first gulf is Kachchh, whose northern part consists of the the Rann of Kachchh: saline marshes. Beyond the head of the gulf are more marshes: the Little Rann of Kachchh. North of this, sand desert intrudes from Rajasthan. The peninsula itself contains more marshes, although it rises in the south center above 1,000 meters in the Gir Range. East of the peninsula flow Gujarat's important rivers, all ending in the Gulf of Khambhat: the Sabarmati going south from the Aravalli Range; the Mahi, flowing southwest; the Narmada, exiting from between the Vindhya and Satpura ranges; and the Tapti, coming from between the Satpura and the northern end of the Western Ghats.
Over 50 million people live here. More than nine in ten speak Gujarati.(6) Just over one in 20 speak Urdu.(7) Almost nine in ten are Hindus(8), mostly Vaishnavites. Less than one in ten are Moslems, mostly Sunnni, but with a significant Shi'ite (Isma'ilaya) minority.
There are four cities with over a million people: Ahmadabad, Surat, Vadodara and Rajkot.
The Harappan civilization expanded into the Kathiawar Peninsula and the head of the Gulf of Khambhat sometime before 1500 B.C.E. Their language is unknown since their writing has not been deciphered. By 2000 B.C.E., Indo-Aryans, perhaps Sanskrit-speaking, had moved in. By 500 B.C.E., Sanskrit had become a literary-only language. The spoken language first diversified into Old Gujarati, which is attested from the 12th century and is the ancestor of several languages. Modern Gujarati evolved from it by the 15th century.
The latter was prominent on the Kathiawar Peninsula in the later first millenium B.C.E. By the turn of that millenium, the Ajivikas were gone, and this area had a mix of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The conquering Iranian groups in the early first millenium C.E., the Sakas, did not change this mix, which persisted into the second millenium.
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(1) Bharat is its name in transliterated Hindi; India is also an official name.
(2) Sometimes transliterated as Gujerat.
(3) Separated from Goa since Goa became a state in 1987; some atlases have not been updated.
(4) Or Kutch.
(5) Or Cambay.
(6) As of 1972.
(7) As of 1961.
(8) As of 1961.