Altogether, "India" could denote any land east of the
Nile and west of Cathay. It is not surprising then that the term "India" was often meant to conjure the idea of vast eastern, non-Christian space.
Hamilton points out that earlier writers had already subdivided Middle India in three types of Ethiopians, one of which being Indians, exemplified by Gervase of Tilbury (1150-1220) in his encyclopedic Otia Imperiali (b. 1220).