 "Hindu" has historically been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people indigenous to the Indian subcontinent.Throughout its long history, Japan had no concept of religion since there was no corresponding Japanese word, nor anything close to its meaning, but when American warships appeared off the coast of Japan in 1853 and forced the Japanese government to sign treaties demanding, among other things, freedom of religion, the country had to contend with this Western idea.According to the philologist Max Müller in the 19th century, the root of the English word religion, the Latin "religio", was originally used to mean only reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety (which Cicero further derived to mean diligence).