While homepages are the location where documents of a given doctype are stored, index pages provide additional views to these documents.
Typically an index page simply lists all documents of a given type alpha-numerically. In cases where the amount of documents increases, one such index will cease to be an effective tool to support browsing a documentation. In this case different index pages need to be created.
Confluence creates an index page and adds a shortcut to your sidebar (if you're using the default theme). The index displays a list of pages made with the blueprint, and information selected information from your blueprint pages.
A document type (doctype) defines the properties and section for document instances. It also provides home and index pages. In Confluence these doctypes are implemented as page blueprints, usually with one template. This template is used to create new pages in Confluence.