Tianzhu

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Tiānzhú (in Chinese), Tenjiku (in Japanese), Cheonchuk (in Korean), Thiên Trúc (in Vietnamese) are the pronunciations of the characters 天竺, the main pre-modern East Asian name for South Asia, also known as the Indian subcontinent. In Korean Hangul, this name is also written 천축.

[edit] Origin

The Silk Road made the first contacts between East and South Asia possible. The Chinese names of the latter territory, like the Western name for India, were inspired by the Indus River, or Sindhu, the main topographic element from the area of contact. The oldest extant Chinese writing about this area appears in Records of the Grand Historian, by Sima Qian (about 1st century BCE – 1st century CE), based on the reports of Zhang Qian’s explorations in Central Asia. It employed the name 身毒, which may be pronounced Juāndú, Shēndú or Yuándú, pointing to a derivation from Sindhu. In the writings of those times, other Chinese names for South Asia also appear; among them Tiānzhú (天竺) would become the most popular. It is probable that, at the beginning of the first millennium, 天竺 was pronounced Xiandu, again suggesting a derivation from Sindhu (the actual pronunciation of Classical Chinese is mostly a matter of tentative reconstruction). It is also probable that Buddhist monks favored the character 天 (tiān) because it meant Heaven, thus emphasizing the special status of South Asia as the origin of Buddhism. Subsequently Tianzhu would become the most popular Chinese name for South Asia as Buddhism became an integral part of Chinese culture. This term would also spread to other countries in the East Asian cultural area.

[edit] References

• Alin Dosoftei (2008-02-11). "India - Bharat - Tenjiku: one reality, more perspectives". Retrieved on 2008-04-16.