Tianzhu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Tianzhu (disambiguation).

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 of South Asia. In Korean, this name is also written with Hangul: 천축.

[edit] Origin

The Silk Road made possible the first contacts between East and South Asia, hence the Chinese names of the latter territory (the same as the Western name of India) were inspired by Sindhu, the main topographic element from the area of contact. The oldest Chinese writing (preserved until today) 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 is employed the name 身毒, which may be pronounced as Juāndú, Shēndú or Yuándú, pointing to a derivation from Sindhu. In the writings of those times there appear also other Chinese names for South Asia; among them Tiānzhú (天竺) will become the most popular. It is probable that at the beginning of the first millennium 天竺 was pronounced as Xiandu, again suggesting a derivatin from Sindhu (the pronunciation of Classical Chinese is mostly forgotten). It is also probable that the Buddhist monks favored the character 天 (tiān) because it means Heaven (to emphasize the specificity of South Asia as the origin of Buddhism). Subsequently Tianzhu will become the most popular Chinese name for South Asia according as the Buddhism will become part of the Chinese culture. This term will spread also in the other countries belonging to the East Asian cultural area.