Etymology of Tibet
is a region of southerwestern China on a high plateau north of the Himalayas. The first known English word Tibet dates back to 1827 CE and may have been derived from older terms in other languages similar to Mongol term Tibyet, or Töbed. The first known Chinese words Xizang and the simplified form Zang date back to time between 1591 CE and 1592 CE during the Ming Dynasty. The first known official use of Xizhang in Qing records dates back to 1663 CE Their definitions and usage have been controversial in terms of the extent of territory being claimed.
The endonymic term is Bod or Ü-Tsang for Central Tibet. The Chinese term Tǔbō or Tǔfān was used during the Tang and Song dynasties to refer to the historical Tibetan Empire. In 1720 the Kangxi Emperor of Qing dynasty wrote an edict for the Imperial Stele Inscriptions of the Pacification of Tibet in Han, Manchu, Mongolian, and Tibetan languages. At that point, Xizang officially appeared, replacing other terms like Kokham and Ali Sankor. The Manchu term is Wargi Dzang, and the Mongol term is Töbed. Xizang was subsequently used in all documents such as 13-Article Ordinance for the More Effective Governing of Tibet in 1751, or 29-Article Ordinance for the More Effective Governing of Tibet of 1793. Xizang has become synonymous in China with the Tibet Autonomous Region.
Names
In English
The first known written use of the English adjective Tibetian is from in 1747; the first known use of the modern form, Tibetan, was in 1822. The first known written use of the proper noun was in 1827 as Thibet. The western name, is, however, much older: it was recorded in the 13th century by Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and William Rubruck, as Tebet. William Rubruck records Tebet as the name of a people, situated beyond the Tangut, and were distinctive for their customs and traditions. The name Tebet appears to be a loan from an Iranian or Turkic language, perhaps Sogdian. In 17th-century Modern Latin, Tibet is known as Tibetum. The ultimate origin of the name, however, remains unclear. Suggestions include derivation from Tibetan, Turkic or Chinese.The proposed Tibetan etymology derives the term from Stod-bod "High/Upper Tibet" from the autonym Bod. Andreas Gruschke's study of the Tibetan Amdo Province says,
At the beginning of the Tang dynasty's rule of China, Tibetans were called Tubo, a term that seems to be derived from tu phod or stod pod. The archaic Tibetan dialects of Amdo have retained the articulation of the medieval Tibetan language; as such the pronunciation is Töwöd, as in Mongolian tongue. Thus, the term was handed down as Tübüt in Turkish diction, Tibbat in Arabic and passed on as Tibet in Western languages.
The proposed Turkic etymology adduces töbäd 'the heights'. Behr cites Bazin and Hamilton to the effect that the four variant 土/吐-番/蕃 characters used to write Tu-fan/bo "Tibet" suggest "a purely phonetic transcription" of an underlying *Töpün "The Heights, Peaks" "Tibet" etymology from Old Turkic töpä/töpü "peak; height". He further hypothesizes that the final -t in Tibet names derives from "an Altaic collective plural which results in *Töpät, thus perfectly matching Turkic Töpüt 'Tibet'", which is attested in the Old Turkic Orkhon inscriptions.
Proposed Chinese etymology compares Tǔfān / Tǔbō. The premise of the Chinese name being the primary origin of the name hinges its having had -t final in Middle Chinese, e.g., Eric Partridge's hypothetical Tu-pat. Stein assumes that Tufan has the same origin as Tibet, but not that the latter is adopted from Chinese: Instead, the Chinese name would have arisen "by assimilation with the name of the T'u-fa, a Turco-Mongol race, who must originally have been called something like Tuppat", also reflected in Sogdian and Turkic texts as Tüpüt.
Origins: A short etymological dictionary of modern English states that "Tibet seems to have passed to us through the Ar name, drawn from the anicent Ch name ".
In Tibetan
The Standard or Central Tibetan endonym for Tibet, Bod, is pronounced, transliterated Bhö or Phö.One local explanation for the origin of Bod is that it is derived from the bod pa, a warning call used by herdsmen in pre-agricultural Tibet. According to Tibetan historian Chapel Tseten Phuntsog, the herdsmen formed close bonds with each other because they lived sparsely in a remote area that was prone to natural disasters and attacks by bandits and wild animals. When a herdsman became aware of incoming danger, he would yell "geye" or "waye" from the top of a hill to warn others. Bod consequently became the name of the region over time.
In regard to external uses of the endonym Bod, the French Sinologist and Tibetologist Rolf Stein explains in his 1922 work Tibetan Civilization:
The name Tibetans give their country, Bod, was closely rendered and preserved by their Indian neighbours to the south, as Bhoṭa, Bhauṭa or Bauṭa. It has even been suggested that this name is to be found in Ptolemy and the Periplus Maris Erythraei, a first-century Greek narrative, where the river Bautisos and a people called the Bautai are mentioned in connexion with a region of Central Asia. But we have no knowledge of the existence of Tibetans at that time.
American philologist Christopher Beckwith agrees that Ptolemy's geographic reference to the "Bautai – i.e., the "Bauts"" was "the first mention in either Western or Eastern historical sources of the native ethnonym of Tibet". He compares the 4th-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus describing the Bautai living "on the slopes of high mountains to the south" of Serica with contemporaneous Chinese sources recording a Qiang people called the Fa 發, anciently "pronounced something like Puat" and "undoubtedly intended to represent Baut, the name that became pronounced by seventh-century Tibetans as Bod." Beckwith states in his 1987 work The Tibetan Empire in Central Asia:
This first mention of the name Bod, the usual name for Tibet in the later Tibetan historical sources, is significant in that it is used to refer to a conquered region. In other words, the ancient name Bod originally referred only to a part of the Tibetan Plateau, a part which, together with Rtsaṅ, has come to be called Dbus-gtsaṅ.
In Chinese
The oldest Chinese language name for Tibetan Empire is , with modern Standard Chinese transliteration as either or. Chinese is a loan from Tibetan གཙང, the name of the southwestern part of the Tibetan Plateau.Modern Xizang 'Western Tsang' now specifies the "Tibet Autonomous Region".
The name 吐蕃 is recorded in the Old Book of Tang, relating that the Tibetan King Namri Songtsen sent two emissaries to Emperor Yang of Sui in 608 and 609. The two characters had the following medieval readings:
- could be read as > 'spit' or > 'vomit'.
- could be read as > 'hedge, fence' or > 'luxuriant growth'.
Herbert Giles included this pronunciation in the 1912 revision of his dictionary.
It also appears in Mathews' Chinese–English Dictionary.
W. South Coblin conjectures that it was adopted by mainland Chinese scholars after 1949.
In contrast, Victor H. Mair argues that it was the original pronunciation.
Contemporary Chinese dictionaries disagree whether 吐蕃 'Tibet' is pronounced or – a question complicated by the homophonous slur 土番 "barbarians; natives; aborigines". The Hanyu Da Cidian cites the first recorded Chinese usages of 土番 'ancient name for Tibet' in the 7th century and 土番 'natives ' in the 19th century.
None of the dictionaries giving includes a fanqie pronunciation, which is typically found in entries taken from older dictionaries.
Stein discusses the fan pronunciation of "Tibet".
The Chinese, well informed on the Tibetans as they were from the seventh century onwards, rendered Bod as Fan. Was this because the Tibetans sometimes said 'Bon' instead of 'Bod', or because 'fan' in Chinese was a common term for 'barbarians'? We do not know. But before long, on the testimony of a Tibetan ambassador, the Chinese started using the form T'u-fan, by assimilation with the name of the T'u-fa, a Turco-Mongol race, who must originally have been called something like Tuppat. At the same period, Turkic and Sogdian texts mention a people called 'Tüpüt', situated roughly in the north-east of modern Tibet. This is the form that Moslem writers have used since the ninth century. Through them it reached the medieval European explorers.
西藏 is the present-day Chinese name for "Tibet". This compound of 'west' and 'storage place; treasure vault; canon ' is a phonetic transliteration of Ü-Tsang, the traditional province in western and central Tibet.
藏 was used to transcribe the Tsang people as early as the Yuan dynasty, and "Xizang" was coined under the Qing dynasty Jiaqing Emperor. is used as an abbreviation for "Tibet" in words such as 藏文 "Tibetan language" and 藏族 "Tibetan people".
Geographical definitions
The difference in definition is a major source of dispute. The distribution of Amdo and eastern Kham into surrounding provinces was initiated by the Yongzheng Emperor during the 18th century and has been continuously maintained by successive Chinese governments. In 1720, Emperor Kangxi wrote an edict for the Imperial Stele Inscriptions of the Pacification of Tibet in the Manchu, Han, Mongolian, and Tibetan languages. At that point, Xizang officially appeared, replacing the term Tubo used since the Tang and Song dynasties, and the terms Kokham, Ü-Tsang, and Ali Sankor in China. The Tibetan term for Xizang is Bod, the Manchu term for Xizang is Wargi Dzang, and the Mongol term for Xizang is Töbed.Since the Thirteen Articles for the Settlement of Qinghai Affairs were submitted to Emperor Yongzheng in 1724, for the demarcations made during the Yongzheng reign, the borders between Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan were basically determined
Western scholars such as anthropologist Melvyn Goldstein exclude Amdo and Kham from political Tibet:
A modern nation-state usually has clearly defined borders at which one government's authority ceases and that of another begins. In centuries past, the Tibetan and Chinese governments had strong centers from which their power radiated, and weakened with distance from the capital. Inhabitants of border regions often considered themselves independent of both. Actual control exercised over these areas shifted in favor of one government or the other over the course of time. This history is conducive to ambiguity as to what areas belonged to Tibet, or to China, or to neither, at various times.
Rob Gifford, a National Public Radio journalist, said that in 2007, the region sometimes known as "ethnographic Tibet", which includes sections of Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan that surround the TAR, has greater religious freedoms than the TAR since the authorities in Beijing do not perceive the Tibetan populations in the areas as having the likelihood to strive for political independence.
In spite of the changing nature of the recognised borders between the two countries over the centuries, and arguments about their positions, there were serious attempts from very early times to delineate the borders clearly to avoid conflict. One of the earliest such attempts was promulgated in the Sino-Tibetan treaty which was agreed on in 821/822 under the Tibetan emperor Ralpacan. It established peace for more than two decades. A bilingual account of this treaty is inscribed on a stone pillar which stands outside the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. Here is the main core of this remarkable agreement:
In more recent times the border between China and Tibet was recognised to be near the town of Batang, which marked the furthest point of Tibetan rule on the route to Chengdu:
Spencer Chapman gives a similar, but more detailed, account of this border agreement:
Mr. A. Hosie, the British Consul at Chengdu, made a quick trip from Batang to the Tibetan border escorted by Chinese authorities, in September 1904, on the promise that he would not even put a foot over the border into Tibet. He describes the border marker as being a 3 day journey to the south and slightly west of Batang. It was a "well-worn, four-sided pillar of sandstone, about 3 feet in height, each side measuring some 18 inches. There was no inscription on the stone, and when unthinkingly I made a movement to look for writing on the Tibetan side, the Chinese officials at once stepped in front of me and barred the road to Tibet. Looking into Tibet the eye met a sea of grass-covered treeless hills. And from the valley at the foot of the Ningching Shan rose smoke from the camp fires of 400 Tibetan troops charged with the protection of the frontier. There was no time to make any prolonged inspection, for the Chinese authorities were anxious for me to leave as soon as possible."
André Migot, a French doctor and explorer, who travelled for many months in Tibet in 1947, stated:
Migot, discussing the history of Chinese control of Tibet, states that it was not until the end of the 17th century that:
American Tibetologist Elliot Sperling has argued in favor of reviving the term Tubote for modern use in place of Xizang, on the grounds that Tubote more clearly includes the entire Tibetan plateau rather than simply the Tibet Autonomous Region.