Tianzhu (India)

Tianzhu is a historical Chinese name for the Indian subcontinent. means "heaven", and means "bamboo" in Chinese.
Tianzhu was also referred to as, because there were five geographical regions on the Indian subcontinent known to the Chinese: Central, Eastern, Northern, Southern, and Western India.

Etymology

Originally pronounced as ' or ' in Old Chinese, it comes from the Chinese transliteration of unattested Old Persian diminutive, which is from attested ?????, which is itself derived from the Proto-Indo-Iranian *síndʰuš, the etymon also of Sanskrit, the native name of the Indus River. Persians travelling in northwest India named the subcontinent after the river around the 6th century BC. is just one of several Chinese transliterations of Sindhu. appears in Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian and is used in the Book of the Later Han. comes from the Kuchean, another transliteration of Hindu. The western terms of Hindu and India also ultimately derive from the same Persian concept.

Extent

A detailed account of Tianzhu is given in the "Xiyu Zhuan" in the compiled by Fan Ye :

Other languages

In Japan, Tianzhu is pronounced as. It is used in such works as the Japanese translation of Journey to the West.
In Korea, Tianzhu is pronounced as. It is used in Wang ocheonchukguk jeon, a travelogue by the 8th century Buddhist monk Hyecho from the Korean kingdom of Silla.