report are are told that in this name it is to be pronounced like in or yin. This does not seem very improbable. But an etymological authority tells us that the character in question has, in this name, the sound T'ien.[1] There may be some truth in this statement. But it is not supported by authority, and seems rather fanciful.
The district or region which the envoy Chang reported as named, let us continue to say, Shên-tu, is briefly described by him and others of the Han period. It was several thousand li south-east from Bactria, near a river (or sea); its inhabitants used elephants in fighting. Some writers describe them as Buddhists; and they were in many respects like the people of Bactria, or like the Geti (Yue-ti) according to another account. Their country was about 2000 li south-west from what is now the Ch'êng-tu and Ning-yuan districts in Ssŭchuan, and it had a regular trade with the merchants of the Ch'êng-tu district, some of whom seem to have settled in it. Further, this country was not far from the western border of the Chinese empire in the Han time, and it was on the way from China to Bactria. So though the name Shên-tu came to be afterwards given to India yet in its first use it apparently denoted a small region in what is now Yunnan and Burmah.[2]
The name Hsien-tou was apparently applied to a region different from that designated Shên-tu.[3] Like Hsien-tu (縣度〭), of which term it is perhaps only a variety, this name was probably used first by the Chinese for the Indus,
- ↑ Wên-ch'i-tien-chu (問奇典註), ch. 2. p. 22. The change of Shên-tu into T'ien-tu may point to a Burmese pronunciation of Sindu as Thindu.
- ↑ Han-Shu, ch. 95; Hou Han-Shu, ch. 88; Ma T. 1. ch. 338 gives much information about India compiled not very carefully from previous authorities; his account is translated in Julien's Mélanges p. 147.
- ↑ But Hsien (Hien)-tou (賢豆) came to be used as a name for India, and we find it described as a native designation for the whole country properly called Indravardhana. Su-kao-snêg-chuan, ch. 2. See also Fang-chih, ch. 1.
