Re: [INDOLOGY] Origin of Mahācīna

Fri Mar 11 16:48:35 UTC 2016

To Bill's point about Qin: I am not sure about the _geographical_
self-reference, but we do find -- and I confess I do not know how early or
late this is found, but it's there -- not so rarely the expression 秦言,
which is used to gloss a foreign word, and which we would translate loosely
as something like "In Chinese....".
best, jonathan

PS: I found the point about what is in Dutch sinaasappel wonderful! (The
17th c. form seems more Germanic: appelsien. For more fun facts:
http://www.etymologiebank.nl/trefwoord/appelsien)

On Fri, Mar 11, 2016 at 5:01 PM, Bill Mak <bill.m.mak at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> I believe there are textual issues with the Arthaśāstra and Mahābhārata
> which make the dating of those passages with references to cīna,
> cīnabhūmija, cīnapaṭṭa, etc rather difficult. Many Sanskrit astral texts
> contain kūrmavibhāga type of descriptions, correlating directions with
> country names and thus give us some clues of the geographical knowledge of
> the authors. In early Indo-Greek works like Yavanajātaka and
> Vṛddhayavanajātaka, there is no reference to cīna. In Varāhamihira's
> Bṛhatsaṃhitā (6th century) we find cīna in the the long list of place names
> belonging to the direction NE:
> 14.29ab/ aiśānyāṃ merukanaṣṭarājyapaśupālakīrakāśmīrāḥ/
> 14.29cd/ abhisāradaradataṅgaṇakulūta*sairindhra[K.sairindha]vanarāṣṭrāḥ//
> 14.30ab/ brahmapuradārvaḍāmaravanarājyakirātacīnakauṇindāḥ/
> 14.30cd/ *bhallāḥ
> paṭola[K.bhallāpalola]jaṭāsura*kunaṭakhasa[K.kunaṭhakhaṣa]ghoṣakucikākhyāḥ//
>
> Elsewhere, cīna appeared 8 more times in the text for various types of
> predictions. So for Varāhamihira, the idea of cīna was quite certain.
>
> As for Dan's comment on the origin of China, or even cīna, I don't think
> it can be so easily answered. Qin秦 was indeed the first Chinese empire, but
> it was very short-lived and there is no source I am aware of that Chinese
> ever referred themselves as people from Qin; or conversely, I am not aware
> of the knowledge of the Qin Empire in non-Chinese sources. Chinese
> referring themselves as people from various dynasties did become common
> later on, and indeed in the Chinese Buddhist texts, the reference to the
> people of Qin秦, that is referring to Later Qin (384 - 471 CE), is found
> frequently.
>
> But there are earlier sources which should be mentioned here. In Shijia
> fangzhi 釋迦方志, a quote attributed Chengguanzi成光子 of Later Han, dated 205
> CE, referred China as 振旦國 - country of Zhendan (from Cīnasthāna?). Later
> all, similar Chinese translations 震丹、真丹、真旦、振旦、神丹 are found frequently in
> early Buddhist texts throughout first half of the first millennium. This
> seems to add a Central Asian factor to "cīna", since cīnasthāna is not
> attested in Sanskrit sources. It is possible that the Sanskrit "cīna" was
> adopted from this earlier "cīnasthāna" or similar variants used in Central
> Asia. "Cīna" was translated into Chinese only later, appeared as 脂那
> (zhina) in Narendrayaśas' Chinese translation dated late sixth century
> CE, followed by the more common 支那 (zhina).
>
> Best regards,
> Bill
>
>
> --
> Bill M. Mak, PhD
> Associate Professor
>
> Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University
> Yoshidahonmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan 606-8501
> 〒606-8501 京都市左京区吉田本町
> 京都大学人文科学研究所
>
> email: mak at zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp
> Tel:+81-75-753-6961
> Fax:+81-75-753-6903
>
> copies of my publications may be found at:
> http://www.billmak.com
>
> On 2016/03/11, at 16:20, Klaus Karttunen wrote:
>
> Dear Collagues,
> in Greek and Latin China was known as Serica, from the first century BCE
> on, but this signifies just the country of Seres or “silk-producers”. In
> Ptolemy’s Geography Serica is northern China, while southern, reached from
> sea, is the country of Sinai. Cosmas Indicopleustes in the early 6th
> century had Tzinista for China, perhaps from early Arabic or Persian.
>
> Beside KAŚ and Mbh, Cīna and Mahācīna are met in late parts of the Pāli
> Canon, references in Malalasekera (at home, I cannot check it now).
>
> Marco Polo did not introduce China, for him China was Cathay (a late name
> related to Russian Kitai). Portuguese China is first attested in 1516 and
> could be learnt in India or South-East Asia, althougn Persian chīnī as
> medieval name of porcelain may have influenced. The s-form is curiously
> found in the name of orange in many European languages (e.g. German
> Apfelsine), “the apple of China”.
>
> Just to show that the names of China have been discussed quite a long
> time, I add an early reference:
> Klaproth, J. 1827. “Sur les noms de la Chine”, *JA* 10, 53-61 (with notes
> by E. Jacquet, *JA* 2:10, 1832, 438-453 & 2:11, 1832, 188f.
>
> Best,
> Klaus
>
> Klaus Karttunen
> South Asian and Indoeuropean Studies
> Asian and African Studies, Department of World Cultures
> PL 59 (Unioninkatu 38 B)
> 00014 University of Helsinki, FINLAND
> Tel +358-(0)2941 4482418
> Fax +358-(0)2941 22094
> Klaus.Karttunen at helsinki.fi
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 11 Mar 2016, at 06:17, Dominik Wujastyk <wujastyk at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> I'm an outsider in this discussion, so pardon any naive remarks.  I was
> under the impression, though, from something I read somewhere (that
> statement wouldn't get past Wikipedia) that Cīna in Tantrika texts,
> especially the *Mahācīnācāratantra*, referred to what we today call the
> Assam-Burma region.  Meghalaya, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, Northern Burma
> that sort of area.
>
> Best,
> Dominik
>
> --
> Professor Dominik Wujastyk* <http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
> Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
> Department of History and Classics
> <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
> University of Alberta, Canada
>
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-- 
J. Silk
Leiden University
Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS
Matthias de Vrieshof 3, Room 0.05b
2311 BZ Leiden
The Netherlands

copies of my publications may be found at
http://www.buddhismandsocialjustice.com/silk_publications.html

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