On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c8.s1.18

v1.c8.s1.18

But what was the sound originally represented by the character now read Chu in the compound T'ien-chu? It seems that no satisfactory and decisive answer can be given at present to this question. We find that in the Han period the character represented several sounds which cannot be said to be very like each other. The upper part chu meaning bamboo is not significant here, we are told, but only phonetic; and the lower part is significant, and refers the word to the category earth. The character might then be read something like du, but this account of the syllable may be doubted, as we learn also that the character was read like *tek*, an old and still current pronunciation of the word for bamboo. Then this same character was also read as *chuh*, *tuh*, *kat*, and *ko* or *gou*.¹ Something like the last was perhaps the earliest pronunciation of the character, and this is probably a corruption or abbreviation of a form like *kao* (竹) or *kung* (笁). This last form, unknown to the dictionaries apparently, occurs often in Japanese texts of Buddhist books instead of the character for *chu*. Now in the fact that *ko* or *gou* was an old sound of this character we have an explanation of a proper name found in the Tibetan version of the Buddhist "Sūtra in Forty-two Sections". One of the two Indian monks who came to China in the time of Han Ming Ti, and translated or drew up the above scripture, is styled in Chinese text *Chu Fa-lan*. These words apparently represented an Indian name like Dharma-pushpa, that is, Flower of Buddhism. Now the Tibetans transcribing the sounds of the characters for Chu Falan according to their own language wrote apparently *Go-ba-ran* and this became in the modern transcription *Gobharana*. This last word is neither Sanskrit nor Tibetan, but it has been adopted by Feer who has been followed by Beal and Eitel. That Chu in such expressions as Chu-Fa-lan (竺法蘭), is not part of the name, but means "India" or "Indian" we know from its occurrence in other expressions of a similar kind. We may also infer it, in this case, from the fact that it does not occur in some old editions of the above-mentioned scripture, which have only Fa-lan as the name of the Indian monk. So also in another Tibetan work we find him described as "Bhāraṇa Paṇḍita".² There is also another word in which we may perhaps recognize the *ko* pronunciation of our character *chu*. This word is the old "Tangut", more correctly Tan-ku, which was the Turkish-Persian designation for the country now called Tibet.¹ It is not improbable that, as some have supposed, this Tan-ku is simply the *T'ien-chu* of Chinese writers. And so this last may have been originally a Turkish term, used to denote a country immediately to the west of China, and between that country and Bactria.