On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India, 629–645 A.D. v1.c8.s1.3

v1.c8.s1.3

This rendering differs in some respects from that given by Julien which is neither very clear nor correct. Here, however, as in several other passages of the Records, it is not easy to make out the precise meaning of the author's statements. It is plain, however, that he is not dealing with names given to India generally but only with those used in Chinese books. Then his words would seem to indicate that he regarded *T'ien-chu*, *Shên-tu*, and *Sien-tou* as only dialectical varieties or mistaken transcriptions of *Yin-tu*, which was the standard pronunciation. Further his language does not seem to intimate, as Julien understood it to intimate, that Yin-tu was the name for all India used by the inhabitants of the country. In some other works we find it stated that Yin-tu was the native name for the whole country, and Indu-deśa given as the original Sanskrit term. Our author may have had this opinion but this does not seem to be the meaning of his statements here. On the contrary he apparently wishes us to understand that the natives of India had only designations of their own States, such as Magadha and Kausambhi, and that they were without a general name under which these could be included. It was the peoples beyond, as for example the Turks, who gave the name Yin-tu, and the Hu who gave Sin-tu, to a great territory of uncertain limits. Then the Buddhist writers of Kashmir, Gandhāra, and other countries beyond India proper, seem also to have sometimes used the name Yin-tu. But, as I-ching tells us, although this word may mean "moon" yet it was not the current name for India. In Buddhist literature India is called Jambudvipa, and portions of it Āryadeśa and Madhyadeśa.¹ One of the other names for India to be found in Buddhist literature is Indravardhana. But in the Chinese accounts of letters or missions sent by Indian rajahs to the court of China the rajahs are only represented as styling themselves kings of special countries in India. Thus the great Śīlāditya, who treated our pilgrim with great honour, is made in Chinese history to call himself king of Magadha.