Tianzhu (India)
| Tianzhu | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chinese | 天竺 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Korean name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hangul | 천축 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hanja | 天竺 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Japanese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kanji | 天竺 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hiragana | てんじく | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Look up 天竺 in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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| Historical Chinese exonyms |
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Tianzhu (Chinese: 天竺; pinyin: Tiānzhú) is one of the historical ancient Chinese names for the Indian subcontinent. Tian (天) means heaven, and Zhu (竺) means centre in Chinese.
Tianzhu was also referred to as Wutianzhu (五天竺, literal meaning is "Five Indias"), because there were five geographical regions on the Indian subcontinent known to the Chinese: Central, Eastern, Northern, Southern, and Western India.