The Names They Gave to Giants: How Southeast Asia's Kingdoms Named, Perceived, and Navigated India and China
The Names They Gave to Giants: How Southeast Asia's Kingdoms Named, Perceived, and Navigated India and China This analysis traces the ancient, mediated pathways of knowledge and nomenclature between India, China, and Southeast Asia, revealing how geographic and cultural barriers shaped civilizational perception. The foundational revelation is that direct Sino-Indian contact was impossible across the Himalayas, forcing initial interaction through the Indus Valley gateway in the northwest. This geographic imperative dictated the names they gave each other: India learned of "Cīna" (from the Qin state) via Central Asian traders, while China understood India as "Tiānzhú" (from Sindhu, the Indus River) via the same intermediaries. These names were not mere labels but encoded the nature of the relationship—China as a distant source of silk, India as a western holy land. Southeast Asia inherited and powerfully localized these terms, sorting them into...