[470] From bonzo, a Portuguese corruption of the Japanese busso, a devout person, applied first to the Buddhist priests of Japan, and then extended to those of China and neighbouring lands.
[471] This name, probably the Chinese jin, men, people, already occurs in Sanskrit writings in its present form:
, Chína, whence the Hindi
, Chín, and the Arabo-Persian
, Sín, which gives the classical Sinae. The most common national name is Chûng-kûe, "middle kingdom" (presumably the centre of the universe), whence Chûng-kûe-Jín, the Chinese people. Some have referred China to the Chin (Tsin) dynasty (909 B.C.), while Marco Polo's Kataia (Russian Kitai) is the Khata (North China) of the Mongol period, from the Manchu K'î-tan, founders of the Liâo dynasty, which was overthrown 1115 A.D. by the Nü-Chăn Tatars. Ptolemy's Thinae is rightly regarded by Edkins as the same word as Sinae, the substitution of t for s being normal in Annam, whence this form may have reached the west through the southern seaport of Kattigara.
[472] Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilization, from 2300 B.C. to 200 A.D., or Chapters on the Elements Derived from the Old Civilizations of West Asia in the Formation of the Ancient Chinese Culture, London, 1894.
[473] "Observations upon the Languages of the Early Inhabitants of Mesopotamia," in Journ. R. As. Soc. XVI. Part 2.