CHIMNEY-GLASS, s. Gardener's name, on the Bombay side of India, for the flower and plant Allamanda cathartica (Sir G. Birdwood).
CHINA, n.p. The European knowledge of this name in the forms Thinae and Sinae goes back nearly to the Christian era. The famous mention of the Sinim by the prophet Isaiah would carry us much further back, but we fear the possibility of that referring to the Chinese must be abandoned, as must be likewise, perhaps, the similar application of the name Chinas in ancient Sanskrit works. The most probable origin of the name—which is essentially a name applied by foreigners to the country—as yet suggested, is that put forward by Baron F. von Richthofen, that it comes from Jih-nan, an old name of Tongking, seeing that in Jih-nan lay the only port which was open for foreign trade with China at the beginning of our era, and that that province was then included administratively within the limits of China Proper (see Richthofen, China, i. 504-510; the same author's papers in the Trans. of the Berlin Geog. Soc. for 1876; and a paper by one of the present writers in Proc. R. Geog. Soc., November 1882.)
Another theory has been suggested by our friend M. Terrien de la Couperie in an elaborate note, of which we can but state the general gist. Whilst he quite accepts the suggestion that Kiao-chi or Tongking, anciently called Kiao-ti, was the Kattigara of Ptolemy's authority, he denies that Jih-nan can have been the origin of Sinae. This he does on two chief grounds: (l) That Jih-nan was not Kiao-chi, but a province a good deal further south, corresponding to the modern province of An (Nghé Ane, in the map of M. Dutreuil de Rhins, the capital of which is about 2° 17′ in lat. S. of Hanoi). This is distinctly stated in the Official Geography of Annam. An was one of the twelve provinces of Cochin China proper till 1820-41, when, with two others, it was transferred to Tongking. Also, in the Chinese Historical Atlas, Jih-nan lies in Chen-Ching, i.e. Cochin-China. (2) That the ancient pronunciation of Jih-nan, as indicated by the Chinese authorities of the Han period, was Nit-nam. It is still pronounced in Sinico-Annamite (the most archaic of the Chinese dialects) Nhut-nam, and in Cantonese Yat-nam. M. Terrien further points out that the export of Chinese goods, and the traffic with the south and west, was for several centuries B.C. monopolised by the State of Tsen (now pronounced in Sinico-Annamite Chen, and in Mandarin Tien), which corresponded to the centre and west of modern Yun-nan. The She-ki of Sze-ma Tsien (B.C. 91), and the Annals of the Han Dynasty afford interesting information on this subject. When the Emperor Wu-ti, in consequence of Chang-Kien's information brought back from Bactria, sent envoys to find the route followed by the traders of Shuh (i.e. Sze-chuen) to India, these envoys were detained by Tang-Kiang, King of Tsen, who objected to their exploring trade-routes through his territory, saying haughtily: "Has the Han a greater dominion than ours?"
M. Terrien conceives that as the only communication of this Tsen State with the Sea would be by the Song-Koi R., the emporium of sea-trade with that State would be at its mouth, viz. at Kiao-ti or Kattigara. Thus, he considers, the name of Tsen, this powerful and arrogant State, the monopoliser of trade-routes, is in all probability that which spread far and wide the name of Chīn, Sīn, Sinae, Thinae, and preserved its predominance in the mouths of foreigners, even when, as in the 2nd century of our era, the great Empire of the Han has extended over the Delta of the Song-Koi.
This theory needs more consideration than we can now give it. But it will doubtless have discussion elsewhere, and it does not disturb Richthofen's identification of Kattigara.
[Prof. Giles regards the suggestions of Richthofen and T. de la Couperie as mere guesses. From a recent reconsideration of the subject he has come to the conclusion that the name may possibly be derived from the name of a dynasty, Ch'in or Ts'in, which flourished B.C. 255-207, and became widely known in India, Persia, and other Asiatic countries, the final a being added by the Portuguese.]
c. A.D. 80-89.—"Behind this country (Chrysē) the sea comes to a termination somewhere in Thin, and in the interior of that country, quite to the north, there is a very great city called Thinae, from which raw silk and silk thread and silk stuffs are brought overland through Bactria to Barygaza, as they are on the other hand by the Ganges River to Limyricē. It is not easy, however, to get to this Thin, and few and far between are those who come from it...."—Periplus Maris Erythraei; see Müller, Geog. Gr. Min. i. 303.
c. 150—"The inhabited part of our earth is bounded on the east by the Unknown Land which lies along the region occupied by the easternmost races of Asia Minor, the Sinae and the natives of Sericē...."—Claudius Ptolemy, Bk. vii. ch. 5.
c. 545.—"The country of silk, I may mention, is the remotest of all the Indies, lying towards the left when you enter the Indian Sea, but a vast distance further off than the Persian Gulf or that island which the Indians call Selediba, and the Greeks Taprobane. Tzinitza (elsewhere Tzinista) is the name of the Country, and the Ocean compasses it round to the left, just as the same Ocean compasses Barbari (i.e. the Somāli Country) round to the right. And the Indian philosophers called Brachmans tell you that if you were to stretch a straight cord from Tzinitza through Persia to the Roman territory, you would just divide the world in halves."—Cosmas, Topog. Christ., Bk. II.
c. 641.—"In 641 the King of Magadha (Behar, &c.) sent an ambassador with a letter to the Chinese Court. The emperor ... in return directed one of his officers to go to the King ... and to invite his submission. The King Shiloyto (Siladitya) was all astonishment. 'Since time immemorial,' he asked his officer, 'did ever an ambassador come from Mohochintan?'.... The Chinese author remarks that in the tongue of the barbarians the Middle Kingdom is called Mohochintan (Mahā-Chīna-sthāna)."—From Cathay, &c., lxviii.