Definitions of Tibet


Tibet is a term for the major elevated plateau in Central Asia, north of the Himalayas. It is today mostly under the sovereignty of the People's Republic of China, primarily administered as the Tibet Autonomous Region besides adjacent parts of Qinghai, Gansu, Yunnan, and Sichuan.
The English name is adopted from Modern Latin Tibetum, and is shared by all western languages.
However, the term "Tibet" is subject to many definitions and controversy over its function and territorial claims.
There isn't any clear equivalent of the English term Tibet in either Tibetan or Chinese; names for the region loosely corresponding to the Tibetan Plateau include the Standard Tibetan endonym Bod for "Greater Tibet",
Ü-Tsang for "Central Tibet", Chinese 吐蕃 Tǔbō or Tǔfān for the historical Tibetan Empire,
西藏 Xīzàng "Western Tsang" for the territory of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Names

In English

The English adjective Tibetian is first recorded only as late as 1747, when Tibet was under Qing rule. The proper noun is first recorded in 1827, as Thibet.
The western name of Tibet is, however, much older, recorded in the 13th century by Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and William Rubruck, as Tebet.
William Rubruck records Tebet as the name of a people, situated beyond the Tangut, characterized by their custom of mortuary cannibalism.
The name Tebet appears to be a loan from an Iranian or Turkic language, perhaps Sogdian.
In 17th-century Modern Latin, Tibet is known as Tibetum.
The ultimate origin of the name, however, remains unclear. Suggestions include derivation from Tibetan, Turkic or Chinese.
The proposed Tibetan etymology derives the term from Stod-bod "High/Upper Tibet" from the autonym Bod. Andreas Gruschke's study of the Tibetan Amdo Province says,
At the beginning of the Tang dynasty's rule of China, Tibetans were called Tubo, a term that seems to be derived from tu phod or stod pod. The archaic Tibetan dialects of Amdo have retained the articulation of the medieval Tibetan language; as such the pronunciation is Töwöd, as in Mongolian tongue. Thus, the term was handed down as Tübüt in Turkish diction, Tibbat in Arabic and passed on as Tibet in Western languages.

The proposed Turkic etymology adduces töbäd "the heights".
Behr cites Bazin and Hamilton to the effect that the four variant 土/吐-番/蕃 characters used to write Tu-fan/bo "Tibet" suggest "a purely phonetic transcription" of an underlying *Töpün "The Heights, Peaks" "Tibet" etymology from Old Turkish töpä/töpü "peak; height". He further hypothesizes that the final -t in Tibet names derives from "an Altaic collective plural which results in *Töpät, thus perfectly matching Turkish Töpüt 'Tibet'", which is attested in the Old Turkic Orkhon inscriptions.
Proposed Chinese etymology compares Tǔfān/Tǔbō. The premise of the Chinese name being the primary origin of the name hinges its having had -t final in Middle Chinese, e.g., Eric Partridge's hypothetical Tu-pat.
Stein assumes that Tufan has the same origin as Tibet, but not that the latter is adopted from Chinese: Instead, the Chinese name would have arisen "by assimilation with the name of the T'u-fa, a Turco-Mongol race, who must originally have been called something like Tuppat", also reflected in "Turkish and Sogdian texts" as Tüpüt.

In Tibetan

The Standard or Central Tibetan endonym Bod "Tibet" is pronounced, transliterated Bhö or Phö.
Rolf Stein explains,
The name Tibetans give their country, Bod, was closely rendered and preserved by their Indian neighbours to the south, as Bhoṭa, Bhauṭa or Bauṭa. It has even been suggested that this name is to be found in Ptolemy and the Periplus Maris Erythraei, a first-century Greek narrative, where the river Bautisos and a people called the Bautai are mentioned in connexion with a region of Central Asia. But we have no knowledge of the existence of Tibetans at that time.

Christopher Beckwith agrees that Ptolemy's geographic reference to the "Bautai – i.e., the "Bauts"" was "the first mention in either Western or Eastern historical sources of the native ethnonym of Tibet". He compares the 4th-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus describing the Bautai living "on the slopes of high mountains to the south" of Serica with contemporaneous Chinese sources recording a Qiang people called the Fa, anciently "pronounced something like Puat" and "undoubtedly intended to represent Baut, the name that became pronounced by seventh-century Tibetans as Bod."
Bod originally named the Central Tibetan region Ü-Tsang or Dbus-gtsang.
This first mention of the name Bod, the usual name for Tibet in the later Tibetan historical sources, is significant in that it is used to refer to a conquered region. In other words, the ancient name Bod originally referred only to a part of the Tibetan Plateau, a part which, together with Rtsaṅ, has come to be called Dbus-gtsaṅ.

In Chinese

The oldest Chinese language name for "Tibet" is 吐蕃, transliterated either pinyin Tǔbō, Wade–Giles T'u-po or
pinyin Tǔfān, Wade–Giles T'u-fan. Chinese 藏 Zàng is a loan from Tibetan གཙང, the name of the southwestern part of the Tibetan Plateau.
Modern Xizang "Western Tsang" now specifies the "Tibet Autonomous Region".
吐蕃 Tufan/Tubo is first recorded in the Old Book of Tang describing the Tibetan King Namri Songtsen sent two emissaries to Emperor Yang of Sui in 608 and 609.
The Tubo vs. Tufan transliteration of 吐蕃 is based on historical spellings involving four different characters:
The latter two fān Chinese characters are used interchangeably for "foreign" words, e.g., fānqié 番茄 or 蕃茄 "tomato". Fán is sometimes translated as "barbarian" meaning "non-Chinese; foreign".
For the character 蕃, pre-modern Chinese dictionaries indicate only the pronunciation fán.
According to Paul Pelliot, the pronunciation tǔbō was suggested by Abel Rémusat in the early 19th century, based on pronunciations of similar characters, and adopted uncritically by other European scholars.
Contemporary Chinese dictionaries disagree whether 吐蕃 "Tibet" is pronounced "Tǔbō" or Tǔfān – a question complicated by the homophonous slur tǔfān 土番 "barbarians; natives; aborigines". The Hanyu Da Cidian cites the first recorded Chinese usages of Tǔfān 土番 "ancient name for Tibet" in the 7th century and tǔfān 土番 "natives " in the 19th century. Sinological linguists are engaged in ongoing debates whether 吐蕃 is "properly" pronounced Tubo or Tufan. For example, Sino-Platonic Papers has been the venue for disputation among Victor H. Mair, Edwin G. Pulleyblank, and W. South Coblin.
The Chinese neologism Tǔbó 圖博 avoids the problematic Tǔfān pronunciation, and is used by authorities such as the Central Tibetan Administration.
Stein discusses the fan pronunciation of "Tibet".
The Chinese, well informed on the Tibetans as they were from the seventh century onwards, rendered Bod as Fan. Was this because the Tibetans sometimes said 'Bon' instead of 'Bod', or because 'fan' in Chinese was a common term for 'barbarians'? We do not know. But before long, on the testimony of a Tibetan ambassador, the Chinese started using the form T'u-fan, by assimilation with the name of the T'u-fa, a Turco-Mongol race, who must originally have been called something like Tuppat. At the same period, Turkish and Sogdian texts mention a people called 'Tüpüt', situated roughly in the north-east of modern Tibet. This is the form that Moslem writers have used since the ninth century. Through them it reached the medieval European explorers.

This Fan 蕃 pronunciation of "B'i̭wan" illustrates the difference between modern Chinese pronunciation and the Middle Chinese spoken during the Sui Dynasty and Tang Dynasty period when "Tibet" was first recorded. Reconstructed Middle Chinese pronunciations of Tǔbō and Tǔfān "Tibet" are: t'uopuâ and t'uop'i̭wɐn, thwopwâ and thwobjwɐn, tʰɔ'pa and tʰɔ'puan, or thuXpat and thuXpjon
Xizang 西藏 is the present-day Chinese name for "Tibet". This compound of xi "west" and zàng "storage place; treasure vault; canon " is a phonetic transliteration of Ü-Tsang, the traditional province in western and central Tibet.
Zang 藏 was used to transcribe the Tsang people as early as the Yuan Dynasty, and "Xizang" was coined under the Qing Dynasty Jiaqing Emperor. Zang abbreviates "Tibet" in words such as Zàngwén 藏文 "Tibetan language" and Zàngzú 藏族 "Tibetan people".
The People's Republic of China government equates Xīzàng with the Xīzàng Zìzhìqū 西藏自治区 "Tibet Autonomous Region, TAR". The English borrowing Xizang from Chinese can be used to differentiate the modern "TAR" from the historical "Tibet".

Geographical definitions

When the PRC government and some Tibetologists refer to Tibet, it means the areas covering Ü-Tsang and Western Kham, which became present-day the Tibet Autonomous Region, a provincial-level entity of the People's Republic. This definition excludes the former domains of the Dalai Lamas in Amdo and eastern Kham which are part of Qinghai, Gansu, Yunnan, and Sichuan.
When the Government of Tibet in Exile and the Tibetan refugee community abroad refer to Tibet, they mean the areas consisting of the traditional provinces of Amdo, Kham, and Ü-Tsang.
The difference in definition is a major source of dispute. The distribution of Amdo and eastern Kham into surrounding provinces was initiated by the Yongzheng Emperor during the 18th century and has been continuously maintained by successive Chinese governments.
Western scholars such as anthropologist Melvyn Goldstein exclude Amdo and Kham from political Tibet:
A modern nation-state usually has clearly defined borders at which one government's authority ceases and that of another begins. In centuries past, the Tibetan and Chinese governments had strong centers from which their power radiated, and weakened with distance from the capital. Inhabitants of border regions often considered themselves independent of both. Actual control exercised over these areas shifted in favor of one government or the other over the course of time. This history is conducive to ambiguity as to what areas belonged to Tibet, or to China, or to neither, at various times.
Rob Gifford, a National Public Radio journalist, said that in 2007, the region sometimes known as "ethnographic Tibet", which includes sections of Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan that surround the TAR, has greater religious freedoms than the TAR since the authorities in Beijing do not perceive the Tibetan populations in the areas as having the likelihood to strive for political independence.
In spite of the changing nature of the recognised borders between the two countries over the centuries, and arguments about their positions, there were serious attempts from very early times to delineate the borders clearly to avoid conflict. One of the earliest such attempts was promulgated in the Sino-Tibetan treaty which was agreed on in 821/822 under the Tibetan emperor Ralpacan. It established peace for more than two decades. A bilingual account of this treaty is inscribed on a stone pillar which stands outside the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. Here is the main core of this remarkable agreement:
In more recent times the border between China and Tibet was recognised to be near the town of Batang, which marked the furthest point of Tibetan rule on the route to Chengdu:
Spencer Chapman gives a similar, but more detailed, account of this border agreement:
Mr. A. Hosie, the British Consul at Chengdu, made a quick trip from Batang to the Tibetan border escorted by Chinese authorities, in September 1904, on the promise that he would not even put a foot over the border into Tibet. He describes the border marker as being a 3½ day journey to the south and slightly west of Batang. It was a "well-worn, four-sided pillar of sandstone, about 3 feet in height, each side measuring some 18 inches. There was no inscription on the stone, and when unthinkingly I made a movement to look for writing on the Tibetan side, the Chinese officials at once stepped in front of me and barred the road to Tibet. Looking into Tibet the eye met a sea of grass-covered treeless hills. And from the valley at the foot of the Ningching Shan rose smoke from the camp fires of 400 Tibetan troops charged with the protection of the frontier. There was no time to make any prolonged inspection, for the Chinese authorities were anxious for me to leave as soon as possible."
André Migot, a French doctor and explorer, who travelled for many months in Tibet in 1947, stated:
Migot, discussing the history of Chinese control of Tibet, states that it was not until the end of the 17th century that: