Tianzhu is the historical Chinese name for India. Tenjiku (meaning "heaven") is the obsolete Japanese word for ancient India, being the Japanese pronunciation of the archaic Chinese name for India, "Tianzhu".

Tianzhu is the historical East Asian name for India that comes from the Chinese transliteration of the Persian Hindu, which itself is derived from the Sanskrit Sindhu, the native name of the River Indus. Tianzhu is the one of the Chinese translation of River Sindhu.

Tianzhu was also referred to as Wutianzhu (五天竺, literal meaning is “Five Indias”)

In the Chinese common religion and philosophical schools the idea of the universal God has been expressed in a variety of names and representations, most notably as 天 (Tiān, "Heaven") and 上帝 (Shàngdì, "Highest Deity" or "Highest Emperor").

These two and other concepts have been variously combined, in diverse contexts, to form titles such as:

Huáng Tiān Shàngdì (皇天上帝; Huáng, "Emperor" + Tiān + Shàngdì)[1] or Xuán Tiān Shàngdì (玄天上帝; Xuán, "Deep" + Tiān + Shàngdì)[2]
Shàngtiān (Shàng + Tiān, "Highest Heaven")[3]
Tiāntáng (Tiān + Táng, "Hall of Heaven").[4]

The compounds tiānshén (tiān + shén, meaning "heavenly god")[5] and tiānxiān (tiān + xiān, meaning "heavenly immortal")[6] have been used for a deity, in a polytheistic sense. The word Dì by itself has likewise been used for God.[7]

When Abrahamic religions penetrated China, they appropriated some of the traditional titles, or created new compound titles, to express their theology.