Some similarity's between India and China

[ashok mourya]

How is the cultural relationship between India and China ?
What are differences in the way people from the two countries live their lives today.
...
Both India and China are large countries that gave rise to a diversity of cultures. In addition, as neighbours for 5000 years, a lot of culture has been shared and transferred between the two. As such, the cultures are very similar in a lot of ways. One could write books on this topic, so it's difficult to write a short answer. Among the similarities include:

• Significance of the family unit
• Attitudes toward teachers, education and child upbringing
• Both are superstitious cultures (for example, superstitions surrounding when one can cut hair, cleaning the house beforeholidays, etc.)
• Belief in luck
• Lunisolar calendar systems
• 60-year calendar cycles (thanks Mangesh Joshi)
  
• Associations of colours with ideas (red being one of the most auspicious, white being the colour of mourning and death in both Indian and Chinese tradition)
• Hosts and guests and how they traditionally receive each other
• Music based on pentatonic scales (India and China both each have many other styles, but both make extensive use of pentatonic scales. In particular the popular Indian ragam mohanam is exactly identical to the Chinese pentatonic scale)
• Philosophical and religious ideas (reincarnation, karma, various deities) especially with Buddhist Chinese -- mind you there are hundreds of millions of Chinese around the world who are worshipping an Indian guy, which shows the extent to which the countries have shared/imposed/propagated/traded ideas with each other
• Idol worship
• 5 elements, but 2 of them differ (China: Wood, Water, Earth, Metal, Fire; India: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether)
• Beliefs in traditional medicine
• Tea cultivation -- both India and China have been doing it for so long, nobody has the slightest clue who had it first
• Rice cultivation
• Food -- you might wonder why I list this as a similarity, but many people in the West see only a small fraction of Indian cuisines and a small fraction of Chinese cuisines. In reality the foods take a more gradual transition from Indian cities to Chinese cities, and foods that came from outside became common to both (naan, for example, which is common to both northern India and western China, uncommon in both southern India and eastern China). People also pay less attention to is raw ingredients. Indian and Chinese cuisines have a lot of similarities in the vegetables used, and even spices to some degree. It's the way they're used and mixed, and the cooking methods that are so vastly different that one might not recognise that there are even similarities in what's stocked in the kitchen. South Indians and Chinese regularly shop at each others' grocery stores and markets in southeast Asia.

Among the differences:

• Language structure and grammar is different, even though Indian and Chinese languages have both imported a little vocabulary from each other
• Attitudes in a group, the amount of individualism one expresses directly, and when it is appropriate to be expressive in a social context
• Conflict resolution
• Attitudes regarding embarrassment and losing/maintaining face
• Directness vs. indirectness in personal expression
• Gestures of indication (for example, yes/no/happiness/sadness) differ between the two
• The actual theories and methods used in traditional medicine, although both have a strong belief in traditional medicine
• Chopsticks vs. hands for eating
• Soy cultivation, which India has actually done for several hundred years, but it never caught on in Indian cuisine as much as it did in China
• Cuisine differs greatly, but a lot of it has to do with cooking methods rather than raw ingredients
• The beliefs and religious/cultural significance behind holidays
• Literary and artistic traditions
• Pop culture divides the countries much more than traditional culture

 

[GumNaam]

these aren't traits specific to China and india; these are traits common across all asian cultures including middle eastern cultures.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Buddha was from Nepal.

And Nepal was not even a part of British India when it was created from the hundreds of independent countries in the subcontinent.

 

[ashok mourya]

Both are idol worshippers.....

 

[Bussard Ramjet]

Buddha was from Nepal.

And Nepal was not even a part of British India when it was created from the hundreds of independent countries in the subcontinent.

Buddha was from what is TODAY Nepal.

At that time it was all the part of the same dynasty. That is the reason why other important places for Buddhists are found in India, like Bodh Gaya.

 

[ashok mourya]

@Chinese-Dragon can you enlight about Chinese monkey god ,like our hanuman.??

Monkey King, also called Sun Wukong, is the main character in the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West. He accompanies the monk Xuanzang to retrieve Buddhist sutras from India. Sun Wukong protects Xuanzang from other evil spirits and monsters along the journey. Sun is very powerful to lift his Ru Yi Jin Gu Bang. He is also very fast, traveling 108,000 li (54,000 kilometers) in one somersault. Sun knows 72 transformations, which allows him to transform into various animals and objects. With his help, Xuanzang successfully retrieves Buddhist sutras and gets back to his country.

In India, there is also a special monkey. According to the Hinduism, he is called Hanuman, one of the most popular concepts of devotees of God. He is the 11th incarnation (Rudra avtar) of Lord Shiva, and is considered the most powerful and intelligent amongst Gods. His most famous feat, as described in the Ramayana, was leading an army of monkeys to fight the demon King Ravana.

Sun Wukong and Hanuman are monkeys. Ji Xianlin, a famous Chinese scholar, believes that Sun Wukong is the incarnation of Hanuman in China, which means that Sun Wukong might originate in India.

 

[shadows888]

@Chinese-Dragon can you enlight about Chinese monkey god ,like our hanuman.??

Monkey King, also called Sun Wukong, is the main character in the classical Chinese novel Journey to the West. He accompanies the monk Xuanzang to retrieve Buddhist sutras from India. Sun Wukong protects Xuanzang from other evil spirits and monsters along the journey. Sun is very powerful to lift his Ru Yi Jin Gu Bang. He is also very fast, traveling 108,000 li (54,000 kilometers) in one somersault. Sun knows 72 transformations, which allows him to transform into various animals and objects. With his help, Xuanzang successfully retrieves Buddhist sutras and gets back to his country.

In India, there is also a special monkey. According to the Hinduism, he is called Hanuman, one of the most popular concepts of devotees of God. He is the 11th incarnation (Rudra avtar) of Lord Shiva, and is considered the most powerful and intelligent amongst Gods. His most famous feat, as described in the Ramayana, was leading an army of monkeys to fight the demon King Ravana.

Sun Wukong and Hanuman are monkeys. Ji Xianlin, a famous Chinese scholar, believes that Sun Wukong is the incarnation of Hanuman in China, which means that Sun Wukong might originate in India.

I don't know about Sun Wukong being incarnation of Hanuman but he's one of the most popular ancient deities.

 

[faithfulguy]

• Tea cultivation -- both India and China have been doing it for so long, nobody has the slightest clue who had it first

Actually, tea is from China. Chai is a Mandarin Chinese term. The English term "tea" come from Minnan dialect. Except for Portuguese, most European language also use a variation of the word "tea"

 

[LURKER]

Buddha was from Nepal.

And Nepal was not even a part of British India when it was created from the hundreds of independent countries in the subcontinent.

Buddha was from that part of modern day Nepal whom even the Nepalis don't consider as fellow Nepali as they don't speak Nepali and are similar to people living across the border culturally, racially and speak the same languages like maithili, awadhi, hindi etc. Buddha got enlightened in Gaya and hence got known as Buddha, (before that he was Prince Siddharth), gave his first sermon at Sarnath and died at Kushinagar all in India. Kingdom of Kosala with its capital at Ayodhya and later Shravasti, both in India, incorporated all the territories in terai which Nepal later annexed from Awadh. So no that region was not always a part of Nepal.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

Buddha was from that part of modern day Nepal whom even the Nepalis don't consider as fellow Nepali as they don't speak Nepali and are similar to people living across the border culturally, racially and speak the same languages like maithili, awadhi, hindi etc. Buddha got enlightened in Gaya and hence got know as Buddha, (before that he was Prince Siddharth), gave his first sermon at Sarnath and died at Kushinagar all in India. Kingdom of Kosala with its capital at Ayodhya and later Shravasti, both in India, incorporated all the territories in terai which Nepal later annexed from Awadh. So no that region was not always a part of Nepal.

Isn't the Indian God "Shiva" from Kailash Manasarovar, which is in modern-day China?

Regardless, all of this happened long before the idea of India even existed.

 

[Tshering22]

Buddha was from Nepal.

And Nepal was not even a part of British India when it was created from the hundreds of independent countries in the subcontinent.

Ok. You need to understand how the Mahajanapadas were arranged as individual kingdoms. So was modern China multiple kingdoms at one stage. It wasn't the single unified entity that it is now. If you had your common periods of unity, so did we.

It is not like Japan, which was one of the very few single empires in Asia for a long time.

 

[LURKER]

Isn't the Indian God "Shiva" from Kailash Manasarovar, which is in modern-day China?

Regardless, all of this happened long before the idea of India even existed.

We're not discussing mythology rather history here. Boundaries of ancient kingdoms were not well defined as modern day nations.

The idea of nation state of India may not have exited back then just as the idea of nation state of China is a modern concept, but the idea of culturally contiguous India has existed for centuries.

 

[艹艹艹]

Philosophical and religious ideas (reincarnation, karma, various deities) especially with Buddhist Chinese -- mind you there are hundreds of millions of Chinese around the world who are worshipping an Indian guy, which shows the extent to which the countries have shared/imposed/propagated/traded ideas with each other

The mainstream ideology of Chinese society is the Confucian thought, Buddhism only exists in the form of religion in China. Most Chinese are atheists.
Before Buddhism was introduced into China, China already had its own mainstream ideology.
Taoism also has a deep influence on Chinese society.
Sun wukong's shifu （teacher） comes from Taoism

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

But the idea of culturally contiguous India has existed for centuries.

Highly doubtful.

China was ruled by one central government/authority more than 2000 years ago (Qin/Chin Dynasty). All of China's dynasties since then have been successors to this state, and also ruled the country from one central authority in the Chinese capital.

India is completely different. The dynasties in India had no connection to each other, they did not succeed each other, they did not rule from any central authority apart from one instance where the territory of modern-day India just happened to be inside Ashoka's Empire (along with the rest of the subcontinent and beyond).

The idea of India as a unified nation, under one central authority only existed after British India. Before that the landmass was occupied by hundreds of separate countries.

I guess you could say that the majority of people in the subcontinent had some degree of influence from the IVC civilisation (brought by outside Aryans) which existed in what is now modern-day Pakistan. But by that logic, all of East Asia was influenced by Confucian ideology, that doesn't make East Asia a single country or civilisation.

 

[nature is]

@Chinese-Dragon

Sun Wukong and Hanuman are monkeys. Ji Xianlin, a famous Chinese scholar, believes that Sun Wukong is the incarnation of Hanuman in China, which means that Sun Wukong might originate in India.

Sun Wukong is a character in a novel, not a god. So he cannot be an incarnation of some god elsewhere. So to whether the character is drawn from Hanuman, there's no conclusive evidence. Points to note, monkey is not the only animal in the Chinese novel, the story is made up of many animal spirits like pig, fox, snake.....and the villain is an ox/cow. The monkey was actually a devilish spirit before he turned good. Quite different from Hanuman.