Introduction

INTRODUCTION

‘The more we learn the further goes back the history of Eastern Navigation.’ — YULE.

L’histoire de l’Inde, trop exclusivement regardée du continent, doit être aussi envisagée au point de vue maritime. — SYLVAIN LÉVI.

The Indian Ocean is not a closed basin like the Mediterranean Sea; on the South it opens on an infinite expanse of water. Yet the prevalence of currents and of the Indian Ocean periodical winds conducive to navigation has maintained here, since very early times, a system of exchanges in which the African coast, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, Insulindia, Indo-China, and beyond it, China and even Korea and Japan, continually gave and received their quotas. And in this system, India held a privileged, if not a preponderant, place by the advantage of her situation and the great length of her coasts; she is the centre towards which the many lines of this system converge. Doubtless, the documents are rare for the ancient period; but the race which carried civilisation by the sea to Burma, to Siam, to Cambodia, Indo-China and Java, and Madagascar, was a race of navigators.

And though as a whole Southern India ‘has in the past looked east rather than west,’ still the mariners of Sūrpāraka, Bharukaccha and Muziris are famous in history and legend. In his celebrated study on the Rāmāyaṇa¹, Sylvain Lévi draws pointed attention to many similarities between the geographical cantos in the fourth book of the Rāmāyaṇa and the statements of Arab geographers, and argues that these similarities suggest the existence of a folklore of the Indian Ocean, stories current among mariners of the ‘distant countries to which either their voluntary sailings or the freaks of winds had carried them.’ “And from Africa to China,” he says, “on this immense extent of coasts which recede in deep hollows or project in compact masses, the same narratives recur, ever re-examined and ever guaranteed by fresh proofs. Each self-respecting navigator must have seen the sacred marvels with his own eyes. From the Periplus of Scylax to the voyages of Sindbad the Sailor, the same stories pass from collection to collection, as they pass from mouth to mouth”. And the testimony of Al-Biruni is clear on the existence, in his day, of an active intercourse of ancient standing between Africa and China, and of the part of India in it; for he says:² “The reason why in particular Somnāth has become so famous is that it was a harbour for sea-faring people, and a station for those who went to and fro between Sufāla in the country of Zanj (Africa) and China.”

On the landward side again India was in equally active communication with China. The route taken by Fā-hien and Yüan Chwang into India was followed by many others, and trade was at least as good an incentive to this intercourse as religion; I-tsing has preserved a record of sixty of his contemporaries who visited India for religious study, but we have no account of the mercantile intercourse of the same period. But as Garrez has shown,³ even for the Persians of the Sassanian period, Bactriana, the cradle of the religion of Zoroaster, had become virtually an Indian country and the Oxus a river of the Buddhists and Brahmins. “For nearly eight centuries in effect (125 B.C. to 650 A.D.), Bactriana was occupied by the Kuṣāns, who also extended their sway over the entire valley of the Kābūl and that of the Indus up to the peninsula of Guzerat. Connected thus politically with the land of Indians, separated on the other hand from Iran proper by a desert, it fell gradually under Indian influence, and the ancient religion of the Magi had to give place to the Brahmins, and above all to the Buddhists. The Greek writers of this period always cite Bactriana with India, and mention thousands of Brahmanas and Samanas who reside there. Already the medals of many Greek kings of this country bear legends in an Indian language and character. Those of Indo-Scythians show us still, it is true, some names of Iranian divinities; but the figures on them are accompanied by Indian attributes, some even being oddly made up with that superfluity of heads and arms which characterises so specially the representation of divinity in the land of the Hindus. The Chinese annalists, who have conserved to us precious data regarding these Scythian princes, describe them as zealous Buddhists; this is beyond all possibility of doubt for many among them, notably for the celebrated Kanerki or Kaniṣka. It is during this period that the Iranian name of Bālhi entered Sanskrit literature, and that the Oxus, under its primitive name of which we find no trace in Iran, took a place in the Indian cosmography of the Brahmans as well as the Buddhists”. Sylvain Lévi has pointed out that the Rāmāyaṇa mentions the Tārim under the name of Sītā, while traditional Buddhist cosmography makes this stream, as well as the Indus, the Oxus and the Ganges, rise from one and the same lake Anavatapta.⁴

In the days when Yüan Chwang traversed Bactriana, “Buddhism was generally flourishing from Termez, at the passage of the Oxus, up to Bāmiān at the gates of Kābūl, and in the south-west up to Ta-la-kien on the frontier of the kingdom of Po-la-sse (Persia). The country of Balkh alone contained nearly one hundred convents and 53,000 monks. One of the convents, the most remarkable for its magnificence, situated to the south-west of the town, was known by the name ‘New Convent’ (nava saṅghārāma or nava vihāra).⁵ This ’new convent’ (Nubehar) was destroyed by Islamic forces within half-a-century after Yüan Chwang visited it, and Buddhism suffered in Central Asia the same fate which befell it in India some centuries later. And for many centuries after the land routes across the North-Western frontier of India ceased to be frequented by merchants and pilgrims from China, the sea-route between India and China was open, and there is much evidence available on these latter-day commercial relations.

Besides these contacts with Africa, Arabia and China, India, and Southern India in particular, had in the early centuries of the Christian era, a regular system of exchanges, direct and indirect, with the Eastern section of the Roman Empire.

Our aim is to see what impression Southern India (including Ceylon) made upon the foreigners who came into contact with it one way or another. The earliest accounts we have are, speaking generally, those of the classical writers, whose notices of India gain in extent and accuracy to the end of the second century A.D. Then come several notices from Chinese travellers and annalists many of which have been made accessible only by researches that are still in progress. From the eighth century the writings of Arab merchants and travellers, historians and geographers begin to be important, while the Chinese sources become more copious and definite than before. We have also occasional notices by European travellers (and priests) like Benjamin of Tudela and Marco Polo. After the end of the fourteenth century, the foreign notices of Southern India become too many and too voluminous for inclusion in this collection, and an exception has been made in favour of only a very few highly significant accounts.

Among the classical writers directly accessible at present the earliest to mention India is Herodotus. Writing in the fifth century B.C., the Father of History had only a vague and meagre knowledge of the country and his notice of it is valuable for his curious account of certain wild trees that bore wool which in beauty and quality excelled that of sheep and out of which the Indians made their clothing.⁶ His is the first rational account of India and its peoples, generally free from the fables described by other writers both before and after him. The first direct notice of a South Indian kingdom occurs in Megasthenes whose quaint account of the Pāṇḍyan Kingdom seems to be a mixture of facts and of contemporary fables relating to that Kingdom. (I B, i and ii).

One of the most surprising results of recent research is the discovery by Paul Pelliot of a passage (II) in Pan Kou, a very early Chinese writer, attesting the existence of an active intercourse between China and the states of Insulindia and Southern India in the Han period, beginning from the second century B.C. If the text of Pan Kou has been correctly interpreted, it would warrant a somewhat drastic revision of the notions now held regarding the age when the Hindu colonisation of the eastern lands began.⁷

Alexandria in Egypt rose to great prosperity in the Hellenistic Age, and though it was noted for its manufactures, it derived its immense wealth in part from its “share in the trade of the East which had by now assumed very large proportions thanks to direct contact with India….Ptolemaic merchant fleets were sent to the southern ports of the Red Sea,”⁸ by the Nile-Red-Sea canal which had been opened in 190 B.C., and the Arabs and the Hindus served as intermediaries for the trade with India and the Far East till Roman times.

The Andhras are the earliest Indian line of kings definitely known to have developed a sea power and to have promoted maritime trade and also perhaps overseas colonisation. The attribute trisamudrādhipati, lord of the three oceans, is applied to them by Bāṇa in his Harṣacarita, and there is mention in the Apocrypha of an Andrapolis as a port in Western India; lastly, numerous coins of this dynasty are known to bear the design of a double-masted ship figured on them.⁹

“The policy of the Roman Empire during the two centuries following the Christian era was to encourage direct sea trade with India, cutting out all overland routes through Parthia and thus avoiding the annoyance of fiscal dependence on that consistent enemy of Rome”.¹⁰ Strabo records the increase in the knowledge of India among the Romans of his day and the success of the expedition under Gallus, sent by Augustus (25 B.C.) to secure for the empire the command of Aden and the Red Sea route to India, which was becoming increasingly popular among the merchants of the empire, (III C). Aden was soon after occupied by a colony of Egyptians and Greeks, and the monsoon was discovered for the Romans by Hippalus, an Egyptian pilot. This discovery not only shortened the duration of the journey, but, by enabling ships to cut across the open sea, greatly diminished the danger from pirates who infested the coastal waters. “We are told that whereas before this discovery hardly twenty ships a year had made the voyage, after it, on an average, a ship a day left the Egyptian ports for the East. To the sailors of these ships the whole of the western coast of India was well known.¹¹ It is noteworthy that more than one half of the Roman coins found in India date from the time of Augustus and Tiberius. Before the first century A.D. was far advanced, the Indian trade attained such magnitude as to give concern to thoughtful observers.

“Besides cloves and other products of Malaya and silk from China, the ports on the West coast of India furnished pepper, ivory of the elephants of Malabar, indigo, steel, muslins, ebony, pearls from Cape Comorin, and teak-wood which was employed in carpentry on the coasts of the Persian Gulf where in general teak did not grow. Lastly the Coromandel coast supplied cotton stuffs. In their turn the Roman ships brought wine, Egyptian fabrics, coral, a rare article in all the Eastern countries, tin, lead and bronze. As the articles brought by the Romans did not suffice to pay for what they purchased, the difference was paid in cash”.¹²

Pliny the Elder, the anonymous author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, and Ptolemy, represent the further stages in that increasing acquaintance of the Romans with the countries of the East of which we get the first hints in Strabo. Though Pliny generally derives his information regarding India from earlier writers, still his references to Indian trade (IV B) and the drain of Roman treasure due to it must have been quite up to date when he wrote his Natural History about 75 A.D. Whether the Periplus was written a few years before or after the publication of Pliny’s work, its author had doubtless visited the seats of commerce on the West coast of India, and his account is invaluable for the directness and accuracy that generally characterise it (V).

The voyages of Greek sailors were continued beyond Cape Comorin from about the close of the first century A.D., and in the early decades of the second century they explored many sea-routes across the Bay of Bengal. “One pioneer appropriately named Alexander cut across the Isthmus of Malaya and skirted the Annamese coast as far as Cattigara (probably Hanoi in Tonkin). Finally, in 166 a deputation of Greek merchants, who styled themselves ‘ambassadors’ from the emperor ‘An-Tun’ (M. Aurelius Antoninus) visited the court of the Emperor Huan-ti at Loyang and opened negotiations for a regular overseas trade between the Mediterranean lands and China”.¹³ But these voyages were occasional ventures that led to no extensive changes in the trade connections of the Roman Empire. Yet the improvement effected in the knowledge relating to the geography of the East is reflected in Ptolemy’s pages. Pliny and Periplus knew nothing of the Far East; the merchants who frequented Barygaza and Muziris in their time knew little of the Eastern navigation beyond India, and they were still enquiring if Taprobanê was an island or a continent communicating with Africa.¹⁴ On the other hand, coins of Trajan (98-117 A.D.) and Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) are not uncommon on the East coast of South India, though comparatively rare on the West coast. And though “his map of India has been distorted out of recognition by a portentous error,” Ptolemy “made important additions to the knowledge of the geography of Ceylon, the interior of India, and India beyond the Ganges”.¹⁵ And after Ptolemy, as Sylvain Lévi has shown, all texts Greek and Indian relate themselves to him and to the Niddesa. It has been rightly observed that Ptolemy’s Guide to Geography ‘differed from Strabo’s production as does a skeleton from the living body’:¹⁶ for this reason and because of the numerous and difficult problems of identification presented by his tables relating to Southern India, problems which cannot be adequately treated in casual notes, I decided to omit the tables from the present collection.

After Ptolemy’s attempt ‘to put into scientific form the records and personal impressions of a number of merchants, travellers and others of his time,’ there ‘followed a long period without original observation or authorship—a period of copying, compilation and imitation’.¹⁷ The Roman empire began to develop signs of weakness and the delicate commercial system which had been reared during the Hellenistic and early Imperial periods broke down completely towards the end of the third century. The Greek half of the Roman empire indeed kept up its political unity much longer than the Western half; but ‘knowledge and enterprise were languishing and were not revived until the conquests of the followers of Mohammed again brought East and West into contact and orderly relations’.¹⁸ To this period belongs Marcian of Heraclea (VII) whose work has survived only in fragments. “If it had been preserved to us in complete form”, says Schoff,¹⁹ “it might indeed have been a more useful compilation of Roman geography for general reference than the highly technical work of Ptolemy.”

A more typical Byzantine figure was the ‘crotchety monk’ Cosmas, called Indikopleustes ‘the man who sailed to India’. In his early life he was a merchant, and his business took him to many places on the Persian Gulf, on the West coast of India and as far east as Ceylon (XII C). His book, Christian Topography, written some time between 530 and 550 A.D. sets out to disprove the theories of classical geographers on the configuration of the earth and establish doctrines ‘drawn from Holy Scripture.’ Yule characterised it, not very unjustly, ‘a continent of mud’ from which we may extract, however, ‘a few geographical fossils of considerable interest.’²⁰

The live contact between South India and Persia in the first part of the seventh century A.D. is attested by a striking coincidence between the paintings in the ceiling of Cave No. I in Ajaṇṭā and a somewhat detailed notice by a Persian historian of a correspondence between Pulakesin II and the Sassanian monarch Khusru II. Some doubts have indeed been cast upon the view that Ajaṇṭā paintings portray Khusru II and his celebrated consort Shirin on the one hand, and Pulakesin II receiving a Persian embassy on the other. But the details mentioned by Tabari (838-923 A.D.), the Persian historian, in his account of the dispute between Khusru II and his son are quite clear and definite. “Tabari”, says Nöldeke, “in this part of his narrative followed a Pehlevi work written shortly after the king’s death, but before the Arab conquest”; and Tabari puts the following statement in the mouth of Khusru: “Two years ago, Pulakesi, King of India, sent to us, in the thirty-sixth year of our reign, ambassadors carrying a letter imparting to us various news, and presents for us, for you, and our other sons. He also wrote a letter to each of you. To you he presented—don’t you remember it?—an elephant, a sword, a white falcon and a piece of gold brocade. When we looked at the presents and at the letters, we remarked that yours bore the mark ‘Private’ on the cover in the Indian language. Then we ordered that the presents and other letters should be delivered to each of you, but we kept back your letter, on account of the remark written on the outside. We then sent for an Indian scribe, had the seal broken, and the letter read. The contents were:—‘Rejoice and be of good cheer, for on the day Dai ba Adhar, of the thirty-eighth year of the reign of Chosroes, thou wilt be crowned king and become ruler of the whole empire. Signed, Pulakesi.’ But we closed this letter with our seal, and gave it into the keeping of our consort Shirin”.²¹

India’s relations with China form a long and instructive story. But I must in general confine my attention to South India and Ceylon and the sea-route to China; an occasional glance at the relations between China and the maritime states of the Malay peninsula along that route will also be useful to our understanding of the subject. The beginnings of this intercourse may be traced, as has been seen, to the second century B.C. or even earlier. The evidence for the first and second centuries A.D. is meagre. Yet there is no room to doubt that the political condition of India and the extensive trade relations maintained by the various parts of that country were well known in China. This becomes clear from an interesting passage in the report made to the emperor in 125 A.D. by general Pan Yong, the son of the celebrated Pan Tch’ao and nephew of the historian Pan Kou. Pan Yong played an important part in the conquest and administration of the Western parts of the Chinese Empire in the first years of the second century A.D., and his account of India, remarkable alike for its brevity and precision, deserves to be reproduced here:²²

“The kingdom of T’ien-tchou (India) is also known as Chen-tou; it lies several thousands of li to the south-east of Hiong-nou. Its customs are similar to those of Hiong-nou, but the country is low, humid and warm. This kingdom is on the banks of a great river. The people ride on elephants while going to war; they are weaker than the Yue-tche; they practise the religion of the Buddha; and it has become a habit with them never to kill or to fight.”

“If after leaving the kingdom of Kao-fou (Kabul) which belongs to the Yue-tche, one goes south-west, one reaches the western sea; in the East one gets to the kingdom of P’an-k’i;²³ all these lands form part of Chen-tou. Chen-tou contains several hundreds of towns other (than the capital); in each town they have appointed a governor; there are many dozens of other kingdoms (besides the principal one); in each kingdom there is a king. Though some small differences may be noticed in each of these kingdoms, yet all are called Chen-tou. At this period (apparently 125 A.D.) they are dependent altogether on the Yue-tche; the Yue-tche having killed the king and installed a chief as governor of these people.

“This country produces elephants, rhinoceroses, tortoise shell, gold, silver, copper, iron, lead (and) tin. From the West coast it is in communication with Ta-Ts’in (the Roman province of Syria),²⁴ and precious objects from Ta-Ts’in are found there. There are also fine fabrics, woollen carpets of good quality, perfumes of all kinds, sugar-candy, pepper, ginger (and) black salt.

“In the epoch of the emperor Ho (89-105 A.D.), they sent on several occasions ambassadors carrying tribute and presents. Later, the countries of the West having revolted, these relations were interrupted. Then in the reign of emperor Houan, in the second (159 A.D.) and fourth (161 A.D.) years Yen-hi they came again on two occasions from beyond Je-nan”.²⁵ The Hindu embassies of 159 and 161 thus followed the same route as the so-called ‘embassy’ from Marcus Aurelius which reached China in 166 A.D.²⁶ and brought with them ivory, rhinoceros horns and tortoise shells.

According to a Chinese authority cited by Sylvain Lévi,²⁷ there was another and a longer break in the relations between China and India in the third century. But it may be doubted if this statement refers to the Southern sea-route between China and India. At any rate there is much evidence to show that Southern India was in active touch with the colonies of Indonesia and that these colonies often employed South Indian products in their exchanges with China.

In 225 A.D. Fu-nan (Ancient Cambodia) and other countries offered the lieou-li (pkt. verūlya, skt. vaidūrya), the cat’s-eye gem, as a present; this gem must have been of South Indian origin.²⁸ About the same time, the king of Fu-nan sent an embassy to India; this embassy went up the river Ganges and reached the court of the Muruṇḍa king and returned to Fu-nan at the end of four years with a present of four horses of the country of the Yue-che (Indo-Scythians).²⁹ Other embassies from Fu-nan to China are recorded in the years, 225-30, 243, 268, 285, 286, 287, 357, 434, 435, 438, and 484 bringing presents of “an image in chased gold of the seat of the king of dragons, an elephant in white sandal, two stupas of ivory, two pieces of cotton, two sou-li (surāhi) of glass, and one tray of areca-nut and tortoise shell.” Again in 503, 511, 514, 519, embassies brought as presents a lucky image of sandalwood from India and the leaves of the sāla tree, besides pearls, rock crystal, turmeric, and storax and other perfumes. Later embassies offered a live rhinoceros among other things.³⁰ It is easily seen that vaidūrya, sandalwood and pearls are specifically South Indian products.

The kingdom of Campā (Ancient Cochin-China) also sent embassies in the years 230, 268, 284 and 340 offering tame elephants and carrying a letter ‘written entirely in barbaric characters,’ i.e., an Indian alphabet prevalent in Campā, and it is well-known that this alphabet was of South Indian origin.³¹

It has been shown that asbestos was shipped from India to Fu-nan in the beginning of the third century A.D.³² From Java again at least seven embassies are known to have been sent to China in the fifth century, and in 430 one of these is said to have taken to the Chinese court rings of diamond, red parrots, cotton stuffs, coarse and fine, from India, and cotton goods from Ye-po (Gāndhāra, according to Pelliot).³³

Facts like these show that the sea-route between India and China was being actively used during the early centuries of the Christian era, if not directly at least by the mediation of the Hindu colonies of Indonesia. This inference is confirmed by the story of Fā-hien’s travels at the beginning of the fifth century. He is indeed the first Buddhist who is known to have succeeded in accomplishing a sea journey from Ceylon to China. He did not visit the mainland of South India but took ship from Tamluk to Ceylon, (VIII B, C), and his interest was centred chiefly in Buddhism. His account of the Deccan and the ‘pigeon monastery’ is just edifying gossip (VIII-A).

It may be noted that in this early period the sea-trade between China and the Western countries was developed by the initiative and enterprise of the Arabs and Indians. The Chinese were still timid navigators and much afraid of pirates.³⁴

After Fā-hien there was a succession of Buddhists who sailed between Southern India and China. Sanghavarmi, a Ceylonese monk, arrived in China in 420 A.D. and translated the Mahīśāsaka Vinaya. The more celebrated Guṇavarman arrived soon after. The stories that have gathered round his name may not all be history; but there is little reason to doubt that Javanese Buddhism owed a great deal to him, and that, in China, he helped to establish a community of nuns, a project which involved the invitation of some nuns from Ceylon to come and assist in the initiation of the order. Guṇavarman also translated many sacred books into the Chinese language (IX). The names of several others who followed the sea-route in the fifth century are mentioned in the Kwai-Yuen catalogue of the Chinese Tripiṭaka, compiled in 730 A.D.³⁵

The maritime intercourse between the two countries seems to have continued in full swing in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D. Cosmas mentions the arrival in Ceylon of ships from the remotest countries including those that brought silk from T’sinista (China), and his testimony is that of a merchant who had taken a personal part in trading with Ceylon in the sixth century. Later Chinese authors like Cho’u K’iu-fei (1178) and Chau Ju-kua (1225) record it as their opinion that though Kia Tan (730-835 A.D.), the great Chinese geographer, described a land-route from Annam to India, still the sea-route must have been more expeditious than the long overland route, because the celebrated Bodhidharma sailed all the way to Canton about 520 A.D.³⁶ Ma-Twan-lin has preserved an account of a South Indian embassy to China (X) at the beginning of the sixth century A.D. which took some horses of a fine breed as presents to the Chinese Emperor and gave much interesting information on the products of the country. The role of Fu-nan as intermediary in the trade relations between South India and China becomes apparent in a curious account (XI) of a highly valued mirror from Western India offered for sale in China sometime between 500 and 550 A.D. To Ma Twan-lin again we owe the survival of a short and rather vague passage (XIII) which refers to conditions prevailing in India, maybe in the second half of the sixth century or in an earlier period; it says that some Indians went as far as Fu-nan and Tonkin to traffic in coral necklaces and pearls of inferior quality, and then proceeds to give a brief sketch of the Indians, their habits and dress.

The seventh century forms a great epoch in the annals of Indian Buddhism and the attractions offered by its study in situ to many pious Chinese pilgrims. Some Indian monks also travelled to China to labour there in the cause of the Buddhist faith. Dharmagupta, for instance, a scholar of Lāṭa (Gujarat), left his native land at first for Central India, and gradually found his way across Kapiśa and Badakshan, Kashgar, Turfān and other places to the Chinese capital about 590 A.D.; and he spent the rest of his life there translating Hindu texts into Chinese and writing a memoir on the countries of the West till 619 A.D.³⁷ Of all the Chinese pilgrims that came to India, Yüan Chwang rightly claims the first place in the attention of the historians and archaeologists of India. Not only did he travel much more extensively in India than his compatriots, but he was on the whole much less of a recluse than they. Like them, he was primarily interested in the study and collection of Buddhist sacred books and in visiting the far-famed shrines of India, but as Watters has said ‘his creed was broad and his piety never became ascetic, and he was by nature tolerant.’ The record of his journeys and experiences is as varied and interesting as may be expected, and, except in recording Buddhist miracles, he generally depended on the testimony of his own personal observation (XIV). Even so, he does not completely satisfy the curiosity of modern students, and to cite Watters once more: ‘He was not a good observer, a careful investigator, or a satisfactory recorder, and consequently he left very much untold which he would have done well to tell.’

By the side of Yüan Chwang, I-tsing appears more bookish. I-tsing³⁸ was a boy of twelve when Yüan Chwang returned to China in 645 A.D., and his biographer informs us that I-tsing made up his mind to follow Yüan Chwang’s illustrious example in the year 649. For reasons unknown to us, he had to put off the execution of his plan till 671 when he embarked from Canton on a Persian ship; many other monks had promised to accompany him, but stayed away in the end, and his only companion was his pupil Chan-hing. He reached India early in 673 and landed at Tamluk. He spent three months there and made the acquaintance of a Chinaman who had already lived twelve years in India. In his company he visited Bihar, the true Holy Land of Buddhism, travelling with a caravan of hundreds of merchants. He fell ill on the way, and later became a victim to a band of robbers who relieved him of all possessions, including his clothes. He rejoined his companions later and finished his pilgrimage without any further adventures. He then spent ten years in Nālandā till in 685 he made up his mind to return to China by the same route as he had taken on his outward journey. He spent four years at Śrīvijaya, went to Canton for a short period, and returned to Śrīvijaya with four companions to carry on his literary work. His memoirs were written when he lived in Śrīvijaya. He returned to China in 695 and was received with great pomp by the notorious empress Ou. He kept himself busy with his literary work till his death in 713.³⁹

I-tsing thus did not visit Southern India or even Ceylon, and he has therefore nothing to tell us directly about these lands. But his works are valuable for the itineraries they contain (XV-A), for their notices of differences in doctrines and social practices among the Buddhists of different lands (XV-B, C, D), and above all for the brief biographies of eminent monks who visited India in his time (XV-E). For, as Chavannes has observed, it is surprising to find that in one generation as many as sixty persons braved the hazards of this distant and perilous voyage. And it is legitimate to suppose that in the periods before and after I-tsing hundreds of pilgrims must have undertaken similar voyages the details of which have altogether escaped the historian.

That religion was not the sole motive force that brought China and India together in this period, that trade and politics also worked towards the same result, becomes clear from the notices of certain embassies from the kingdoms of India⁴⁰ including the Pallava kingdom of Kāñcī in the last years of the seventh century and the first years of the eighth (XVI). These notices have been collected from a Chinese encyclopaedia of the eleventh century by Chavannes, and are also preserved in a later abbreviated version in the pages of the indefatigable Ma-Twan-lin. These embassies have not received the attention they deserve at the hands of Indian historians. Śīlāditya of Western India,⁴¹ and the Cāḷukya Vallabha of South India, sent their representatives to China in 692. But the most surprising fact we learn from these records is that in 720 A.D. Narasimhavarman II, the Pallava ruler of Kāñcī, well-known under his surname Rājasimha, sent an embassy to China to inform the Chinese emperor of his intention to go to war with the Arabs and Tibetans and asked the Emperor to give a name to his army; he also sent word that he had constructed a temple on account of the emperor and wanted him to give it too a name. The ambassador that brought these requests was highly honoured, and a Chinese embassy was sent in return to visit South India and gratify the wishes of Narasimhavarman.

These precise references to Narasimhavarman go to show that the usual chronology of the reigns of the Pallava monarchs at the close of the seventh century and the beginning of the eighth is not as well founded as it is generally taken to be; it is possible that the reign of Narasimhavarman lasted longer and that of Nandivarman II Pallavamalla began later than is generally believed.⁴² The mention of Arabs and Tibetans as the enemies of the Pallava kingdom in this period should also be noted. Separately or allied together, the Arabs and the Tibetans were more the enemies of China in this period than of any Indian state, least of all a South Indian state, and one may reasonably surmise that it was the Chinese court which, being impressed by the political power of Narasimhavarman in India, was anxious to enlist his support in its plans against the Tibetans. “It is certain, according to the evidence of certain Chinese authors,” says Reinaud, “that the Tibetans, called Thufan by those writers, played in the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. a great part in Central Asia. Masters for a time of regions situated in the north-east and south-east, they made the emperors of China tremble even in their capital. A Chinese author says that, at an epoch which corresponds to the year 787, the emperor of China found himself constrained, for his own security, to make an alliance with the king of Yunnan, the Khalif of Bagdad, and certain Indian princes. The Tibetan arms seemed to extend to the remotest parts of the Bay of Bengal; it is only in some such way that we can explain the name Tibetan Sea applied to the Bay by Ishtakri and Ibn Hawkal.”⁴³

The career of the remarkable monk Vajrabodhi⁴⁴ falls in the same period as the South Indian missions to China just mentioned and is connected with the most celebrated among them. He was a native of South India born in 661 A.D. He studied in Nālandā till his twenty-sixth year, and then made a pilgrimage to Kapilavastu in 689 before he returned to Southern India, the centre of the cult of Avalokiteśvara. Then Kāñcī had been suffering for three years without rain, and the king Narasimhapotavarman implored the help of the pious monk, who brought on rain by means of prayer. Soon after this Vajrabodhi had a vision in which he was ordered to visit Ceylon and to go and worship Mañjuśrī in the Middle Empire of China. He crossed the sea and was solemnly received in Ceylon. There he spent six months worshipping the holy relics. He returned to India, and with the permission of the king, perhaps Narasimhavarman himself, he embarked for China together with an ambassador carrying presents to the Emperor. The mission, doubtless the same as Narasimhavarman’s mentioned above, halted first at the port of Po-tchi-li in Ceylon, which it reached in twenty-four hours and in which there were already thirty-five Persian vessels that had come to exchange precious stones. The monk became friends with the Persian merchants, and after a month’s stay in Ceylon all of them sailed together and reached Śrīvijaya after a month’s voyage. The last stage in the voyage ended disastrously, all the boats except Vajrabodhi’s being scattered by a tempest. After a long series of reverses, he landed at Canton and took the road from there to the Eastern capital, where he arrived in 720 A.D. Vajrabodhi had introduced the Mahāyāna into Ceylon when he stayed there, and when he died in China in 732, he enjoined his pupil Amoghavajra to go to the five Indias and to the kingdom of Ceylon. Amoghavajra left Canton on a Malay boat (741) and reached Ceylon where he was received with pomp by the ruler Silāmegha. There he pursued his work with vigour and fixed the Mahāyāna doctrine in its final form.

Bodhisena, a South Indian Brahmin of the Barachi (Bhāradvāja ?) family, was drawn to China by the fame of the land and by his desire to meet Mañjuśrī who was then reputed to be living in China. On his way, he met a priest from Campā, Buttetsu by name, and they travelled together to China in 733. Bodhisena learnt from a facetious priest that Mañjuśrī had left for Japan, and just at the time he was pressed by a Japanese embassy taking leave of the Chinese court to embark with them for Japan. And Bodhisena accepted the invitation with alacrity, reached Naniwa (modern Osaka) in 736 and was received in great pomp by the officials and priests of the court. Bodhisena and his friend Buttetsu lived there for many years as highly honoured guests, and officiated in the installation of a great statue of Buddha Vairocana in 749. In 750 Bodhisena became Sojo, the head of the entire Buddhist ecclesiastical order in Japan, and was popularly known as Baramon Sojo (Brahman Bishop). He taught Sanskrit and the doctrine of the Gaṇḍavyūha of the Mahāyāna at three different monasteries till his death in 760 A.D. at the age of fifty-seven. An inscribed stūpa erected ten years later marks to this day the place of his final rest. The Japanese alphabet was fixed about this time and shows unmistakable traces of Sanskrit influence, and Takakusu suggests that the studies inaugurated by Bodhisena had something to do with it.⁴⁵

Several embassies from Ceylon to China are mentioned in the eighth century.⁴⁶ Some other facts of considerable significance may be noted before we leave this phase of Indo-Chinese relations. A disciple of the Chinese priest Kien-tchen, who made a voyage from China to Japan in 749 A.D., while describing the journey (XVII), states that the Canton river was full of vessels from India, Persia and Arabia, and that in Canton itself there were three Brahmin temples where Indian Brahmins lived. And in 881 A.D. a Japanese prince, Shinnio Taka-oka by name, who had started on a pilgrimage to India, died on his way at Lo-yue, in the southern part of the Malay peninsula.⁴⁷ Lastly, the Tamil inscription of Takuā-pā mentioning a Viṣṇu temple, a tank called Nāraṇam and the Maṇigrāmam (merchant guild) of that place may be assigned also to the same period.⁴⁸

A Chinese work of the early ninth century, purporting to record facts relating to the eighth, states that the foreign ships “which visited Canton were very large, so high out of the water that ladders several tens of feet in length had to be used to get aboard. The foreign (Fan) captains who commanded them were registered in the office of the Inspector of Maritime Trade (Shi-po-shi). This office (the existence of which, by the way, proves the importance of this trade), before allowing the ships to clear, required that the manifests should be submitted to it, and then collected export duty and also the freight charges. The export of ‘precious and rare articles’ was forbidden, and attempts at smuggling were punished with imprisonment.”⁴⁹

With the ninth century we enter on the period of the great Arab travellers, geographers and historians. From very ancient times much of the trade of the Indian Ocean had been in the hands of the Arabs, and with the rise of Islam there came a sudden expansion the effects of which were not confined to religion and politics, but spread to commerce and science. The Prophet had been himself a merchant in his early life, and this no doubt explains in part the great prestige which Muslim merchants enjoyed. The dramatic story of the expansion of Muslim power under the early Khalifs is well known; one would expect that the political revolutions which accompanied it would have been hindrances to trade. But even in the midst of the most rapid and surprising conquests, commercial expansion went on apace. In the 16th year of the Hegira (637 A.D.), in the Caliphate of Omar, a fleet started from the coast of Oman to ravage Sindh and the West Coast of India. And before the end of the seventh century, a colony of Muslim merchants had established themselves in Ceylon. Some Muslim women who had lost their parents in Ceylon were carried off by Indian pirates on their way back home, and this event furnished a pretext to the famous Hajjāj to invade the Indus Valley.⁵⁰ In 758 A.D. the Arabs and Persians settled in Canton were sufficiently numerous for them to be able to raise a tumult in the city and turn to their own profit the confusion thus created.⁵¹ In fact politically the Arab empire was not stable and “it split up into various elements almost as quickly as it had been constructed. But as an economic and cultural power it remained of the greatest significance. It created for a time the conditions under which a revival both of prosperity and of learning was possible. The actual contribution of Arab scholars and of Arab artists is not so important as the work they enabled others to do. The empire was not so much Arab as Muslim, not a racial but a religious unity. ‘Out of some sixteen geographers of note’ (who wrote in Arabic), we are told by a modern historian, ‘from the ninth to the thirteenth century, four were natives of Persia, four of Baghdad, and four of Spain’.”⁵²

Abul-Kasim-Obeidulla bin-Ahmad was among the earliest of these writers. He is better known as Ibn Khurdadbeh, his Persian surname indicating that he was a descendant of a Magian, Khordadbeh by name. The latter embraced Islam like many of his co-religionists, and his grandson rose to a high position in the official world, and he was in a position to gather much authentic information on the various parts of the empire and the countries with which it maintained relations of one kind or another. His Book of Routes and Kingdoms was composed between 844 and 848 A.D., but was still being modified in 885 A.D.⁵³ Unfortunately, as Masūdī remarks, he presents his facts in a dry and incomplete manner (XVIII), and if he enters into details occasionally, it is only to refer to some quixotic legend. Yet, there is one precious passage describing the state of intercommunication between Europe and Asia in the second half of the ninth century:

“The Jewish merchants speak Persian, Roman (Greek and Latin), Arabic, and the French, Spanish and Slav languages. They travel from the West to the East, and from the East to the West, now by land and now by sea. They take from the West eunuchs, female slaves, boys, silk, furs and swords. They embark in the country of the Franks on the Western sea and sail to Farama; there they put their merchandise on the backs of animals and go by land marching for five days to Colzom, at a distance of twenty parasangs. Then they embark on the Eastern sea (Red Sea) and go from Colzom to Hedjaz and Jidda; and then to Sindh, India and China. On their return they bring musk, aloes, camphor, cinnamon and other products of the eastern countries, and return to Colzom, and then to Farama where they take ship again on the Western sea, some going to Constantinople to sell their goods, and others to the country of the Franks.

“Sometimes the Jewish merchants, in embarking on the Western sea, sail (to the mouth of the Oronte) towards Antioch. At the end of a three days’ march (from there), they reach the banks of the Euphrates and come to Baghdad. There they embark on the Tigris and descend to Obollah, whence they set sail to Oman, Sindh, India and China. The voyage is thus made without interruption.”⁵⁴

Abu Zaid Hassan, of Siraf on the Persian Gulf, though no great traveller himself, had immense opportunities of meeting much travelled merchants and scholars, the celebrated Masūdī among them. Siraf was then a busy port frequented by merchants from all parts of the world, and Abu Zaid declares that his object was to supplement an earlier work on India and China by adding to it data drawn from his own studies and his talks with persons who had travelled in the eastern countries. Abu Zaid’s predecessor who wrote his work in 851 A.D. has often been called Suleiman; but the evidence does not warrant anything more than the cautious conclusion of Yule, re-stated by Pelliot, that the work edited by Abu Zaid is a compilation of notes made by an anonymous writer “from his own experiences in at least two voyages he made to India at an interval of sixteen years and from what he had collected from others who had visited China, Suleiman among them.”⁵⁵ “It is clear,” says Yule, “from the vagueness of his accounts that the author’s knowledge of India was slight and inaccurate, and that he had no distinct conception of its magnitude.” (XIX. i). However that may be, he was largely drawn upon by Masūdī who had travelled in India and Ceylon and wanted to devote particular attention to India.⁵⁶ Ibn Al-Fakhih (902), another writer of the early tenth century,⁵⁷ who preceded Abu Zaid and Masūdī, also drew largely upon this anonymous writer whom Abu Zaid considered worthy of being edited more than half a century after the date of the original composition. In fact it is a common trait of Arab writers to copy one another extensively and it would be otiose to reproduce all their accounts.

Abu Zaid adds many interesting particulars (XIX, ii) to the notes of his predecessors. The accuracy of his information is established by the remarkably correct account he gives of the political revolution that caused confusion in China soon after Suleiman’s visit or visits to that country and had entirely stopped the Arab trade with China at the time he wrote his work.

There are many other Arab writers, travellers and geographers, of the tenth century,⁵⁸ besides those so far mentioned. But their works have little on Southern India or at least little that is new except exaggerated and apocryphal accounts like that of the temple of Mankir (Malkhed) from the pen of Abū’l-Faradj (988).⁵⁹ The illustrious Al-Bīrūnī (c. 1030) took the whole range of human sciences for his sphere; philosophy, mathematics, chronology, medicine, nothing escaped his attention; he knew Sanskrit very well and appears to have read even Greek works in the original.⁶⁰ He spent many years in India, was the friend of Mahmud of Ghazni and his son Mas‘ūd, and was in correspondence with Avicenna. He died at Ghazni in 1048. His great work on India is an excellent account of Indian religion, philosophy, literature, chronology, astronomy, customs, law and astrology. His interesting fable on Kikhind (XX) attests the hold of the Rāma legends on the minds of the people and the attention paid to it by Al-Bīrūnī himself.

To return to the relations between Southern India and China. We have seen that the political troubles which broke out in China in the latter part of the ninth century had, as Abu Zaid remarked, put a stop to the maritime trade with the West. The foreigners at Canton and Chuan-chou had to seek refuge in Kalah on the West coast of the Malay peninsula and in Palembang in Sumatra. And for a time, foreign ships did not proceed beyond Kalah where they were met by Chinese vessels. This went on at least till Masūdī’s visit to that place early in the tenth century.⁶¹ What took place later when conditions in China again became favourable to trade is recorded in the Sung annals as follows:

“In the 4th year k’ai-pao (A.D. 971) a Merchant Shipping office was established at Canton, and later on offices were also established at Hang-chou and Ming-chou (i.e., Ning-po). All Ta-shih (Arabs) and foreigners from Ku-lo (Kalah), She-p’o (Java), Chan-ch’eng (Annam), P’o-ni (Borneo), Ma-i (Philippine islands) and San-fo-ts’i (Palembang, Sumatra) exchanged at these places for gold, silver, strings of cash, lead, tin, colored silks, and porcelain-ware, their aromatics, rhinoceros horns, tusks of ivory, coral, amber, strings of pearls, steel, turtles’ shells, tortoise-shell, cornelians, ch’ih-k’u shells, rock crystal, foreign textile fabrics, ebony, sapan-wood, etc. In the Emperor Tai-tsu’s time (960-976) a Licence office was established at the capital, and orders were given that the foreign aromatic drugs and high priced goods brought to Canton, Kiao-chih (Tonkin), the Liang Chê and to Ch’üan-chou (Zayton) should be deposited in the governmental godowns, and that all private trading in pearls, tortoise-shell, rhinoceros horns, ivory, steel, turtles’ shells, amber, cornelians and frankincense outside of the official markets was forbidden. All objects not included in the above list might be freely dealt in by the people.”⁶²

Besides these steps to monopolise the luxury trade with foreigners and regulate all foreign trade, the Chinese government also endeavoured successfully to increase its volume by sending a trade mission abroad and offering special licences. And this new trade movement reached its greatest extension during the southern Sung dynasty in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and in course of time the growth of an illicit trade in luxuries brought about a drain of metallic currency that created anxiety in China.⁶³

A casual statement of Gaspar Correa, the Portuguese traveller who came to India in 1512 and died there in 1563, throws a welcome light on the commercial relations between China and South India towards the close of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth, and implies that the island of Formosa also took a share in this trade. Correa says: “By the time the Portuguese ships arrived (at Calicut in 1498), four centuries had elapsed since the year when there came more than eight hundred sailing ships from Malacca, China and the land of the Lequeos (Formosa),—ships, great and small, manned by people of various nationalities and charged with very rich merchandise which they brought for sale. They came to Calicut, navigated the entire coast up to Cambay, and they were so numerous that they spread themselves over the whole country.”⁶⁴

Cho’u K’ü-fei, writing in 1178, gives a short and valuable sketch of the route taken by Arab merchants in his time: “(Traders) coming from the country of the Ta-shī, after travelling south to Quilon (Ku-lin) on small vessels, transfer to big ships, and proceeding east, they make Palembang (San-fo-ts’i). After this they come to China by the same route as the Palembang ships.”⁶⁵

Of the countries engaged in trade with China, the same writer says: “Of all the wealthy foreign lands which have great store of precious and varied goods, none surpass the realm of the Arabs (Ta-shī). Next to them comes Java (Shö-p’o); the third is Palembang (San-fo-ts’i); many others come in the next rank.”⁶⁶ Southern India does not figure among the states taking the front rank in the China trade, though in another passage, Cho’u-k’ü-fei does make mention of ships from Quilon as distinct from those of the Arabs,⁶⁷ and Quilon was the chief port of South India in this period. But the omission of South India may be merely due to the fact that the Arabs were the most active sailors of the time doing a large carrying trade for South India among other lands, and that the Chinese vaguely ascribed to their native land all the products they fetched in their ships. However that may be, the Chinese attempts to revive foreign trade which began in the later part of the tenth century happened to coincide with the rise of the greatest empire of the Tamils, the Cōla empire of Rājarāja I and his successors. And the maritime power of this empire was by no means negligible, and the Chinese books bear testimony to the political embassies that were received in China from the Cōla empire of this period. The first mission to reach China from the Cōla country was that of 1015. Of this mission, the Sung-shi and Ma Twan-lin record fairly full details which will be found extracted elsewhere in this book (Notes to XXIII, D). Though the whole journey of the embassy extended over three years, the envoys were under sail for only 247 days during that period. They said that the king of their country was called Lo-tsa-lo-tsa (Rājarāja). That monarch sent the emperor of China many valuable presents, and the envoys added to them some on their own account. There was another embassy in 1033 from Shi-lo-lo-cha Yin-to-lo-chu-lo, Śrī Rājendra Cōḷa, and yet another in 1077 when the king of Chu-lien was Ti-hua-kia-lo, which is a name not easy to explain.⁶⁸

The foreign contacts of the Cōḷa empire in this period are attested also by a curious passage in a Mon inscription from Prome of the reign of Kyan-Zitthā (1084-1112 A.D.) which makes a cryptic reference to the conversion of a Cōḷa prince to Buddhism (XXI). The identity of the Cōḷa prince who changed his creed and subsequently offered his daughter in marriage to the Moṅ ruler cannot be determined at present.

The great geographer Edrisi, whose work was written under the patronage of Roger II of Sicily and completed in 1153-4, depended exclusively on the writings of his predecessors like Ibn-Khurdadbeh and Ibn-Hawkal for what he said on India. Yule⁶⁹ has characterised his account of south-eastern Asia, including India, as very meagre and confused. “Professing to give the distances between places,” continues Yule, “he generally underestimates these enormously, insomuch that in a map compiled from his distances Asia would, I apprehend, assume very contracted dimensions.”

Only a few years later than Edrisi was the Jewish traveller from Spain, Benjamin of Tudela, who has some interesting remarks to offer on Quilon and South India (XXII). Yule doubts if the travels of Benjamin (1159-73) extended farther east than the island of Kish in the Persian Gulf and says that what he relates of India is to all appearance hearsay.⁷⁰

One of the most valuable notices of the kingdoms of South India in the Middle Ages is that of Chau Ju-Kua (XXIII), the Chinese inspector of foreign trade, who compiled his work called Chu-fan-chī about 1225 A.D.⁷¹ The editors of this work give the following estimate of Chau Ju-Kua: “His notes to a certain extent are second-hand information, but notwithstanding this, he has placed on record much original matter, facts and information of great interest. The large percentage of clear and simple matter-of-fact data we find in his work, as compared with the improbable and incredible admixtures which we are accustomed to encounter in all oriental authors of his time, gives him a prominent place among the mediaeval authors on the ethnography of his time, a period particularly interesting to us, as it precedes by about a century Marco Polo, and fills a gap in our knowledge of China’s relations with the outside world extending from the Arab writers of the ninth and tenth centuries to the days of the great Venetian traveller.”⁷²

Soon after, the Sung empire fell before the Mongols. In 1251 Mangu Khan became the great Khan, and appointed his brother Kublai Khan as the governor-general of China. Kublai, an able and energetic commander and statesman, set about subjugating, by slow and sure stages, the whole of the Sung empire. Mangu died in 1259, and Kublai became the Great Khan in 1260. From this time to his death in 1294, his was the most celebrated court in the world. Under the Mongol domination there were in fact fewer obstacles to China communicating with the other countries of the world than at any other time. And the fame of the Great Khan that had spread far and wide attracted many persons of various types from all parts of the world to China. Scholars and artists, merchants, missionaries and ambassadors, musicians and jugglers, came crowding in. And living in China for many years together, Kublai himself became more and more Chinese in sympathy, habits and outlook. Good roads and a quick and efficient postal service made for a surprisingly well-organised system of communications within the vast limits of the Mongol empire. According to Marco Polo, Zayton (Chüan-chou) as a port easily surpassed Alexandria in the heyday of its prosperity. Chinese influence spread rapidly in this period to the archipelago and in a measure even to India; we hear of Chinese soldiers in the service of the Ceylonese king in 1266 A.D.,⁷³ and the travellers of the period attest the presence of considerable numbers of Chinamen in the ports on the West coast of India.⁷⁴

The restlessness of Kublai Khan and his vanity or scientific curiosity, together with the very unsettled political conditions that prevailed in the Pāṇḍyan kingdom towards the close of the thirteenth century, brought about a very active exchange of political embassies between the Chinese court and the South Indian powers between the years 1279 and 1292, and these embassies have been succinctly discussed by Rockhill with citations from the Chinese annals of the period (XXIV), the Yüan Shih. The presence of Buddha relics in Ceylon was another factor which provided some of the missions with a definite objective.

The legitimate king of Ma‘bar who sent a secret message to the ambassador of Kublai Khan in 1281 must have been Kulaśēkhara, the Kales Dewar of whom Wassaf, the great Muslim historian of Shiraz, has given the following account: “Kales Dewar, the ruler of Ma‘bar, enjoyed a highly prosperous life, extending to forty and odd years, during which time neither any foreign enemy entered his country, nor any severe malady confined him to bed. His coffers were replete with wealth inasmuch that in the treasury of the city of Mardi (Madura) there were 1,200 crores of gold deposited, every crore being equal to a thousand laks, and every lak to one hundred thousand dinars. Besides this there was an accumulation of precious stones, such as pearls, rubies, turquoises, and emeralds,—more than is in the power of language to express. (Here follows a long string of reflections upon the instability of worldly wealth and grandeur.)

“This fortunate and happy sovereign had two sons, the elder named Sundar Pandi, who was legitimate, his mother being joined to the Dewar by lawful marriage, and the younger named Tira Pandi, was illegitimate, his mother being one of the mistresses who continually attended the king in his banquet of pleasure; for it was customary with the rulers of that country that, when the daily affairs of the administration were over, and the crowds that attended the court had gone to their respective homes, a thousand beautiful courtezans used to attend the king in his pleasure. They used to perform the several duties prescribed to each of them; some were appointed as chamberlains, some as interpreters, some as cupbearers, and day and night both the sexes kept promiscuous intercourse together; and it was usual for the king to invite to his bed that girl upon whom the lot should happen to fall. I have mentioned this in illustration of their customs.

“As Tira Pandi was remarkable for his shrewdness and intrepidity, the ruler nominated him as his successor. His brother Sundar Pandi, being enraged at this supersession, killed his father, in a moment of rashness and undutifulness, towards the close of the year 709 H. (1310 A.D.), and placed the crown on his head in the city of Mardi. He induced the troops who were there to support his interests, and conveyed some of the royal treasures which were deposited there to the city of Mankul, and he himself accompanied, marching on, attended in royal pomp with the elephants, horses and treasures. Upon this his brother Tira Pandi, being resolved on avenging his father’s blood, followed to give him battle, and on the margin of a lake which, in their language, they call Talachi, the opponents came to action. Both the brothers, each ignorant of the fate of the other, fled away; but Tira Pandi being unfortunate (tira bakht), and having been wounded, fell into the hands of the enemy, and seven elephant-loads of gold also fell to the lot of the army of Sundar Pandi.

“It is a saying of philosophers, that ingratitude will, sooner or later, meet its punishment, and this was proved in the sequel, for Manar Barmul, the son of the daughter of Kales Dewar, who espoused the cause of Tira Pandi, being at that time at Karamhatti, near Kalul, sent him assistance, both in men and money, which was attended with a most fortunate result. Sundar Pandi had taken possession of the kingdom, and the army and the treasure were his own; but, as in every religion and faith, evil deeds produce a life of insecurity, a matter which it is unnecessary to expatiate upon, he, notwithstanding all his treasures and the goodwill of the army, was far from being happy and prosperous, entertaining crude notions, and never awakening from his dream of pride, and at last he met with the chastisement due to his ingratitude, for in the middle of the year 710 (1310 A.D.) Tira Pandi, having collected an army, advanced to oppose him, and Sundar Pandi, trembling and alarmed, fled from his native country, and took refuge under the protection of ‘Alau-d-din, of Delhi, and Tira Pandi became firmly established in his hereditary kingdom.

“While I was engaged in writing this passage, one of my friends said to me: ‘The kings of Hind are celebrated for their penetration and wisdom; why then did Kales Dewar, during his life-time, nominate his younger and illegitimate son as his successor, to the rejection of the elder, who was of pure blood, by which he introduced distraction into a kingdom which had been adorned like a bride.’”⁷⁵

The troubles between Kulaśēkhara’s children that ended so disastrously for him and his kingdom evidently started very much earlier in his reign. The affairs of the South Indian Kingdom round about 1281 as recorded in the Yüan-shih give sufficient indication of this. Even the great Kublai Khan could not have interceded with any tangible effect in the affairs of so remote a country; but we owe it to his interest in these distant lands that we have before us a business-like record of occurrences in South India of which we should have otherwise remained ignorant. But the questions arising out of these diplomatic embassies cannot be pursued further here.

‘Marco Polo’s journey to the East was the beginning of direct contact between the Far East and Europe—with the exception of the Roman embassy of the time of Marcus Aurelius recorded above.’⁷⁶ This ‘prince of mediaeval travellers’ reached the court of Kublai Khan after a hazardous journey of three years and a half across Asia. He became a great favourite of the Khan and spent seventeen years with him, being employed by him in several important missions in different parts of his empire. Finally he was chosen to escort a princess of the Khan’s family, who had to be sent as a bride for the ruler of Persia. He left China in 1292 and his voyage to Persia through the Indian seas lasted about a year and a half. Thence he travelled to Constantinople, and finally reached Venice in 1295.

During the years that Marco Polo spent in the East he had exceptional opportunities for observation, and he used them well. He was only passing through some parts of South India on his way to Persia, and the amount of information he was able to collect on these countries is indeed surprising. His work has come down in several recensions of varying authenticity, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish what he wrote from later accretions. And for a time his name passed under a cloud and his veracity was impeached partly on account of the fables that had crept into copies of his work. But now, as Yule observes, ‘his veracity and justness of observation still shine brighter under every recovery of lost or forgotten knowledge.’⁷⁷ Marco Polo was doubtless himself responsible for some of the fictitious and fabulous statements in his book, for he often records the things he heard in addition to those he saw, and perhaps he did not always understand correctly what he saw in so many strange lands. But when all deductions have been made, his narrative still remains an invaluable source of knowledge about the countries he touched.

It is with his return voyage by sea from China to Persia that we are primarily concerned (XXV), and I can do no better than reproduce the following summary and estimate by Major of this part of Marco’s travels: “He touched at the kingdom of Ziamba (Tsiampa, Campā), where he learned much of Great Java or Java, though he did not himself visit either that island or Borneo. He then sailed southward, and passing the small island of Pentan (Bintang) came to Java Minor, under which name he designates Sumatra. He appears then to have sailed along its coast through the Straits of Malacca to Seilan (Ceylon), noticing on his way the island Angaman (Andaman Islands). After some stay at Ceylon he sailed to Maabar, which, however, must not be confounded with Malabar, but is the coast of Coromandel. He notices its fine cottons; also its various superstitions, as the worship of the cow, the abstinence from animal food, the courtezans dedicated to the service of the temple, and the acts of voluntary self-sacrifice to their gods, as well as the custom of females burning themselves after the death of their husbands. Then passing Cape Comorin he sailed along the coasts of Malabar, where he notices the abundance of pepper and ginger; then along those of Guzerat and Cambaia, and so, across the Indian Ocean, home.

“In the course of his inquiries and explorations, Marco Polo took pains to make himself acquainted with the natural history of each country, and especially with such products as by their costliness or usefulness might become valuable as articles of commerce. By his observations on the manufactures and navigation of different countries, he constantly shows his sense of what would be chiefly interesting to a maritime and commercial people like the Venetians, to whose nation he belonged; and a rich field for such observation lay before him. The commerce of India he found stretching, like an immense chain, from the territories of Kublai Khan to the shores of the Persian Gulf and of the Red Sea. He found the shores and the islands of the India Sea luxuriantly covered with nature’s choicest productions. In lieu of wine, the palm tree gave its milk, and the bread fruit tree afforded its wholesome food. The betel nut, and spices, and everything which might flatter the palate of man, he found in rich abundance in those climates, and if he does not minutely describe them, he at least names the different plants from which these luxuries were procured. Nor is he silent upon those less useful but not less highly prized productions of India which are derived from beneath the surface of the earth. He tells us of the topaz, the amethyst, and the emerald, of the sapphires of Ceylon, and the diamonds of Golconda, and the rubies from the mountains of Thibet.”⁷⁸

The Yüan shih records an attempt on the part of the Chinese government in 1296 to prohibit the export of gold and silver, as also to limit the value of the trade with Ma‘bar (Coromandel), Kulam (Quilon), and Fandaraina to a relatively small sum of money.⁷⁹ Ma Twan-lin records that about 1300 A.D. many Brahmins from India were found in the court of Pan-pan, and that, being much in favour with the ruler of the land, they received rich gifts from him.⁸⁰

By the side of the bright star of Marco Polo, other European travellers of the Middle Ages seem to lack lustre. But if the Venetian merchant represents one side of the culture contacts between the West and the East, the three monks who visited South India soon after Marco Polo represent another. First among them was the Franciscan friar John of Monte Corvino who ‘already nearly fifty years of age’ plunged alone into China, ‘that great ocean of Paganism, and of what he deemed little better, Nestorianism, to preach the Gospel.’⁸¹ His travel to China by way of India fell in 1292-3. He became later archbishop of Cambluc where he died in 1328. This lonely monk was out of sympathy with much that he saw in India (XXVI); with him may be said to begin the stream of Christian missionary criticism of Indian life and habits which has not always been either intelligent or charitable. John’s account of ships and navigation in the Indian seas has much in common with similar statements of other writers and may be usefully compared with them. Nearly thirty years after John of Monte Corvino left the shores of India came Friar Odoric of Pordenone, who was in India soon after 1321. From Hormuz he embarked for Tana near Bombay (XXVII-A); either here or from Surat, “he gathered the bones of four brethren who had suffered there in 1321 (as related by Friar Jordanus) and carried them with him on his voyage eastward. He went on to Malabar, touching at Pandarani, Cranganor, and Kulam (Quilon), and proceeded thence to Ceylon and the shrine of St. Thomas at Mailāpūr, the modern Madras.”⁸² His account of some Hindu customs and practices is doubtless that of an eye-witness (XXVII B, C, D).

Lastly we have Friar Jordanus. It is possible that Jordanus first came to India some years before Odoric, and two of his letters are dated from India in 1321 and 1324. In both of them, he holds out to his brother Friars in Europe the prospect of extensive missionary work in the East (XXVIII-A). He says, for instance in his letter of 1321 A.D.: “I will only say a word as to the harvest to be expected, that it promises to be great and encouraging. Let friars be getting ready to come, for there are three places that I know where they might reap a great harvest and where they could live in common. One of these is Supera where two Friars might be stationed; and a second is in the district of Parocco, where two or three might abide; and the third is Columbus; besides many others that I am not acquainted with.”⁸³ The three places named here are Supara, Broach and Quilon. Jordanus was appointed Bishop of Columbum⁸⁴ (or Columbus, Quilon) in 1328, and it is most likely that he wrote Mirabilia between this date and that of his second departure from Europe, 1330.⁸⁵ It is not known that Jordanus ever reached Columbum as its bishop. His mention of the Parsis in India and their mode of exposing the dead deserves to be noted as among the earliest notices of this community, if not actually the first account of them (XXVIII B, C).

There is one more friar we must notice; he is John of Marignolli. He was appointed Papal legate to the court of the Great Khan in response to a request from him received by the Pope ten years after the death of John of Monte Corvino, the founder of the Cathay mission and Archbishop of Cambluc. Like Marco Polo, John of Marignolli took the land route to China and left China by sea via Zayton in 1346 or 1347. Of the voyage that followed he says nothing more than that he arrived at Columbum (Quilon) in Malabar (XXXI-A). “He remained with the Christians of Columbum upwards of a year, and then, during the south-west monsoon of 1348 or 1349, set sail for the Coromandel coast to visit the shrine of Thomas the Apostle. After passing only four days there,” he went to Saba, which has not been satisfactorily identified, though it seems probable that some part of Sumatra is meant. When he quitted Saba, he was overtaken by a storm which drove his vessel to Ceylon perhaps against his wish. And in spite of his unpleasant experiences in the island at the hands of a Mussalman chieftain, Marignolli’s recollections of Ceylon were very pleasant and he locates the Earthly Paradise very near that island if not actually there. His account of the Buddhist monks of Ceylon makes interesting reading. He returned to Europe in 1353 and wrote down his recollections soon after (XXXI B, C). He was perhaps an aged man at the time.⁸⁶

Abulféda (1273—1331), the celebrated Arab historian and geographer, does not mark any great advance in knowledge relating to India. His notices of South India are brief, vague and secondhand (XXIX). He cites the inveterate traveller and geographer Ibn Sa‘īd (1214—1274 or 1286) quite often.

On the other hand the Moorish traveller Ibn Battūtā was an indefatigable explorer. Born in Tangier about 1300, he left his native place at the age of twenty-two, and continued to travel incessantly for the next thirty years. He died at Fez in 1377. He did not write his work himself, but was content ‘to dictate to a copyist the description of the towns he visited, the anecdotes and history he could recall and so on.’ He was by profession a doctor of the Muhammadan law and traditions. A detailed summary of his experiences in South India will be found reproduced from Yule elsewhere in this book (XXX-C-i) as an introduction to the translation of the original narrative which follows. “The adventures which befell Ibn Battūtā during his long sojourn in India,” says Major, “form one of the most curious and eventful chapters of his peregrinations; and this part of his narrative derives additional interest from the details which he introduces, not only of the natural productions and agriculture of the country, but of the manners, institutions and history of Hindustan, under the Affghan dynasties, which preceded for nearly three hundred years the establishment of the Mogul power. He gives an historical retrospect, extending from the first conquest of Delhi by the Muhammedans under Kotbed-din Ai-bek, in 1188, to the accession of the reigning sovereign, Sultan Muhammed, the son of Tughlak, in 1325; which is especially valuable from the additional facts which it supplies, and the light thrown on many of the transactions recorded by Ferishta. This preliminary sketch is continued by the personal narrative of Ibn Battūtā himself, whose fortune led him to India at the crisis when the unity of the Patan power (at all times rather an aristocracy of military leaders than a consolidated monarchy) was on the point of dissolution, from the mad tyranny of Sultan Muhammed, which drove all the governors of provinces into open revolt, and led to the erection of independent kingdoms in Bengal, the Dekhan, etc. On the arrival of an embassy from the emperor of China, he gladly accepted an appointment as one of the envoys destined to convey the gifts sent in return by Sultan Muhammed; and receiving his outfit and credentials, quitted without delay the dangerous walls of Delhi early in the year of the Hejira 743 (A.D. 1342).”⁸⁷

Sidi Ali Celibī (1554) is one of the latest among the foreign Muhammadan writers on India. He was an admiral, poet and writer. He came to India, and visited important towns in it in order to get into touch with the learned men in the country and to collect all books in Arabic, Persian and Turkish treating of the art of navigation. He returned to Constantinople by the land route across the N.W. of India, Badakshan, Transoxiana and Persia. Some sailing directions from his treatise called Mohit, The Ocean, are reproduced in an Appendix (App. IV). He based his work on ten earlier works, three ancient and seven modern. Among the modern authorities used by Sidi Ali was Ahmad Ibn Mājid (A.D. 1489-90), who called himself “Master of Navigation and Lion of the Raging Sea.” Though the Portuguese sources are not clear on this point, it seems possible that he helped Vasco da Gama to reach India. In his Nautical Instructions he often refers to the opinions of Cōla mariners, and so does Suleiman al Mahrī (C 1511-53). Ibn Mājid records that in his day, at the commencement of the period of Saba (east winds) a flotilla of ships left Komar (Madagascar) to the destination of Zang (part of the East African coast, say 3° N.L. to 3° S.L.), of Marima (same coast, say 8° to 11° S.L.), of Hormuz and of Al-Hind (the West coast of India).⁸⁸

Contemporary with Ibn Battūtā was the Chinese merchant Wang Ta-Yüan who visited a number of foreign countries for purposes of trade between the years 1330 and 1349. His Tao i chi lio (Description of the Barbarians of the Isles) is therefore for the most part the account of an eye-witness and thus superior to that of Chau Ju-Kua who wrote from hearsay. This book describes no fewer than ninety-nine countries, ports and noteworthy localities, and follows closely the model set by Chau Ju-Kua (XXXII). Though his literary style is said to be poor, his work gives evidence of wide learning and a philosophic turn of mind.⁸⁹

In 1382, an embassy from Java to China took “black slaves, men and women, to the number of one hundred, eight large pearls, and 75,000 catti of pepper,”⁹⁰ which shows that towards the end of the fourteenth century the interrelations between China, Java and India continued more or less unchanged.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century, ‘the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, whose reign is known under the title of Yong-lo (1403-25) sent out a series of naval expeditions overseas which established the fame and the supremacy of the new dynasty far and wide and which prompted a score of princes to despatch embassies to the Chinese court and pay homage to the Emperor.⁹¹ These embassies were stupendous enterprises, comprising a fleet of 62 vessels and 37,000 soldiers on the first occasion, each ship being 440 feet by 180. And among their commanders none was more famous than the eunuch Cheng Ho. The initial motive of these embassies lay in the desire of the emperor to ascertain the whereabouts of his nephew Kien Wen dethroned by him and suspected to have hidden himself somewhere in the countries beyond the sea.⁹²

Cheng Ho was accompanied in these voyages by two persons whose writings throw much welcome light on the state of the countries they visited. One was Fei Hsin whose work Hsing cha sheng lan or ‘Description of the star raft’ bears a preface dated 1436 and thus forms one of the earliest accounts we have of the celebrated voyages of Cheng Ho. We do not know in what capacity Fei Hsin was attached to Cheng Ho’s suite. His work describes forty countries or localities; the author borrows much from earlier writers but also gives much that is new, and sometimes elucidates and supplements the brief notes of his predecessors (XXXIII).⁹³

The other was the better known Ma Huan, a Chinese Muslim, who, on account of his knowledge of foreign languages, was attached as Interpreter to the expedition of 1412-13. The voyages of Cheng Ho and the texts of Ma Huan have been recently studied at some length and with great critical acumen by Duyvendak and Pelliot, and it seems desirable to state here the broad conclusions that emerge from these studies.

The first voyage to the Western seas was ordered in the sixth month of the third year of Yong-lo; i.e., 27th June-25th July 1405. In the voyage Cheng Ho visited Calicut (Ku-li) where he erected a stèle, and probably visited Ceylon. On his return he captured the pirate Chen-Tsu-yi of Palembang and carried him to China where he was put to death.⁹⁴ The second voyage was in Sep.–Oct. 1408 and was primarily directed to Ceylon though it went as far as Cochin and Calicut (Fei Hsin). The king of this island, A-lie-k’ou-nai-eul (Alagakkonāra, i.e., Vijaya Bāhu VI) lured Cheng Ho into the interior and then despatched soldiers to pillage his ships in his absence. Cheng Ho rose equal to the occasion. When he found the interior depleted of its soldiers, he put himself at the head of the 2000 men or so that he had with him and took the capital city and made prisoners of A-lie-k’ou-nai-eul, his wife and children, together with his principal officials. In June-July 1411, Cheng Ho presented his prisoners at the Chinese Court, the emperor was merciful to them and set them free to return to their country. There is a Chinese inscription in Ceylon, discovered at Galle in 1911, commemorating this visit of Cheng Ho to Ceylon.⁹⁵ The third voyage lasted from December 1412—Jan. 1413 to Aug.—Septr. 1415. Ma Huan went on this voyage in the course of which Ceylon, Cochin, Calicut, the Maldives and Ormuz were visited. The Ming shih adds Kāyal to the list. Thus in this voyage Cheng Ho went beyond India for the first time. The fourth voyage was from 1416 to 1419. Ma Huan was not on this embassy which went up to Africa and as a result of which nineteen kingdoms sent embassies bearing tribute to China. Ma Huan joined the fifth voyage (1421-22), an exceptionally rapid one which induced fifteen states, Calicut among others, to send embassies to China in 1423. The sixth voyage lasted from February 1424 to March 1425, and before it returned, there had occurred a change on the Chinese throne. The new emperor was opposed to these voyages and posted Cheng Ho to guard the southern capital, Nanking. But this emperor died in May 1425, and his successor revived the old practice five years later. In the seventh and last voyage (1430) Cheng Ho visited Calicut, Quilon and Cochin, and according to the Ming Shih the Maldives also were visited by Cheng Ho, Ma Huan and Fei Hsin. Possibly Ma Huan went to Mecca on this occasion.

Cheng Ho himself, it may be noted, though a Mussulman and son of a haji, showed an inclination to Buddhism with that eclecticism of which there were many instances in the Mongol period.⁹⁶

The knowledge of the world gathered by the Chinese as a result of these expeditions was proved inadequate by the coming of the Europeans soon after; but the accounts of these voyages fill a gap from Marco Polo and Ibn Battūtā to the early Portuguese.

Ma Huan’s work was first published in 1451. Ma Huan’s style was that of an unlettered sailor, prolix and lacking in literary quality. The book is called Ying-yai-sheng-lan, ‘Description of the coasts of the Ocean.’ Both Groenveldt and Phillips used this original text. Rockhill’s translations were made from the polished and revised version of Chang Sheng dating from 1522 (XXXIV).⁹⁷

Some extracts of unusual interest, bearing on navigation in the Indian Ocean at the close of the fifteenth century (App. I), on the part played by Gujaratis in the maritime trade of the Middle Ages (App. II), and on the Indian merchants and merchandise in Malaka (App. III) are included in the Appendix.