History of the Qaraunah Turks in India c9.84

c9.84

An important act of Muhammad Tughluq's administration in which Ibn Batūṭah was concerned was the dispatch of an embassy to China in 742 A.H. (1341 A.D.). Relations had existed between China and India for centuries in the past. When Buddhism was the prevailing religion in India, Chinese pilgrims and monks used to come in large numbers to visit the Buddhist shrines but such intercourse ceased with the decline of Buddhism in the tenth century A.D. No attempt was ever made by Hindu or Buddhist sovereigns to conquer the lands beyond the Himalayas, and the Indian empire even in the hey-day of its glory was confined to the limits of the Indian peninsula, though the lands beyond the Hindu Kush seem to have nominally acknowledged its sway. Later historians have written of the projected 'mad expedition' of Muhammad Tughluq to China noticed before, though no contemporary gives even the barest indication of such an enterprise. The continued intercourse of China with India has done not a little to mislead historians who have confounded an expedition against a hill chieftain with an attempt to invade the vast Mongol empire separated from Hindustan by the impassable barrier of the Himalayas. In the thirteenth century the Chinese soldiers enlisted themselves in the army of the king of Ceylon, and trade relations also existed between the two countries. The emperors of China often sent their officers to Ceylon to collect gems and pearls and drugs, and envoys were sent on one occasion to negotiate the purchase of the sacred alms-dish of Buddha.⁴²