The Colas c30.29

c30.29

In the face of strong discouragement from the Chinese government, the commercial relations between China and South India appear to have been sustained, with more or less regularity, to the end of the thirteenth century. The Loboe Toewa (Sumatra) Tamil fragment of Ś. 1010 (A.D. 1088) which mentions the Tiśai-Āyirattaiññūṟṟuvar shows that the merchants of South India had settlements outside India, and it is quite possible that small settlements of these traders were found in all important entrepots of the Persian Gulf and the China Sea. Hindu sculptures of decidedly South Indian origin have been discovered in a Chinese temple in the port-town of Ch'üan-Chou, opposite to Formosa; these sculptures represent Purāṇic themes like the Gajēndra-mōkṣa and Kṛṣṇa tied to a mortar between trees and so on, and are best placed in the twelfth or thirteenth century. It seems possible therefore that a colony of South Indian merchants had settled in the port-town of Ch'üan-chou, which has been identified with the Zayton of the mediaeval travellers.