A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c18.36

c18.36

The Kākatīya monarch Ganapati gave an impetus to the foreign trade of the Andhra country in the middle of the thirteenth century by his charter of security (*abhayaśāsana*). Under this charter the cargo of shipwrecked merchants would no longer be seized, as had been the custom till then; moreover, the duty on all exports and imports would not exceed 1/30 of their value. This edict was renewed a century later by Annapota Reddi (1378), and corresponded to the general practice that prevailed in all the enlightened and progressive ports of South India, though Colombo still retained the older practice in the fourteenth century. In the last quarter of the thirteenth century, the restless ambition and insatiable curiosity of Kublai Khan, added to the unsettled political conditions of the Pāndya kingdom, resulted in a very active exchange of embassies, more political than commercial, between the Chinese court and the South Indian powers. Again in the fifteenth century, under the third Ming emperor (1403-25), large fleets of Chinese junks, led by the famous general Cheng Ho, made no fewer than seven voyages across the Indian ocean and visited many South Indian ports, particularly those on the west coast.