A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c6.50

Language: English

c6.50.1

Intercourse between China and South India by sea as early as the second century B.C. is attested to by the record of a Chinese embassy to Kāñchi (‘Houang-tche’) and the discovery of a Chinese coin of about the same date from Chandravalli in Mysore. Entries in the Chinese annals of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries A.D. show clearly that the Hindu kingdoms of Indo-China and the archipelago were in active touch with South India on the one side and China on the other: they are said to have sent to the Chinese court on many occasions presents of vaiḍūrya (the semi-precious ‘cat’s eye’), sandalwood and pearls which are specifically South Indian products. Fa-hien did not visit the mainland of South India: he took ship from Tamluk to Ceylon, and his account of the Deccan and the ‘pigeon monastery’ is just edifying gossip. Many Buddhist monks went from South India and Ceylon to China by sea and settled there, helping to spread Buddhism in that land and to translate Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. Cosmas mentions the arrival of Chinese ships bringing silk to Ceylon. The celebrated Yuan Chwang, Master of the Law (of Buddhism), travelled much more extensively in India than any of his compatriots who came on similar missions, and on the whole he was much less of a recluse than they. He spent a number of months in the states of the Deccan and South India (A.D.

c6.50.2

641-2) and has left behind interesting observations on the religious and social conditions that prevailed in these lands in his day; but even he does not completely satisfy the curiosity of modern students, and it has been said of him: ‘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.’ I-tsing who spent many years in India in the last quarter of the seventh century did not visit South India and has nothing directly to tell us about it. But his works are valuable for the itineraries they contain, for their notices of differences in doctrine and practice among the Buddhists of different lands and, above all, for the brief biographies of about sixty eminent monks who visited India at the same time as he. There are records in the Chinese annals of embassies exchanged between China and the Pallava court of Kāñchi in the eighth century and the Chola court in the eleventh. A fair amount of trade was carried on between China and South India in the following centuries and Chinese junks visited Indian waters pretty freely. The great Mongol emperor Kublai Khan sent a number of embassies to South Indian states and some of them even sought to influence the course of local politics; with what results we are not in a position to judge.

c6.50.3

A Chinese merchant, Wang Ta-yüan, visited a number of foreign countries for purposes of trade between the years 1330 and 1349, and wrote the *Tao-i-chi-lio* (*Description of the Barbarians of the Isles*). This work, poor in style but marked by the wide learning and philosophic turn of the author's mind, describes no fewer than ninety-nine countries, ports and noteworthy localities, and is valuable as the account of an eye-witness. Colombo, the Maldives, Kāyangulam, Eli and Calicut are among the places he described. In the first quarter of the fifteenth century A.D., the third emperor of the Ming dynasty sent out a series of stupendous naval expeditions calculated to establish the fame and supremacy of the dynasty over many lands; this prompted a number of foreign rulers in their turn to send embassies to the Chinese court. No fewer than seven of these expeditions reached South India under the command of the famous Cheng Ho. He was accompanied on these expeditions by Fei Hsin and Ma Huan who have left behind accounts of the different countries they visited. Fei Hsin's *Hsing-cha-sheng-lan* or *Description of the Star Raft* (1436) and Ma Huan's *Ying-yai-sheng-lan* (*Description of the Coasts of the Ocean*, 1451) are particularly valuable for their notices of Ceylon, Cochin and Calicut in the interval between Ibn Batuta's travels and the arrival of the Portuguese.