A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c6.50.3

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.