Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c7.15

c7.15

From early times, there was a regular trade-route by land between Eastern India and China through Upper Burma and Yunnan. We know from Chinese chronicles that in the second century B.C. merchants with their ware travelled from China across the whole of North India and Afganistan to Bactria. Through this route came twenty Chinese priests for whom, according to I-tsing, an Indian king built a temple in the third or fourth century A.D. From different points along this route one could pass to Lower Burma and other parts of Indo-China, and a Chinese writer, Kia Tan, refers to a land-route between Annam and India.¹ There was a more direct route between Eastern India and Burma through Arracan to which reference is made in the Burmese chronicles.