Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v1.c5.s1.36

v1.c5.s1.36

Sugar and steel were also among the items exported from China to India in this period. In modern Hindi, Bengali and Nepali, white sugar is called *cini*, which means “Chinese”. Wang Dayuan wrote in the Yuan period that among the goods traded between Chinese merchants and southern Indians were “white sugar” and “sugar icing”. The word “cinaja” in Sanskrit, meaning “steel”, also carries the literal meaning of “made in China”. Although ancient India produced and exported steel, in certain periods Chinese steel was also imported into India. Ibn Muhdhih, an Arab geographer in the 9ᵗʰ-10ᵗʰ century CE, once saw an observatory in Kashmir which had been made of Chinese steel. This indicates that Chinese steel was being imported into India even earlier. Wang Dayuan wrote that Chinese merchant ships in his time often carried “ironware”, “bar iron”, “steel cooking vessels”, “needles”, etc., as trading goods.