Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c13.16

v2.c13.16

The southern sea route: During the early 1980s, Chinese archaeologists discovered a piece of plain cotton cloth amid ancient coffins in the Wuyi mountain region of Fujian. Its warp reveals that it has had a history of over 3,000 years. During that time and even over 10 centuries later, China did not itself produce cotton or cotton cloth. The main region of cotton production was India. Therefore it is highly probable that this piece of cloth was brought in from India. If this deduction is correct, then it certainly must have been along the sea route that Indian cotton cloth travelled up to Fujian as early as the 10^th century BCE. The *Hanshu Dilizhi* describes a certain maritime route between Guangxi and Huangzhi guo (present-day Kanchipuram in southern India) and the time required to ply between the two. If there had not already been considerable maritime contacts between the two, there could certainly not have been such a precise, accurate description of a sea route and the time taken to travel along it. In addition, it says that “Huangzhi guo” had folk customs similar to Zhuya. It claimed that it was vast in territorial expanse, had a large population and had many “foreign spirits”. Zhuya is the present-day Hainan island of China. From this it can be inferred that around the 2ⁿᵈ century BCE, China and southern India were already in contact with each other through the sea route. Han dynasty emissaries went to Kanchipuram while envoys and merchants from Kanchipuram came to China. In those times, the Han envoys did not travel by their own ships but would have had to board foreign merchant ships. The journey was extremely perilous but at the same time could be very profitable as well. The journey to and fro required a minimum of two years.