Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c13.37

v2.c13.37

The encouragement given to maritime commerce by the Chinese authorities in this period enabled the expansion and strengthening of Chinese trading networks to Southeast and South Asia. Although there is not much evidence of settled Chinese trading communities in Indian ports as was the case in some Southeast Asian ports, Chinese merchants were nevertheless regular visitors to coastal Indian towns both on the Coromandel and Malabar coasts. They often spent considerable time in these ports to unload and ship goods further west, repair their ships and wait out the monsoon season. Under the rule of the Chola kings, there were regular ties between Chinese ports such as Quanzhou and Guangzhou and Indian ports such as Nagapattinam. Chinese traveller Wang Dayuan recorded seeing a pagoda at Nagapattinam built by Chinese traders in Chinese style. The inscription on it read: “Construction completed in the eighth lunar month of the year of Xianchun (1267)”.