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KTRODTJCTIOS.
It seems evident tliat, during ancient and mediaeval times, the sea-trade
between Egypt and Persia on the one side, and India and the Far East on
-the other, remained nearly exclusively in the hands of the enterprising Arabs
of the southern Arabian coast, who, in very early days, estabhshed stations
at all the principal ports-of-call along the coast to the south of the Indus 5
and thence ultimately to Canton where, as we shall see, they appear to have
had a settlement or colony as early as A. D. 300. So far as can be gathered
the Greeks took little or no share in this trade beyond the Malabar coast,
and, as the sequel will show, there is absolutely no evidence to substantiate
the assertion that the Chinese did either ^ Greeks may have got to China, lo
and Chinese may have travelled in the sixth century as far as Aden or the
head of the Persian Gulf, to Hormuz, Siraf, Basra or Baghdad, but these
were isolated cases of commercial adventure, and do not affect the conclusion
reached.
It was in about 120 B. C. that China first heard of the countries of 15
western Asia, of Syria (Li-kan) and of Chaldaea (T'iau-chi). This information
came to it through Chang K'ien, who had been sent by the Emperor Wu-ti
on a political mission to the Yu6-chi (Kushan) to solicit their aid against
the Hiung-nu, who were pressing on the Chinese western frontier. Chang
K'i6n only heard of the countries of the west when in Parthia (An-si)^ and 20
the information he brought home concerning them was of thevagiiest.[ltw^as
not until the end of the first century of our era that a Chinese, Kan Ying .
reached Chaldaea and gained some exact information concerning it and the
sea-route which led from the head of the Persian Gulf to Syria and Egypt.
But Kan Ying went no further than the mouth of the Euphrates, probably 25
to the Apologos of the Greeks, when frightened by the reported dangers of
-the voyage, he retraced his steps ^.
for Sindh, India and China. There is brought there from the last named country such merchandize
as iron, damasked sword blades, shagreen skins,-musj£, aloes wood (gbaru?), horses, saddles, pottery,
pepper, both odoriferous and non-odoriferous (i. e., black pepper and long peppers), cocoanuts, 30
hermut (a perfumed seed), cardamoms, cinnamon, galangal, mace, myrobolans, ebony, tortoise^hell,
camphor, nutmegs, cloves, cubebs, divers grass tissues, and others rich and velvety, elephants tu^s,
tin, rattans, and other reeds, as well as the greater part of the bitter aloes destined for commerce)).
1) As for example K. Beazley, Dawn of modern geography, I, 490, and E. Speck,
Handelsgeschichte des Alterthums, I, 29. 35
2) See F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, 35 et seqq., 137 et seqq. and E. Chavannes,
Les Pays d'Occident d'apres le Heou Han Chou, in T'oung-pao, 2* ser. VIII. 176, et seqq.
Chavannes (1-76. n. 3) thinks it possible that the name T'iau-chi- may be an attempt to transcribe
the Persian word desht «plainD, which is found used by early Arab writers to designate the Desht
Misan, the Mesene at the mouth of the Tigris.
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