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IXTRODUCTICN.
Although China appears to have first become known to the Greeks
through the expedition of Alexander, (Nearchus and Onesicritus mention the
Seres, of whose longevity they had heard marvellous tales, but which they
evidently supposed to have been an Indian tribe), the first accurate information
5 concerning China was supplied by the author of the Periphs of the Ery-
thraean Sea, writing somewhere about 80 A. D. He refers (§ 64) to the
country of Thina as lying beyond the Malay Peninsula (Chryse) «Where the
sea terminates outwards». For more precise information concerning the geo-
graphical position of China, we have to come down to the first half of the
10 sixth century, when Cosmas Indicopleustes stated that Tzinista «was bounded
to the east by the ocean».
Although the author of the Periplus knew little of China's position, he
supplied other reliable information concerning it. We learn from him that
already in his time there came from a city in the interior of that country
15 much silk «both raw and spun into thread and woven into fine stuff», also
furs and iron, which were brought overland through Baktria to Bharoch.
(Barugaza) and to Diul-Sindh at the mouth of the Indus (Barbarikon), or to
Mangalore (Muziris) and Nelisseram near Mt. Delli, by way of the Ganges.
Nothing, however, is to be found in the Periplus to indicate that the author
20 had the slightest idea of there being any direct communication by sea between
India or Ceylon and China. «Had such existed)), Bunbury justly remarks,^
«even in the hands of native traders, it is hardly possible that our author
could have remained so entirely in the dark as we actually find him with
regard to all the countries beyond the Ganges)). ,,
25 Chinese records confirm the belief that China had no relations by sea
with India and the West at the beginning of our era. The earliest mention
of a mission, or more probably a private expedition, arriving from the West
(Ta-ts'in) in China is referred to in the year 166 A. D., when a party of
foreigners representing themselves as sent by An-tun (the Emperor Marcus
so Aurelius Antoninus) arrived by sea in Tongking, and proceeded thence overland
to the court of the Emperor Huan-ti. Sixty years later, in 226, another
westerner came to China, also a merchant from Ta-ts'in, Ts'in-lun by name;
he also landed in Tongking, and was sent overland to the court of the Emperor
Sun-ch'uan. When Ts'in-lun started on the returnjourney, the Emperor sent one
35 of his officers with him, but he died on the way, andT'sin-lun returned alone =*.
1) Ancient Geography, ii, 476.
2) Hirth, Op. cit, 42, 47, 48. 173—178.