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ISTKODUCTION. I
to the rest of the world. Commerce by sea with south-eastern Asia and the -^
countries lying to the west was steadily increasing through the continued
energy and enterprise of the Arabs and Indians ^.
The troublous times through which China passed in the fourth, fifth and
B sixth centuries may have had much to do with retarding the development of
commercial enterprise on the part of the people of the southern provinces,
but piracy was probably more effective in keeping them off the sea. In the
middle of the fifth century, Chinese living along the southern coast were so
harried by the Tongking pirates, who plundered cities and towns, that the
10 Emperor "W6n-ti of the Sung had to send, in 447, a punitive expedition into
Indo-China, which laid the country waste and sacked the capital ^.
How hazy were the notions of the Chinese ofthe fifth century of India and
the "West, how slight the intercourse established with them, may be seen in
the Sung-shu, the history of the period extending from A. D. 420 to 478,
15 and written about A. D. 500. In chapter 97 we read: «As regards the Roman
Orient (Ta-ts'in) and India, far out on the Western Ocean (jj^ Jij |g 7^),
though the envoys of the two Han dynasties have experienced the special
difficulties of this route, yet trade has been carried on, and goods have been
sent out to the foreign tribes, the force of the wind driving them far across
20 the waves of the sea. There are lofty (ranges of) hills quite different (from
those we know) and a great variety of populous tribes having different names
and bearing uncommon designations, they being of a class quite different
(from our own). All the precious things of land and water come from
there all this has caused navigation and trade to be extended to those
25 parts» (-j^ M M ^ M ^ ^ MV' ^^^^^ *^^^ ^® ^°^®^ *^^* ^* *^^*
time what trade there was between China, India, and the West was not in
Chinese hands, and that the Chinese had but a vague notion of the lands
whence the products of foreign countries were brought to them, and to which,
none of their people had ever gone. Additional evidence of this is furnished
30 by other dynastic histories covering the period from the end of the fourth
to the beginning of the seventh centuries, in which we find all the products
of Indo-China, Ceylon, India, Arabia, and the east coast of Africa classed as
1) In A. D. 414 the pilgrim Fa-hien embarked in Java on a large merchant ship bound
for Canton. The people on board were «Po-lo-mon», a name used in those days by the Chinese to
35 designate the west coast of India from Kulam to the mouth of the Indus. Legge, A Record of
Buddhist Kingdoms, 111—115. See also infra, p. 12.
2) M" Gowan, History of China, 209, 210.
3) Hirth, Op. cit., 46, 180.
X