Chau Ju-Kua - University of Oregon Libraries

INTKODUCTION. 1
for we learn that at that time they carried on direct trade with the Arabs,
the Malay Peninsula, Tongking, Siam, Java, Western Sumatra, "Western
Borneo, and certain of the Philippine Islands, though, of course, the products
of many other countries of the south and south-west were brought there too.
5 The annals of the Sung dynasty ^ supply a list of the principal articles of this
trade, imports and exports. In or about 999. They were gold, silver, Chinese
cash, coined money, lead, piece-goods of all colours, porcelain-ware, cotton
fabrics, incense and scented woods, rhinoceros horns, ivory, coral, amber,
strings of pearls, steel (pin-tHe) ^, shells of turtles, tortoise-shell, cornelians,
10 ch^o-M shelP, rock-crystal, foreign cotton stuffs, ebony and sapan wood.
So valuable had this trade become at the end of the tenth century, that
not only was it made a Government monopoly, but, with the object of increas-
ing it, a mission was sent abroad by the Emperor with credentials under the
Imperial seal and provisions of gold and piece-goods to induce «the foreign
15 traders of the South Sea and those who went to foreign lands beyond the sea
to trade» to come to China. Special licences to import goods were promised
them.
The result of the Government's strenuous effort to increase this trade
was only too soon felt; the Imperial storehouses were shortly packed with
20 ivory, rhinoceros horns, pearls, jade, incense and scented woods and all the
precious merchandise of the southern seas. To find a market for these goods,
the local officials of the empire were ordered to induce the people to purchase
them with «gold, piece-goods, rice and straw»*.
The great value to China of this foreign trade may be estimated by the
25 steps the Government took to regulate it. We have seen (p. 9) that a
1) Sung-shI, 186,18*.
2) Literally «hard irona. There is great uncertainty as to the nature of pin-t'ie (^B
Bretschneider, Ancient Chinese, etc., 12, n. 2 — is disposed to think it was damascene
I).
steel, especially sword blades. Perhaps it was the ondanique of which Marco Polo (I. 91)
30 speaks as a product of Kerman, a word which Yule thinks may be Hundwaniy ^\^^^,
nindian steel», which enjoyed great fame all over the East. Edrisi (I, 65) says that the iron
preferred by the Indian smiths came from the Sofala coast of East Africa. There was a large'
amount of it carried yearly to India by ships from Sumatra or Java («the islands of Zabedj»).
3) Probably a large white shell of the cockle kind, plentiful in Sumatran waters. The
35 term is sometimes translated «mother-of-pearl». See infra Pt. II, Ch. XXXV.
4) Sung-shi, 186,19. It is imposible to determine the exact amounts of these imports,
as we do not know the units of count, which varied greatly. The Sung-shi says that from
1049 to 1053 the annual importation of elephants' tusks, rhinoceros horns, strings of pearls,
aromatics, incense, etc., was over 53,000 units of count. In 1175 the annual amount had risen
40 to over 500,000 units.
2*
9