KĀÑCĪ AND CHINA IN THE SECOND CENTURY B.C.

II. KĀÑCĪ AND CHINA IN THE SECOND CENTURY B.C.

Pan Kou, a Chinese writer who lived not later than the end of the first century A.D., says in his Ts’ien han chou:

“From the gates of Je-nan,¹ from Siu-Wen and Ho-p’ou travelling by boat for five months we reach the kingdom of Ton-Yuan. After a further journey of about four months by sea is reached the kingdom of Yi-lou-mo. By sailing still further for a period of over twenty days, the kingdom of Chen-li is reached. From there you travel more than ten days by land to the kingdom of Fou-kan-tou-lou.² From the kingdom of Fou-kan-tou-lou, going by boat for more than two months you reach the kingdom of Houang-tche. The habits of the people there generally resemble those of the people of Tchou-yai. These are extensive and populous lands, full of strange products. From the time of Emperor Wou (140-86 B.C.) all of them have been sending tribute.³ There are official interpreters who belong to the (administration of the) palace houang-men (yellow-gate); with the recruits they go by sea to buy shining pearls, glass,⁴ rare stones and strange products, giving gold and silks in exchange. In the lands to which they go, the people supply them with food and join them in their repast. The merchant ships of the foreigners take them to their destination by turns. These foreigners also profit by the trade; (besides) they also plunder and kill people. Moreover (the passengers) have to be afraid of tempests which drown them. If nothing happens, they take many years to go and come back. The large pearls measure up to seven inches.⁵ In the period of Yuan-che (1-6 A.D.) of the emperor P’ing, Wang Mang desired to transform the government and manifest stately power. He sent rich presents to the king of Houang-tche and asked him to send an embassy bringing a live rhinoceros as tribute. From the kingdom of Houang-tche, going by boat for about eight months, we reach Pi-tsong.⁶ Travelling again by sea for about two months, we get to the frontier of Siang-lin in Je-nan. They say that to the south of Houang-tche lies the kingdom of Ssen-tch’eng-pou, whence the interpreter envoys of the Han return.”⁷ — ch. 28

It is seen, observes Pelliot, that Pan-Kou has joined two series of data, one going back to the period of the emperor Wou (140-86 B.C.), and the other coming from the envoys of Wang Mang in the initial years of the Christian era. He also points out that in this passage, in spite of its obscurities, we are in the realm of history, not legend. Now the country which is reached after a year’s voyage from the coasts of Indo-China, and from which pearls and glass were procured, must have been in the midst of the Indian ocean, possibly even at its western end. Herrmann locates Houang-tche in Abyssinia and B. Laufer in Malaya; Ferrand rejects these identifications with good reason, and says: “Phonetically, the equivalence Houng-tche < Kāñcī is satisfactory for the epoch of Han; historically it is possible”⁸ that China had relations with Kāñcī in the second century B.C. Let us note also this. A Cōḷa embassy of the eleventh century from Coromandel to Canton took eight months to complete the journey; Pan Kou gives ten months to one year for the same voyage, nearly a dozen centuries earlier. Chinese vessels, it should be noted finally, had not yet begun to sail to India; they began to do so only much later. And the Chinese are distinctly stated by Pan Kou to have depended for their transport on foreign ships. But he makes it no less clear that from the first century B.C. the products of Southern India had begun to reach China by sea, and that at the beginning of the Christian era, under orders of the Court, a Chinese mission traversed the entire Indian ocean.⁹