Indian Shipping/Book 1/Part 2/Chapter 7

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CHAPTER VII.

The Period of Hindu Imperialism in Northern India (continued): The Intercourse with China.

It was also in the age of the Guptas and Harshavardhana that we find the field of Indian maritime activity in the eastern seas extending as far as China and Japan in the farthest East, beyond the small colonies of Java and Sumatra. As Mr. Kakasu Okakura remarks, "Down to the days of the Mohammedan conquest went, by the ancient highways of the sea, the intrepid mariners of the Bengal coast, founding their colonies in Ceylon, Java, and Sumatra, and binding Cathay (China) and India fast in mutual intercourse."[1] The intercourse of India with China by way of the sea began at least as early as the commencement of the Christian era, while "the Chinese did not arrive in the Malay Archipelago before the 5th century, and they did not extend their voyages to India, Persia, and Arabia till a century later."[2] Throughout the ​1st and 2nd centuries of the Christian era, during the reigns of the Chinese Emperor Hoti (a.d. 89-105) and of the Emperor Hiwanti (a.d. 158-9), there arrived, according to Chinese annals, many embassies from Indian sovereigns bringing merchandise under the name of tribute to the Chinese court, which alone had the monopoly of the trade with foreign nations.[3] Thus, as the Milinda Panha informs us (pp. 127, 327, 359), during the 2nd century after Christ, when under the great Satrap Rudradaman (a.d. 143-158) the Kshatrapa dynasty of Kathiavad was at the height of its power, challenging the supremacy even of the great Andhra Empire, Indians of the Tientes, i.e. Sindhu, brought presents by sea to China. Chinese annals point also to a continued intercourse of Ceylon with China by way of the sea, which was due to a common national worship. Among those men who shared in the propagation of Buddhism and in the ​translations of its scriptures in China, there were many who took the sea route between India and China. Some particulars about them are contained in the Kwai-Yuen Catalogue of the Chinese Tripitaka compiled in a.d. 730.[4] The first eminent Buddhist who succeeded in finishing a sea journey from Ceylon to China was of course the well-known Fa-Hien. But a little before him an Indian called Buddhabhadra, a descendant of the Sakya prince Amitodana, arrived in China in 398, i.e. two years before Fa-Hien entered India. He embarked from Cochin for China after travelling through Northern India and Indo-China. After him the Kwai-Yuen Catalogue, as well as other Chinese works, mentions a series of names of Buddhist priests who sailed between Southern India and China. Thus in a.d. 420 Saṅghavarmi, a Sinhalese and the translator of the Mahisasaka Vinaya, arrived in China. In a.d. 424 Gunavarman, grandson of an ex-king of Kabul, arrived at the capital of the Sung dynasty. He had sailed from Ceylon and visited Java on the way, like Fa-Hien. In the year 429 a.d., in the reign of the Emperor Wun, three Sinhalese visited China. Again, is mentioned in the work called Bhikshuni Nidāna that in the year 433 a.d. the ship called Nandi brought to China a second party of Sinhalese nuns who established the Bhikshuni ​order in China. In a.d. 434 there arrived in China quite a number of Sinhalese nuns, under the leadership of a certain Tissara, to further Gunavarman's work for the foundation of the monastic system in China after the model of Sinhalese Buddhism. In a.d. 435 Gunabhadra, the translator of the Sańyukta-āgama (of which the MS. was brought by Fa-Hien from Ceylon), arrived at the province of Kau in China from Ceylon. Again, in a.d. 438 another group of eight Bhikshunis came from Ceylon. In a.d. 442 Saṅghavarman, who had come to China by the overland route, sailed from the southern coast of China for India. In a.d. 453 a Chinese Buddhist called Dharmakrama took the sea route from Southern India on his way back to China. Saṅghabhadra, who was born in a western country but educated in Ceylon, came to China with his teacher, a Tripitak-Acharyya, and translated Buddhaghosa's Sāmantapasadika in a.d. 488. In the 6th century there was a continued development of the maritime intercourse between India and China. In the year 526 a.d. Bodhidharma, the great patriarch of Indian Buddhism, who was the son of a king of Southern India, embarked in his old age from India, and "reached Canton by sea." He was received with the honour due to his age and character, and invited to Nanking, where the Emperor of South China held his court. As the Chinese geographer, Chia-Tau, also records in ​his Huang-hua-hsi-ta-chi, "Ta-mo (i.e. Bodhidharma) came floating on the sea to Pan-yu (i.e. Canton)."[5] The arrival of Bodhidharma gave a great impetus to Indian missionary activity in China, where it is recorded that there were at work at one time and in one province, viz. Lo-Yang, "more than 3,000 Indian monks and 10,000 Indian families to impress their national religion and art on Chinese soil."[6] Specific mention of individual sea voyages to China also appears in Chinese works. Thus the Kwai-Yuen Catalogue records that in a.d. 548 Paramati, who was a native of Ujjaini, being invited by the Emperor Wu, of the Llan dynasty, arrived on the southern coast of China. In the Suyshoo, a Chinese history of the Suy dynasty, it is stated that in a.d. 607 the King of Ceylon "sent the Brahman, Kewmo-lo, with 30 vessels to meet the approaching ships which conveyed an embassy from China." Ceylon had at that time a fully developed national marine which, according to the Mahāwańso (ch. xl.), was founded as early as a.d. 495 by the king Mogallana for the defence of the coast.

  1. ↑ Ideals of the East, pp. 1, 2.
  2. ↑ Mr. G. Phillips in the J.R.A.S., 1895, p. 525. According to Professor Lacouperie (Western Origin of Chinese Civilization) the maritime intercourse of India with China dates from a much earlier period, from about 680 b.c., when the "sea-traders of the Indian Ocean," whose "chiefs were Hindus," founded a colony called Lang-ga, after the Indian name Lanka of Ceylon, about the present Gulf of Kiao-tchoa, where they arrived in vessels having the prows shaped like the heads of birds or animals after the patterns specified in the Yuktikalpataru and exemplified in the ships and boats of old Indian art. These Indian colonists had, however, to retreat before the gradual advance of the Chinese till they became merged in the kingdom of Cambodia, founded by Hindus in the Indo-Chinese peninsula about the 1st century a.d. But throughout this period the monopoly of the sea-borne trade of China was in their hands, and the articles of this trade were the well-known Indian products, such as rubies, pearls, sugar, aromatics, peacocks, corals, and the like.
  3. ↑ See J.R.A.S., 1896, pp. 64-66.
  4. ↑ Professor M. Anesaki in the J.R.A.S., April, 1903.
  5. ↑ J.R.A.S., 1896, and Edkins' Chinese Buddhism, p. 100.
  6. ↑ Okakura's Ideals of the East, p. 113.
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