Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Cheng Ho's routes over the Indian Ocean require some attention. Variations were
slight among those for east of Ceylon and South India, which may be passed over,
but as we follow him further westward, we notice certain interesting features.
It should fi rst be pointed out that the two sea routes leading from the western
coast of South India to the Iranian Bay and to the Red Sea had both a long history
behind them. However, in early times, oversea communications between those
regions were presumably achieved by sailing along the coast. It was only when later
navigators learned to make use of the monsoon, which was a familiar phenomenon
in that area, that a direct route over the Arabian Sea was opened up.
Who was the fi rst to notice and turn to account the monsoon that blew over the
Arabian Sea and thus opened up the above-mentioned route? Some authorities
ascribe the discovery of the monsoon to Hippalus, an Alexandrian in the employ of
the Roman Empire c. 40 A.D.-50. Hence, as one historian puts it, “Hippalus
deserves as much honour in Roman annals as does Columbus in modern history.”
Others contend that before Hippalus the Arabs had already made use of monsoon
in sailing over the Arabian Sea. Still others would credit Nearchos, one of the gen-
erals who accompanied the Macedonian king Alexander in his Asian expedition in
the fourth century B.C. with the so-called “discovery”.
17
Be that as it may, the fact
remains that navigators over the Arabian Sea had, from a very early time, learned
to make use of the monsoon to strike out an oversea route, thus enabling them-
selves to abandon the tortuous coastal sailing. When Cheng Ho's fl eet arrived in the
Iranian Bay or entered the Red Sea, these routes were already scenes of busy
traffi cking.
There is another problem that deserves a far more thorough probing. Among the
routes shown in Cheng Ho's chart (Fig.
5.1
) is one that leads from the present
Belligamme in the south of Ceylon or from Kozhikode on the western coast of
South India to Brava or to Moqadisho on the eastern coast of Africa. When was this
direct route fi rst opened up? We know that oversea communications between the
equatorial regions on the eastern coast of Africa and India or China also go a long
way back. Indeed, descriptions of the sea coast in what is now Somalia and Kenya
may be found in Chinese records as early as the eighth and ninth centuries.
18
In 1071
(or the fourth year of Hsining in the Sung Dynasty), ambassadors from Tsengtan, a
country on the eastern coast of Africa, after 160 days of sailing along the coast,
landed in the city of Canton in China. A second embassy came in 1083. The Sung
rulers obviously thought very highly of this diplomatic relationship and loaded the
ambassadors with rich gifts.
19
Now Tsengtan is actually a scribal error for Tsengpa,
17
For detailed information, see
S. A. Huzayyin, Arabia and the Far East, Their Cultural Relations
in Graeco-Roman and Irano-Arabian Times
, Cairo, 1942, pp. 112-113, and J. N. L. Baker,
op. cit.
,
pp. 19-20.
18
Tu Huan (in
Ching Hsing Chi
) and Tuan Ch'eng-shih (in
Yu Yang Tsa Tsu
) of the T'ang Dynasty
gave the earliest information in Chinese records about Berbera and Malindi respectively. Tuan's
work is easily available, while Tu's work is now preserved in the form of citations in other works.
A collection of these citations with commentaries has been published recently by Chang Yi-ch'un
under the title
Ching Hsing Chi Chien Chu,
Peking, 1963.
19
Sung Shih
(Dynastic History of Sung),
Chüan
490, section on Tsengtan.
