Sailing from China - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 126

•CalicuttoHormuz:stayona qian bearing(315°)for5watches, qianhai (325°)
for 45 watches, xu (300°) for 100 watches, xinxu (295°) for 15 watches, zigui
(10°) for 20 watches, xinyou (275°) for 5 watches, hai (330°) for 10 watches,
qianhai (325°) for 30 watches and zi (360°) for 5 watches.
Aden, Djofar and Hormuz were the three great ports of medieval Islamic trade
before the intrusion of Europeans in the Indian Ocean, but they were not destina-
tions for Chinese ships. Even in the Yuan dynasty, Chinese sailed no further west
than Calicut, where they transferred their cargoes to the ships of Muslim mer-
chants. If the routes described on the cartouche were not for Chinese navigators,
who were they for? The answer is that they were not for anyone. They are in fact
records of the voyages of the imperial eunuch Zheng He who visited all three in
the fifteenth century. What this tells us is that our cartographer was working from
a source in which these routes were indicated - and we can find routes very much
like these in the Laud rutter, though not in Zhang Xie's Study of the Eastern and
Western Seas , which came too late to bother with Zheng He. The routes he has
drawnacrosshismap,then,illustrateawrittentextthathasdisappearedatthesame
timethatitshowsthecommercial networksoftheChinaseaslateintheMingdyn-
asty. It is a composite of text and experience.
FindingCalicutontheSeldenmapresolvesoneofthepuzzlesleftoverfromour
foray into the life of Thomas Hyde. Remember the Chinese writing on the scroll in
Thomas Hyde's hand? Go back and take a look. The two prominent characters at
the top are gu and li , 'ancient' and 'reason'. Combine them and you could plaus-
ibly come up with the phrase 'ancient principle', but in fact what you have is the
ChineseattempttowritethefirsttwosyllablesofthewordCalicut, Guliguo .There
is nothing on the map to suggest why Hyde should have selected Calicut for his
portrait and nothing in his notes that betrays a personal interest, yet it is hard to
believe that a scholar of his temperament would have chosen the characters at ran-
dom. Might this Indian Ocean seaport have represented some sort of far edge of
what a European could know about Asia, beyond which lay realms of knowledge
beyondaccess? DidHydeperhapsthinkofCalicut asameeting pointbetween east
and west?. Hyde has inscribed the Chinese rendering of Calicut on his portrait. He
didn't annotate Guli on the map, nor does the term appear anywhere in his notes.
Clearly he was paying attention when Michael Shen showed him Calicut on their
map - but to what, I wonder?