The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  This marked the beginning of a much closer relationship between the Han Chinese and the sea. Its characteristics were trade, but also naval warfare. In 138 BC a Chinese navy sailed south from the River Yangtze to fend off Yueh pirates. Over the next few years a series of Chinese naval attacks maintained firm pressure on the Yueh statelets along the coast of the South China Sea. Guangzhou, the capital of the Nan Yueh, fell to the Chinese and was used as the base for a raid into the Gulf of Tongking; the king of Guangzhou was captured as he tried to flee by sea. This was a period when the Han Chinese could confidently extend their power as far south as Vietnam; but holding the Han Empire together was only possible by firmly suppressing the centrifugal tendencies of all the many regions and peoples that lay under Han domination. When Han power disintegrated, Chinese refugees flooded south; they had already begun to do so during a crisis in northern China between AD 9 and 25, and this further stimulated the emergence of Guangzhou as a major centre of trade and culture, a city that was able to draw up from Vietnam exotic birds and animals and tropical plants.33

  The Han Empire divided, and the Wei in the north found themselves at odds with the Wu dynasty, who came to control the south from AD 220 onwards. As a result, the Wu were cut off from the land routes. On the other hand, the Wu state acquired a long coastline facing out towards the South China Sea, which the Chinese began to exploit more intensely than before. Wu Chinese began to look in new directions for the luxuries they had known while they lived in the cities of the north.34 These even included the frankincense and myrrh of Arabia, as well as coloured glass from Phoenicia and amber that might well have originated in the Baltic, all of which had once percolated down the Silk Road.35 The question was how they could obtain these goodies, and the answer lay in their relations with the regions between China and India, in other words Indo-China and Malaya/Indonesia. As will be seen, they also hoped to create a series of links to the land of birth of Buddhism at a time when Buddhist texts and relics were enormously prized in China.

  These links could be laid down in two main directions. One route led from the ports of southern China and along the coast of what is now Vietnam, to the territory the Chinese called Funan.36 From there one could follow the coast right round till one reached the Isthmus of Kra, the narrow neck of land that links the Malay peninsula to Asia. After crossing the isthmus by land, which could take a good ten days as the terrain was covered with forests hilly and, travellers could take ship once again in southern Thailand and then leap across the Bay of Bengal from Burma to north-eastern India. For a while Funan was able to maintain a stranglehold on the movement of people and goods from the South China Sea towards the Indian Ocean, and the isthmian route, despite its awkwardness, was preferred. The alternative route went all the way by sea from Indo-China along the Malay coast, past what is now Singapore and through the Strait of Malacca, jumping across the Bay of Bengal from somewhere on the western side of Malaya.37 Chinese ships avoided the open sea, to judge from a text known as the Liang shu: ‘the Zhang hai [South China Sea] is of great extent and ocean-going junks have not yet crossed it directly’.38 The dividends for those in power were considerable. Around AD 300, Shih Chong was the governor of a region that lay along the trade routes towards Canton and Hanoi, and he accumulated enormous wealth by taxing merchants and ambassadors who passed through his lands laden with goods; he also traded on his own behalf, sending out merchants to collect ivory, pearls, scented woods and perfumes, while he was particularly proud of half a dozen coral trees that stood three or four feet high and were beautifully coloured. He also possessed thousands of beautiful female slaves:

  He asked a few tens of them each to hold various scents in their mouths; and when they talked and laughed, the fragrance was wafted by every breeze. He then had powdered gharu-woods as fine as dust sprinkled over an ivory bed, and asked those that he specially loved to step on it. Those who left not a trace he presented with a hundred p’ei of pearls [50,000 pearls!]. Those who moved the fine powder were ordered to eat and drink less in order that they might be lighter.39

  Although he was not typical of his contemporaries, the South China Sea trade had brought Shih fabulous wealth – fabulous in the sense that accounts of his wealth no doubt grew in the telling. And yet Guangzhou and Hanoi derived their wealth from the fact that these towns were collection points, rather than centres of production – ‘prosperous frontier towns’, in the words of Wang Gung-Wu, and the luxurious life of Shih Chong and his successors was rendered possible by the remoteness of these provinces from the central imperial government. As with other frontier regions, the area around Guangzhou, Guangdong, was plagued by pirates and bandits who hoped to set up their own fiefdoms along the coast. This held back the expansion of trade across the South China Sea. One of these pirates, Lu Xun, was resoundingly defeated at the start of the fifth century, a victory that ushered in a period of quiet in Guangdong. Strife further south, along the coast of Annam, left Guangzhou largely free to develop its trade across the South China Sea, so that ‘the governor of Guangzhou need only pass through the city gates of Guangzhou just once, and he will be enriched by thirty million strings of cash’.40 By the sixth century AD Guangzhou was at its peak, and the local officials operated a tax system that, for all its severity, did not slow down the economy, was tolerated and became normal practice: the goods of foreign merchants were bought at half the official price and then sold on at the full price. It seems unlikely that the beneficiaries were anyone other than the greedy officials.41

  An early Chinese description of the sea route to India survives in the Qian Hanshu, a compilation of Han history created in its present form after the fall of the Han, but incorporating older material. It is very difficult to identify the places in India whose ancient names, now imperfectly known, if known at all, were rendered into Chinese sounds. That they included Barygaza and Muziris is very likely. The Han history does contain the earliest surviving description of Malaya, or at any rate the Kra Isthmus, in any language.42 But the voyage towards India was slow, each stage taking months at a time, as one would expect when the monsoons were blowing; what made the endless wait worthwhile was the produce that could be found:

  These countries are extensive, their populations numerous and their many products unfamiliar. Ever since the time of the Emperor Wu [141–87 BC] they have all offered tribute. There are chief interpreters attached to the Yellow Gate [the Department of Eunuchs] who, together with volunteers, put out to sea to buy lustrous pearls, glass, rare stones and strange products in exchange for gold and various silks. All the countries they visit provide them with food and companionship. The trading ships of the barbarians transfer the Chinese to their destination. It is a profitable business for the barbarians, who also loot and kill. Moreover, there are the hazards of wind and wave to be encountered and the possibility of death by drowning. If these are avoided the outward and return voyages take several years. The large pearls are at the most two Chinese inches in circumference.43

  The impression that had to be created was that of subject peoples, but the pretence could not be maintained; much of this description is concerned with trade for profit. Around the third century AD, the clear aim of the ‘chief interpreters’ was to reach India; officially, at any rate, they were the emperor’s agents sent on a diplomatic mission, but in reality they had gone west to buy the rarest of luxury goods from far-off lands.44 Malaya was an inconvenient barrier with nothing obvious to offer, whereas Indian products were rare and unusual. The transformation of Malaya into a desirable destination would be slow; but, even before that, Malay seamen had become active. The essential point is that the Han Chinese remained wary of the open seas, and everything suggests that the Malays were emerging as one of the most active seafaring nations of east Asia. There is every reason to suppose that they, not Indians and certainly not Chinese, sailed the boats that took ‘chief interpreters’ and other Chinese merchants from the west coast of Malaya to eastern India; the historian Wang Gung-Wu, writing i
n 1958, expressed puzzlement at the fact that his Chinese sources did not specify that ships reaching the Indian Ocean were Chinese or Yueh or Indian, and the answer that he missed is that they were operated by Malays. As will be seen, we even have detailed descriptions of them, with their measurements (over 200 feet long, 20–30 feet high, and with four adjustable sails).45 In the fifth century the ‘southern barbarians’ provided everything from rhinoceros horn and kingfisher feathers to pearls and asbestos (then regarded as a mysteriously wonderful mineral).46 For Malays who ranged further and further across the ocean, as far as Africa, the journey across the Bay of Bengal was nothing special.

  For a few centuries Funan in southern Vietnam was the main intermediary between China and India. It is thought to have been the largest kingdom lying between China and India, and to have dominated the coasts of the Gulf of Siam and the eastern shores of Malaya.47 Only the Chinese name of this territory is known; but many of its inhabitants were probably related to the Mon-Khmer people who later built the great temple cities in Cambodia.48 Funan’s maritime successes date to a period when the shipping that moved through the South China Sea carried Chinese passengers, Indian monks, and merchants and Malay sailors, with, no doubt, a good sprinkling of local Vietnamese hands on board as well. By the middle of the third century Funan was attracting admiring comments from Chinese travellers. At this period a king of Funan named Fan-man or Fan Shiman by the Chinese expanded his power over his neighbours and created a kingdom that combined lively international trade with the successful exploitation of large tracts of land suitable for rice and other foods. Funan’s cities were walled, they were rich in libraries and archives, and its taxes, it was said, were paid in gold, silver, pearls and perfume. Funan was also a centre of shipbuilding.49 In short, the Funanese met Chinese criteria for being classed as reasonably civilized barbarians.

  The origins of Funan were said to have lain in the sea, so its vocation was always trading. According to a legend recorded in China, at some time in the first century AD a local queen sent a pirate raid to attack a merchant ship, but those on board defended themselves well, and the ship was able to put in to land. A passenger from ‘beyond the seas’ with the Brahmin name Kaundinya set foot on dry land, drank some of its water (this symbolized taking possession of the lands of the water queen) and married the queen. Thereupon he became king of Funan, acting as overlord over a group of seven chieftains in different towns around the Mekong delta. The marriage between a sky god and a princess born, rather like Aphrodite, in the foam of the sea was a longstanding motif of Malay and Polynesian mythology, and the story presented here bears the imprint of these earlier legends.50 Even so, the story has been interpreted as evidence that Indians arrived in Vietnam by sea and inserted themselves into the highest echelons of local society, which they increasingly indianized and indeed commercialized. The kingdom of Funan was a joint enterprise of Indian merchants and colonizers, with an interest in maritime trade, working alongside native Vietnamese with an interest in harvesting the produce of the fields.51 However important the sea was to the prosperity of Funan, the inland regions were also of great economic importance, and the capital, which still needs to be identified, lay some way inland.52 Its indianized character was acquired more by osmosis than by colonization; and when colonization took place it occurred in the port cities, and was the work of merchants and Brahmin priests who merged deliberately with the local population, as will be seen. Indian culture fascinated the Funanese, as it did later rulers of lands around the South China Sea; the Khmer kings of Cambodia, the builders of the great temples at Angkor Wat, claimed descent from Kaundinya and the kings of Funan. This does not mean that the townsmen were all Indians. Rather, as in other port cities around the world, the ports of Funan hummed with the bargaining of Indians, Chinese, Malays, Indonesians, Vietnamese, Burmese and many other ethnic groups.

  The remains of one of their trading ports, at Oc-èo at the top of the Gulf of Siam, confirm Chinese reports; it had originated in the first century AD as a Malay fishing harbour, but soon afterwards it underwent a spectacular transformation, and it remained a great centre of trade until the early seventh century. Just as no one knows the local name for Funan, no one knows the original name of the town that has been excavated at Oc-èo, which lies not far from Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon. Oc-èo is not simply one site among many, though other Vietnamese ports of this period await discovery; everything suggests that it was the earliest trading port of any significance in the history of south-east Asia, and it is the first place in the region where writing has been found, in the form of Sanskrit inscriptions, not just on stone but on gold rings. The site itself is large, covering 450 hectares.53 The inhabitants lived in houses partly built of stone and brick but raised on piles above the ground, to avoid flooding, as is still so often the case in south-east Asia. Larger palaces for the elite had two storeys.54 Oc-èo did not actually lie on the seashore but twenty-five kilometres inland, and was connected to the open sea by canals. These canals were a typical feature of the south Vietnamese landscape; they ran through the waterlogged countryside and serve as a reminder that the rulers of Funan were able to mobilize a considerable labour force to construct and maintain a whole network of waterways. It has been well said that one word describes the Funanese environment: ‘watery’.55

  Oc-èo tied the sea to the Funanese possessions that lay down the watercourses of the Mekong River, and it had access to vast paddy fields sown with rice that flooded naturally when the Mekong rose; if nothing else, Oc-èo was a place mariners would want to use to resupply their ships on the long haul from southern China to Malaya and back.56 Objects found there have included coins of the Antonine emperors of Rome, from the second century, Chinese bronzes of the first to sixth centuries, and polished gems thought to have been brought from Sasanid Persia, though many of these items would have been carried to Funan in stages and passed from hand to hand over a long period. Imported materials were used to manufacture ornaments, jewellery and utensils, including silver dinner plates: the people of Oc-èo fashioned gems from diamonds, rubies, sapphires, topaz, garnets, opals, jet and much else, and they imported gold, probably in the form of gold wire, which they then melted down to make rings, bracelets and other high-value objects. More modest metals moved around the South China Sea, such as iron, which arrived from north-east Borneo.57 Interestingly, more goods have been found that originated in the Roman Empire than from China, even though China was much nearer and more accessible, so Oc-èo, although it lay beyond the Indian Ocean, was certainly linked to those trade routes that brought ‘Roman’ merchants at least as far as southern India – the question is who then transported these goods to the South China Sea. But Funanese relations with Wu China were constantly being sealed by embassies that carried tribute to the imperial court. In the fifth century embassies to China arrived again and again, bearing gold, sandalwood, ivory and incense.

  During much of this century and the early sixth, contact between Funan and China was especially lively. Not just state emissaries but monks were sent back and forth between China and Funan; on one occasion the king of Funan sent a Buddhist monk to southern China with the text of 240 sutras that he wanted to share with the imperial court. Funan thus acted as a bridge between the birthplace of Buddhism and the great empire that was at this period enthusiastically embracing Buddhist doctrines. Even so, the Funanese ambassadors were not always welcome, and occasionally, as in 357, they were kept waiting and then sent back without the tribute being accepted, perhaps because the emperor preferred other allies in the region, or perhaps because the tribute itself was regarded as paltry. One reason the Wu emperors cared about Funan was not because of an interest in the trade in fine gemstones but their love for Funanese music, which was still greatly appreciated at the Tang court in seventh-century China. Unfortunately neither the instruments nor the sounds are known; but an ‘Office for Funan Music’ existed at Nanjing in 244, so the infatuation lasted many centuries.58

  The sh
ips of Funan were described by Chinese writers, and fell into two categories. There were ships whose average length was said to be twelve xin, or eight Chinese feet, which were also six xin broad. They would therefore have been quite tubby in shape; a striking feature was the bow and stern, said to look like fish, so the boards were evidently gathered together into something like a point. They were powered by oars and the largest ones could carry about a hundred people. Relatively small vessels of this sort would have been suitable for carrying low-bulk, high-value goods such as jewellery, rare spices and incense. Another account describes much larger vessels, able to carry 600–700 passengers and crew and a very large cargo (more than 10,000 ho), and these ships were powered by four sails. They sound more like the junks that traded along the coast of China, and may have been copied from foreign ships by the shipbuilders of Funan. The Chinese texts call the Funanese ships bo, which has been linked to a Malay word, perahu, that the Chinese language would have struggled to turn into a manageable sound. And this has led to the assumption that the ships and sailors were Malay, which makes a great deal of sense, particularly bearing in mind the description of the smaller ships, which have a strongly Malay feel. For the descriptions that survive of the people of Funan suggest that there were many Malays living in the area where the Chinese would have had contact with this kingdom – the port cities. The Chinese texts speak of dark, curly-haired people, whom they found ugly (though that was a common enough way of expressing superiority over ‘barbarians’); they were big people who wore their hair long at the back and went around virtually naked, with nothing on their feet, and like many who display their flesh they adorned their bodies with tattoos.59 They do not sound like the handsome Khmers who lived further inland in Funan. Oc-èo in particular was a place where people of varied origins came together – Khmers, Indians, Malays, Chinese, only to mention the most obvious among the very many peoples of south-east Asia – a large cosmopolitan port city whose identity was created by generations of settlers and their descendants, and whose daily life was dominated by trade across the seas and by the need to prepare goods, such as gems, that could be sent on its ships to China and elsewhere.