Diplomacy, Trade and the Quest for the Buddha's Tooth: The Yongle Emperor and Ming China's South Asian Frontier PDF

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1SPPGT Chapter 3 Chinese courts and merchants rarely undertook diplomatic or commercial activities in the Indian Ocean region prior to Diplomacy, Trade and the 11th century. In the first millennium ad, coastal China was connected to the maritime world of the Indian Ocean the Quest for the ...

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26 | Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450

Chinese courts and merchants rarely undertook diplomatic or commercial activities in the Indian Ocean region prior to the 11th century. In the first millennium ad, coastal China was connected to the maritime world of the Indian Ocean through the shipping and trading networks of people from Southeast Asia, the Persian Gulf and Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon). China’s engagement with the Indian Ocean world and the coastal regions of South Asia intensified gradually over the first half of the second millennium. During this period, the Song (960–1279) and Yuan (1271–1368) courts were in frequent contact with maritime polities in the South China Sea and across the Bay of Bengal. Seafaring merchants from China also successfully established commercial networks that, in the 12th and 13th centuries, extended to the Coromandel and Malabar coasts of South Asia. By the time Zheng He 鄭和 (1371–1433) sailed on his maiden voyage in 1405, Chinese traders and courts were no longer passive participants in Indian Ocean trade and diplomacy. Not only were Chinese seafaring merchants able to bypass intermediaries and procure goods directly from foreign markets, court oicials from China also had the naval prowess to demand submission from polities located as far away as South Asia. Indeed, the maritime frontiers of Ming China during the reign of the Yongle 永樂 emperor (1402–24) extended to the coastal regions of South Asia, the main destination of the first three voyages of Admiral Zheng He. Zheng He’s engagement with South Asia, a region he visited during each of his seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433, was multifaceted and included places (such as Bengal) that he did not travel to personally. It involved the use and demonstration of military power in order to construct a Chinese world order on behalf of the Yongle emperor, who desperately sought to legitimise his usurpation of the Ming throne. The solicitation and ferrying of tributary missions, court-sponsored commercial activities, and the search for Buddhist relics were also part of these expeditions. The objectives of the Zheng He-led expeditions to South Asia fit with the arguments made by Geofrey Wade in this volume (see Chapter 2) and in his earlier works about the Ming court’s pursuit of domination in the maritime regions. Indeed, the activities of Zheng He and other Ming eunuchs in South Asia were also associated, as in the case of Southeast Asia, with seeking submission of foreign rulers, procuring exotic treasures and artefacts, and legitimising the reign of the Yongle emperor. Focusing on these objectives of the Zheng He expeditions, this chapter outlines the complex and multilayered relationships between the Ming court and South Asia during the reign of the Yongle emperor. These encounters difered significantly from those of previous periods and were never replicated again by any future court in China. In fact, the Zheng He expeditions marked the culmination of the maritime interactions between South Asia and China that grew rapidly after the 10th century. The main diference was the unprecedented role of the state in directing the interactions. While the abrupt end to the expeditions in 1433 led to the re-emergence of private merchant networks as key facilitators of these linkages, the arrival of European colonial polities in the 16th century yet again changed the dynamics of maritime contacts between South Asia and Ming China.

Engaging with the maritime world Confucian oicials at Chinese courts since the Han dynasty (206 bc–ad 220) had tried unsuccessfully to curtail the commercial motives of foreign tribute carriers. While the court scribes portrayed the arrival of these missions as acceptance of vassal status by foreign polities, in reality most of the carriers were traders who sought to exploit the tribute system by selling their merchandise in local markets for considerable profit. During the Song dynasty, the court eventually recognised the commercial intention of the tribute carriers and tried to incorporate the practice into its fiscal system. It gave various incentives to foreign traders, including commercial privileges and tax breaks, and encouraged them to bring other merchants to Song China.1 During the Song, because the overland routes to and beyond Central Asia were blocked by the semi-nomadic polities such as the Liao (907–1125) and Jin (1115–1234), the court paid greater attention to maritime commerce than during previous dynasties. As a result of these policies and encouragements, exchanges with the Indian Ocean region developed rapidly in the 11th and 12th centuries. The period also witnessed the development of shipbuilding technology and navigational skills in China and the emergence of Chinese communities abroad.2 Many of the policies with regard to promoting maritime commerce continued during the subsequent Yuan period. Unlike the Song, however, the Yuan court under Qubilai Khan (r. 1260–94) was actively involved in demanding submission from maritime polities through oicial missions and naval attacks. Between 1280 and 1296, for example, 13 missions were dispatched to strategic locations in the coastal regions of South Asia. Seven of these went to Kollam on the Malabar coast and six went to the Ma’bar polity on the Coromandel coast. These Yuan missions, which took place against the backdrop of punitive naval raids on Japan, Champa and Java, were intended to extract tributary missions.3 Through these tributary missions Qubilai wanted to project himself as the legitimate ‘Khan’ in a politically fragmented Mongol world. It is likely that during Qubilai’s reign a distinction was made between tributary missions with commercial motives and those that arrived to legitimise the Mongol ruler in China. This distinction may have been made and enforced by scrutinising the background of the tribute carriers and through verifications by court oicials who personally travelled to foreign polities. The Ming court, under the founding ruler the Hongwu 洪武 emperor (r. 1368–98) and subsequently the Yongle emperor, followed the Yuan court’s policy in aggressively seeking tributary missions from maritime polities, including those in South Asia. The policies instituted by the Hongwu emperor, including his ban on private Chinese traders engaging in foreign trade, had a significant impact on maritime commerce, diplomatic interactions and the formation of Chinese diasporic networks. The Hongwu emperor also established a strict policy on tribute missions, restricting and punishing those who attempted to carry out commercial activities.4 Aware of Qubilai’s failed maritime strategy, the Hongwu emperor warned his heirs not to use Ming China’s naval abilities to invade polities in the

Plate 3.1 Patterned silk fragment, dated 1300–1600, Nanjing, Suzhou or Hangzhou. This ivory-coloured fragment of silk is patterned with sprays of pomegranates on a chequered ground. Silk damask, height 19cm, width 14cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, donated by the Reverend Dr Franz Bock (1823–99), V&A 7052-1860

maritime realm. The threat to the Ming empire, according to the Hongwu emperor, lay in the northern borderlands and not in the coastal regions.5 By the time the Yongle emperor usurped the Ming throne in 1402, private commercial networks of Chinese merchants based in Southeast Asia had become active in Indian Ocean trade. Using Southeast Asian ports as their bases, these private merchants conducted trade with Ming China as well as with the coastal regions of South Asia. One of the aims of the Zheng He expeditions may well have been to bring the commercial exchanges along the Ming coast, and the networks of private Chinese traders based abroad, under state control. The intention was also to install friendly regimes at key nodal points of the Indian Ocean world. All this was done through the demonstration of naval power, evident from the size and number of ships, the large contingent of soldiers and the advanced weaponry carried by Zheng He’s armada.6 Within this context, it is worth noting that the South Asian polities with which the Ming court pursued diplomatic relations were either located in strategic sectors of the Indian Ocean and/or had emerged as important trading destinations for Chinese merchants. Maritime power and diplomacy The terminus of Zheng He’s first three expeditions was Calicut (Guli 古里, now Kozhikode), the leading centre for intra-Indian Ocean commerce and the main exporter of pepper from the Malabar coast. Prior to Zheng He’s arrival

Diplomacy, Trade and the Quest for the Buddha’s Tooth: The Yongle Emperor and Ming China’s South Asian Frontier | 27

B AY O F B E N G A L

I N D I A A R A B I A N S E A

Honavar Madras Kanchi

Mangalore

.BJMBQVS

Mt. Delly Sacriice rock

Chidambaram

CALICUT (Kozhikode) Coimbatore

Nagapattinam

COCHIN (Kochi)

Pt. Pedro

Androth Kalpeni LACCADIVE ISLANDS

QUILON (Kollam)

Old Kayal SRI LANKA

Minicoy

Batticaloa Negombo Colombo

Kelai



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Fadifolu atoll Male or Sultan’s island

Kandy Little Basses Great Basses

M A L D IV E I S L A N D S

I N D I A N

O C E A N

Mulaku atoll Haddummati atoll

N 0

250 kilometres

Plate 3.2 Map of southern India

on the Malabar coast, another eunuch emissary sent by the Yongle emperor, Yin Qing 尹慶 (active 1400–10), had visited the region. The Veritable Records of the Ming reports that in 1403 the Ming court sent Yin Qing to Melaka (Manlajia 滿剌 加) and Cochin (Kezhi 柯枝, now Kochi) to ‘confer upon the kings of these countries “spangled-gold” silk gauze drapes and parasols together with patterned fine silks and coloured silks as appropriate’ (Pl. 3.1).7 Yin Qing returned to China in 1405, with ‘rulers’ of Samudera (Sumendala 蘇門答剌), Melaka and Calicut.8 While during the Zheng He expeditions, rulers of several maritime polities seem to have personally led tributary missions to the Ming court, it is more likely that the people Yin Qing brought with him were simply oicials or traders from the three foreign polities. The aim may have been to legitimise Yongle emperor’s accession through the display of foreign tributary missions at the court. This was, in fact, the first time after the Yongle emperor usurped the Ming throne that envoys had arrived in China from these three polities. Yin Qing’s destination in South Asia, as noted in the Veritable Records, was Cochin (Pl. 3.2), which was not yet a major port or commercial site on the Malabar coast. Neither was Melaka an important centre of trade or maritime communication when Yin Qing arrived. Rather, it was during the course of Zheng He’s expeditions that both Cochin and Melaka developed into nodal points of Indian Ocean interactions. In fact, the Ming court played a critical role in transforming these two sites from obscurity to preeminence in their respective regions. This was perhaps done in order to access local resources and establish Ming bastions at key locations of the Indian Ocean world.9 The Ming court’s objectives entailed displacing existing powers

28 | Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450

at these sites. While the support for Melaka came at the expense of supplanting Samudera as the main chokepoint in the Straits of Melaka, Cochin may have been chosen over Calicut for its pepper supplies and as a base for westward exploration of the Indian Ocean. When Yin Qing returned with the ‘rulers’ of Samudera, Melaka and Calicut, the Ming court ‘commanded that these native leaders all be enfeofed as kings of their countries, that they be provided with seals and patents and that variegated silks and clothing be conferred upon them’.10 Ma Huan 馬歡 (d. c. 1460), who accompanied Zheng He in 1413, 1421 and 1431, seems to suggest that this enfeofment of the ruler of Calicut was carried out by Zheng He in 1407, when he delivered a silver seal and gifts of ‘hats and girdles of various grades’ to the ministers of Calicut.11 Ma Huan also describes how the Calicut king, planning to send tribute to the Ming court, ordered foreign craftsmen residing in his land to make a jewelled girdle for the Chinese emperor. This girdle, studded with precious stones and large pearls, was made with 50 liang of ‘fine red gold’ that had been processed into threads ‘as fine as a hair’.12 The embassies sent by Calicut ofered local products to the Ming court, which in return presented various gifts to the South Asian envoys and treated them to lavish banquets. Paper money, copper cash, silk gauzes and other silk fabrics, gilded brocades and porcelain were frequently presented to the envoys and the rulers of Calicut.13 The list of return gifts, which were often more valuable and in greater quantities than the tribute oferings, clearly indicates the Ming court’s attempt to induce foreign polities to send tributary missions on a regular basis. Embassies from Calicut continued to arrive at the Ming court until about 1435, but a decline in

CHAGAT"I MONGOLS/ TIMURIDS

Samarkand

Balkh Kabul

PeshBwar PUNJAB Lahore TIBET

MULTAN Gangadvara

HI

Delhi

SIND

Agra Kalpi

SAM.AS

LA

YA

S

Benares Bodh GayB

Thatta KATHIAWAR AND GUJARAT

MA

JA6/PUR

MALWA

BENGAL

Ujjain

Chittagong

Ratanpur KHANDESH BAHMANI
Rajpur SULT"NATE Daulatabad GONDWANA

ISS A

Multan Uch

OR

PERSIAN EMIRATES

Thaneswar

Bhubaneswar

GA NA

Bidar Warangal Gulbarga

TE LIN

A R A B I A N S E A

(Ahsanabad) Golkonda

Vijayanagar

Sindabur (Goa)

B AY O F B E N G A L

VIJAYANAGAR Dvarasamudra
Manjarur (Mangalore) (Halebid)

Calicut (Kozhikode) Cochin (Kochi) Quilon (Kollam) SRI LANKA

N

Galle 0

I N D I A N

O C E A N

intensity can be discerned after 1417, when the Yongle emperor granted special status to Cochin. Although the 18th-century Ming shi (Ming History) states that envoys from Calicut took precedence over those from other maritime polities, Cochin may have been the more important ally for the Ming court on the Malabar coast. In 1405, when Yin Qing returned to the Ming court, the Cochin representative was conspicuously missing and instead, as noted above, the ‘ruler’ of Calicut accompanied the Ming envoy. This seems to be an indication of the existing conflict between Calicut and Cochin in the early 15th century. Ming sources make it clear that Calicut was not only a leading trading hub in the Indian Ocean, but it was also a place where Muslim merchants (mostly of Arab origin) exerted significant political and economic power. Some of these merchants, especially those invested in foreign trade, funded the expansionist policies of the Zamorin, the ruler of Calicut. They may have been the ones who lobbied the Zamorin to invade Cochin, which was quickly emerging as the main rival port on the Malabar coast. Sometime in the late 15th century, the Zamorin did in fact occupy Cochin and install his representative as the king of the port-city.14 Through the missions of Yin Qing and Zheng He the Ming court was probably aware of this rivalry between Calicut and Cochin and decided to intervene in 1416–17 by granting special status to Cochin and its ruler Keyili 可亦里.15 As part of his fifth expedition, which sailed from China in 1417, Zheng He was asked to confer a seal upon Keyili and enfeof a mountain in his kingdom as the zhenguo zhi shan 鎮 國之山 (‘Mountain Which Protects the Country’). The Yongle emperor composed a proclamation that was inscribed on a stone tablet and carried to Cochin by Zheng

500 kilometres

Plate 3.3 Map of Bengal-Jaunpur

He. Both of these were rare acts by the Ming court. Only three other polities, Melaka (in 1405), Japan (in 1406) and Brunei (in 1408), received a similar privilege. These stone tablets were significantly diferent from the trilingual inscription installed in Sri Lanka mentioned below. While the latter was inscribed to promote trading connections with foreign merchant communities, the proclamations sent to Melaka, Japan, Brunei and Cochin were intended to establish political relations with key polities, with perhaps the ofer of military protection in times of need. ‘All were intended’, as Wang Gungwu has noted, by the Yongle emperor to seal ‘closer relations between his empire and the four countries concerned’.16 This exceptional relationship may have been established with Cochin because the Ming court decided to support an emerging port (i.e. Cochin) over the Muslim-dominated Calicut.17 After the cessation of the Zheng He expeditions, the Zamorin not only invaded Cochin, but also seems to have banned Chinese merchants from trading on the Malabar coast. The Christian traveller Joseph of Cranganore provides the following report about the absence of Chinese merchants in Calicut in the early 16th century: These people of Cathay are men of remarkable energy, and formerly drove a first-rate trade at the city of Calicut. But the King of Calicut having treated them badly, they quitted that city, and returning shortly after inflicted no small slaughter on the people of Calicut, and after that returned no more. After that they began to frequent Mailapetam, a city subject to the king of Narsingha; a region towards the East, ... and there they now drive their trade.18

The Ming court’s attempt to intervene in local disputes was not limited to the Malabar coast. It also got involved in a

Diplomacy, Trade and the Quest for the Buddha’s Tooth: The Yongle Emperor and Ming China’s South Asian Frontier | 29

Plate 3.4 Timur receiving gifts from the Egyptian ambassadors, dated 16th July 1436 (Dhu’l-Hijja 839), Shraz, Iran. Album leaf, ink, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, height 17.8cm, width 24cm. Worcester Art Museum, Jerome Wheelock Fund, 1935.26

conflict between Bengal and its neighbouring Jaunpur Sultanate (Pl. 3.3). In 1420, the king of Bengal complained to the Yongle emperor that Jaunpur forces had carried out several military raids on its territory. In response to the complaint, the Ming court dispatched the eunuch Hou Xian 侯顯 (active 1405–27) and others ‘with Imperial orders of instruction for them [i.e. Bengal and Jaunpur], so that they would both cultivate good relations with their neighbours and would each protect their own territory’.19 The entourage led by Hou Xian arrived in Bengal in August or September 1420 and was welcomed with a grand reception. It was Hou Xian’s second visit to the region and this time he seems to have brought along Chinese soldiers, who were all presented with silver coins by the ruler of Bengal. The entourage then proceeded to Jaunpur to convey the Yongle emperor’s message and try to resolve the territorial dispute peacefully.20 The rulers of Bengal evidently knew about Ming naval power and its interventions in other maritime regions prior to lodging the complaint. In fact, Bengal had sent at least eight embassies to the Ming court before 1420 and traders from the region were actively engaged in Indian Ocean commerce.21 Hou Xian himself had visited the region in 1415. Thus, by 1420, the rulers, oicials and traders in Bengal must have been very familiar with the Ming court’s intentions to exert its power in the ...