Silk Road, Cotton Road or....

Indo-Chinese Trade in Pre-European Times

Author(s): Stephen F. Dale
Source: Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 43, No. 1, Expanding Frontiers in South Asian and
World History: Essays in Honour of John F. Richards (Jan., 2009), pp. 79-88
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20488072
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Modern Asian Studies 43, 1 (2009) pp. 79-88. (? 2oo8 Cambridge University Press
doi:10.1017/S0026749X07003277 First published online 8 October 2oo8

"Silk Road, Cotton Road or. . ..

Indo-Chinese Trade in Pre-European Times"
STEPHEN F. DALE

OSUDepartment of History, 367 Dulles Hall, 230 West I 7th Avenue,

Columbus, OH 432 Io, USA
Email: dale. i@osu.edu

Abstract
India and China were the most important producers of textiles in the world
prior to the industrial revolution. However, whereas the Western historiography
usually discusses Indian cotton and Chinese silk in connection with European
imports, or with their sales in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, cotton
and silk were also exchanged between India and China. Indeed, Indian cotton
and Chinese silk were probably the principal manufactured goods exchanged
between these civilizations. Although Indian records are fragmentary, especially
when compared with the voluminous Chinese sources, Indian cotton goods are
known to have reached the Indianized states in Xinjiang in the early Common
Era (CE), and may have been produced there, in Khotan and the neighbouring
states, by the time that indigenous silk production was known to exist in India in
the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Yet, while in later centuries large amounts of
cotton cloth were produced in China while indigenous centres of silk production
developed in India, exchanges of the finest types of cotton and silk cloth continued,
usually driven by cultural and social factors in each civilization.

Introduction

In his discussion of Southeast Asia's commerce with India and China,

Anthony Reid remarks, "Situated between the world's two major
sources of fine cloth-India for cottons and China for silks-Southeast
Asia became internationally known as a consumer rather than as a
producer of textiles."' Reid's allusion to Southeast Asian consumption

1 Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450-1680 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1988), 90. For Southeast Asian trade, see alsoG.R. Tibbetts, A Study
of the Arabic Texts Containing Material on South-East Asia (Leiden and London: EJ. Brill,
1979). Hans Bielstein, Diplomacy and Trade in the Chinese World 589-1276 (Leiden:

79

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 8o STEPHEN F. DALE

of Chinese silk and Indian cotto

about the nature of commercial r
Asian civilizations. While it is w
supplied much of the Southeast A
silk cloth respectively, much less is
these 'countries' or regions sold
textile products to each other, an
natural or manufactured goods
of Indo-Chinese trade. While th
commerce between South Asia an
predictably fragmentary, they su
trade relations in textile manufac
commercial exchanges.
In broad outline, Indian and Ch
about Indo-Chinese commerce i
century. These are, first, that
throughout nearly two millennia
dynasty (2o6 BCE to 220 CE) to
(1368-1644 CE), and did so even
the cloth in the early Gupta peri
production from the thirteenth ce
likely, although much harder to d
surrogates-the Indianized states o
to China at an early but undeterm
that certain kinds of Indian cotton
well after the Chinese cultivation
cloth blossomed in the late thirtee
Put another way, silk cloth produ
Chinese always produced certain v
matched in India or other silk-pr
was first manufactured in South
produce certain varieties that always
knowledge of silk and cotton cult
China, respectively, both via the s
Asia as well as the southeast overla
the Chinese heartland with Burm
valley.

Brill, 2005), 72-77, summarizes Indo-Chinese diplomatic/trade missions between

the seventh and tenth centuries CE.

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 "SILK ROAD, COTTON ROAD" 8i

Chinese silk, Sanskrit cinapatta or 'Chinese cl

India during Mauryan (322-183 BCE) or early H
have arrived via Burma, but undoubtedly came
Xinjiang to Kashmir, or through Bactria and K
from the eighth century CE onwards, the ma
grew in importance for Sino-Indian commerce
silk cloth is referred to in early Indian Buddh
specifically, identified in the Arthashastra (c.
is not known when Indians first began weaving
but silk weavers' guilds are known to have exis
fifth century CE. However, until the Sultanat
the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries CE, Indian
wild cocoons, not knowing, evidently, how to use
or how to unravel thread from boiled cocoons.4
pilgrim Hsiian-tsang describes this Indian silk b
kauseya. Therefore, it is not surprising that
Chinese silk continued to be highly prized a
during the next millennium. Various Sanskrit
by the Indian royalty from the first through th
it was valued by the Indian elite, male and fem
of Kalidasa (c. first century BCE to fifth cen
weddings. Embassies from T'ang rulers (618
in the seventh century are known to have bro
silk to Indian courts.5 The ample Sanskrit voc
references to silk give an idea of the prevalen
the Indian elite of this period, although some
from Iran.6 Even though the warm, humid In
no identifiable Chinese silk artefacts from th
substantial amounts of Chinese silk continued
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The
Huan discusses this trade in his account of th

2 Tansen 'Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy and Trade (Honolulu:

2003), 176.
3 A.L. Basham, The Wonder that Was India (New York: Gr
4 Xinru Liu, Silk and Religion: An exploration ofi material life
600-1200 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 50.
5 Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy and Trade, 185 and Bielenstein,
Chinese World, 72.
6 Xinru Liu, Silk and Religion, 52. For the varieties of
Vainker, Chinese Silk, A Cultural History (New Brunswic
Press, 2004).

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82 STEPHEN F. DALE

the Indian Ocean, although he also m

both in Bengal and Kerala.7
Although Indian use of Chinese silk
consumption of cotton cloth is rarely d
trade. However, what was the 'Silk Ro
reverse direction, a 'Cotton Road'. Cot
its Sanskrit-derived name as pai-tieh,
China periodically exercised suzeraint
Fragments of cotton cloth with an India
eastern or later Han have been found
east of Khotan, on the southern and
'Silk Road'.9 Whether or not this cloth
imported from India, cotton cultivat
seems to have developed in Xinjian
Indians began producing their own silk
the administrative and military city
day Turfan, was known to produce pa
cloth, and in tribute lists from the T
source of cotton, as well as hides and
Central Asia. 10 Cotton cloth production
Liang Dynasty (502-556 CE). "The St
in a special kind of herb which had f
fruits of this herb were called pai-tie
this fibre material for weaving cloth
white. Such cloth used to be exchange
other route for the transfer of cotto
east Bengal, Assam and Burma to we
have occurred during the Han dynast

7 Ma Huan, Ying-yai Sheng-lan The Overall Surve

and edited byJ.V.G. Mills (Cambridge: Cambr
Society, 1970), 143, 163.
8 Pai-tie from the Sanskrit, patta. Cotton cl
Asia as early as 2300 BCE, in the Indus Valley
Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in
Technology," Part IX "Textile Technology:
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 196
9 Gau Hanyu, Chinese Textile Designs tran
Whitfield (Hong Kong: Viking, 1992), 26 and
10 Edward Schaefer, The Golden Peaches of
California Press, 1985), 106.
11 Quoted by Kang Chao, The Development o
(Cambridge, Ma.: East Asian Center, 1977), 5
12 Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy and Trade, 10.

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 "SILK ROAD, COTTON ROAD" 83

However,just as it took several more centuries for

silk industry on a large scale, so too the production
China proper, that is beyond the border territori
Yunnan, did not develop into a major industry until
and early fourteenth centuries. Scholars offer diff
this relatively slow development. One is that hem
successfully cultivated and used for cloth in Ch
that the prevalence and popularity of silk cloth,
production centres such as Xian, made it difficult for
to penetrate the Chinese market.'4 A third and rel
the variety of cotton grown in Xianjian, Gossypium h
stem variety, was inferior both to that grown in Ind
variety that entered China through the south. This va
arboreum, which originated in East Bengal, became
Chinese cotton industry. As for the reason(s) why
expanded so quickly in the thirteenth century, this h
to the development of a new ginning frame some
twelfth and early thirteenth century and, second
simultaneous Mongol, Yuan dynasty (1271-136
cotton cultivation, in which the Mongols demand
their troops, not the first or last time in world hi
stimulated a major industrial development.'5 Under
provinces paid a cotton tax in kind, and later dur
peasants with certain sized holdings were required t
land to produce cotton.16
Yet, as in the case of Indian use of Chinese silk
cotton cloth industry developed, China continued
cloth throughout the pre-European centuries. I
estimate the volume of these imports, or alway
original source, whether India or Southeast Asi
from the extant fragmentary evidence that it was ar
consumers who sought out certain especially fine v
cloth. While the tribute of inferior Gansu cotton
sources indicate that cotton was an expensive for

13 Xiaozhai Lu and Robert C. Clarke, "The cultivation and u

sativa L.) in ancient China," www.hempfood.com/IHA/ihao21
Needham, Science and Civilization in China, 5, Part IX, 18-22.
14 Chao, The Development of Cotton Textile Production in China, 7.
15 Chao, The Development ofi Cotton Textile Production in China, 18
and Civilization in China, 5, Part IX, 58-59.
16 Chao, The Development ofi Cotton Textile Production in China, 19

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84 STEPHEN F. DALE

that most Chinese monks who wish

requiring them to wear cotton fou
texts also extol the 'sunrise clouds o
'morning sunrise clouds', beautifull
from the Indianized states of Sout
Buddhists, like Chinese Buddhist m
cloth because of their Buddhist non
them to use silkworms and thus injure
the cotton cloth that T'ang writers p
for Indian musicians who played in
at least one source as being clothed i
tsang also records giving fine silks in
while coveting fine Indian cottons pr
Buddhist monks. It is during the ear
production was widespread, that Ma
about Chinese knowledge of and i
particularly informative about Beng
"The land [of Bengal] produces five
enumerates six types of cotton cloth, f
One of these cotton fabrics, a "cloth
as pi cloth, perhaps the fine muslin clo
is a type often mentioned in Chine
description of Bengali cotton cloth-
Coimbatore variety sold in the Ke
indicates that the Chinese continu
Indian cotton cloth in the pre-Europ
While there appears to be a re
Chinese cloth production and sales,
overall 'balance of payments' relatio
economies. Apart from the political
a centralized Chinese state that
commerce, as opposed to a decentr
Indian economies-there is not even t
information available for Indo-Ch
for Indo-Roman trade, in which R
cloth and spices. However, one th

17 Liu, Silk and Religion, 51-2.

18 Schaeffer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand
19 Ibid., 207.
20 Note byJ.V.G. Mills in Ma Huan, Ying-yai Sheng-lan, 162, n. 1.

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 "SILK ROAD, COTTON ROAD" 85

connection suggested above, between Buddhism

commerce in textiles. Thus, during the T'ang
enthusiastically patronized Buddhism, T'ang emb
monks exchanged silk in India for Buddhist ar
religious artefacts seem to have been the Indian eq
export porcelain. Even in the earlier 'Six Dynasti
for such artefacts was 'enormous'. It is difficult to
popularity in China and equally difficult, of cours
value relative to Chinese silk in India, as they repr
types of commodities. Nonetheless, during the
familiar trade routes through the deserts of Cent
the Southern Seas, a great traffic in holy and vene
from India and its cultural dependencies into T'a
reverence shown to relics of the saints and master
even the Buddhas themselves, was phenomenal,
these objects fetched a great price in the public
trees, while not exactly artefacts, were one of t
Chinese coveted; they arrived in China with a miss
Indian ruler, Harsha of Kanauj, in 641 and again
kingdom of Magadha in 647.22
Apart from these cotton and Buddhist artefac
a number of other commodities to China. In t
Indo-Chinese trade was stimulated by the Kush
centuries CE) control of Indian and Central Asian
sent coral, pearls and glass to China.23 Incense als
as Buddhism spread into China in the early centur
Era, yet another example of the connection betw
Indo-Chinese trade. The T'ang era also saw the Chi
drugs and medical texts, many of them also associate
Chinese Buddhist culture of the period.24 Indian sc
in China. Astronomy, one of the most respected In
T'ang, is not necessarily directly linked to Buddh
of the most eminent Indian astronomers residi
eighth century was named Gautama Siddhartha. H
Indian families, who along with Gautama Siddh

21 Schaeffer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, 265-6.

22 Ibid., 122.
23 Liu, Ancient India and Ancient China, 53-63.
24 Schaefer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand, 182.

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 86 STEPHEN F. DALE

the science of calendrical calculation

names Kasyapa and Kumara.25
The presence of Indian scientists in
the relative frequency with which India
crackpots and others visited China. T
belief that Indian caste restrictions in
overland or overseas, may have been t
times, but it did not prevent Brahm
in Xian-or from offering their m
monarchies in Southeast Asia-much
southern Indian merchants from tra
to trade. Iranian or Iranized merch
Sogdians, apparently dominated the
Buddhist and Buddhist era. Parthians
of Central Asia for several centuries
the early Christian Era, competed w
Indian and Chinese goods to the Re
century CE during the Kushana er
Indian merchants became increasingly
much of the trade along both the Ce
Asia sea routes from the fourth century
their letters reveal the presence of s
guilds operating in Xinjiang, nort
Asia.26
Yet, even though Sogdian merchants dominated both Central Asian
and Southeast Asian Indo-Chinese commerce during these centuries,
Indian merchants are still known to have been active in Xinjiang. The
Sogdian letters cited above also contain hints that in Loulan, in the
northeast Taklamakan desert region, Indian merchants cooperated
with Sogdians. A document dated to the seventh century CE found
near Turfan records that three merchants surnamed Zhu, a probable
Chinese designation for Indian merchants (tianzhu), received silver
payment for some unnamed goods.27 At a much later date, Indian
merchant guilds from the South Indian Chola kingdom are known
to have played an undefined role in the Indo-China trade, although

25 Ibid., 275.
26 Sen, Buddhism, Diplomacy and Trade, 161 and Frantz Grenet, "Les marchands
sogdiens dans le mers du Sud ? l'?poque pr?islamique," in Pierre Chuvin ed., Inde-Asie
Centrale, Routes du commerce et des id?es (Tashkent and Aix -en-Provence, 1996), 65-84.
27 Ibid, 140-63.

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 "SILK ROAD, COTTON ROAD" 87

it is difficult to determine how many may have tr

Asian or even Chinese ports. However, it is certainl
that the Chola kingdom welcomed merchants as e
the Zamorins of Calicut, whose entrepot Ma Huan
account of the 1433 voyage as "The great countr
Ocean."28
The picture of Indo-Chinese trade that emerges from the
fragmentary sources of the pre-European era suggests a kind of
economic symmetry where the export of cloth and Buddhist artefacts
may possibly have balanced off the Indian imports of silk and, during
the Sultanate era, the occasional shipment of porcelain. The latter
was sought after by Muslim monarchs but not usually by their Hindu
predecessors or contemporaries, except those, perhaps, who had been
influenced by Muslim tastes.29 Given the enormous time period of
this survey and the knowledge that even in discussing Indo-Chinese
trade, one is often citing regional peculiarities, it is difficult to make
many categorical judgements about the economic relations of the two
great Asian civilizations. Thus, while Chinese merchants may have
been willing to pay an Indian merchant in seventh-century Turfan
with silver and, on other occasions, to purchase Indian products
with gold and copper, Ma Huan mentions the Chinese purchasing
"precious stones, pearls and corals" in Calicut with "hemp-silk or
other such articles which must be given in exchange for it" in
1433.30 And the value of Chinese silk must usually have been
sufficient as an exchange commodity, even for overpriced Buddhist
artefacts.
Apart from this apparent symmetry of trade, the other obvious fact
of Indo-Chinese commerce was the central importance of Buddhism
in stimulating commerce of all kinds. This cultural dictate also caused
the Chinese to value Indian commodities such as incense and to
regard Indians as a people skilled not only in spiritual matters but in
professions such as medicine. Records from the Sung dynasty indicate,
for example, that during the course of the eleventh century Indian
Buddhist monks, who were by then making pilgrimages to Wu Tai Shan

28 Ma Huan, Ying-yai Sheng-lan, 137.

29 Chinese porcelain fragments have been found in the ruins of buildings at
Vijayanagar. I am indebted to Sanjay Subramanyam and Cathy Asher for suggesting
that 'Hindu' rulers in times of Muslim dominance may also have valued the Chinese
export porcelain. For a reference to porcelain fragments, see John M. Fritz and George
Michell, City of Victory, Vijayanagara (New York, N.Y.: Aperture, 1991), 100.
30 Ma Huan, Ying-yai Sheng-lan, 141.

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88 STEPHEN F. DALE

in Shanxi province, brought vast qu

coveted by the Chinese. This aspect
to have been largely one sided, no d
wealth, particularly the wealth of i
perhaps, during the T'ang era, th
empire-for whom Indians as well
intriguing curiosity.

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