603 
ANTIQUITY OF THE CHINESE TRADE WITH INDIA 
AND THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 
Chinese records only can enable us to discover at what period 
their junks began to frequent the Archipelago.* There is evidence 
of their trading to Java in the ninth century, and if this trade was 
then established, it is probable that they also visited Borneo in very 
remote times, and even before the Malay kingdom of Brand was 
formed, for they were themselves engaged in the trade with India at 
least as early as the fourth century. In the thirteenth century this 
intercourse was considerable and evidently far from new. An op- 
♦ 
posite conclusion however may be drawn from the ten pages which 
the historian of the Indian Archipelago devotes to the early com¬ 
merce of the Chinese in these and the Indian seas,f and we must 
therefore shortly examine the reasoning of an authority whose views 
on all subjects of the kind justly carry the greatest weight. Mr. 
Crawfurd certainly declares that “ the most extensive, intimate, and 
probably the most ancient, of the foreign commercial relations of the 
Indian islands, is that with China,”£ but he infers from Marco Po¬ 
lo’s narrative that, previous to his voyage, Chinese navigators had 
not visited India, and that their intercourse with the Archipelago 
was not busy or active. The commentary by which this inference 
is supported is more Ingenious than convincing, and we think that 
most persons who take up Marco Polo free from any preconceptions, 
will be impressed with the belief that he found a regular junk trade 
established with both. Marco Polo’s voyage demands our attention 
in itself, because it is in every respect interesting and instructive. It 
carries us through the Archipelago two centuries before any Euro¬ 
pean ship had passed the Cape, and while the rich trade and naviga¬ 
tion to the eastward remained undisturbed in the same condition in 
which they had been dimly descried and described by the Greek, - 
Alexandrian and Roman geographers. It throws light too on Ma~ 
* The zealous and penetrating researches of M. Stanilas Julien promise 
to cast full light on the early geographical knowledge and navigation of the 
Chinese. 
y History of the Indian Archipelago, vol. iii. p. 154 to 164, 
t With respect to the ancient Indian trade of China Mr, Craw furd says, 
“ there is nothing indeed in the character of the Chinese that would lead us 
to believe them capable of bold and perilous adventure, a nd l must, for this 
reason and others to be now mentioned, utterly discredit their distant voy¬ 
ages beyond the Indian islands to Malabar or the Persian Gulf. ” 
h 2 
