WITH INDIA AND THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. 
607 
the oar one way and other fifteen draw it back.* The vessels des¬ 
cribed by Marco Polo are smaller ; they were moved by oars, on each 
of which four hands were employed f Two boats accompanied and 
often assisted in dragging* thern.^; 
From Arabian writings we know that in the 9th century a regular 
trade was carried on by the Arabs with China,§ and this was pro¬ 
bably first established several centuries previously. In the 8th cen¬ 
tury Arabs and Persians were settled at Canton in great numbers. || 
Even if the Chinese had not themselves found the way to the Indi¬ 
an Archipelago they must soon have learned it from the Arabs. Ac¬ 
cording to Chinese accounts referred to by Mr. Crawfurd, and which 
were procured by him in Java, they became acquainted with the Ar¬ 
chipelago in tlie fifth century. But Chinese and Arabic writings 
carry back their western trade to an earlier period. In M. Dulau- 
rier’s highly instructive observations on M. Reinaud’s new edition 
of the Arabic travels to India and China in the 9th century^] - we are 
furnished with the following resume of these authorities : “ Although 
a celebrated English historian, Gibbon, shews himself little dispos¬ 
ed to believe in the ancient navigation of the Chinese in the Indian 
sea, it is not the less certain now, from the narrative of the travels 
of the Budhist priest Fa-hien, that their ships in the 4th century of 
our era resorted to the Bay of Bengal and to Ceylon, and the ite¬ 
nerary of another Chinese traveller named Hiouan-thsang, who liv¬ 
ed at the commencement of the 7th. century, conducts along the 
whole western coast of India to the mouth of the Indus. We know 
that they frequented these parts as well as the Persian Gulf under 
the reign of the dynasty of Thang. Two Arab writers cited by M. 
Reinaud, Massoudi and Hamza of Ispahan, one of the 9th. century 
of our era and the other of the lOtli., agree in saying that in the 
first half of the 5th. century the city of Iiira, to the south east of 
ancient Babylon, at some distance from the present bed of the Eu¬ 
phrates, and which was then the chief place of a principality subject 
to Persia, saw constantly moored before its houses ships from India 
and China. Two other Arab authors, the geographer Edrisi, who 
* lb. p. 235. 
■f The junks that visit Singapore from Macoa are still provided with 
cars. 
t Hugh Murray’s ed. of Marco Polo p. 271. 
$ Travels of two Mahoraedans in India and China in the ninth century 
Harris p. 522. Kerr, vol. i. p. 47. 
II p. 156. f Journal Asiatique, August-Sept. 1846 p. 140, 
