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Importation from China

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standard of Aurelian, the manufacturers of Tyre and Berytus
were sometimes compelled, by the operation of the same causes,
to content themselves with a ninth part of that extravagant
rate.66
A law was thought necessary to discriminate the dress
of comedians from that of senators; and of the silk exported
from its native country the far greater part was consumed by
the subjects of Justinian. They were still more intimately
acquainted with a shell-fish of the Mediterranean, surnamed the
silk-worm of the sea; the fine wool or hair by which the mother-
of-pearl affixes itself to the rock is now manufactured for curi-
osity rather than use; and a robe obtained from the same singular
materials was the gift of the Roman emperor to the satraps of
Armenia, 67

68

A valuable merchandize of small bulk is capable of defraying by land and the expense of land carriage; and the caravans traversed the whole latitude of Asia in two hundred and forty-three days from the Chinese ocean to the sea-coast of Syria. Silk was immediately delivered to the Romans by the Persian merchants, who frequented the fairs of Armenia and Nisibis; but this trade, which in the intervals of truce was oppressed by avarice and jealousy, was totally interrupted by the long wars of the rival monarchies. The great king might proudly number Sogdiana, and even Serica, among the provinces of his empire; but his real dominion was bounded by the Oxus, and his useful intercourse with the Sogdoites, beyond the river, depended on the pleasure of their conquerors, the white Huns and the Turks, who successively reigned over that industrious people. Yet the most savage dominion has not extirpated the seeds of agriculture and commerce in a region which is celebrated as one of the four gardens of Asia; the cities of Samarcand and Bochara are advantageously seated for the exchange of its various productions;

66 Flavius Vopiscus in Aurelian. c. 45, in Hist. August. p. 224. See Salmasius ad Hist. Aug. p. 392, and Plinian. Exercitat. in Solinum, p. 694, 695. The Anecdotes of Procopius (c. 25) state a partial and imperfect rate of the price of silk in the time of Justinian.

67 Procopius de Ædif. 1. iii. c. I. These pinnes de mer are found near Smyrna, Sicily, Corsica, and Minorca; and a pair of gloves of their silk was presented to Pope Benedict XIV. [This cloth is the byssus woven from the threads of the pinna squamosa.]

68 Procopius, Persic. 1. i. c. 20; 1. ii. c. 25. Gothic. I. iv. c. 17. Menander in Excerpt. Legat. p. 107 [fr. 18, F. H. G. iv. p. 225]. Of the Parthian or Persian empire, Isidore of Charax (in Stathmis Parthicis, p. 7, 8, in Hudson. Geograph. Minor. tom. ii.) has marked the roads, and Ammianus Marcellinus (1. xxiii, c. 6, p. 400) has enumerated the provinces.

and their merchants purchased from the Chinese 69 the raw or manufactured silk which they transported into Persia for the use of the Roman empire. In the vain capital of China, the Sogdian caravans were entertained as the suppliant embassies of tributary kingdoms, and, if they returned in safety, the bold adventure was rewarded with exorbitant gain. But the difficult and perilous march from Samarcand to the first town of Shensi could not be performed in less than sixty, eighty, or one hundred days; as soon as they had passed the Jaxartes, they entered the desert; and the wandering hords, unless they are restrained by armies and garrisons, have always considered the citizen and the traveller as the objects of lawful rapine. To escape the Tartar robbers and the tyrants of Persia, the silk caravans explored a more southern road; they traversed the mountains of Thibet, descended the streams of the Ganges or the Indus, and patiently expected, in the ports of Guzerat and Malabar, the annual fleets of the West.70 But the dangers of the desert were found less intolerable than toil, hunger, and the loss of time; the attempt was seldom renewed; and the only European who has passed that unfrequented way applauds his own diligence, that in nine months after his departure from Pekin he reached the mouth of the Indus. The ocean, however, was open to the free communication of mankind. From the great river to the tropic of Cancer, the provinces of China were subdued and civilized by the emperors of the North; they were filled about the time of the Christian æra with cities and men, mulberry-trees and their precious inhabitants; and, if the Chinese, with the knowledge of the compass, had possessed the genius of the Greeks or Phoenicians, they might have spread their discoveries over the southern hemisphere. I am not qualified to examine, and I am not disposed to believe, their distant voyages to the Persian gulf

69 The blind admiration of the Jesuits confounds the different periods of the Chinese history. They are more critically distinguished by M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. part i. in the Tables, part. ii. in the Geography, Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, tom. xxxii. xxxvi. xlii. xliii.), who discovers the gradual progress of the truth of the annals, and the extent of the monarchy, till the Christian æra. He has searched, with a curious eye, the connexions of the Chinese with the nations of the West; but these connexions are slight, casual, and obscure; nor did the Romans entertain a suspicion that the Seres or Sinæ possessed an empire not inferior to their own. [Cp. Appendix 12.]

70 The roads from China to Persia and Hindostan may be investigated in the relations of Hackluyt and Thévenot (the ambassadors of Sharokh, Anthony Jenkinson, the Père Grueber, &c.). See likewise Hanway's Travels, vol. i. p. 345-357A communication through Thibet has been lately explored by the English sovereigns of Bengal.

or the Cape of Good Hope; but their ancestors might equal the labours and success of the present race, and the sphere of their navigation might extend from the isles of Japan to the straits of Malacca, the pillars, if we may apply that name, of an Oriental Hercules. Without losing sight of land, they might sail along the coast to the extreme promontory of Achin, which is annually visited by ten or twelve ships laden with the productions, the manufactures, and even the artificers, of China; the island of Sumatra and the opposite peninsula are faintly delineated 72 as the regions of gold and silver; and the trading cities named in the geography of Ptolemy may indicate that this wealth was not solely derived from the mines. The direct interval between Sumatra and Ceylon is about three hundred leagues; the Chinese and Indian navigators were conducted by the flight of birds and periodical winds, and the ocean might be securely traversed in square-built ships, which, instead of iron, were sewed together with the strong thread of the cocoa-nut. Ceylon, Serendib, or Taprobana, was divided between two hostile princes; one of whom possessed the mountains, the elephants, and the luminous carbuncle; and the other enjoyed the more solid riches of domestic industry, foreign trade, and the capacious harbour of Trinquemale, which received and dismissed the fleets of the East and West. In this hospitable isle, at an equal distance (as it was computed) from their respective countries, the silk merchants of China, who had collected in their voyages aloes, cloves, nutmegs, and sandal-wood, maintained a free and beneficial commerce with the inhabitants of the Persian gulf. The subjects of the great king exalted, without a rival, his power and magnificence; and the Roman, who confounded their vanity by comparing his paltry coin with a gold medal of the emperor Anastasius, had sailed to Ceylon in an Ethiopian ship, as a simple passenger.73

71 For the Chinese navigation to Malacca and Achin, perhaps to Ceylon, see Renaudot (on the two Mahometan Travellers, p. 8-11, 13-17, 141-157), Dampier (vol. ii. p. 136), the Hist. Philosophique des deux Indes (tom. i. p. 98), and the Hist. Générale des Voyages (tom. vi. p. 201).

72 The knowledge, or rather ignorance, of Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, Arrian, Marcian, &c. of the countries eastward of Cape Comorin, is finely illustrated by d'Anville (Antiquité Géographique de l'Inde, especially p. 161-198). Our geography of India is improved by commerce and conquest; and has been illustrated by the excellent maps and memoirs of major Rennel. If he extends the sphere of his inquiries with the same critical knowledge and sagacity, he will succeed, and may surpass, the first of modern geographers.

73 The Taprobane of Pliny (vi. 24), Solinus (c. 53), and Salmas. (Plinianæ Exercitat. p. 781, 782), and most of the ancients, who often confound the islands of

of silkworms

As silk became of indispensable use, the emperor Justinian Introduction saw, with concern, that the Persians had occupied by land and into Greece sea the monopoly of this important supply, and that the wealth of his subjects was continually drained by a nation of enemies and idolaters. An active government would have restored the trade of Egypt and the navigation of the Red Sea, which had decayed with the prosperity of the empire; and the Roman vessels might have sailed, for the purchase of silk, to the ports of Ceylon, of Malacca, or even of China. Justinian embraced a more humble expedient, and solicited the aid of his Christian allies, the Æthiopians of Abyssinia, who had recently acquired the arts of navigation, the spirit of trade, and the seaport of Adulis,74 still decorated with the trophies of a Grecian conqueror. Along the African coast, they penetrated to the equator in search of gold, emeralds, and aromatics; but they wisely declined an unequal competition, in which they must be always prevented by the vicinity of the Persians to the markets of India; and the emperor submitted to the disappointment, till his wishes were gratified by an unexpected event. The gospel had been preached to the Indians: a bishop already governed the Christians of St. Thomas on the pepper coast of Malabar; a church was planted in Ceylon; and the missionaries pursued the footsteps of commerce to the extremities of Asia.75 Two Persian monks had long resided in China, perhaps in the royal city of Nankin, the seat of a monarch addicted to foreign superstitions, and who actually received an embassy from the isle of Ceylon. Amidst their pious occupations, they viewed with a curious eye the common dress of the Chinese, the manufactures of silk, and the myriads of silk-worms, whose education (either on trees or in houses) had once been considered as the labour of queens.76 They soon discovered that it was impracticable to transport the

Ceylon and Sumatra, is more clearly described by Cosmas Indicopleustes; yet even the Christian topographer has exaggerated its dimensions. His information

on the Indian and Chinese trade is rare and curious (l. ii. p. 138; l. xi. p. 337, 338, edit. Montfaucon).

74 See Procopius, Persic. (1. ii. c. 20). Cosmas affords some interesting knowledge of the port and inscription [two inscriptions, (1) of Ptolemy Euergetes (iii.); (2) of a king of Axum, of a much later date] of Adulis (Topograph. Christ. 1. ii. p. 138, 140-143), and of the trade of the Axumites along the African coast of Barbaria or Zingi (p. 138, 139), and as far as Taprobane (l. xi. p. 339). [On the Axumites, see Dillmann's article in the Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy, 1878.]

75 See the Christian missions in India, in Cosmas (l. iii. p. 178, 179, 1. xi. p.
and consult Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. (tom. iv. p. 413-548).

337)
The invention, manufacture, and general use of silk in China may be seen in
Duhalde (Description Générale de la Chine, tom. ii. p. 165, 205-223). The pro-
vince of Chekian is the most renowned both for quantity and quality.

Re

short-lived insect, but that in the eggs a numerous progeny might be preserved and multiplied in a distant climate. ligion or interest had more power over the Persian monks than the love of their country: after a long journey, they arrived at Constantinople, imparted their project to the emperor, and were liberally encouraged by the gifts and promises of Justinian. To the historians of that prince, a campaign at the foot of mount Caucasus has seemed more deserving of a minute relation than the labours of these missionaries of commerce, who again entered China, deceived a jealous people by concealing the eggs of the silk-worm in a hollow cane, and returned in triumph with the spoils of the East. Under their direction, the eggs were hatched at the proper season by the artificial heat of dung; the worms were fed with mulberry leaves; they lived and laboured in a foreign climate; a sufficient number of butterflies was saved to propagate the race; and trees were planted to supply the nourishment of the rising generations. Experience and reflection corrected the errors of a new attempt, and the Sogdoite ambassadors acknowledged, in the succeeding reign, that the Romans were not inferior to the natives of China in the education of the insects and the manufactures of silk," in which both China and Constantinople have been surpassed by the industry of modern Europe. I am not insensible of the benefits of elegant luxury; yet I reflect with some pain that, if the importers of silk had introduced the art of printing, already practised by the Chinese, the comedies of Menander and the entire decads of Livy would have been perpetuated in the editions of the sixth century. A larger view of the globe might at least have promoted the improvement of speculative science, but the Christian geography was forcibly extracted from texts of scripture, and the study of nature was the surest symptom of an unbelieving mind. The orthodox faith confined the habitable world to one temperate zone, and represented the earth as an oblong surface, four hundred days' journey in length, two hundred in breadth, encompassed by the ocean, and covered by the solid crystal of the firmament.78

IV. The subjects of Justinian were dissatisfied with the times,

77 Procopius, 1. viii. (Gothic. iv.) c. 17. Theophanes Byzant. apud Phot. Cod. lxxxiv. p. 38. Zonaras, tom. ii. 1. xiv. p. 69. Pagi (tom. ii. p. 602) assigns to the year 552 this memorable importation. Menander (in Excerpt. Legat. p. 107 [fr. 18, F.H.G. iv.]) mentions the admiration of the Sogdoites; and Theophylact Simocatta (1. vii. c. 9) darkly represents the two rival kingdoms in (China) the country of silk. 78 Cosmas, surnamed Indicopleustes, or the Indian navigator, performed his voyage about the year 522, and composed at Alexandria, between 535 and 547,

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