Chapter 10
The all-water route
The gifts of the self-appointed emissaries from Andun that were so cavalierly
rejected by the court in Luoyang consisted of ivory, rhinoceros horn, and
tortoise shell. The Chinese considered these to be valuable goods, but they
suspected, quite correctly, that they came from nearby Southeast Asia. If
Romans had really come bearing gifts, they needed to be more exotic than
this.
In the West, Southeast Asia was referred to as Chryse. The Periplus
describes it as“the furthest part of the mainland toward the east”and in a
later passage as“an island in the ocean, the furthest extremity towards the east
of the inhabited world, lying under the rising sun itself.” This begs the
question: was it part of the mainland, say Burma (Myanmar), or perhaps the
entire Southeast Asian peninsula, or was it an island, probably Sumatra or
perhaps the entire Sunda chain of islands (Sumatra, Java, Bali, Timor) or
something in between such as the Malay peninsula? As for products,“it
supplies thefinest tortoise shell of all the places in the Erythreaean Sea.”
Since Westerners often associated places with their signature products, the
name of this place should have had something to do with turtles. But Chryse
is from the Greek for “gold” and was also known as the “Golden
Chersonese.” In Indian literature it was Suvarnadvipa in Sanskrit and
Suvannabhumi in Pali, both variations of“Golden Land.”As the Indians
learned more about this country, they began to specify local areas with names
reflecting more realistic expectations, including“Camphor Land,”“Cardamom
Land,”and“Coconut Land.”
Claudius Ptolemy’s account of Southeast Asia is more extensive than the
Peripluseven if much of his information is problematic. He specifies that
Southeast Asia is a peninsula but makes it huge, several times larger than
India, extending indefinitely southward, as he does with Africa, to enclose
the Indian Ocean. The real Southeast Asia also has islands, large and small,
lying to the south and east of the peninsula, and Ptolemy has islands, too,
but they are scattered along both sides of the coast. He divides peninsular
Southeast Asia into two parts, a western, which he calls“India Beyond the
Ganges,”and an eastern, referred to as“Sinae.”North of both lay Scythia and