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CHAGATAI MONGOLS/
Samarkand
TIMURIDS
Balkh
Kabul
Peshawar
PUNJAB
Lahore
MULTAN TIBET
Thaneswar
PERSIAN Multan Gangadvara
EMIRATES Uch
SIND Delhi H I M A L A Y A S
Agra JAUNPUR
SAMMAS Kalpi
Benares
Thatta Bodh Gaya
MALWA
KATHIAWAR BENGAL
AND Ujjain
GUJARAT Chittagong
KHANDESH Ratanpur
BAHMANI Rajpur ORISSA
SULTANATE Bhubaneswar
Daulatabad GONDWANA
Bidar Warangal
Gulbarga TELINGANA
A R A B I A N S E A (Ahsanabad) Golkonda
Sindabur Vijayanagar
(Goa) B A Y O F B E N G A L
VIJAYANAGAR
Manjarur (Mangalore) Dvarasamudra
(Halebid)
Calicut (Kozhikode)
Cochin (Kochi)
Quilon (Kollam)
SRI LANKA N
Galle
0 5 0 0 kilometres
I N D I A N O C E A N
Plate 3.3 Map of Bengal-Jaunpur
intensity can be discerned after 1417, when the Yongle He. Both of these were rare acts by the Ming court. Only
emperor granted special status to Cochin. Although the three other polities, Melaka (in 1405), Japan (in 1406) and
18th-century Ming shi 明史 (History of the Ming) states that Brunei (in 1408), received a similar privilege. These stone
envoys from Calicut took precedence over those from other tablets were significantly different from the trilingual
maritime polities, Cochin may have been the more inscription installed in Sri Lanka mentioned below. While
important ally for the Ming court on the Malabar coast. In the latter was inscribed to promote trading connections with
1405, when Yin Qing returned to the Ming court, the foreign merchant communities, the proclamations sent to
Cochin representative was conspicuously missing and Melaka, Japan, Brunei and Cochin were intended to
instead, as noted above, the ‘ruler’ of Calicut accompanied establish political relations with key polities, with perhaps
the Ming envoy. This seems to be an indication of the the offer of military protection in times of need. ‘All were
existing conflict between Calicut and Cochin in the early intended’, as Wang Gungwu has noted, by the Yongle
15th century. Ming sources make it clear that Calicut was emperor to seal ‘closer relations between his empire and the
not only a leading trading hub in the Indian Ocean, but it four countries concerned’. This exceptional relationship
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was also a place where Muslim merchants (mostly of Arab may have been established with Cochin because the Ming
origin) exerted significant political and economic power. court decided to support an emerging port (i.e. Cochin) over
17
Some of these merchants, especially those invested in foreign the Muslim-dominated Calicut.
trade, funded the expansionist policies of the Zamorin, the After the cessation of the Zheng He expeditions, the
ruler of Calicut. They may have been the ones who lobbied Zamorin not only invaded Cochin, but also seems to have
the Zamorin to invade Cochin, which was quickly emerging banned Chinese merchants from trading on the Malabar
as the main rival port on the Malabar coast. Sometime in coast. The Christian traveller Joseph of Cranganore
the late 15th century, the Zamorin did in fact occupy Cochin provides the following report about the absence of Chinese
and install his representative as the king of the port-city. merchants in Calicut in the early 16th century:
14
Through the missions of Yin Qing and Zheng He the Ming These people of Cathay are men of remarkable energy, and
court was probably aware of this rivalry between Calicut formerly drove a first-rate trade at the city of Calicut. But the
and Cochin and decided to intervene in 1416–17 by granting King of Calicut having treated them badly, they quitted that
special status to Cochin and its ruler Keyili 可亦里. city, and returning shortly after inflicted no small slaughter on
15
As part of his fifth expedition, which sailed from China in the people of Calicut, and after that returned no more. After
1417, Zheng He was asked to confer a seal upon Keyili and that they began to frequent Mailapetam, a city subject to the
enfeoff a mountain in his kingdom as the zhenguo zhi shan king of Narsingha; a region towards the East, ... and there they
now drive their trade.
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鎮國之山 (‘Mountain Which Protects the Country’). The
Yongle emperor composed a proclamation that was The Ming court’s attempt to intervene in local disputes
inscribed on a stone tablet and carried to Cochin by Zheng was not limited to the Malabar coast. It also got involved in a

Diplomacy, Trade and the Quest for the Buddha’s Tooth: The Yongle Emperor and Ming China’s South Asian Frontier | 29