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Ming imperial voyages to Bengal

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The Ming imperial voyages to Bengal were a series of diplomatic and maritime contacts between Ming China and the Bengal Sultanate in the first four decades of the fifteenth century. They formed part of the wider programme of state-sponsored expeditions into the Indian Ocean known as the Ming treasure voyages, and ran alongside a sequence of embassies sent in the other direction by the sultans of Bengal, who are recorded at the Ming court from 1408 onwards.

The exchange is documented chiefly in Chinese sources: the Ming Shi-lu, the day-by-day record of the Ming court, notes the arrival of Bengali envoys and the despatch of imperial ones, while the travel accounts of Ma Huan and Fei Xin, who sailed with the treasure fleets, describe the country itself. The best-known episode came on 20 September 1414, when an envoy from Bengal presented a giraffe to the Yongle Emperor; the animal was identified at court with the auspicious qilin of Chinese tradition and was commemorated in a celebrated painting. In 1415 the eunuch Hou Xian was sent to Bengal with imperial gifts, and in 1420 he was despatched again, this time to the neighbouring Jaunpur Sultanate, after the sultan of Bengal complained that Jaunpur had repeatedly attacked his territory.

The contacts declined with the treasure voyages themselves. A squadron of the seventh and final voyage, commanded by Hong Bao and carrying Ma Huan, reached Bengal in about 1432, and a Bengali embassy brought further giraffes to the court of the Zhengtong Emperor in 1438. Historians disagree over how to read the episode: older accounts treat it as an example of peaceable tributary diplomacy, while Tansen Sen has argued that Ming activity in South Asia, Bengal included, was an assertion of imperial power rather than a benign exchange of gifts.

Background

The Yongle Emperor, who took the throne in 1402 after a civil war, pursued an unusually active foreign policy, sending fleets and envoys across maritime Asia to draw distant rulers into the Chinese tributary system and so lend legitimacy to his contested accession. Between 1405 and 1433 seven large expeditions, commanded principally by the eunuch admiral Zheng He, sailed from the Chinese coast into Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and East Africa.[1]

Bengal at this date was an independent Muslim sultanate under the Ilyas Shahi dynasty, ruling the eastern Ganges delta from Gaur and Sonargaon and trading through the port of Chittagong. It was among the wealthiest states of the eastern Indian Ocean, exporting fine cotton textiles, and it lay on the sailing route between Semudera in northern Sumatra and the Malabar coast, which made it accessible to fleets that were already calling at Calicut and Sri Lanka.[2] The Chinese knew the country as Bang-ge-la (榜葛剌).[2]

Bengali embassies to the Ming court

The earliest Bengali mission recorded in the Ming Shi-lu reached the court on 30 September 1408, when an envoy named in Chinese transcription as Sai-yi Ma-ha-ye, sent by "Ai-ya-si-ding" — the sultan Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah — offered local products and received paper money and silks in return.[3] Missions followed in quick succession. On 17 February 1409 an embassy of 234 people arrived, one of the largest from any country recorded in the period; the court ordered that silks, gauzes, gold-spangled parasols and porcelain be conferred on the sultan.[4] In December of the same year a joint party of fifty-nine envoys from Bengal and Semudera presented horses and local goods,[5] and further embassies are noted in January and July 1411.[6][7]

Sally K. Church notes that Bengali delegations were usually smaller than those of other tributaries, and that the Ming shi summarised the relationship by saying that after these early missions tribute arrived almost every year.[2] The exchanges were materially one-sided in Bengal's favour: envoys brought horses, textiles and exotica and were sent home with silks, clothing, paper money and porcelain of considerably greater value, the standard Ming practice of rewarding tributary submission generously.[8]

The giraffe of 1414

On 20 September 1414 an envoy sent by "Sai-fu-ding", king of Bengal, presented a memorial together with a giraffe, fine horses and local products.[9] The animal had not come from Bengal: it had reached the delta through the Indian Ocean trade with East Africa, and Chinese observers associated giraffes above all with Malindi on the Swahili coast.[2]

Its arrival caused a sensation because courtiers identified it with the qilin, a composite beast of Chinese tradition whose appearance was held to signal a sage ruler and an age of peace. The identification was helped by resemblances between the creature's appearance and descriptions of the qilin, and possibly by the Somali word for the animal.[2] For an emperor who had seized the throne from his nephew, an omen of Heaven's approval was politically useful. The Yongle Emperor nonetheless declined to accept the congratulations his ministers pressed on him, disclaiming the idea that the beast was proof of his own virtue, while commissioning the court calligrapher Shen Du to paint it.[2] Shen Du's image, a giraffe led on a halter by an attendant and accompanied by a eulogy, survives in later copies, one of which is held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the painting and its inscription were examined in detail by the sinologist J. J. L. Duyvendak in 1939.[10]

The identification of the giraffe with the qilin outlasted the event itself. The association became conventional in later Chinese usage and passed into Japanese and Korean, in which the word derived from qilin is still the ordinary term for the animal.[2]

Chinese missions to Bengal

Chinese envoys travelled in the other direction during the same years. On 13 August 1415 the Yongle Emperor ordered the eunuch director Hou Xian to go as envoy to Bengal and other countries, conferring on their rulers velvet brocades, patterned fine silks, damasks and silks interwoven with gold thread.[11] Hou Xian, who had earlier led missions to Tibet and Nepal, returned to China in 1418.[2]

Whether Zheng He himself ever went to Bengal is uncertain. The country does not appear in the lists of places visited that were inscribed on the admiral's commemorative stelae, and the evidence points instead to detached squadrons and to separate embassies such as Hou Xian's, rather than to visits by the main treasure fleet.[2]

Mediation between Bengal and Jaunpur

The most unusual episode came in 1420. According to the Ming Shi-lu entry of 16 October that year, the king of Bengal had reported that "Yi-bu-la-jin" — Ibrahim Shah, ruler of Jaunpur — had on several occasions sent troops against Bengali territory. Hou Xian and others were despatched to Jaunpur carrying imperial instructions that the two states should cultivate good relations with their neighbours and each keep to its own territory, together with gifts of variegated silks for both rulers and for the chief of the "Land of the Diamond Throne" through which the mission would pass.[12] The episode is often cited as a rare instance of Chinese arbitration between two South Asian states; the Jaunpur attacks did cease, though the Timurid ruler Shah Rukh also intervened on Bengal's behalf at about the same time, and the relative weight of the two interventions is unclear.[13]

Church observes that the chain of communication is not fully documented: she found no record of Bengali envoys arriving between Hou Xian's return in 1418 and the notice of October 1420, so it is not certain how the request for help reached the court, and the Ming shi simply places the appeal in 1420.[2]

The seventh voyage and Ma Huan's account

Bengali missions continued into the 1420s: on 2 June 1421 an envoy named Wu-du-man presented rhinoceros horn, ambergris and other goods and received headwear, belts, clothing, paper money and silks.[14]

The most substantial Chinese encounter with the country came during the seventh and last treasure voyage of 1431–1433. A squadron under the eunuch Hong Bao separated from the main fleet and sailed directly from Semudera to Bengal, travelling on to Chittagong, then Sonargaon, and finally the capital at Gaur, before making for Calicut.[1][15] The interpreter Ma Huan sailed with this squadron, and the chapter on Bengal in his Yingya Shenglan ("The Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores") is the fullest of the Chinese descriptions, covering the country's ports and cities, its Muslim rulers and mixed population, its currency, its agriculture and above all its cotton textiles.[15] A shorter account appears in Fei Xin's Xingcha Shenglan of 1436.[1] Together these chapters are among the most detailed surviving foreign descriptions of fifteenth-century Bengal.[16]

Later contacts and decline

The treasure voyages ended with the return of the seventh expedition in 1433, and the Ming court's maritime programme was not revived. Bengal sent at least one further embassy: on 19 October 1438, in the reign of the Zhengtong Emperor, an envoy recorded as Xia-er-ye-mei came to court with giraffes, white and red parrots, white pigeons and other goods, and was rewarded with a banquet and suits of gold-threaded and variegated silk.[17] With the fleets laid up and the court turning its attention to the northern frontier, direct contact between the two states lapsed thereafter.[2]

Sources and historiography

Almost all the documentation is Chinese, and its limitations shape what can be said. The Ming Shi-lu entries are brief court notices, concerned with the correct performance of tribute rather than with Bengal itself, and the Ming shi, compiled in the following dynasty, condenses them further.[2] Bengali and Persian sources from the sultanate make no mention of the exchanges.

A particular difficulty is the Chinese rendering of Bengali royal names. The Ming Shi-lu continues to name "Ai-ya-si-ding" (Ghiyath al-Din) and later "Sai-fu-ding" (Saif al-Din) as the reigning king in entries written after those rulers had died, so the sovereign credited with a given embassy may not be the one who actually sent it. The giraffe of 1414 is a case in point: the Veritable Records attribute it to Saif al-Din, that is Saifuddin Hamza Shah, although he appears to have died in about 1412, and several modern accounts therefore credit the gift to his successor Shihabuddin Bayazid Shah.[2][13]

Interpretations differ. A long tradition, encouraged in modern China, presents the voyages as peaceful commerce and cultural exchange, with the Jaunpur mediation as its emblem. Tansen Sen has challenged this reading, arguing from the episodes at Calicut, Sri Lanka and Bengal that the expeditions were instruments for projecting Ming power across the Indian Ocean and for realising the Yongle Emperor's claim to preside over tianxia, and that Chinese intervention in a quarrel between two Indian states is better understood in that light.[8]

Legacy

The exchanges left little institutional trace once the fleets stopped sailing, but they remain prominent in the historiography of both countries. In Bangladesh they are cited as evidence of the Bengal Sultanate's reach and prosperity, and Ma Huan's chapter is a standard source for the period.[16] In China the giraffe became one of the enduring images of the Yongle reign; a version of the giraffe painting was among the exhibits chosen for the British Museum's 2014 exhibition Ming: 50 Years that Changed China, six centuries after the animal's arrival, its inclusion, according to the co-curator Craig Clunas, never in doubt.[18] The episode is also regularly invoked in contemporary Bangladesh–China diplomacy as the starting point of a long relationship.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Dreyer 2007.
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 Church 2004.
  3. ↑ Wade, Geoff. "Yong-le: Year 6, Month 9, Day 11 (30 September 1408)". Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu. Asia Research Institute and Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  4. ↑ Wade, Geoff. "Yong-le: Year 7, Month 2, Day 3 (17 February 1409)". Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu. Asia Research Institute and Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  5. ↑ Wade, Geoff. "Yong-le: Year 7, Month 10, Day 27 (3 December 1409)". Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu. Asia Research Institute and Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  6. ↑ Wade, Geoff. "Yong-le: Year 8, Month 12, Day 16 (10 January 1411)". Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu. Asia Research Institute and Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  7. ↑ Wade, Geoff. "Yong-le: Year 9, Month 6, Day 21 (11 July 1411)". Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu. Asia Research Institute and Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Sen 2019.
  9. ↑ Wade, Geoff. "Yong-le: Year 12, Month 9, Day 7 (20 September 1414)". Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu. Asia Research Institute and Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  10. ↑ Duyvendak 1939, pp. 400–405.
  11. ↑ Wade, Geoff. "Yong-le: Year 13, Month 7, Day 9 (13 August 1415)". Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu. Asia Research Institute and Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  12. ↑ Wade, Geoff. "Yong-le: Year 18, Month 9, Day 10 (16 October 1420)". Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu. Asia Research Institute and Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Eaton 1993, p. 53.
  14. ↑ Wade, Geoff. "Yong-le: Year 19, Month 5, Day 3 (2 June 1421)". Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu. Asia Research Institute and Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Mills 1970.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 "Ma Huan". Banglapedia. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  17. ↑ Wade, Geoff. "Zheng-tong: Year 3, Month 10, Day 1 (19 October 1438)". Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu. Asia Research Institute and Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore. Retrieved 20 September 2026.
  18. ↑ Clunas, Craig (20 January 2015). "How a Giraffe made its way to Ming China, via Bengal". Object Archives. Retrieved 20 September 2026.

Sources

Further reading

  • Clunas, Craig; Harrison-Hall, Jessica, eds. (2014). Ming: 50 Years That Changed China. London: British Museum Press. ISBN 978-0-7141-2477-3.
  • Clunas, Craig; Harrison-Hall, Jessica; Luk, Yu-ping, eds. (2016). Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400–1450. London: British Museum. ISBN 978-0-86159-205-0.
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