Maritime Silk Road
The Maritime Silk Road or Maritime Silk Route is the maritime section of the historic Silk Road that connected Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula, eastern Africa, and Europe.[2] The Maritime Silk Road was primarily established and operated by Austronesian sailors in Southeast Asia who sailed large long-distance ocean-going Austronesian trading ships.[3](p11) The route was also utilized by the dhows of the Persian and Arab traders in the Arabian Sea and beyond,[3](p13) and the Tamil merchants in South Asia.[3](p13) China also started building their own trade ships (chuán) and followed the routes in the later period, from the 10th to the 15th centuries CE.[4]
The term "Maritime Silk Road" is a modern name, acquired from its similarity to the overland Silk Road. Overland Silk Road was itself a modern name, the idea of which was invented as late as 1877 by a Prussian geographer, Baron von Richthofen.
The route was influential in the early spread of Hinduism and Buddhism to the east.[5][6] The close links of these religions to trade with South Asia led to the widespread adoption of Sanskrit as the trade lingua franca in the early Maritime Silk Road by the 4th century CE.[3]
Han and Tang dynasty Chinese records also indicate that the early Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to South Asia booked passage with the Austronesian ships (which they called the k'un-lun po) that traded in the Chinese port city of Guangzhou. Books written by Chinese monks like Wan Chen and Hui-Lin contain detailed accounts of the large trading vessels from Southeast Asia dating back to at least the 3rd century CE.[7]
Notes
- ↑ Manguin, Pierre-Yves (2016). "Austronesian Shipping in the Indian Ocean: From Outrigger Boats to Trading Ships". In Campbell, Gwyn. Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 51–76. ISBN 978-3-319-33822-4.
- ↑ "Maritime Silk Road". SEAArch. Archived from the original on 2014-01-05. Retrieved 2017-09-11. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Guan, Kwa Chong (2016). "The Maritime Silk Road: History of an Idea" (PDF). NSC Working Paper (23): 1–30.
- ↑ Flecker, Michael (August 2015). "Early Voyaging in the South China Sea: Implications on Territorial Claims". Nalanda-Sriwijaya Center Working Paper Series. 19: 1–53.
- ↑ Sen, Tansen (3 February 2014). "Maritime Southeast Asia Between South Asia and China to the Sixteenth Century". TRaNS: Trans-Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia. 2 (1): 31–59. doi:10.1017/trn.2013.15. Unknown parameter
|s2cid=ignored (help) - ↑ Bopearachchi, Osmund (2022). "Indian Ocean Trade through Buddhist Iconographies". In Billé, Franck; Mehendale, Sanjyot; Lankton, James. The Maritime Silk Road: Global Connectivities, Regional Nodes, Localities (PDF). Asian Borderlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. pp. 243–266. ISBN 978-90-4855-242-9.
- ↑ McGrail, Seán (2001). Boats of the World: From the Stone Age to the Medieval Times. Oxford University Press. pp. 289–293. ISBN 978-0-19-927186-3.
Further reading
Maritime Silk Road, Wikipedia- Silk Road transmission of Buddhism, Wikipedia
- Hill, John E. (2009) Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes during the Later Han Dynasty, 1st to 2nd Centuries CE. BookSurge, Charleston, South Carolina.
- Zürcher, Erik (2007). The Buddhist Conquest of China, 3rd ed. Leiden. E. J. Brill. 1st ed. 1959, 2nd ed. 1972.
