Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/63

 THE ROUTES FKOM INDIA TO CHINA 27 of the galleys from Egypt and the Persian Gulf, with the heavier junks of China. Cosmas not only mentions China for the first time by name as Tzinista (cf. Chinistan), a designation which admits of no dispute, but he had also a fair idea of its position, lying to the northeast of Ceylon as the Euphrates delta lies to the northwest, and with the same circumambient ocean as the highway to both. From this time, China plays a distinctive part in the Indo-European trade. Three ancient land routes have been traced from India to China; Indian colonies settled on the Malacca coast and in the Eastern Archi- pelago; Indian missionaries spread their Buddhist faith from Central Asia to Burma, Ceylon, and Cathay. At the Red Sea, or western extremity of the route, Indian sailors seem to have given a Sanskrit name (apparently Dwipa-Sukhadhara, or Island Abode of Bliss) to the island of Socotra, as they did to Sumatra (presumably a variant of Sanskrit Samudra, Ocean) half-way along the ocean course. At the eastern extremity the very ancient Tao coinage, or " Knife-Cash " of China, has been ascribed to sea traders from the Indian Ocean, who before 670 B. c. marked their bronze knives with distinctive symbols so as to convert them into a return- able currency. It must be remembered that during ten centuries (250 B. c. to about 700 A. D) Buddhism was the dominant political religion in India, and that it was a religion of enterprise both mercantile and missionary by land and by sea. We are told that Indian merchants were