If you read the extent scholarship on Southeast Asia in the first millennium AD, you will find scholars repeatedly indicating that ships sailed across the seas between the area of what is now Côn Đảo, at the southeastern tip of the Indochinese Peninsula, and Singapore.
The image above contains two maps. The one on the left is from a work published in 1961, and the one on the right is from a work published in 2018. Both maps are recording the supposed journey of the monk Yijing, who traveled to India and back in the late seventh century, and both maps indicate that it was possible to sail directly between Côn Đảo and Singapore in the late seventh century.
Meanwhile, earlier in the seventh century, in 636, some scholars completed the compilation of a dynastic history called the History of the Liang (Liangshu 梁書) which covered the history of the years 502-556.
In that book there is a reference to this sea passage, or more specifically to there NOT being such a sea passage.
The sea to the south of the southern coast of the Indochinese Peninsula was referred to by Chinese at that time as the “Swelling Sea” (Zhanghai 漲海). Important information about the Swelling Sea is mentioned in a passage about the kingdom of Dunxun 頓遜, a polity which I think everyone agrees was on the eastern side of what is now the Gulf of Thailand.
Here is what that passage records:
其南界三千餘里有頓遜國，在海崎上，地方千里，城去海十里。有五王，並覊屬扶南。頓遜之東界通交州，其西界接天竺、安息徼外諸國，往還交巿。所以然者， 頓遜迴入海中千餘里，漲海無崖岸，船舶未曾得逕過也。其巿，東西交會，日有萬餘人。珍物寶貨，無所不有。
More than 3,000 leagues past [Funan’s] southern border lies the kingdom of Dunxun, situated on a promontory in the sea. Its territory extends 1,000 leagues, and its citadel lies ten leagues inland from the sea. There are five kings, all of whom are vassals of Funan.
Dunxun’s eastern border is in communication with Jiaozhou 交州, while its western border connects with India [Tianzhu 天竺], Anxi 安息, and the various other foreign [jiaowai 徼外] kingdoms which travel to and from here to engage in trade.
The reason for this is that Dunxun wraps around into the sea for over a thousand leagues. The Swelling Sea has no shores or banks, and ships have never been able to cross it.
Its market serves as a meeting point for east–west trade, and over ten thousand people gather there daily. It has every kind of rare treasure and precious merchandise imaginable.
What is clearly being described here is the fact that ships did not sail directly south from the southern coast of the Indochinese Peninsula. As far as mariners knew, there were “no shores or banks” out there.
Instead, mariners followed the coast, and as you sailed westward along the southern coast of the Indochinese Peninsula, and then veered to the south, it surely must has seemed as if you were “wrap[ping] around into the sea for over a thousand leagues.”
Further, that so many foreign merchants congregated there is because Dunxun was located on a trans-peninsular trade route.
So, did some dramatic advancement in navigation take place between the time that this information was recorded and Yijing journeyed to India and back?
No. In fact, we still see these same conditions 500 years later in Zhao Rukuo’s twelfth-century Lingwai daida.
It’s time to change those maps, folks!
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If ships could not cross from Con Dao to Singapore, then the direct route from northen Sumatra to Sri Lanka looks questionable as well.
Thanks for the comment.
I’m not saying that “technically” it was impossible for a ship to sail from Con Dao to Singapore in the first millennium AD. I’m saying that “historically” that is not what the Chinese did or appear to have known about in the first millennium AD (and into the second).
It looks to me like the distance from Guangdong to the Vietnam coast could be close to the distance between Con Dao and Singapore, and they appear to have crossed that distance in one voyage.
So, yes, “technically” that was possible. But “historically,” why would they not do that?
We can see that from the early centuries AD, exotic goods from India and the Middle East came across the trans-peninsular trade routes on the Malay Peninsula and made their way to Funan. In those centuries, why would a Chinese mariner go any further south than Funan? Everything he needed was right there. And we see with Kang Tai, Zhu Ying and Ge Hong that they only went as far south as Funan.
By the Song period, the two hubs were Sanfoqi and Shepo. Where were these places? These were the same places that had been important in the earlier centuries. Sanfoqi was in the area were Funan had been located and Shepo was at the trans-peninsular crossing between Lake Songkhla and Kedah/Trang.
Again, if you were a Chinese mariner, why would you go any further south than Sanfoqi and Shepo? “Technically” you could do it, but why bother? It would have been more expensive to do so, and so, what were the returns on that bigger investment that would have made it worth it?
In the 13th century, the Mongols attacked island Java. Why did they do that? The information in the History of the Yuan says something about a Yuan envoy getting insulted. No one sends an army far across the sea because of that. There was something much bigger at stake. I think it was because spices were starting to enter the trade system (and I see evidence of this in the type of tribute that starts getting delivered), and the Chinese wanted to get some control over this trade. THAT then was finally a reason to sail further south, and they did.
Again, it was not because there was a technical innovation. It was because there was an historical reason to do so.
Meanwhile, as for traders from India and the Middle East, I still think that the majority of them just traveled to the western side of the Malay Peninsula, however, the “tributary system” gave certain people a reason to journey all of the way to China. There was nothing comparable, as far as I can tell, that attracted movement in the other direction to go as far as India and the Middle East. In the second millennium AD, we see Ibn Battuta mentioning big Chinese ships sailing to southern India (but not further than that). From his account, you get the sense that financially that was something that was only possible for a small number of extremely wealthy merchants. As such, like the majority of South Asian and Middle Eastern traders, I think that most Chinese traders throughout the first millennium and into the second only went as far as the eastern side of the Malay Peninsula.
Finally, look at the itineraries (Yijing, Jia Dan, etc.) and try to get them to make sense as going through the Straits of Melaka. They don’t make sense, and no one has been able to get them to make sense. They all end up going in circles between island Java and Sumatra. By contrast, if you track them over the trans-peninsular routes, they all make perfect sense.
I grew up in rural New England. Technically it was probably possible for one of our beat-up old cars to make it the 5-6 hours to New York City or Boston, but we never drove there (and, indeed, never went there). Such a trip was too far and too expensive. Instead, if there was something that we really needed/wanted that you could only get in a city, then we drove one hour to a small city which got its products shipped in from other places, like NYC and Boston.
I think that modern age logic also applied in the premodern era.
Finally, one more note: when we see mention of foreign ships between the Malay Peninsula and China in the first millennium AD, I’m not convinced that those ships had sailed all the way from the Middle East/South Asia.
For instance, Yijing (if I remember correctly) gets taken by a “Persian” to Shilifoshi, and then he is there for a while, and then continues on his journey in “the king’s ship.” If the Persian was going all the way to the Middle East, why didn’t Yijing just stay on the boat a while longer?
I think it is more logical to assume that there were communities of foreign traders at the trans-peninsular crossings as well as at places like Funan/Sanfoqi and Linyi/Champa. I can’t remember where, but in one early dynasty history there is mention of I think 500 “Hu” families in Duanxun/Duxun. My guess is that many of the foreigners operated different legs of the Middle East/South Asia-to-China route. Some sailed back and forth between China and Funan/Sanfoqi. Some sailed back and forth between Funan/Sanfoqi and Dianxun or Shepo. And then on the other side of the Malay Peninsula, there were ships that sailed back and forth between the ports on the other end of the trans-peninsular crossings and South Asia. And then there were still other ships that operated the leg from South Asia to the Middle East.
Yes, from Ibn Battuta, we can see that in the second millennium AD, there were some huge ships that could go all the way, but I think that historically those were the exception rather than the norm. Oh, but those ships sailed past island Java and up through the Philippines, and that was something new, as far as I can tell. Again, I think this is where spices and the Mongol attack come into the picture.
In the early Ming period, Ayutthaya conquered Angkor and the trans-peninsular crossings on the Malay Peninsula, down to Shepo. That changed everything.
1) Ayutthaya became the main tributary kingdom in the region and maintained that relationship the longest (probably in part because they had good products that they redirected to their capital from the trans-peninsular crossings that they now controlled).
2) It led to the rise of Melaka, as other people tried to find new ways to access products from South Asia and the Middle East, since their previous two main sources (Sanfoqi/Kambuja and Shepo/Songkhla) were no longer active following Ayutthaya’s expansion. With that development people had a clear, and economically viable, reason to sail directly between Con Dao and Singapore, as we can see in late Ming/Qing nautical texts that they did.