The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [43]
Within the eastern ocean, there was extensive trade all around the shores of the Bay of Bengal, while within island southeast Asia there were whole more or less autonomous and very complex networks which go back millennia. From about 500 BCE there were local networks connecting the Vietnamese coast with Indonesia and then around the Malay peninsular and into Burma even, and also linking Thailand with the South China Sea. Later, Indian prestige goods entered this network, from around the start of the Common Era, and as we will see below, ideas went with these goods.37 The Buddhist pilgrim Fa Hsien writing in 415 CE went on a ship from Sri Lanka to Srivijaya, and there were 200 travellers, who Panikkar identified as being brahmanical merchants, on board.38 We will quote his account of his voyage at the end of this chapter.
Longer distance trade connected India and China. There are two ways to travel east from India and get to China: overland across the Isthmus of Kra in the Malay peninsula, or passing through the Straits of Melaka. It seems that the overland route was chosen in earlier times, until better and bigger ships made the all-sea route from, say, Sri Lanka to the South China Sea more cost effective. In the first century of the Common Era Funan, on the lower Vietnam coast, did well. The usual route was from India to the isthmus of Kra, and then to China via Funan. Indeed, this state expanded considerably in the next two centuries, until the sea route via Melaka took over. The seas of insular southeast Asia were then, from the sixth to the eleventh centuries, dominated by Srivijaya, and from the late thirteenth century by Majapahit. But by this time, as we will see in the next chapter, Islam was entering the region.
Yet again it must be stressed that our records in this period, and later, privilege long-distance, high-value trade. Yet this trade was and is very much superstructure. The base was coastal trade, and indeed a part of coastal trade was vital for the long-distance routes, for they fed local products into the wider circuit. Similarly, while the records often focus on glamorous valuable products, essentials were also carried. We have already described several routes where essentials were carried quite long distances. As before, this trade remains largely hidden from our records, but we do know that it was always important. The Periplus mentions bulk items being traded from India to the Red Sea and Egypt, such as grain, rice, ghee, sesame oil, cotton cloth and cane sugar, though this was not a direct trade for the cargoes were broken up at Socotra, or modern Somalia.
When we distinguish between luxuries and necessities, the essential point is that it is the latter which continues, unaffected by political rises and declines: indeed the very name implies this. Luxuries, on the other hand, suffer from a very labile, or discretionary, demand. 'Little and often usually outweighs big and rare.' This whole distinction is of great interest to political economy theorists, who consider that an exchange of necessities