Li Fang: Taiping Yulan (Imperial Digest of Taiping) (983)

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Taken from: The Siren of Cirebon. A Tenth-Century Trading Vessel Lost in the Java Sea. By Horst Hubertus Liebner.

Christie, Anthony (1957): 'An Obscure Passage from the "Periplus: ΚΟΛΑΝΔΙΟφΩΝΤΑ ΤΑ ΜΕΓΙΣΤΑ"', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London,19 (2), 345-53

Manguin, Pierre-Yves: (1993b): 'Trading Ships of the South China Sea: Shipbuilding Techniques and Their Role in the History of the Devel-opment of Asian Trade Networks', Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient,36 (3), 253-80.

 

A quotation from a lost Chinese account of the late third century explains:

Yuan 769

Foreigners call ships bo.  The biggest are 20 chang or more in length, and two or three chang above the waterline.  Seen from above they resemble covered galleries.  They carry six to seven hundred men and a cargo of 10,000 hu.

The men from beyond our frontiers use four sails for their ships, varying with the size of the ships.  These sails are connected with each other from bow to stern. [...] The four sails do not face directly forward, but are made to move together to one side or the other with the direction of the breeze. [...] The pressure [of the wind] swells [the sails] from behind and is thrown from one to the other, so that they all profit from its force. If it is violent, they diminish or augment [the surface of the sails] according to conditions. This oblique [rig], which permits the sails to receive from one another the breath of the wind, obviates the anxiety attendant upon having high masts.

 

These measurements have been understood to ‘indicate a vessel of about 170 feet overall, with a freeboard of some 16 feet or more’ and a carrying capacity of ‘c. 600 tons deadweight’.  See also: Note on KUNLUN Empire

 

Taken from: Sino-Iranica; Chinese contributions to the history of civilization in ancient Iran, with special reference to the history of cultivated plants and products by Berthold Laufer.

T’ao Hun-kin (d536) writes that; the bulk of styrax was imported on foreign ships, with the report that it came from Ta Ts'in (Middle East) (but comes from Somalia).

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Note on Kunlun People
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In the 3rd century ACE, the Chinese historians wrote about the sea-going vessels of the Kunlun   (the Malay). The Kunlun were described as short, wooly-haired, dark-skinned people who were expert sailors. The Kunlun vessels were known as Kunlun-po with the word po being the Kunlun word for ship. The ships of the Kunlun are  described as: extending to 200 feet in length and standing out of the water up to 20 feet. They were said to be able to hold from 600-700 passengers and 10,000 bushels (900 tons) of cargo. Each ship could sport up to four obliquely mounted sails.

The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, describes ships from Chryse in the Malay Archipelago known as Kolan-diphonta or 'Kolan-ships'. The 'Kolan' here are probably the Kunlun of the Chinese annals.

They (and later the Arabs) were most probably the ones providing the Chinese with black slaves.
The oldest mentions of Kunlun people were clearly black people from South East Asia. Later a clear African element comes in; first a doubtful one but later with convincing evidence .
Examples:
Hui-lin in his Ch’ieh Ching Yin I (737-820) when talking about the Kunlun people: There are many races and varieties of them thus there are the Zangis (the single character used to write this is; seng), the Turmi, the Kurdang and the Khmer.

Tuo Tuo (1238-1298) (Sung Shi) In the second year of Tai-ping Hsing Kuo (AD 977) Arabia sent the ambassador Pu-sze-na, the vice-ambassador Mo-ho-mo (Mahmud), and the judge Pu-lo, with the products of their country as presents. Their attendants had sunken eyes and black skin and they were called Kun-lun-nu.

Chou Ch'u-fei (1178) Ling-wai-tai-ta has a chapter on; Kouen-Louen ts'eng-k'i(the land of the blacks) which is undoubtedly Madagascar.

At the same time the black people of South East Asia remain Kunlun too.

Slave hunting went on in South East Asia as in Africa: Duarte Barbosa (begin 16th century): Many slaves were shipped from the island of Sunda (between Bali and Timor) to China.

 

Ge Chengyong 葛承雍. 2006. "Tang chang'an heiren laiyuan xunzong" 唐長安黑人 來源尋踪 [The origin of black people in Chang'an City of the Tang dynasty]. Zhonghua wenshi luncong 中華文史論叢 65: 1–27.

 

Zhang, Xinglang (1930) in his article: Importation of Negro Slaves to China Under the T'ang Dynasty asserted that the Negro slaves were imported by Muslims from Africa into China.

In 2001, Chinese historian Ge Chengyong criticized Zhang’s view in an article to probe the origin of Black people living in Chang-an city in the Tang Dynasty and drew a conclusion different from Zhang’s. Considering the thesis of the “African origin” not convincing enough, he suggested that the Black people were not Negroid from Africa but Negrito from Nan Hai (south sea, present Southeast Asia and called Kunlun). Some of the Kunlun were part of foreigners’ annual tribute to Chinese authorities, some were left in China by foreign envoys, and some were enslaved people sold to the coastal regions. As for the term Sengzhi, it is generally considered to be identical to Zanj (other forms such as Zinj, Zenj, Zandj, Zanghi) and is a word used by the Arabs to refer to the East African coast. …… Ge did not agree with the view, considering Sengzhi an expression of Buddhism (seng=monk) in Nanhai in early times. It is more proper to look for the origins of Black people in Southeast Asia rather than in Africa (Ge, 2001), a view that is accepted by scholars in China (e.g. Cheng, 2002; Liang, 2004)

 

Ge Chengyong: Some of my peers and predecessors have thought that these dark-skinned people, with curly hair, broad nose and thick lips, hailed from Africa. I believe they are more likely to have come from Southeast Asia, for example the Indonesian archipelago.

Between the fourth and sixth centuries, to which the pottery figurine (of black people=Kunlun found in China) has been traced, the trade route between China and Africa merely connected the Chinese empire with Egypt. So there is a very slim possibility that these men came from the heart of the African continent. On the other hand, words about them, albeit scant, appeared in writings of the time in which they are portrayed as 'wearing shorts and being superb divers or fast mast-climbers'. These are the traits associated with islanders from Southeast Asia."

Some of these men may have been purchased - or captured - by local tribal leaders or human traders in one of those Indian Ocean islands. From there they could have traveled to what today is Vietnam before moving further toward the heartland of the Chinese empire. Their existence in Tang China has cast a tantalizing beam of light on the society of their adopted home, although most details of that existence are likely to remain forever shrouded in mystery.

The Kunlun slaves, with other non-Chinese domestic servants, were so popular at the time that having them within the household became not only fashionable but de rigueur for the rich. It was a fashion and a fad that reflected a general fascination with things exotic, a fascination that gripped all of society.

Note: with this last phrase he is referring to: Yeh Tzu-Ch'i: Ts'ao-mu-tzu (1378) (The Book of the Fading-like-Grass Master): With the northerners (men living in the North), maid servants were without fail Kao-li girls, man-servants were Negroes. Otherwise, they were said not to be perfect gentlemen.

 

African diaspora in China by Li Anshuan p465

 

Black-skinned people are a large group who settled in various places in the world. There is no reason to assume that the Black people in China had only one origin. When Arabia sent a delegation headed by its ambassador to China in 977 CE, “their attendants had sunken eyes and Black skin and they were called Kunlun nu”, according to the History of the Song Dynasty. They could have been from Africa. As for those of Indian origin, there were two groups. One is known as the “untouchables”, who as the indigenous inhabitants contributed a great deal to the civilisation of the Indus River Valley. The other group comprises those who migrated to India or were brought by Arabs or Indians from East Africa as slaves (Rashidi & Sertima 2007: 65—120). The third origin is Southeast Asia, which many works have mentioned, Ge Chengyong being representative of this view (Ge Chengyong 2001).

Regarding the origin of the Black people in the Tang period, Zhang Xinglang points to Africa and Ge Chengyong suggests Southeast Asia, a kind of “singular origin”. After examining both arguments, although based on rich material and sound logic, it is clear that each emphasises the positive evidence while neglecting materials contrary to their view. Historical research should be more careful and open the door for alternative explanations. In sum, multiple origins might be a more reasonable and convincing answer to the question.

 

Early Global Interconnectivity across the Indian Ocean Angela Schottenhammer · 2019

 

(About the Senqi slaves brought to China)

We confront the fundamental question of whether these individuals with origins unspecified by the sources were in fact even actually African. At least initially, having only exceedingly rare and incidental contact with them, the Chinese applied the terms sengzhi and cengqi not to Africans at all but instead to the welter of Indonesian archipelago tribal peoples with whom they had for centuries much more commonly and frequently interacted. We can certainly assume such to have been the case from the inception of the use of such terms through the duration of the Tang dynasty. Indeed, entertaining the prospect that neither the enslaved children from Java nor the enslaved maiden from Srivijaya were necessarily African, the late sinologist Edward Schafer (1913-1991) speculated that these human offerings to the Chinese court at Chang’an may well have been of Malay-Negrito stock. Indeed, even as early as Tang times, the Chinese were evidently aware of an island northwest of Eastern Sumatra or Palembang (=Foshiguo) that was called Gegesengqiguo (Schafer’s Kat-kat Zangi Country), whose inhabitants are described as: prone to violence and who, once they have boarded their boats, are much to be feared.

 

Li, J. 1982.“Examination of Kunlun Slaves in the Tang Dynasty.”Wenshi 6: 98–118.

Li Jiping 李季平. 1982. "Tangdai kunlunnukao" 唐代崑崙奴考 [A study of Kunlun slaves in the Tang dynasty]. Wenshi 文史 16: 292–98.

 

"Some of my peers and predecessors have thought that these dark-skinned people, with curly hair, broad nose and thick lips, hailed from Africa. I believe they are more likely to have come from Southeast Asia, for example the Indonesian archipelago.

 

"Between the fourth and sixth centuries, to which the pottery figurine has been traced, the trade route between China and Africa merely connected the Chinese empire with Egypt. So there is a very slim possibility that these men came from the heart of the African continent. On the other hand, words about them, albeit scant, appeared in writings of the time in which they are portrayed as 'wearing shorts and being superb divers or fast mast-climbers'. These are the traits associated with islanders from Southeast Asia."

 

"Some of these men may have been purchased - or captured - by local tribal leaders or human traders in one of those Indian Ocean islands," Ge says. "From there they could have traveled to what today is Vietnam before moving further toward the heartland of the Chinese empire. Their existence in Tang China has cast a tantalizing beam of light on the society of their adopted home, although most details of that existence are likely to remain forever shrouded in mystery."

 

Ge Chengyong says that the Kunlun slaves, with other non-Chinese domestic servants, were so popular at the time that having them within the household became not only fashionable but de rigueur for the rich.

Note: with this last phrase he is referring to: Yeh Tzu-Ch'i: Ts'ao-mu-tzu (1378) (The Book of the Fading-like-Grass Master): With the northerners (men living in the North), maid servants were without fail Kao-li girls, man-servants were Negroes. Otherwise, they were said not to be perfect gentlemen.

 

"It was a fashion and a fad that reflected a general fascination with things exotic, a fascination that gripped all of society."

Taken from: Liang J. (2004) Some Thoughts about the Source of Kunlun Slaves in Tang Dynasty. P58-62.

 

There are roughly the following views and opinions:

 

(1) From North Africa. In Chang'an of the Tang Dynasty, "there were expatriates from more than forty countries in the East and the West, including blacks (Kunlun slaves) from Africa."

 

(2) Southeast Asia. Ge Chengyong pointed out that the source of blacks in the Tang Dynasty was not Africa but Southeast Asia, that is, the Negrito people. Han Zhenhua pointed out that Kunlun slaves refer to the small black people on the Indochinese Peninsula, including the Ka people in Laos. The Kunlun people originally referred to the aboriginal people of the Indochina peninsula. All the countries that ruled these small black people on the peninsula were called "Kunlun and the like" in Chinese records.

 

(3) India. In Tan Sitong's "Poems on Lifting the Wall in Prison", there is "I smile to the sky with my sword across my face, and go to Kunlun. " He believes that the Kunlun slaves should refer to the Indians: Zou Chenfan wrote the journey of the Western Expedition, saying that Mount Himalaya is Kunlun, which is accurate and credible. Mount Himalaya is in northern India. The Tang Dynasty called Indians: Kunlun, which is also true.

 

(4) The aborigines of Kunlun in western China. Some people in modern times simply regard "Kunlun" as the Kunlun Mountains located in Northwest China today, so they believe that the Kunlun slaves are the aborigines of the present Kunlun Mountains, who were brought into China from the Western Regions through the Northwest Silk Trade. Among these scholars, quite a few believe that the Kunlun slaves were brought by Arab merchants from north-eastern Africa to enter China via India or directly enter southern China by sea. There are generally two reasons: First, the biggest feature of Kunlun slaves is their dark, so the first thing people think of is Africans. Second, Arab businessmen at that time often traveled between and entered China to do business, and there are indeed records in Chinese historical records of Arab businessmen selling slaves and black African countries. For example, in "Huichao Going to the Five Tianzhu Biography Persian Kingdom", it is said that Persians often go to the Lion Kingdom (that is, Ceylon) to get treasures, and to Kunlun Kingdom to get gold. The Kunlun Kingdom is said to be the land of African blacks, because the gold produced in Africa has been famous all over the world since ancient times. Zhou Qufei's "Lingwaidaida" Volume 3 " Kunlun-ceng-qi (Madagascar)" says: "There are many savages on the island, their bodies are like black paint, and their fists are drawn. They are lured to capture them with food and sell them as slaves." Zhao Rushi " The article "Miscellaneous Countries on the Sea" in the volume of "Zhu Fan Zhi" also says: " Kunlun-ceng-qi (Madagascar) is in the southwest sea, connecting large islands. There are often rocs flying, covering the sun and moving the sundial. There are camels, and rocs will swallow them when they meet. "

 

(5) Dwarf black Kunlun slaves from the South China Sea Dwarf black.

According to modern textual research, the main source of " Kunlun slaves was Asian Malay blacks from Saigon (Kunlun Island in the outer sea (today)). According to Indian historical records, Saigon has been the largest slave market in Asia since the third century AD, mainly selling slaves to China, and this slave trade continued until the Ming Dynasty. However, the ancients had inaccurate and mistakenly pronounced "Chai stick" as "Kunlun", which is how they got the name "Kunlun slave".

 

(6) From the point of view of clothing, most of the black figurines unearthed later are also naked upper body oblique silk belt, banner around the waist or wearing shorts. This is very consistent with the image of the Kunlun people "Barefoot Ganman" recorded in "Nanhai Jigui Neifa Biography" by Yijing, an eminent monk in the Tang Dynasty. "Ganman" is Sanskrit, referring to the underwear worn by the lower body. A very obvious feature that has nothing to do with ancient African black clothing. Ge Chengyong said that many authoritative scholars believed that blacks in the Tang Dynasty came from Africa.

The stream of black-slaves out of South-East Asia to China.

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Li Yansho:  Nan-shi 南史 (History of the Southern Dynasties), (659)

 

Sources from the fourth and fifth centuries use the term kunlun to describe people with dark skin. An anecdote from a history of the Liu Song dynasty (420-479), for example, describes an emperor who had a kunlun slave, marking the earliest mention of a kunlun person rather than the term's use as an adjective for a dark-skinned. Chinese person.  This kunlun slave, Bai Zhu, was "often at [the emperor's] side. He was ordered to beat the ministers and officials with a stick," and even the highest-ranking ministers "feared his venom."

 

Liu Xu: (940) Jiu Tang Shu (Old History of the Tang Dynasty)

 

Yuan4, f1v

In 684 a Kunlun of Kouang - tcheou (Guangzhou) killed the tou-tou Lou Yuan-jouei.

This appears to be the first mention of a community of kunlun living in China, but not a slave community.

 

Zhang Ji (8th century Tang poet): Kunlun-er (Kunlun-kids)

 

These children the poem says sailed from an island in the sea on their way to China (Han lands)(2) a barbarian guest (manke)(1) (obviously a foreign merchant) had bought them in Yulinzhou. (=close to the Vietnamese Chinese border.)(3)

 

Home to the Kunlun is the islands amidst the Southern Sea;

Yet, led forth by Man (1) visitors, they have come to roam Han (2) lands.

Parrots and cockatoos must have taught them speech,

As, riding upon billowing waves, they first entered through the Region of Teeming Forests. (3)

Gold rings once dangled luridly from their ears;

Which conch-spiraled hair, long and coiling, they still refuse to bind their heads.

Black as lacquer is their flesh and skin received from nature;

Half-stripped of tree-floss garments, they stride about with bodies exposed. 

 

Chu Yu : P'ing-chou k'ot'an (1119) (Pinzhou Chats)

 

Yuan 2 §8

Most of the wealthy in Kuang-chou (Canton) possessed kuei nu (devil or negro slaves). They are very strong, able to carry weights of several hundred catties (one catty 750gr). Their speech and their desires are unintelligible... Their nature is simple and they do not run away. They are called wild men. Their color is black as ink, their lips are red and their teeth white, their hair is curly and yellow (huang). There are males and females.... (Their sexes are classified to denote the male and female of animals and some birds). They live in the mountains (or islands) beyond the sea. They eat raw things. If, in captivity, they are given cooked food, in a few days they get diarrhea.... (diarrhea is called changing the bowls "huanchang"). This makes some of them fall ill and die. If they do not die one can keep them. After they have been domesticated for a long time they are able to understand human speech, but they can not utter it themselves. There is also a kind of offshore savage, who does not lives into the water, which is called Kunlun slave.

The yellow hair shows we have here people from the Solomon Islands.

 

Houang Cheng-ts'eng : Si Yang tchao kong tien lou (Records on tributes made by foreign countries from the Western Ocean) (1520)

 

The Country of Java

In 1381 the king (of java) sent an address written on leaves of gold, together with tribute, and also 300 black slaves.

 

Zhang, Tingyu: Ming Shi (Records of the Ming Dynasty) (1739)

 

(Yuan 324)

In the year 1381 they (Java) sent envoys, who brought as tribute 300 black slaves (Gonghei nu) and products of the country. The next year they brought again black slaves, men and women, to the number of a hundred, eight large pearls and 75,000 catties of pepper.