Regimes of Diplomacy and Law: Bengal-China Encounters in the Early Fifteenth Century

Mahmood Kooria

doi:10.1163/15685209-12341536

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the Bengal–China connections between the Ilyās Shāhī and Ming dynasties in the early fifteenth century across the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea. It traces how law played a central role in the cultural geography and diplomatic vocabulary between individuals and communities in foreign lands, with their shared understanding of two nodal points of law. Diplomatic missions explicate how customary, regional and transregional laws were entangled in inter-imperial etiquette. Then there were the religious orders of Islam that constituted an inner circle of imperial exchanges. Between the Ilyās Shāhī rule in Bengal and the Ming Empire in China, certain dimensions of Islamic law provided a common language for the circulation of people and ideas. Stretching between cities and across oceans the interpolity legal exchanges expose interesting aspects of the histories of China and Bengal.

Highlights

More than a decade ago JESHO published a special issue (49/4), edited by Kenneth R
Between the Ilyās Shāhī rule in Bengal and the Ming Empire in China, certain dimensions of Islamic law provided a common language for the circulation of people and ideas
By giving special attention to the moments of legal interfacing, and on the basis of a few extra, sometimes new, pieces of evidence, I shall revisit some of the arguments raised in that issue of JESHO and engage with the latest literature in the field, in order to show how law was a central element in the premodern transregional circulations of people, commodities and practices

Summary

Introduction

More than a decade ago JESHO published a special issue (49/4), edited by Kenneth R. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 49/4 (2006): 435-37; on the Chinese maritime trade policies and mercantile activities in the Bay of Bengal before the Ming period, see W.W. Rockhill, “Notes on the Relations and Trade of China with the Eastern Archipelago and the Coast of the Indian Ocean during the Fourteenth Century.”. That was what the local ruler Parākramabāhu VI (1412-67) had claimed in at least five diplomatic missions to the Ming court in the early fifteenth century.[51] As a commemoration of his execution of law, or what he considered to be justice, in Sri Lanka itself, Zheng He installed a trilingual inscription in Chinese, Persian and Tamil to demonstrate his eclectic view of law and justice On it the Ming emperor dominates the scene of metaphysical worldviews of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam.[52]. “The Giraffe of Bengal: A Medieval Encounter in Ming China.” Medieval History Journal 7/1 (2004): 1-37

68 Ming Shilu: vol 11

Conclusion