China's Acquaintance with the West
 

L. CARRINGTON GOODRICH
 

CHINA'S formal relations \\itii the west started in B. C.
128 when a Chinese envoy travelled by land as far as the
Hellenistic kingdom of Bactria. During the following
century and a quarter many other envoys, military men, and mer¬
chants from China went over the same routes gathering knowl¬
edge of the peoples, customs, natural products, and geography of
the regions touched, some of which has filtered down to us in
records of the time. In the same period other envoys were going
by sea, possibly clear across the Indian Ocean. It seems entirely
possible that by the first century or two A. D. Chinese travellers
were meeting Romans, certainly people from the Roman Orient,
both in the ports and at inland centers of trade. One Chinese en¬
voy, in the 90s, crossed central Asia and reached the mouth of the
Euphrates. Recent finds of the French near Saigon suggest that
some sixty years later Chinese merchants may have mingled with
mariners from the Mediterranean at the capital of the ancient em¬
pire of Funan. Chinese silk «'as making itself popular in Rome in
the time of Caesar Augustus, while—as a first century Chinese
text proclaims—Chinese merchants were exchanging silk and gold
for "brilliant pearls, glass, rare stones, and curious products." En¬
tertainers too were coming to China—jugglers from Alexandria, it
is thought—along with Buddhist missionaries from India, Ceylon,
and Iran.

Throughout the first millennium of our era contacts with the
west of Asia, and even with Egypt, continued. The Zoroastrian
faith, followed by such religions as Nestorian (or Chaldean)
Christianity, Manicheism, Islam, and Judaism made some impact
on China between 500 and iioo. The Chinese by 651 knew of
Mohammed and his successes in Arabia, while Theophylactus