Abstract
Abstract Beginning from the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Muslim and Chinese ships frequently sailed the south China coast, Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, and the Persian Gulf, trading goods and cultures. The Chinese naval commander Zheng He鄭和 (Cheng Ho, 1371-1433) lead seven expeditions along these sea routes, sailing as far as the east coast of Africa in the early 15th century. Historical sources mention that Zheng He used a navigation method called qianxing shu 牽星術, which employed a particular instrument named qianxing ban 牽星板. Navigators could use this instrument to measure the angle between stars and horizon to find units of zhi指. They used this technique to understand the location of their ships while sailing in the open-sea. This thesis discusses the linguistic connections between different cultures and the astronomical knowledge behind that technology. Time and direction were essential to this maritime technology, and this technology united these two issues by observing stars. This technique relied on the altitudes of stars and horizon to define time. Moreover, it used zām, which was a special time-measurement system in ancient India, as a unit of time and measured the specific bright stars and the moon in terms of zhi指in Chinese and isba (إصبع) in Arabic. Both words mean “finger.” Also, navigators observed the bright stars on horizon in dawn and dusk to understand directions. This technique employed the instrument qianxing ban, which can be classified in different types: those with knotted strings and a single board, those with unknotted strings and boards of different sizes, and those with both knotted strings and different sizes of boards. By the seventeenth century, a treatise on armament technology reported that Chinese sailors carried magnetic-needle routes marked with gen 更. These maps were typical of traditional Chinese maritime technology, but also contained information about the stars in terms of the unit zhi which was familiar to most sailors in the Indian and Arabic Oceans. Thus, these sea-charts prove the cultural interactions on this sea-route. Finally, Zheng He’s voyage is reconstructed. Zheng He’s fleet exploited the power of the monsoon. They relied on the northeast wind to depart in winter, then followed the southwest wind to return to China in summer. Moreover, Zheng He’s navigators relied on the altitudes of Pole Star, Pleiades, Pollux, Procyon, Canopus and Southern Cross for directions. In this way, sailors could keep on the right route. Meanwhile, they used qianxing ban to measure the angle of stars. They also used the zām time-measurement system to measure time. In conclusion, the qianxing shu and qianxing ban were the result of centuries of cultural communications between China, India, and the Islamic world.