page_title: Ming treasure voyages
section_title: Records and literature
hierarchical_section_title: Ming treasure voyages / Impact / Records and literature
context_page_description: The Ming treasure voyages were the seven maritime expeditions undertaken by Ming China's treasure fleet between 1405 and 1433. The Yongle Emperor started building the treasure fleet in 1403. The grand project resulted in seven far-reaching ocean voyages to the coastal territories and islands in and around the South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, and beyond. Admiral Zheng He was commissioned to command the treasure fleet for the expeditions. Six of the voyages occurred during the Yongle reign, while the seventh voyage occurred under the Xuande reign. The first three voyages reached up to Calicut on India's Malabar Coast, while the fourth voyage went as far as Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. Afterwards, the fleet made voyages to the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa.
  The Chinese expeditionary fleet was heavily militarized and carried great amounts of treasures, which served to project Chinese power and wealth to the known world. They brought back many foreign ambassadors whose kings and rulers were willing to declare themselves tributaries of China.
context_section_description: There are several extant contemporary accounts, including Ma Huan's Yingya Shenglan [瀛涯勝覽], Fei Xin's Xingcha Shenglan [星槎勝覽], and Gong Zhen's Xiyang Fanguo Zhi [西洋番國志]. Ma served as an interpreter on the fourth, sixth, and seventh voyage; Guo Chongli was Ma's collaborator on the Yingya Shenglan and participated in three of the expeditions; Fei served as a soldier on the third, fifth, and seventh expedition; and Gong served as Zheng's private secretary on the seventh voyage. These three sources provide observations to the political, economic, social, cultural, and religious conditions of the lands visited throughout the voyages. In addition, the Liujiagang and Changle inscriptions are considered to be valuable records by Zheng and his associates.
  The Ming Shilu provides a lot of the information relating to the treasure voyages, particularly the exchange of ambassadors. The work is divided into individual sections about the reigns of Ming emperors. Zheng lived through the reigns of five Ming emperors, but he directly served three emperors. He is mentioned in the Taizong Shilu of the Yongle reign, the Renzong Shilu of the Hongxi reign, and the Xuanzong Shilu of the Xuande reign. The Taizong Shilu combined the second and third voyages into one expedition, which misconstrued Zheng's Palembang journey from 1424 to 1425 as the sixth voyage instead of his seventh. However, the Liujiagang and Changle inscriptions make a clear distinction between the second and third voyage as they correctly date the second voyage from 1407 to 1409 and the third voyage from 1409 to 1411. The Taizong Shilu was followed by the History of Ming.
  A number of later works have been preserved. The accounts in the History of Ming (1739) and Huang Xingzeng's Xiyang Chaogong Dianlu [西洋朝貢典錄] (1520) rely on the Yingya Shenglan. Zheng Xiao's Wuxuebian [吾學編] (ca. 1522) relies on Zhang Sheng's rifacimento of the Yingya Shenglan. Zhu Yunming's Qianwen Ji ("A Record of Things Once Heard") (ca. 1526) contains his Xia Xiyang (下西洋; lit. "Down the Western Ocean"), which provides a detailed itinerary of the seventh voyage. There are also Lu Rong's Shuyuan Zaji (菽園雜記; lit. "Bean Garden Miscellany") (1475), Yan Gongjian's Shuyu Zhouzilu (殊域周咨錄; "Record of Despatches Concerning the Different Countries") (1520), and Gu Qiyuan's Kezuo Zhuiyu (客座贅語; "Boring Talks for My Guests") (ca. 1628). Mao Yuanyi's Wubei Zhi (武備志) (1628) preserves the Mao Kun map [茅坤圖], which is largely based on material from the treasure voyages.
  Luo Maodeng's Sanbao Taijian Xia Xiyang Ji Tongsu Yanyi (三寶太監下西洋記通俗演義) (1597) is a novel about the exploits of Admiral Zheng He and his fleet. In the preface, Luo states that Chinese maritime power was essential to maintain world order. In Luo's work, Zheng sailed the oceans to search for a sacred imperial seal that would restore harmony in the Middle Kingdom. He never finds this seal in the story, suggesting that the world order cannot be restored by any other means than military force according to Finlay (1992). Luo's novel contains a description of different classes of ships with their sizes: the 36 nine-masted treasure ships (baochuan) were 44.4 by 18 zhang, the 700 eight-masted horse ships (machuan) were 37 by 15 zhang, the 240 seven-masted grain ships or supply ships (liangchuan) were 28 by 12 zhang, the 300 six-masted billet ships or troop transports (zuochuan) were 24 by 9.4 zhang, and the 180 five-masted combat ships or warships proper (zhanchuan) were 18 by 6.8 zhang. Dreyer (2007) argues that this work holds little to no evidential value as a historical source, but also notes that Duyvendak thinks that it may be based on some truth.
  The Kezuo Zhuiyu and the Shuyu Zhouzilu describe the following circumstances of what happened to the official archives about the expeditions. The Chenghua Emperor issued an order to retrieve the documents concerning the expeditions to the Western Ocean from the Ministry of War archives, but the official Liu Daxia (劉大夏) had hidden and burned the documents. Liu dismissed the accounts as "deceitful exaggerations of bizarre 
caption: Pages from a copy of Ma Huan's Yingya Shenglan
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