Compared with the danger of the wind and waves encountered when I first came, the return journey was much calmer.

Because compared to the large fleet that set out one step ahead of the harbor of Bijing, it was full of people and supplies; Zhou Huai'an led some elite men and horses to take another maritime Grand Canal line; That is, the Tan Phong Canal from Haimen Town in the south (near present-day Haiphong, Vietnam) to the mouth of the Baiteng River in Qinzhou (near Crescent Bay, Fangchenggang City, Guangxi) in the north.

Because most of the river runs inland through several coastlines, there is little risk of wind and waves and no trouble with rapids. In the meandering river, which is both wide and deep, it is now full of large and small civilian ships and merchant ships;

Among them, there were not only Qianzhong (present-day northern Guizhou) and Lingnan merchant travelers wearing hats and hats, but also Tu men and women with their heads tied to each other, and even some foreign travelers such as Zhenla and Nanzhao with snails and tin tans or shirtless tube cloth. People can't help but sigh at the charm of money and goods, which directly transcends the barriers of nations and countries in this era.

In addition to all kinds of merchants and travelers and a variety of Tu customs along the way, you can also enjoy the graceful and changeable scenery of the Indochina Peninsula.

Sometimes you can see that on one side there is a wave on the blue sea and the sound of the waves is faint, and on the other hand, there is a calm wave on the parallel inland canal and under the wind and sun; And then this stark contrast of movement and stillness, sometimes reunited at a short outlet to the sea, and became a clear and green transition between the water and the sky.

Sometimes it is the undulating hills, such as Daiyuan Mountain and the villages and settlements dotted in between, and sometimes it is the strange cliffs and rugged cliffs close at hand; Sometimes it will suddenly open up in the narrow and horizontal turns of the mountain, showing a spacious valley in the middle of the stream or a wilderness like a peach blossom source;

Sometimes, in the midst of the rather hidden mountain cracks, a torrent of rippling rapids suddenly rushes out of the river, or a high waterfall and deep stream flowing down the mountain, and the volley is like rain and mist.

Sometimes, in the wilderness or dense forests, wild creatures such as apes, leopards, elephants, etc., which are active day and night, will inadvertently look at each other across the river, and then shout and scream, or watch each other away in a familiar indifference.

When he stopped and rested near the fishing village at the mouth of the river halfway, Zhou Huai'an also deliberately went to the place known as "Tianwei Yao" and "Xianren Yuan", and observed and explored the rocky beach that blocked the way at the mouth of the river; It is a pity that all I saw were the broken stone ridges that had been washed by the water, and the obvious traces of the cone axe chiseling, but there were no traces or clues that could prove the use of gunpowder.

As for the obvious traces of smoke and fire on those big stones, they are the result of the pedestrians and merchants who have passed through here in the past dynasties, and the villagers in the nearby towns have visited and sacrificed the ruins here. In the end, on the rocky beach of the old riverbed exposed after the local diversion, Zhou Huai'an found a number of things similar to paleontological fossils, which can be regarded as some kind of souvenirs and souvenirs on the way.

But the discovery also sparked his thoughts. In fact, Zhou Huai'an has always been a little hesitant about another thing, that is, whether to release part of the navigation technology he knows in later generations;

For example, after nearly 300 years of foreign exchanges since the founding of the Tang Dynasty, the Tang people of this era actually had a water compass as a direction navigation, as well as a star-pulling plate introduced by the Arabs to assist the ancient star positioning method; to ensure the direction and positioning of the voyage.

In the Kaiyuan period, when the world calendar was reformulated to determine the ecliptic meridian, there was a famous astronomer and classical scientist - the monk and his party invented the "complex moment"; Geodesy, which can be used to determine the change in north-south distance by measuring the altitude of the North Stars in two places.

There is also a geographic navigation method that uses geographical coordinates along the route. In the "Island Calculation Sutra" annotated by Li Chunfeng and others, the "gravity difference method" of two observations is used to measure land markers by using the Pythagorean theorem and the principle of proportionality of the corresponding sides of similar triangles.

In addition, the Tang people have preliminarily established the concept of navigation quantification related to the trade winds, which not only grasps the law of the coming of the monsoon, but also accurately calculates the time of the arrival of the northeast monsoon. and develop a cycle of timely voyages.

On the basis of these facts, Jia Tan, the former famous minister Jia Tan, even compiled the "Map of Huayi in Hainai", "The Four Descriptions of Ancient and Modern Counties and County Roads", and "The Records of the Four Masters of Huanghua", to describe the specific circumstances and time required along the way from Guangzhou by boat to the East African region where the Persian Gulf and Kunlun countries are located.

In the Battle of Talas, he was captured by the Great Eclipse, and traveled through many countries including the Abbasid Dynasty, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Frankish Kingdom, Egypt, Nubia and the Kingdom of Axum in Ethiopia, and finally returned by ship from the port of Emassawa in the country of Shunai (now southern Somalia in East Africa).

In addition, there are such things as the keel structure of the hull, the technology of watertight compartments sealed with tung oil lime, the hull with a copper cover, and the original nautical charts and star maps made of copperplates. The sea depth is measured with a long rope tie, and the navigation position and condition are judged from the sediment adhered to the bottom of the stone. Carrier pigeons were used as a means of sea transportation. It has also been able to use fish glue and sawdust to repair ships underwater to prevent leakage and sinking.

And so on, some series are enough to beat the advanced shipbuilding and navigation technology of most of the world's civilizations and countries.

Just like the treasure ship of Zheng He in later generations, there was also an ocean-going giant ship called "Mulan Boat" in this era, which claimed to be able to carry six or seven hundred people and continue to sail for more than half a year. Therefore, it is commonly found in many Tang poems; The Tang Dynasty poet Jia Dao's "Sending Han Chaozhou Yu" said: "This heart was with Mulan Boat until the head of the Tiannan tide." ”。

In this case, calcite, which can be used to observe the position of the sun, and sextants that measure the angle between the sun or other celestial bodies and the horizon or horizon at a certain moment in later generations, are not so necessary. On the contrary, some of the designs of sailboats in the Age of Discovery, and the more maneuverable canvas manufacturing process, rope and pulley sets seem to be more useful.

In fact, there were no technical difficulties in weaving coarse canvas (dense weaving) and fine canvas (fine weaving) with multiple strands; There were similar archetypes in early Roman times; It's just that before the birth of the water-powered loom, it took more labor to make.

And all the sprouts of all this will go through a long period of regression and loss in the five generations of war, and then recover and develop to the extreme in the Southern Song Dynasty; So do you want to play the role of a behind-the-scenes promoter and let it go further on another path?

With this kind of thinking, Zhou Huai'an arrived at the mouth of the Baiteng River in Qinzhou, and re-boarded the big ship that went to sea from there; I also got the latest news from the government again.

For example, the left-behind division still adopted his suggestion, and formed a large number of armed expropriation teams to carry out inventory and expropriation activities on various temples and religious sites under its rule; Although a lot of money and food were quickly collected in a short period of time, it also aroused a lot of backlash and resistance;

The temples in those cities are easy to say, nothing more than the destruction of wealth and disaster or non-violent non-cooperation, but the local monasteries that occupy a wide range of fertile land and have a large number of tenants are not so easy to talk about, and even in some places there are new earthen groups called for monasteries to resist the expropriation teams of the left-behind divisions; These swarming situations also made the left-behind division a little overwhelmed and powerless for a while.

Moreover, under the activities of these expropriation teams, it is not surprising that many women were rescued from these temples at intervals, and many treasured artifacts that were contrary to the identity of the monks were copied, and even armor and weapons that were forbidden by the government; Among these hidden women, some are tenant wives and daughters who have been seized in private, some are victims of robbery, and some are bought or sold by taking advantage of the turmoil of the world;

It can be said that in addition to the coastal areas with a relatively high degree of civilization, there are still some real penances and Dharma propagation and preaching. The situation of the inland temples outside this ridge is actually not much better than that of the inland "masters" who deserve to be destroyed; There are even more than that. Because of their remote location, some mountain monasteries have simply become robbers' dens in monks' robes and disguised local tyrants.

Originally, Zhou Huai'an of these monasteries planned to stay until the end, and after the rebels gained a firm foothold in all aspects, he would slowly boil the frog and slowly pack up the fat sheep concocted; Now it can only be thrown to the left-behind division as some kind of alternative and bait;

This is also a dignified and upright means of conspiracy, and I can't help but rush to meet the needs of the left-behind division ahead, and I don't try to deal with and plan. However, if the person who came up with this idea is leaked in the future, it will undoubtedly be a reputation of "enemy of the Buddha" in a sense.

At least in the land of Annam as seen by Zhou Huai'an, it is still better, at least Buddhism and Taoism are both developed and Confucianism also has corresponding influence; The existence of the temple is more of an important help for the preaching and naturalization of the barbarians, and on the other hand, there is not so much accumulation of fertile land, so it is quite late in Zhou Huai'an's treatment sequence, and it is just an order to donate some things to help the army.

But the upper part of the Theravada Buddhism in the neighboring kingdoms of Linyi (Cham dynasty) and Luchenla (Jimi/Khmer dynasty) is simply the other extreme; Monks are a natural privileged group and class in the local area, as long as they wear robes, they are regarded as inviolable people, no taxes or servitudes, and they cannot be detained, and the temple is the core to gather land and slaves, and enjoy the unsparing offerings from top to bottom.

For example, the country of Linyi was deeply troubled by the relics of the Brahmins of Nantianzhu, from the kings and nobles to the common people of Lishu, not to mention the tradition of directly giving alms to the temple, which is called a part of the "Buddha offering"; And the country of Zhenla is even more awesome, the girl of the rich family is 7 to 9 years old, and the daughter of the poor family is not more than 11 years old at the latest, and the monk must be asked to go to her child's body, which is called: "Array Blanket".

At dusk on the same day, the monks should be brought home by beating gongs and drums, and the monks and women lived together until dawn and left. After that, the host family will use cloth to redeem the girl, otherwise the girl will be owned by this monk for life and cannot marry someone else. Before the "carpet", the girl lived with her parents, and after that, she was uninhibited. (See the later "Zhenla Wind and Soil Records")

Therefore, after Zhou Huai'an conquered these places, he sent them to the Abi Hell to find the Bodhisattva of the King of the Earth to report, and then quoted the monks of the Han land to replace them, which can be regarded as another way of propagating the Dharma.

(End of chapter)