In Search of Longevity and Good Karma: Chinese Diplomatic Missions to Middle India in the Seventh Century

China's diplomatic relations with ancient Indian kingdoms has attracted limited attention. Notable anthologies on China's relations with her neighbors make little or no mention of premodern Sino-Indian political contacts. 1 Indian kingdoms are also missing from John King Fairbank's framework of the "Aims and Means in China's Foreign Relations," proposed in his classic work on the Chinese world order. 2 A close analysis, however, reveals that diplomatic channels between China and India were in fact opened and maintained by diverse groups of people with manifold motives. A strategic military alliance between China and India was contemplated by one of the earliest Chinese envoys to Central Asia. Commercial specialists from [End Page 1] various parts of Asia frequently took part in Sino-Indian tributary relations. And Buddhist monks from China visited the courts of important Indian kings and helped establish and sustain diplomatic ties between the two countries.