As Fahrenheit drew closer, an Indian ship covered in gold leaf came out to greet the dock, and when the Mountain Ghost dropped anchor and threw the cable, Prince Ermati suddenly appeared on the dock, which immediately caused a wave of fluctuations in the crowd. Although Ermati was the crown prince, he had actually ruled on behalf of the Peacock King, and his personal appearance to greet him showed the importance that the empire attached to the envoys of the Chuni Kingdom.

In addition to flowers and bronze mirrors, there are gold boxes, gold bottles, and neatly folded white cotton cloths. When he finished washing up and was about to get off the boat, another person came up on the dock, and after two translations, the document was easy to say: "Prince Ermo asked to board the boat for a look." ”

The Mountain Ghost was the third ship of the Shao Si Ming class, and it was the smallest among the sea boats of the Chu State, but it was such a small ship, and Ermoti was still shocked by its size and sturdiness. Indian ships were rudimentary, with hulls either glued together by sugar fibers or tied with ropes, and according to the Roman historian Pliny, the largest Indian ship was no more than 75 tons. Although this is not true, the tenon (joining) and twisting processes determine that it is very difficult to build Indian ships.

The Indian ships were like that, and the Persian ships were all stitched ships. Until the Arabs in the Middle Ages, Sinbad's voyages in the One Thousand and One Nights were still stitched boats (the whole ship was sewn together by a 640-kilometer-long coconut rope without the use of a single iron nail).

Compared with the traditional seafaring kingdoms of Kalinga, Chola, Zheluo, and Pandia in the south, although the Mauryan Empire had a decent navy, the actual ships were only some weakened versions of the old large-winged warships. With the combat effectiveness of these warships, the merchant fleet of the Chu State could completely rampage off the coast of India.

"Please step down the prince." Xiong Jing explained in detail to Lu Zhuo the technical value of the sea boat in Chu State: one is in navigation technology, the second is sail cable technology, and the third is the construction technology of the sea boat itself. The Indian prince wanted to board the boat to take a look, and he could only accept it.

The trestle bridge had already been built, and when Ermoti came up, Lu Zhuo led everyone to salute him. By Chinese standards, the crown prince is a standard barbarian. He was about thirty years of age, with a white deerskin wrapped around his head, adorned with gold and jade, and a knee-length bodice made of cotton cloth commonly worn by Indians, and a delicate brocade draped diagonally over his shoulders, which, according to the judgment of the silk merchants under the city order, was a piece of embroidery from the state of Chu, and on his feet was a white deerskin shoe.

These are what Lu Zhuo and the others can understand, but what they can't understand are the earrings on Ermoti's ears, the mark on the center of his eyebrows, the ointmented eye sockets, the vermilion lips, and the white lead powder on his face. The make-up made the prince look like a temple man, and the Chinese nobles liked their male pets to dress like women, but the dense beard showed that this person was not a temple man.

Smelling the smell of perfume on Ermoti's body, Lu Zhuo and the others' first reaction was weird. However, in the eyes of Ermati and his entourage, the envoys of the Chuni Kingdom were a little disappointed. Chuni is a huge kingdom, but why are the country's envoys not fair-skinned? Isn't it only white people who can build great nations?

In India's diplomatic relations with foreign countries, the caste system cannot help but bring the caste system into its own perception. For Persia, Egypt, and Seleucid, where the West was already ruled by white men, human history was heavily influenced by the Proto-Indo-Europeans near the Caspian Sea (the Aryans were renamed Proto-Indo-Europeans after World War II because of the Führer's pot).

Proto-Indo-Europeans entered Europe and were called Greeks in southeastern Europe, Latins in Italy (the Romans belonged to one branch), Celts in Western Europe, and Germanic people in northern Europe (the ancestors of modern Westerners); Proto-Indo-Europeans entered Asia, known as the Hittites and the Lydians in Asia Minor, the Medes and Persians in the Iranian Plateau, and the caste system in India because of racial differences. Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Vaishyas were all proto-Indo-Europeans, and the Shudras (local natives) may have been Negros or Sinhalese.

Just as the Zhou people replaced the Yin Shang as the rulers of China, the Shang and Zhou cultures (the writing of the merchants, the rituals and music of the Zhou people) influenced the Chinese nations, and the various civilizations developed by the primitive Indo-Europeans who entered Eurasia from the steppe have certain similarities, such as the resemblance of gods and the worship of cattle.

These descendants of the primitive Indo-Europeans, who claimed to be Indians, naturally did not feel the cordiality of facing the Greek, Persian, Egyptian, and Seleucid envoys when they saw the Chinese. And Lu Zhuo was still a Yue person, the Yue people south of the Yangtze River, the Dongyi (Yin Shang) north of the Yangtze River, and the Zhou people in the northwest (including the Chu people before the southward migration), these three kinds of people occupied the East Asian world. Among them, the number of Zhou people is the smallest, the number of Dongyi people who occupy the fertile Central Plains and the Bohai Sea is the largest, and the number of Yue people in the southern mountainous areas is only more than that of the Zhou people.

If we take India to understand East Asia, the Zhou people are the primitive Indo-Europeans, the Dongyi are the Negros, and the Yue people are the Sinhalese. Lu Zhuo, a swarthy-faced Sinhalese envoy, made the crown prince Nemothi uneasy, and he feared that he was meeting a Shudra.

After two translations, the clerk said: "The prince said, is the doctor a nobleman?" Is there a noble person in the Chu State? ”

"Huh." Lu Zhuo couldn't help laughing, "Noble people and ordinary people, don't be confused. The ancestor of the thriving is the general of the Yue country, how can he be a common man? The ancestor of the king of Chu in Yiyi, starting from Emperor Yan, is the descendant of Zhu Rong, Shang once married the daughter of Shang King Pangeng, and the Zhou people are the same noble, the bloodline has been passed down for more than 2,000 years, how can there be no nobleman? ”

Lu Zhuo tied his hair with a high crown, a plain robe, and a sword hanging from his waist. Although the skin is dark, his demeanor is completely aristocratic. When he smiled, his neat white teeth exposed, Demoti was convinced that he was a nobleman. When the interpreter translated Chu into Greek, and then from Greek to Sanskrit, he immediately smiled at Lu Zhuo and began to visit the Mountain Ghost.

From Panyu sailing, only through the Strait of Malacca is the most arduous and long, Panyu to the mouth of the strait, out of the strait to Sinhala is only a few days of sailing. In addition, it was a new ship, and the mountain ghost did not have the usual dampness and stench of sea ships, and the sailors were in a very good state of mind.

After walking around the deck and taking a look at the lower deck, when he returned to the main deck, he looked at the rigging that was dense like a spider's web above his head and asked, "There are so many sails, how can I use them?" ”

Indian ships have sails, but only one sail, and the three masts and three layers of sails on the Mountain Ghost are completely beyond the imagination of the Indians. Lu Zhuo replied with a smile: "The sail is a common sailor, and I don't know." ”

Lu Zhuo's answer was very ingenious, and Ermoti had to give up. He could see that the ships of the Chuni were better than all Indian ships, but the empire could not even build the best Indian ships now, and how could they imitate the ships of Chuni. After the visit, the group led Lu Zhuo into the palace of Hua's city, and when they arrived in the conference hall, many ministers were already standing in the hall waiting.

"Lu Zhuo, the envoy of the State of Chu, presents his credentials to the Emperor of India." In the conference hall, Ermoti sat in his grandfather's place, personally received the national letter presented by Lu Zhuo, and asked the court officials to accept the national gift presented by Lu Zhuo.

The national ceremony is very grand, there are thousands of horses in silk alone, and there are treasure knives, porcelain, lacquerware, paper and other things. The ministers in the council hall were taken aback by the gift, a thousand horses of silk were only more than 2,000 gold in China, but they were worth more than 100 million silver pana in India. The Mauryan Empire lacked gold, so the official gold-silver ratio was 1:35 instead of the normal 1:12\13 in Western countries. Even so, these silks are worth more than 1.6 million gold pana, which is about 22,000 gold when converted into Chu state gold.

The gift was so heavy that Ermati stood up from the throne in shock, and his eyes wandered between the court officials and Lu Zhuo who read the gift list, and the eyes of the ministers in the court looked at Lu Zhuo from the previous suspicion to the current solemnity.

Lu Zhuo smiled bitterly in his heart. When he was in Alakankulam, he knew the value of silk, and a piece of silk could be sold for forty times the purchase price in Alakankulan, and India was far north, trading with the Sogdians, and the price was lower, about thirty times.

Of course, it is a pity to send such a big gift to the Indians, but in the Chinese countries, the national gifts given to the king are so much, when Chu Qi married, the princess of Qi had 5,000 horses in the dowry, not including other more valuable Lian Xi and Sui Sui. According to the idea of the city order, the silk order has been halved, but it still surprises the Indians - if the Chuni people can come a year or two earlier, and give two more gifts, the prince will not need to put Tianai Xijian Wang under house arrest because of the generosity of 400 million silver pana.

"Lu Luoke, arrange the Sanssouci Palace immediately, and the envoys of Chuni need to move in." Ermati immediately commanded, and his decision surprised the ministers again, but thinking of this national gift worth more than 100 million silver pana, which is almost equivalent to half of the empire's annual income, even if it is not unacceptable to let the envoys of Chuni live in the emperor's Tianai Palace.

"Venerable envoy, what do you need?" came and did not be rude, Ermoti then looked at Lu Zhuo, such a national gift, he really didn't know how to thank him.

The interpreter from Pandia was not surprised by the Chuni people's generosity, as they gave the queen Pandia 800 horses of silk. After two translations, Lu Zhuo said: "Under the prince's feet, there is not enough grain and straw in the city, and rice is needed; The lining is insufficient, too, and cotton cloth is needed. If you can return the gift with this, the king of Chu will be happy. ”

"Rice? Cotton cloth? "Demoti laughed when he heard this, these two are the most common and lowly things in India." I'm afraid that your ship is too small to hold so many gifts. ”

"The prince made a mistake. The sea of Chu is large and numerous, and it has not been seen for a while. Lu Zhuo insisted, "The Mountain Ghost is just a sea boat for envoys, not a sea boat for cargo transportation. The cargo ship is five times the size of the Mountain Ghost, and there are hundreds of ships. ”