the great economic flowering of the Yangzi basin and the maritime provinces of the South from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. Indeed, by the end of the fifth century it was noted that there was an increase in traffic on the Yangzi, and that there were many foreign merchants who had come from Southeast Asia and the Indo-Iranian world. The cities situated on the great river, as well as Canton in the extreme South, developed rapidly, and the State began to draw appreciable revenues from commercial taxes. (Gernet 1990: 163).