Did Zheng He always come in peace? – Jeremiah Jenne
In 1911, S.H. Thomlin, an engineer working in Galle along the southwestern coast of Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka, found a stone tablet lying in a culvert. The old stele was a strange document, inscribed in three languages – Persian, Chinese and Tamil – praising and giving thanks to Allah, the Buddha, and the Hindu god Tenavarai-Nayanar. Lost for centuries, this trilingual inscription was a relic from a long-ago visit to Sri Lanka by the great Chinese admiral Zheng He (1371-1433).