A History of Indian Shipping and Maritime Activity from the Earliest Times c19.3

c19.3

A consideration of the kind of things which India sent abroad in exchange for the things she imported and a glance at the list of Indian exports and imports, such as that given in that most interesting work on Oriental commerce, the *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea*, will reveal certain peculiar features regarding the economical system of ancient India, to which has been traced the proverbial "wealth of Ind" by many scholars. As remarked by Major J. B. Keith, in a recent article in the *Asiatic Quarterly Review* (July, 1910), "the old prosperity of India was based on the sound principle, which is, that after clothing and feeding your own people, then of your surplus abundance give to the stranger." For it will appear that the chief items of Indian export were the "renowned art industrial fabrics, and exports were not multiplied on the reprehensible practice of depleting a country of its food-stuffs." The result was the development of an external trade to which we owe, on the one hand, the great cities like Baalbek and Palmyra in the desert, and, on the other hand, "those great monuments of art which India was enabled to erect after clothing and feeding her own people." And of the many satrapies of Darius India was also, as we have seen, the only one which could afford to pay her tribute in gold to him. Finally, we should not miss the point of Pliny's famous complaint about allowing India to find a market for her superfluous manufactured luxuries in Rome and thereby suck out her wealth and drain her of gold.