The Historical Inscriptions of Southern India (collected till 1923) and Outlines of Political History c7.61

c7.61

By the beginning of the Christian era the great Republic of Rome had given way to a still greater empire, and we learn from the writings of Strabo (A.D. 20) and Pliny (A.D. 77) that there existed in Rome an inordinate love of importation of luxuries from the East. Trade with India, therefore, enormously increased and there is reason to suppose that numbers of Roman merchants made their centres of trade, if not their homes, in such places as Madura and in the sea-port towns of the west coast, sending Indian products to Rome and receiving in return Roman goods. Large numbers of Roman coins have been found in South India. The Peutingerian Tables place a temple of Augustus, the Roman Emperor, on the Malabar coast. Strabo mentions an embassy which the Pāṇḍya king of Madura sent to Augustus Cæsar, probably in 22 B.C. Pliny recommends to the Romans a geographical study of the route to India, which he says is a very important subject because ‘in no year does India drain our Empire of less than 550 millions of sestertices, giving back her own wares in exchange.’ He mentions the Kalinga, Āndhra and Pāṇḍya kings. (History Natural xii. 41; vi. Caps 22, 24, 26; Bostock and Riley’s translation). He mentions an embassy which was sent to Claudius Cæsar in Rome in A.D. 41, following on the adventure of a certain freedman, Annius Plocamus, who farmed the Red Sea customs, and who in a gale was carried to Ceylon where he was treated kindly and brought to the notice of the king. He tells us of the port of Muziris in Malabar (Muyirikoḍu); of the Kēralaputra, king of that country; of the Chēras; of how the seas were infested by pirates; of Cochin; of the Pāṇḍya king and his capital Madura. He describes the Indian banyan-tree and the many products of the country.