Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c10.21

c10.21

At this time, however, there was little *direct* trade with India. Athenaeus tells us that in the processions of Ptolemy Philadelphus were to be seen Indian women, Indian hunting dogs, and Indian cows, among other strange sights; also Indian spices carried on camels. The same authority tells us that Ptolemy Philopator’s yacht had a saloon lined with Indian stone¹. Agatharchides, the learned tutor of Ptolemy Soter II (116 B.C.) writes enthusiastically of the commercial enterprise of the Egyptian monarchs, and the wealth and number of the Red Sea ports. But his knowledge ends there. He speaks of Sokotra as “recently discovered,” as if Alexandrian sailors had only just ventured outside the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and then not far. In more than one place he indicates that merchandise was not brought direct from India, but carried to an intermediate port and there bought and shipped by the Alexandrian traders. For instance, in speaking of the great riches of Arabia Felix, he says it was partly due to the Indian traders who came in great numbers from Potana, the port founded by Alexander on the Indus. Potana is of course Pātala²: the very mistake shews how ignorant Agatharchides is of Indian matters. Evidently Indian goods were taken to Muza³ or Aden, two ports at the mouth of the Red Sea, and there transhipped. Aden, called, from the country in which it lay, Arabia Felix or Eudaemon, was the great clearing-house of the East, just as Port Said is to-day. The author of the *Periplus*, writing of the early history of Aden, states this very clearly.