Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c10.31

Language: English

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Eudoxus was a native of Cyzicus. Having acquired a certain reputation as a geographer and ethnologist, he was sent by the authorities of his native city to undertake the exploration of the Nile. While in Egypt, however, his attention was diverted by a romantic incident. The coast-guards from the Red Sea brought to Alexandria an Indian whom they had found drifting in a boat, half dead with hunger and thirst. After he had learnt a little Greek, the Indian explained that he had set out from India with a ship’s company; they had lost their bearings and drifted for months, till his companions had perished, one by one, of hunger; and at last, at the point of death, he had been picked up off the entrance to the Red Sea. He offered, if the government would provide a ship to take him back, to shew them the way to India. The offer was gladly accepted by the monarch, Euergetes II¹, and Eudoxus accompanied the expedition. They took a supply of goods, reached India, and after exchanging their wares for Indian spices and gems, sailed home. Instead of rewarding them, Euergetes basely confiscated their cargo! He died, however, in 117 B.C. and the indomitable sailor obtained permission to try again, this time with a richer cargo. Again he reached the coast of India, but on his return voyage he was caught in a storm, and missing the entrance to the Red Sea, reached the African coast somewhere considerably south of Cape Gardafui.

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Here he conciliated the natives by presents, and received much kindness from them in return, for they gave him water and pilots for the homeward journey. He wrote down, like the scholar he was, several words of their language. But the strangest thing that happened there was the discovery of a ship’s prow carved in the form of a horse. The natives declared that it belonged to a strange ship which came from the west². Eudoxus took the prow back to Alexandria. Here he was again basely robbed³, on the plea that he had misappropriated the ship’s cargo. But some sailors declared that the prow was that of a Cadiz ship, and one even asserted that it was the actual prow of a vessel which had sailed away “beyond the river Lixus in Mauretania” and had never been heard of again. Eudoxus now shook the dust of Alexandria from off his feet, and sailed home. The information he had acquired presented two fascinating problems. Had the mysterious vessel whose prow he had found, really rounded Africa? And if so, was it possible to reach India by following this course? Eudoxus determined to try. Having realised his whole fortune, he fitted out a ship, with which he sailed to Italy, Marseilles, and Cadiz, collecting subscriptions for the great undertaking. Everywhere the project was hailed with enthusiasm, and Eudoxus was able to fit out at Cadiz a large vessel with two light boats for exploring the coast.

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Embarking doctors, artizans, bales of goods, and, strangely enough, “a supply of Spanish dancing girls,” the expedition “set sail for India.” Passing Gibraltar, they at first kept well out to sea; but the sailors grew frightened, and Eudoxus, against his better judgment, stood in shore. As he had feared, the large vessel ran aground, and had to be dismantled, a smaller boat being constructed out of her timbers. They went on and reached an Ethiopian tribe who, he thought, spoke a dialect similar to that which he had studied in East Africa. He was now compelled, owing to want of provisions, to return; but shortly afterwards he fitted out yet another expedition, and this time he intended to winter at one of the large, uninhabited and fertile islands he had observed on the way, probably the Canary Isles or Madeira¹, and sail on when the weather and wind permitted. For this purpose he took seeds and agricultural implements, so as to grow a fresh stock of provisions. Of the end of this brave mariner, who twice reached India and anticipated, in design at least, the projects of Vasco da Gama, we hear no more. From the silence which history observes with regard to his end, we may gather that he never reached home after rounding the Cape. The noteworthy thing about his career is the fact that he twice reached India and that he conceived the project of a voyage to that land by way of South Africa to be a feasible thing.