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Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c11: Chapter VI

Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c11

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English

Contents

Chapter VI

c11.1

οὐ γάρ μοι βίος ἐστὶ μελαινάων ἐπὶ νηῶν,
οὐδέ μοι ἐμπορίη πατρώιος, οὐδ’ ἐπὶ Γάγγην,
ἔρχομαι οἷά τε πολλοί....

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IN the first centuries before and after Christ, when the Kushāns were establishing themselves among the ruins of the Baktrian and other semi-Greek principalities of North-Western India, great changes were taking place in the West. Rome was absorbing the remnants of the Empire of Alexander. Syria had already fallen: Egypt became a Roman province in 30 B.C. The dissensions of the civil war ended at Actium, after which Augustus settled down to organize and regulate his vast possessions. The effect of the *Pax Romana* upon trade was, of course, very marked. Piracy was put down, trade-routes secured, and the fashionable world of Rome, undistracted by conflict, began to demand, on an unprecedented scale, oriental luxuries of every kind. Silk from China, fine muslins from India, and jewels, especially beryls¹ and pearls, were exported from eastern ports for personal adornment. Drugs, spices, and condiments, as well as costus, lycium and other cosmetics fetched high prices. Even greater was the demand for pepper, which sold in the days of Pliny at the price of 15 denarii a pound¹. This seems extraordinary to us, but pepper remained one of the most highly-prized luxuries in the West, even in the Middle Ages. In the fifteenth century it sold at two shillings a pound,—about three pounds in its modern equivalent! Gibbon² tells us that among the ransom demanded by Alaric, was 3000 lb. of pepper.

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The Zamorin of Calicut correctly gauged European taste when he sent his famous letter to the King of Portugal by Vasco da Gama, saying that "In my land is an abundance of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper and precious stones," and asking for specie in exchange. Pliny, who is fond of indulging in trite homilies on Roman extravagance, is right in complaining of the drain upon Roman finance caused by the Indian trade. India produced very little coinage (and what she did produce was mostly imitated from Greek and Roman coins), and her great gold-mines in Dardistān appear to have been practically worked out, probably by the exorbitant demands of her Persian and other early rulers. The specie received from Europe was absorbed as it is very largely to-day. The huge hoards of coins found in the Madras Presidency shew what became of the money. This is especially true of the first five Roman emperors, for, if we may judge from the Roman coins unearthed in India, the trade in Indian luxuries, which reached its height in the reign of Nero, began after this to decline, partly owing to civil war, but still more on account of the severer style of living encouraged by Vespasian and the Antonines¹. Of the earlier emperors, 612 gold, and 1187 silver coins have been unearthed, exclusive of hoards variously described as "pots full" and "cooly loads." By far the greater part of these huge numbers belongs to the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius.

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Pliny² says that India, China, and Arabia, absorbed between them one hundred million sesterces per annum. This sum is calculated by Mommsen³ to represent £1,100,000, of which nearly half went to India. The effect of this enormous drain on imperial finance must have been terribly serious. Roman coinage was, like English gold, the chief medium,—almost the sole medium—of international commerce. Indians had no coinage worth speaking of, and preferred to import specie. This was especially true of the south; the Kushān and Śaka monarchs imitated or restruck Roman coins. The well-known story of the Roman revenue collector, shipwrecked on the Ceylon coast and convincing the Sinhalese monarch of the superiority of his country by pointing to the purity, regularity and fine workmanship of her coins, is told by both Pliny¹ and Kosmas Indikopleustes². “ Thus it is,” says the latter, “ that with their money the trade of the world is carried on.” One of the fashionable extravagances of the time was the consumption of huge quantities of spices at funerals. Even as early as the days of Sulla, we hear of two hundred and ten talents’ weight being used at his obsequies. The climax was, of course, reached by Nero, who at the funeral of Poppoea, in 66 A.D., burnt more aromatics on her pyre than Arabia produced in a year³.

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Extravagance of this kind immensely stimulated the Indian trade, while it brought vast wealth to the inhabitants of Arabia Felix, and the cinnamon country (‘Η Κινναμωνό-φορος) of the adjoining Somali coast.

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¹ The beryl, βήρυλλος from Skt. *vaiḍūrya*, is the much-prized aquamarine of the Romans. Only two beryl mines existed in S. India, at Padiyūr and Vaniyambādi, and they were a great source of wealth.

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¹ N.H. XII. 14.

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² Decline and Fall, III. 272.

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¹ Sewell, Roman Coins found in India (J.R.A.S. 1904, p. 200 ff.).

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² N.H. XII. 18. (41).

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³ Provinces of the Roman Empire, II. 300.

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¹ N.H. VI. 22.

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² Christian Topography, Bk. XI.

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³ Ibid. VII. 42.

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One of the results of the increased intercourse with India was the appearance of several works bearing more or less directly upon the subject of Indian geography. Of these writers, the earliest is Strabo, an Asiatic Greek who lived in the reign of Augustus. A great traveller, Strabo had visited Armenia, and had accompanied his friend Aelius Gallus up the Nile. He had been to the port of Myos Hormos, and observed the great increase of trade with India ; for he found that about one hundred and twenty merchantmen sailed to India (he does not say in what space of time, but perhaps he means in a single season), whereas scarcely anyone dared to make the direct voyage in the days of the Ptolemies¹. In his own days a few bold sailors even made the mouth of the Ganges. But they were ignorant men, ill-qualified to describe what they had seen. Hence Strabo is driven to rely for his information about India upon previous writers². His leading authority is Eratosthenes, the Alexandrian. He draws also largely upon Megasthenes (whom he unfairly censures), and on Aristobulus, Onesikritus, Nearchus, and other writers who took part in Alexander's campaign. Hence the India he describes is the India, not of his own day, but of the third and fourth centuries B.C. ; and valuable and exhaustive though the *Geography* is, it throws little light upon India at the time of Augustus. Even with regard to the accounts of eye-witnesses, he says, there are many discrepancies, and most of the people who write about India do so from hearsay, having visited only isolated portions of the country. The same remarks apply to the *Indika* of Arrian, written about 150 B.C. A work of quite a different kind is the encyclopaedic *Natural History* of Pliny the Elder, completed in the year 77 A.D. two years before his death in the great eruption at Pompeii. The sixth book of this work contains a valuable description of Ceylon, drawn from the accounts of the official already mentioned (a freedman of Annius Plocamus) wrecked there in the reign of the Emperor Claudius. It also contains, besides dissertations on the geography of India drawn from various sources, a most interesting account of the voyage from Myos Hormos to the Indian coast, as made at the time. Other books contain exhaustive catalogues of Indian animals and minerals, and, above all, an invaluable list of Indian plants and drugs, of the greatest use in studying Indian exports of that nature.

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¹ Strabo, *Geog.* II. 5. 12.

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² *Ibid.* xv. 2.

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About the time of Pliny’s great work¹, an anonymous pamphlet entitled *Periplus Maris Erythraei* was published, probably at Alexandria. This little book is unique in the history of Greek geography, in so far as the writer describes the coasts of the Red Sea, Arabia, and Western India from his own experience and not at secondhand, as the other extant authorities do. This important work will receive detailed attention later. The last of the great geographers to write about India, if we except minor authorities and incidental references, is Ptolemy, who lived about 150 A.D. Unfortunately Ptolemy’s *Guide to Geography* is mathematical rather than descriptive. His object is not to describe places, but to determine their latitude and longitude on the map, and his notices are occasional and brief. Later geographers (with the honourable exception of Kosmas Indikopleustes, one of the last writers of the fast-expiring ancient world), confine themselves to incidental statements about India, generally copied from Pliny, Strabo, and Ptolemy. The romances of Aelian and Philostratus are unworthy of serious notice.

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¹ There are amazing discrepancies of opinion about the date of the *Periplus*. It is fairly certain, however, that it was written between 80 and 90 A.D. and nearer 80 than 90.

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The news of the accession of Augustus quickly reached India. Many Indian states sent embassies to congratulate him, an honour, as he remarks, never paid before to any Western prince¹. The most striking of these was one sent by an important king, called, according to Strabo, Porus by some and Pandion by others². If his name really was Pandion, he was one of the Pāṇḍya kings of Madurā, the most southerly of the three Tamil kingdoms. Porus, however (Paurava, a descendant of Puru) became a kind of generic name for an Indian king with the Greeks since the days of Alexander. It is tempting to identify this Porus with Kadphises the first, if it is possible to put the first of the Kushān monarchs so early³. The embassy sailed from Barygaza; it brought in its train a Buddhist monk, Zarmanochegas (Śramaṇācārya), who imitated the notorious Kalanos by burning himself on a pyre at Athens, and a letter written in Greek, describing Porus as “lord over six hundred kings.” All this answers to the Kushān rather than the Tamil monarch. In the Panjāb, Greek was talked, and Buddhism was the prevailing religion, which was scarcely the case in the south. Barygaza would hardly be the port for a Tamil embassy, with Nelkynda and Muziris at hand. Kadphises had extended his dominions over many “Yavana, Śaka, and Pallava” monarchs, and could appropriately call himself “Mahārāja over 600 kings.” Kadphises was familiar with Rome, as is shewn by his imitation of the coins of Augustus. The invitation to Augustus to form an alliance with him, and the offer of a free passage through his domains to Roman citizens, may refer to the overland route through Baktria to China and India. Many curious details about this embassy have been preserved by an eye-witness, Nicolaus of Damascus, who met the party near Antioch. They had started from India about 25 B.C. and had taken four years on the journey. They had suffered much on the road and many had died of fatigue. The length of the journey must have been due to the cumbrous nature of the presents they brought, which included tigers, a partridge as big as an eagle¹, a gigantic python, huge tortoises, and an armless boy who could shoot arrows and throw darts with his feet! With these ponderous gifts they had been forced to take the overland route, and had evidently experienced great difficulties in convoying them over the passes and through the deserts. Had they gone by sea, the journey would have been over in less than a year. This strange troupe found Augustus in Samos in 21 B.C. The tigers were shewn at the opening of the theatre of Marcellus. Other Indian embassies visited Rome from time to time. We have already referred to one from Ceylon to the Emperor Claudius. Another came to Trajan in 99 A.D. from Kadphises II or Kanishka¹, when the conquest of Mesopotamia had brought the Indian and Roman frontiers within six hundred miles of one another.

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¹ Mon. Ancyranum, 36.

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² Strabo, Geog. xv. 4 & 73; Dion Cassius, liv. 9. 58; Priaulx, Indian Travel, p. 64, and Indian Embassies to Rome (J.R.A.S. xix. 294).

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³ Vincent Smith gives 45 A.D. as his date, but other authorities put him seventy years earlier.

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¹ This is the katreus of Kleitarchus, the monal pheasant from the Himālayas.

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¹ I say this with all reservation. Fleet dates Kanishka at 58 B.C.

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In the reign of Claudius, an epoch-making discovery changed the whole aspect of the sea-borne trade between India and Rome. This was the discovery, about 45 A.D. of the existence of the monsoon-winds, blowing regularly across the Indian Ocean, by a captain of the name of Hippalus. The existence of such regular "Etesian" winds had been vaguely known before, and Megasthenes and others had observed that the regular double rainfall of India was due to them. To the Arab sailors, too, the phenomenon was no secret, as the term monsoon, from the Arabic *mauzim*, implies. Hitherto, however, such few Greek vessels as dared to make the voyage from the Red Sea to India had been forced to creep along the Arabian shore and then down the coast of Karmania—an infinitely tedious proceeding. To be becalmed, without compass or map, in the middle of the Indian Ocean was too great a risk to run. Hippalus, however, observing the steady south-west current of the summer months, and learning the secret, perhaps, from an Arab seaman, ventured upon the direct voyage. At first Hippalus merely made the run from Cape Syagrus to Pātala, a distance of 1335 miles, for which he would have the wind directly behind him the whole way. This was subsequently improved upon. It was found that by sailing closer to the wind (the author of the *Periplus* uses the term τραχηλίζοντες, “throwing the ship’s head off the wind,” evidently a slang word among Alexandrian sailors), it was possible to make Sigerus or Melizigara on the Bombay coast. Later merchants made the voyage shorter still. Striking due east from the port of Cana or from Cape Gardafui, it was found possible to make straight for Damirike, or Malabar, the important pepper-country. For particulars of the voyage we are chiefly indebted to Pliny¹. After describing the discovery of Hippalus, and the journey from Koptos to the sea, he tells that passengers for India usually embarked (at Berenike or Myos Hormos) about midsummer. The voyage to Okēlis, at the mouth of the Red Sea, the favourite port for travellers to India, took just a month. Then, if the Hippalus (the name given to the south-west monsoon, after its discoverer) were blowing, they reached Muziris (Cranganore on the Malabar coast), in forty days. No doubt the time was often bettered in practice, as the distance was only about 2000 miles and a Greek vessel with a good wind could do eighty miles a day¹. In any case, Alexandria was now brought within a little over two months of the Indian coast. When we remember the thirty months taken by the pioneer of Greek voyages from India to Suez, Skylax of Karyanda, we begin to appreciate the improvements effected in navigation by the first century A.D. Pliny tells us that passengers preferred to embark at Barake² in the Pāṇḍya country, rather than at Muziris, on account of the pirates who infested the latter port. To keep off these pirates, East Indiamen had to carry troops of archers. This coast has always been pirate-haunted, to the days of Angria and his Marathas, who gave the English so much trouble. Ptolemy speaks of it as Ariake of the pirates¹. Barake was the port for the pepper trade, Kottonara (Kolatta-nadu, i.e. Tellicherry), the centre of the pepper-district. Those returning to Europe had to sail in December, if they wished to take advantage of the north-east monsoon². They could then take advantage of the south and south-west wind in the Red Sea.

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¹ *N.H.* VI. 26; also *Periplus*, § 56.

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¹ For figures, see Hirth, *China and the Roman Orient*, p. 167 (Shanghai, 1885). Hirth, however, forgets that the revenue-ship belonging to Annius Plocamus, caught in the monsoon off the Arabian coast was blown to the Ceylon coast in *fifteen* days! This, I think, constituted a record for the ancient world. Pliny, *N.H.* VI. 22.

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² On the outer edge of the great Cochin lagoon. Inside this lagoon was the great port of Nelkynda. *Vide infra.*

c11.27

¹ ’Ανδρῶν Πειρατῶν. But this has been explained as Āndhrabhṛtya (Bombay Gazetteer, Thāna, II. 415, note).

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² Pliny says Volturnus, but this must be a slip.

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We may now turn to the detailed account given in the Periplus of the coasting voyage to India, as far as the writer’s personal experience went. Coming down the Red Sea, the first port trading direct with India was Muza, the modern Mocha, which sent its ships straight to Barygaza. Evidently these Arabs were rivals of the Greeks, and preferred to use their own vessels. We then come to Okelis, a roadstead with good water and anchorage. Aden (Arabia Felix) the great emporium (which, in the time of the Ptolemies, when the direct voyage to India was not made, had been almost as busy a port of exchange as Alexandria), had lately been sacked by its trade-rivals, and was now in ruins. The writer attributes its overthrow to “Caesar,” but as Roman arms never penetrated to Aden, it is supposed that we have here a misreading for Eleazar¹ (King of the Frankincense Country) or Charibael².

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¹ Eleazer, *Ili azzu*, king of the Λιβανωτοφόροι, 20–65 A.D. Vincent thinks that a Roman expedition from Egypt, or Annius Plocamus on his way to Ceylon in the reign of Claudius (Pliny, *N.H.* vi. 24) sacked Aden. But the *Periplus* always reads Αὐτοκράτωρ, never Καῖσαρ, for the Roman Emperor (e.g. § 23). Hence the reading must be corrupt.

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² Charibael, *Kariba-Il*, Blessed by God, king of the Homerites and Sabaites, 40–70 A.D.

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Outside the straits, the first port is Kane, where ships took in water and provisions for their long run. From here the course differed. Vessels for South India struck straight out to sea, past Sokotra or Dioscorida (*Sukhādhāra-dvīpa*, the Isle of the Blest³); the rest sailed up the coast of the frankincense country, dark and lowering, with clouds hanging low over the hills. It was desperately unhealthy, and the frankincense was mostly collected by convicts. But its wealth was prodigious. Presently Cape Syagrus (Ras Fārtak) hove in sight, with its headland and fort, and then came the roadstead of Moscha, a port of call for India and a port for the frankincense trade. After this there were no important ports till the traveller came to the Persian Gulf, on which was the port of Ommana. At the mouth of the Euphrates was Apologus, an important harbour, of which, however, our author merely remarks that it imported timber from Barygaza—sandalwood, teak, ebony, and blackwood. The importation of Indian wood was as old as the days of Sennacherib, and it is found in ancient Chaldean and Assyrian temples.

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³ Hence Agatharchides, § 103, translates it as νῆσοι εὐδαίμονες.

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We now come to the most interesting part of the narrative—our author’s notes on the Indian ports which he visited. The first of these is the harbour called by the Greeks Barbarikon, whatever the Indian name may have been¹. It was on the middle mouth of the Indus, and the cargoes were disembarked here and sent in boats to Minnagara, the capital of Sind. This was probably Pātala. It was called Min-nagara (City of the Min or Śaka), as Sind was then in the possession of “Parthian Princes who were always driving one another out.” These were, no doubt, the Indo-Parthians, who had been turned out of the Panjāb by the Kushāns. When our author found them, the dynasty had evidently already relapsed into anarchy. The writer correctly notes that the natives called the Indus Sinthus (Sindhu)². The exports of Sind (which had not yet been eclipsed by the southern ports), were costus (Skt. kuṣṭha, Saussurea lappa) an aromatic plant from Kashmīr used for perfumes; lycium or berberry, a cosmetic fashionable in Rome; nard (citronella), gems, indigo, skins, and lastly silk from China. Silk was destined to become an immensely important article of commerce. The expeditions of the Baktrian monarchs, Demetrius and Menander¹, and of the Kushān kings, had opened out the great trade route which runs from Balkh to the historic “Stone Tower” of Sarikol. Some of the silk also found its way through Nepal to the Ganges and thence to the Malabar coast². Later on, it was taken straight from China to Rome, by the land-route from Sarikol to Balkh, Hekatompylus, Ekbatana, Ktesiphon, Hira, and Charax, and then by sea to Petra, Tyre, and the Levant³. Ptolemy tells us of the Macedonian merchant named Maes or Titianus, whose caravans went through the wild Bolor mountains to the Stone Tower, a frontier fort on a desolate crag. Here the Chinese, whose capital was “a seven months’ journey away,” met them with the silk⁴. Silk was the rage in Rome, and this extravagant habit is the occasion of one of Pliny’s homilies⁵. For a long time the origin of silk was a mystery to the Romans. The yarn was woven at places like Cos. It was popularly supposed to grow on trees, a belief which perhaps arose from travellers’ tales of the cocoons of the silkworms being attached to the mulberry leaves on which they feed. Hence Vergil’s

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¹ The Greeks always corrupted an Indian word to its nearest Greek equivalent. Perhaps in this case it was something like Bahārdipur (Schoff, ad loc.); see p. 119, note.

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² § 40.

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¹ Strabo, XI. II. I.

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² Periplus, § 64.

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³ Hirth, China and the Roman Orient (Shanghai, 1885), passim.

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⁴ Geog. I. 12. 8. The road went through the land of the Kasii. Is this Kashgar?

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⁵ N.H. XXI. 8.

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Velleraque ut foliis depectant tenvia Seres¹.

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¹ Georg. II. 121.

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Aristotle, however, knew a great deal more than this about the matter, though his account was evidently disbelieved². The Chinese jealously guarded their secret till the days of Justinian, when two adventurous monks smuggled silkworms’ eggs to Constantinople in a hollow cane.

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² Hist. An. v. 19. 11.

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Passing the treacherous Ran of Kacch, our traveller next put in at the ancient harbour of Barygaza (perhaps Bhrighu-Kaccha), the most famous of the Indian ports trading with the West, until it was eclipsed, after 47 A.D., by its southern rivals. It is the modern Broach. It lay on the river Narmadā, and was difficult of access on account of shoals, and the extraordinary ebb and flow of the tide. At one moment the tide would flow right out, leaving vessels stranded; at the next, it returned with a roar “like an advancing army,” and woe to the luckless vessel caught unprepared³. These intimate touches make us feel that the Periplus is a narrative of actual experiences. At Broach the writer found the coins of Menander and Apollodotus still in circulation. Specie was also imported, native Indian coinage being, as usual, scarce and bad. Our author was no scholar, and he gravely accepted the story that the remains of great shrines, forts, and wells in the Broach district were relics of Alexander’s invasion. He also says that Alexander “penetrated to the Ganges¹.” The fertile coast-country between Broach and the Indus, the writer calls Syrastrene, obviously Surāṣṭra, the name still surviving in Surat. The trade, export and import, of the district, was immense². The exports included the various Indian condiments and spices, muslins, and stones: the imports, specie, unguents, singing boys, and “choice girls for the Royal harem.” These, doubtless, were the Yavanīs of the king’s bodyguard, already referred to. The capital of the district was a second “Minnagara,” or Śaka city, probably Madhyamikā, but which of the numerous Śaka dynasties was reigning there at the time, it is impossible to say. The old capital had been the historic city of Ozene or Ujjain, the chief town of Mālwa, and the seat of the Viceroy of Western India in the days of the Mauryas. It was now temporarily abandoned. A few years later, it became again the capital under the Śaka satrap Chastana, the Tiastanes of Ptolemy. Ships from the Red Sea began to arrive about July, as soon as the south-west monsoon had set in, and they were met by Government pilot-boats, and moored in regular basins, where the bore of the Narmadā was least dangerous. In this statement we have a further piece of evidence of the advanced state of Indian shipping¹. The monarch reigning in Gujarat (Ariake) was Mambarus, who may be Nahapāna², the Kshaharāta chieftain who succeeded Bhūmaka³. Nahapāna was afterwards conquered by the Āndhra monarch Vilivāyakura II⁴. His head-quarters may have been at Nāsik, close to which town a large hoard of his coins has recently come to light. They bear an inscription in barbarous Greek characters, and a head obviously imitated from Baktrian or Roman types. Evidently Nahapāna’s trade brought him in considerable wealth, and brought him into contact with Graeco-Roman influence.

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³ § 45.

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¹ Is the true reading *Menander* for Alexander in these two passages?

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² A detailed list is given in §§ 48-50.

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¹ Regulations for harbour-masters and pilots are laid down in the Kauṭilīya Artha Śāstra. See App. to Ch. III.

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² Wilson in J.R.A.S. Bengal, June, 1904.

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³ Rapson in J.R.A.S. 1904, p. 371.

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⁴ V. Smith dates this at 126 A.D. but this is inconsistent with the accepted date of the Periplus.

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Our traveller now⁵ goes on to describe the Deccan, the seat of the great Āndhra kingdom. Deccan (*Dakkhinābada*⁶) he correctly derives from δάχανος, south. Beyond the Ghauts, the land is wild and desolate, full of tigers, apes, and huge pythons⁷. The principal ports were Ter (Tāgara), Sopāra, Paithān and Kalyān, these being supplied with goods from the central part of India by the great high road running through Daulatabad to Hyderabad. Kalyān and Sopāra, the chief harbours in the days of “the elder Saraganus” (probably Arishṭa Śātakarṇi), had, since the accession of the weak king Sandanes (Sundara Śātakarṇi), been blockaded by the men-of-war from the rival port of Broach, who towed vessels off to their own harbour and made them unload there! Here we have another interesting side-light on contemporary Indian history.

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⁵ § 52.

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⁶ Skt. Dakshiṇāpatha. Δαχιναβάδης καλεῖται ἡ χώρα· δάχανος γὰρ καλεῖται ὁ νότος τῇ αὐτῶν γλώσσῃ. Here we have another personal touch.

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⁷ This agrees with what Hiuen Tsiang and other travellers tell us, and was still true of the Deccan till quite recent times.

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The remaining ports of the Deccan were:
(i) Mandagora, probably Bankot.
(ii) Palaipatmai, probably Dhābol or Pāripatana.
(iii) Melizigara, probably Jaigaḍ.
(iv) Byzantium, probably Vizādrog¹.
(v) Togarum, probably Devgaḍ.
(vi) Auranoboas or Tyrannoboas, probably Aran-yavāha or Mālvan.

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¹ This was *not* a Byzantine colony! The Greeks always transliterated a Hindu name so as to be as like as possible to some well-known Greek word. We do the same, *e.g.* Hobson-Jobson and many other ludicrous instances. The Apollo Bunder at Bombay is the *Pālvā Bandar*, for instance.

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Also the following islands:
(i) Sesikrienae, probably Vengurla.
(ii) Aegidii, probably Angidīva or Goa.
(iii) Kaenitae, probably Kārwāḍ.

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After this, the traveller arrived at the Tamil country, Damirike¹. The chief ports mentioned are Muziris, in the country of Kerobothra or Keralaputra, the Western Tamil kingdom, and Nelkynda, in the kingdom of Pāṇḍya (Pandion) or Madurā. Muziris, as we have already seen, was shunned by travellers on account of bad anchorage and the pirates. It is almost certainly Muyiri-kotta, the modern Cranganore². Nelkynda (Nil-kantha, perhaps) was somewhere in the Cochin backwaters. At the mouth of the backwaters stood Barake, the port mentioned by Pliny. Nelkynda became about this time the most important of the Indian ports. This was partly due to the blockade of the Northern Deccan coast by the ships of Broach. The chief reason, however, is to be sought in the pepper-trade, for which, after the epoch-making discovery of Hippalus, it became the chief port. After this, it completely eclipsed even Broach³. The exports of Nelkynda were most multifarious. Pepper and other condiments, drugs like spikenard and malobathrum, jewels like beryls, pearls, diamonds and sapphires, ivory and silk from Bengal, and tortoise-shell from the Golden Chersonese, were the chief. As we have already noticed, the enormous extent of the trade with Southern India in the first century A.D. is evidenced by the great numbers of Roman coins found there. There seems little doubt that eventually regular colonies of Roman traders sprang up in the Madras Presidency. The Peutinger Tables represent a temple of Augustus at Muziris. There was a "Yavana" colony at the mouth of the Kāviri river. Ptolemy tells of meeting people who had resided in the Madurā district "for a long time¹," and the great numbers of copper coins of little value found there point in the same direction. Roman soldiers, like the Vikings and the Swiss in later days, enlisted in the service of foreign kings, and "dumb Mlecchas," or "powerful Yavanas" in complete armour attending native princes are often mentioned in Tamil literature². Further than Nelkynda, our traveller evidently did not go. Like the great majority of Indian merchants of his time, he made the coasting voyage up the Arabian shores, to the head of the Persian Gulf, along the Mekrān to the mouth of the Indus, and then down the Indian coast to Cochin. His account is a reminiscence of personal experiences on this run. At Nelkynda, no doubt, he discharged his cargoes, loaded his holds with pepper, cinnamon, silks, muslins, and perhaps with a box or two of pearls, sapphires, and tortoise-shell, and waiting for the north-east winds of December, spread his sails for the long voyage back to the mouth of the Red Sea. But before he left Nelkynda, he gathered, no doubt from other sea-captains at anchor within the backwaters, many valuable facts about the east coast of India as far as the mouth of the Ganges, and these he has briefly recorded. Proceeding on his voyage, the traveller comes to cape Kumārī, where dwells a goddess (Kumārī or Devī), and where, we are told, is a shrine and monastery, where men and women dedicate themselves to a life of chastity in her honour, and perform ablutions. This is still true of the pilgrims who visit this holy spot. After this comes the Coast Land, the Chola Maṇḍalam or Chola-coast, the modern Coromandel. Its ports were Kamara, the Khaberis emporium of Ptolemy, at the mouth of the Kaveri; Poduca, i.e. Pudu-cheri or Pondicherry; and Soptama—Su-paṭana, the "fair city" of Madras. Here there was a flourishing trade in pearls and muslins, and ships from Bengal frequently put in. Travellers, were struck by the sangāra¹, or catamarans, large vessels made of logs, and the sea-going kolandia. To the Coromandel coast, says our author, went a very large proportion of the exports from Rome.

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¹ This is surely the correct reading. MSS. Limirike, which is meaningless.

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² Not Mangalore, as formerly held.

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³ It is mentioned by Pliny, Ptolemy, the author of the Geography of Ravenna, and in the Peutinger Tables.

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¹ ἐντεῦθεν εἰσπλευσάντων καὶ χρόνον πλεῖστον ἐπελθόντων. Geog. Prol. I. 17.

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² Mukerji, *Indian Shipping*, p. 128 ff. collects the evidence for this. See also Sewell, *Roman Coins found in India* (J.R.A.S. 1904, p. 391). Pillay, *The Tamils eighteen hundred years ago*, Ch. III; Vincent Smith, *Early History of India* (1907), p. 400.

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¹ Caldwell says this is the Malayalam jangāla.

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Of the neighbouring island of Ceylon he knows very little, but like all the writers of his time, he thinks it a vast island projecting far into the ocean. Then comes Masalia, the Masulipatam district, with a great trade in muslins, and Dosarene, the Darśana or holy land of Orissa, with its trade in ivory. After this, our writer becomes very vague. Further on lies the Ganges, with a port at its mouth (probably Tāmralipti) whence come the Benares muslins, Chinese silk, and malobathrum. A most interesting description of the Mongolian hillmen who collect the malobathrum on the Chinese border concludes the *Periplus*. "Every year, on the borders of This (China), assembles a tribe of men with stunted bodies and broad, flat faces. They are timid and peaceful, and almost wild. They are called Besatae (*vishāda*, dullness, stupidity¹). They come with their families bearing baskets of what appear to be thin grape-leaves. They meet in a place halfway between their own land and China, and hold a fair, spreading out the baskets and using them as mats. After this they return to their own land. Then the natives who are on the watch take these mats and pick out the leaves, which they call 'petri' (*patra*, leaves). They then press them into layers and fasten them with fibres taken from the mats. These they make into balls of three sizes whence come the three grades of malobathrum to be had in India.” Here we have a description of the “silent barter” carried on by many shy, wild tribes all over the world, and still practised by the Veddas of Ceylon. The goods to be bought are left in a clearing, and the purchaser takes them, replacing them by their equivalent in value. Pliny says Sinhalese merchants went to this mart¹, and Kosmas Indikopleustes saw a similar system employed in Ethiopia.

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¹ So Lassen, *Ind. Alt.* III. 8, but Lassen's imaginary adjective *vaishada*, dull, does not exist. See p. 147.

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¹ N.H. VI. 22, 24. Kennedy denies this and reads Cheras for Seres, J.R.A.S. 1904, p. 359. Other references to the silent trade are Herod. IV. 196 (Libya); Ammianus Marcellinus, XXIII. 6. 68 (Seres); Pomponius Mela, III. 8. 60 (Himālayan tribes).

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SOME NOTES ON INDIAN DRUGS AND PERFUMES

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Indian drugs and perfumes were known indirectly in Europe at a very early date. The first extensive account of them is given in Theophrastus’ History of Plants. But Pliny’s account is much fuller, and there are many valuable remarks on this important trade in the Periplus. The following notes deal with some of the principal plants.

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Costus. Skt. kuṣṭha, modern kut-lākṛī, called also uplet in Karachi, and puchuk in the Far East. It is the root of the Saussurea lappa (hence the Roman name Radix), and grows in the Himālayas. It was exported from Barygaza and Barbarikon, and fetched five denarii a pound in Rome, where it was used for making perfumes and for cooking. It is still exported from Kashmīr (where it is a state monopoly), via Karachi and Bombay, to China and Japan, where it is apparently used as incense. About 2000 cwt., valued at about Rs 40,000, are exported annually. Hamilton (New Account, I. 128), writing about 1720, says, “There are great quantities exported from Surat and thence to China, where it bears a good price. For being all idolaters and burning incense before their images, this root beaten into fine powder . . . will burn a long time like a match, sending forth a fine smoke whose smell is very grateful.”

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*Lycium*. Exported from Barygaza and Barbarikon, was the bark and fruit of several species of Himālayan berberry, used for preparing an astringent medicine, and for a cosmetic (Pliny, xxiv. 72).

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*Malabathrum, Cassia*. Both these were the products of the cinnamon tree, a kind of laurel, several varieties of which were used in ancient trade. The true home of the cinnamon plant was, of course, the cinnamon country of the Somali coast, and the adjacent parts of Arabia Felix. Pure cinnamon fetched 1500 denarii per pound. This was the stems and bark of the tree, and was used for making unguents, for incense, and for a condiment. Malabathrum, on the other hand, consisted of the leaves of a cinnamon plant (perhaps *C. tamala*), used for the manufacture of a famous unguent, known chiefly from the reference in Horace (ii. 7. 89), and came from the Himālayas.

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Curiously enough, Ceylon cinnamon, so famous in Dutch days, was not known to the ancients. It is impossible, in this limited space to give details of the cinnamon trade, which has continued from Egyptian and Jewish times down to the present day.

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*Frankincense*. True frankincense, the product of five species of the genus *Boswellia*, comes from the Hadhramaut country, and is imported to India and China, the port of export being Dafār (sometimes supposed to be the Sapphara Metropolis of Ptolemy). Its Arabian origin is indicated by its name *olibanum* (al-luban). There are, however, several gums used in India instead of incense. Among these, *bdellium* (Pliny, xii. 19) was one of the commonest. It is a gum resembling myrrh, and the product of several species of the *Balsamodendron*. It grows chiefly on the slopes of the Hindu Kush, and was exported from Barbarikon and Barygaza. It was worth three denarii a pound. Storax, or Benzoin, the gum of trees of the genus Styracaceae, is the modern Indian ud or incense. It was apparently not common in India, being one of the imports mentioned in the Periplus. Myrrh was the gum of another tree of the genus Balsamodendron. Its Sanskrit name is vola, whence the modern Indian bol. Pliny, XII. 35, gives a long account of the collection of the gum (stactē). The best sort fetched 40 denarii per pound. Some of the Acacias produce fragrant gums, used for the adulteration of incense, and employed for similar purposes.

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Spikenard. This was the stem and leaves of the Nardostachys Jatamansi, a plant of the Valerian class found in the Himālayas. It was used for making the famous "ointment of spikenard" which is chiefly known to English readers from the episode in St Mark XIV. 3. It fetched from 40 to 75 denarii a pound. It was exported from Barygaza, from the Malabar coast (whence it arrived from the mouth of the Ganges), and from Bengal. It must not be confused with nard, which was apparently an essential oil extracted from the citronella or ginger-grass, found in Baluchistān and exported from Barbarikon. See Pliny, XII. 26 ff.

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(For further details, see Watt's Commercial Products of India, articles under the various headings in the Encyclopedia Britannica, the numerous scattered notes of great value in Yule's Marco Polo (3rd edition, Murray, 1903), and in the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency. See also Sir George Birdwood's articles in the Transactions of the Linnaean Society, vols. XXVII-XXVIII, and Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, June 1914, Gustav Oppert's Trade with Ancient India, Madras, 1879, and U. C. Dutt's Materia Medica of the Hindus, revised by K. A. Sen, Calcutta 1901.)

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