Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c11.15

c11.15

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.