Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c11.2

Language: English

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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.