Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c11.23

c11.23

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.