Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c11.46

c11.46

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.