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Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c12: Chapter VII

Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c12

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Chapter VII

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Trade between India and Rome continued to thrive steadily during the second and third centuries A.D. There was a temporary lull in the demand for luxuries after the extraordinary outburst of extravagance which culminated in the reign of Nero, but this did not have a very serious effect upon commerce. Roman Emperors took an increasing interest in Eastern questions, and, as we may see from the writers of the time, the bounds of geographical knowledge were slowly but surely extended. Trajan¹ during his Parthian expedition, travelled to the mouth of the Euphrates and watched the ships spreading their sails for India. He is said to have dreamed of making an expedition to the country himself. He pushed the Roman frontier to within six hundred miles of Indian territory. He entertained an Indian embassy regally, giving its members senators' seats at the theatre². In the reign of Marcus Aurelius, Avidius Cassius fought another successful campaign against Parthia and took the winter capital of Ktesiphon.

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¹ Dion Cassius, LXVII. 28.

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² Ibid. IX. 58.

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In spite of temporary set-backs caused by these wars, the land-borne trade between Europe and the East flourished exceedingly. We have already mentioned that it consisted chiefly of Chinese silk, but Indian goods found their way, wholly or partly, by these routes to Europe in considerable quantities as well¹. Great cities sprang up, created by this traffic. One of the chief roads—the one which ran from the Parthian capital at Hekatompylus—passed through Ekbatana and Ktesiphon. At Ktesiphon it branched off in several directions, the main track running through Mesopotamia, crossing the Tigris by the famous flying bridge between Zeugma and Apamea, and ending at the port of Antioch². Another important branch of the road ran to Palmyra, and then to Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, and Sidon, and joined the network of highways which converged at Petra³. The great city of Petra played a very large part in Eastern trade, more, however, Arabic than Indian. Most of the Indian goods which came up the Red Sea naturally found their way to Alexandria, but some were unshipped at Leuke Kome for Petra¹. These no doubt included silks and other stuffs which went to Tyre to be re-dyed. Gaza and Rhinokolura (the latter originally an Ethiopian convict settlement), were both convenient ports from Petra for the Mediterranean. Petra was a lovely spot, built in an oasis, with springs and gardens, and a large cosmopolitan population. It was visited by Strabo’s friend Athenodorus, and its noble ruins are still an object of admiration. It owed its great prosperity to the caravans from the mouth of the Euphrates, and from the spice, incense, and gold lands of Arabia Felix which converged in its bazaars. It was reduced, however, by Trajan in 105 A.D. for helping the Parthians, when Palmyra took its place as the great *entrepôt* of the Oriental land-trade, till she, too, fell before the Roman arms in 273 A.D. after a career of unexampled splendour and prosperity.

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¹ The chief passages referring to the overland route are: Pliny, *N.H.* VI. 17; Strabo, XI. 7. 3; *ibid.* XII. 2. 17; *ibid.* XIV. 2. 29; *ibid.* XVI. 2. 3 and the Σταθμοὶ Παρθικοί of Isidore of Charax.

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² Zeugma transitu Euphratis nobile. Ex adverso Apameam Seleukus, idem utriusque conditor, ponte iunxerat. Pliny, *N.H.* V. 24. See also Bunbury, *Hist. Anc. Geog.* §§ 17-20.

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³ Huc convenit utrumque bivium, eorum qui Syria Palmyram petiere et eorum qui a Gaza venerunt. Pliny, *N.H.* VI. 28. 144.

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¹ Strabo, XVI. 4. 24.

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Meanwhile, the sea-borne trade with the far East was also progressing. The Parthian war of 162–165 A.D. and the terrible outbreak of plague at Babylon, had caused something like a panic in the silk traffic, and, a mercantile mission, pretending to come from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, but really no doubt sent by the rich merchants of Antioch or Alexandria, reached the court of the Chinese monarch Huan-ti in October, 166 A.D. They represented to the king that their master had always desired to send embassies to China, but the Parthians had wished to carry on the trade in Chinese silks, and for this reason they had been cut off from direct communication. They therefore represented themselves as having been sent by Antun king of Ta-tsin (Antonius King of Syria), who offered ivory, rhinoceros horns, and tortoise-shell from the frontier of Annam. They brought no jewels, says the Chinese annalist, a fact which makes him suspect their story. However, from that date, he continues, direct intercourse between China and the West by sea began. No doubt the merchandise went from Annam to Nelkynda and was there shipped to Alexandria and Antioch¹.

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¹ I follow Hirth, *China and the Roman Orient*, text p. 42, and commentary, pp. 173-8. See also Reinaud, *Relations de l'Empire Romain avec l'Asie Oriental*, p. 184; Priaulx, *Indian Embassies to Rome* (J.R.A.S. xix. 294) and Yule's *Cathay and the Way Thither*.

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Ptolemy, the great Alexandrian geographer, writing about this time, chiefly from information collected by Marinus of Tyre, exhibits a much fuller knowledge of the Asiatic coast than his predecessors, from which we may infer that the mission to the Chinese court was only part of a general pushing forward of Roman trade with the Far East. The author of the *Periplus* knew little or nothing of the coast beyond the mouth of the Ganges. Ptolemy goes a great deal further, though, possibly because he had to depend upon the reports of illiterate seamen, his statements are often very confused and vague. He mixes up Java and Sumatra; he says nothing of the Straits of Malacca, and he thinks that the Chinese coast, instead of trending northward, bends southward to meet the shores of Africa!

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Before we find fault with a system which led to such extraordinary results, we should remember the difficulties with which Ptolemy had to contend. He was dependent for his information upon ignorant sailors, who often misspelt hopelessly the very names of the ports at which they touched. He had only their word for the direction in which they sailed from port to port, and this was often entirely wrong; and for distance, as he himself confesses, he had to be content with calculating from the average run of a ship per day, with deductions to allow for irregularities of the coast, and other disturbing factors. The result of attempting to plot a map upon such data may be seen from the charts of Ptolemy. It led to the strangest contortions of the coast of India itself. Ptolemy seems to be quite unaware of the southward trend of the great peninsula; he thinks that Barygaza is very little to the north of Cape Kory, while Palura is actually to the south of it! In fact he pictures the coast of India, and of the country beyond, as running from west to east in a more or less continuous line, only broken by the Gangetic Gulf or Bay of Bengal. From Cape Kory to the Ganges, we have a series of towns, of which the most interesting is perhaps one, not named, which lies between Maesolia and Palura. Maesolia, the Masalia of the *Periplus*, is probably the Masulipatam district, and Palura, at the beginning of the Gangetic Gulf, lies a little further to the north¹. From this place ships set out on the voyage to the Far East². Crossing the Bay of Bengal, they arrived at Sada in the Silver Country³, and from Sada to Temala or Tamala near Cape Negrais. From here to a port called Zaba⁴, was a voyage of twenty days; and from Zaba about the same distance to Kattigara. On this part of the voyage, however, Ptolemy admits himself to be very doubtful. His information is taken from Marinus, who in turn derived his from a trader named Alexander. Alexander's expression "some days," says Ptolemy, may mean anything,—few or many.

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¹ Colonel Yule puts it as far north as the Ganjām river.

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² ἀφετήριον τῶν εἰς Χρυσῆν πλεόντων.

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³ VII. 2. 3. I. 13. 7.

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⁴ VII. 2. 6. It was at the head of the Gulf of Siam (the Great Gulf). Yule identifies it with Champā, and looks for it on the west coast of Camboja and probably near the Kampot or Kang-Kao river. (*Ind. Ant.* VI. 228.)

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Proceeding up the coast of India from Palura, Ptolemy arrives at the mouth of the Ganges. He is the first Western writer to mention the great Ganges delta. Even the writer of the Periplus says nothing of this, and Strabo and all earlier writers are silent upon the point, if we except Vergil's doubtful reference to the "seven calm streams" of that river¹. Ptolemy assigns to the Ganges five mouths². From the Ganges he goes on to Trans-Gangetic India³. First we arrive at the land of the Airrhadii, *i.e.* Further India from the Ganges to the Tokosanna or Arakan river; then we come to the Silver Country, Arakan and Pegu; then to Besynga or Bassein; and finally to the Golden Chersonese, the Malay Peninsula. The name is a translation of the Sanskrit *Suvarṇabhūmi*, applied to the Irrawady delta, the Burmese documents similarly styling their frontier as the Sonaparānta (Aurea Regio)⁴. After this, we arrive at the Great Cape (Cape Camboja) and the Great Gulf or Gulf of Siam. At the western end of this gulf lay Zabæ or Zaba, the port already mentioned for travellers sailing for Kattigara⁵.

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¹ *Aen.* IX. 30-31.

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² VII. I. 18.

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³ VII. 2. 2.

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⁴ *Suvarṇabhūmi*, as we have already seen (Ch. II), was known to merchants in the *Jātaka* days.

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⁵ VII. 2. 6.

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The inhabitants of Burma-Siam are described as being "fair, shaggy, squat-figured and flat-nosed,"—a very good description on the whole. It is clear, from the frequent mention of marts, river-mouths and the like, that Ptolemy gets his information from traders who have been up and down the coast. Even more interesting is the evidence that these traders penetrated beyond the Sunda Straits into the Eastern Seas. Ptolemy had a good deal to say about the Malay Archipelago. Among the "Islands of Transgangetic India," he mentions Sindae, inhabited by cannibals; the Isle of Good Luck ('Αγαθοῦ δαίμονος); the Sabadeibae and Barusae Isles, also inhabited by cannibals; the island of Iabadius, or Isle of Barley, very fertile, producing much gold and having as its capital Argyre, or Silver Town, at its western extremity; the Isle of the Satyrs, where the inhabitants have tails; and the magnetic rocks of the Maniolae, which attract ships, unless they are built with wooden pegs instead of nails. Of these islands, Sindae¹, the Isle of Good Luck, and the Sabadeibae Isles, have been located off the coast of Sumatra; the Barusae Islands are probably the Nicobars; while the Isle of Satyrs no doubt took its name from the apes which the mariners saw on it. The story of the fabulous rocks of Maniolae, which attracted ships, is familiar to readers of the Arabian Nights. Far more important, however, is the reference to the island of Iabadius, or *Java dvīpa*. The mention of this important island shews a very great advance in Western knowledge of the Far East. That there is no doubt about the identification, is shewn by the fact that Ptolemy knows that the word signifies in Sanskrit the “Isle of Barley¹.” It is characteristic, however, of the vague and inaccurate information supplied by his illiterate informers, that Ptolemy confuses Java with the neighbouring island of Sumatra. The description given is obviously of Sumatra and not of Java at all. Sumatra, not Java, is rich in gold, and Argyre, the capital on the western extremity of the island, is in all probability Achin². Java became later an important Hindu colony, as its great ruins testify; both it and Cambodia became the seats of important bodies of settlers, perhaps partly owing to the extension of the China trade. Java, if we may judge from the narrative of Fa Hian, was an entrepôt for traffic with the Far East, like the Arabian ports in the West; and the island was visited again by Ibn Batuta in the fourteenth century. After rounding the coast of Indo-China, Ptolemy’s account becomes more and more vague. He thinks that the coast-line, instead of bearing away to the north, turns southwards, finally connecting Asia and Africa, and enclosing the Indian Ocean so as to form, like the Mediterranean Sea, a huge landlocked expanse of water. After crossing the Gulf of Beasts (the Gulf of Tongking), we come to Kattigara, the last port in the known expanse of the ancient world, and here Ptolemy’s account ends. Kattigara is probably Kian-chi in Tongking, for we learn from the Chinese annalist who tells us of the Roman embassy to China that the Romans (Ta-tsin) came there in great numbers to trade. Inland lay the great " Metropolis of China¹," which had not, says Ptolemy, the brazen walls or other fabulous attributes usually assigned to it. It was probably Nankin. It had already been vaguely known to the Western world as a vast city exporting silk to Barygaza and the Ganges².

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¹ Lassen, *Ind. Alt.* III. 250, sees in this name a reference to Indian traders (*Sindhu*). Yule thinks that the name survives in Sundar Fulât. Sabadeibae is *Saba-dvīpa*.

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¹ Sanskrit yava, ‘barley.’

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² Bunbury, II. 643; Yule, Marco Polo, II. 266, note.

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¹ The Sinae were the people of south-eastern China, known chiefly by trade from the sea and with Eastern India. The Seres or Silk-people lay to the west and north of the Sinae, and came in contact with the west by trade over the Pamirs.

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² Ptolemy, Geog. VII. 3. 6; Periplus, § 64.

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This concludes Ptolemy’s account of the geography of India. He is, unfortunately, of little use for our purpose, for his great work is mathematical, not descriptive, and throws little or no light upon the condition of India in his day. "His object," says McCrindle, "in composing it, was not, like that of the ordinary geographer, to describe places, but to correct and reform the map of the world in accordance with the increased knowledge which had been acquired of distant countries and with the improved state of science. He therefore limits his treatise to an exposition of the geometrical principles on which geography should be based and to a determination of the position of places on the surface of the earth by their latitude and longitude.” “It differs from Strabo’s production,” he adds, “as the skeleton does from the living body.”

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With Ptolemy we come to an end of the series of eminent geographers who have treated in detail the subject of India. The last Greek writer to deal with the subject of Indian travel is the monk Kosmas Indikopleustes, nearly five centuries later, who wrote when the mists of the Middle Ages were fast settling down upon the ancient world. The gap is, however, filled in, in a most interesting fashion, by a series of incidental notices appearing in philosophical and religious writers, Christian and pagan, of the time, who often exhibit an unexpectedly intimate knowledge of Indian philosophy, religion, and social observances. It is instructive, moreover, to observe the steady growth of knowledge about India which these writers exhibit, and to contrast them with Strabo, who knows little more than what he has learnt from Megasthenes, over two centuries before him. This intimacy was probably due both to the frequency with which Alexandrian and Syrian traders visited India, and also to the presence of Indians in Alexandria¹.

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¹ The first Alexandrian to visit India was Skythianus a contemporary of the Apostles (*J.R.A.S.* xx. 267). Ptolemy and Dion Cassius mention Indians in Alexandria (*As. Res.* iii. 53). So does St Chrysostom, *Or.* xxxii. 373. The first Indian mention of Alexandria is in the *Gārgī Saṃhitā* (*Yavana-pura*).

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As we have already seen, there were probably Roman colonies in Southern India, whose inhabitants, settling in the country for a considerable time, acquired a greater intimacy with Indian customs than had been possible before. The Manicheans owed many of their curious tenets to the Indian lore acquired in his Eastern travels by Terebinthus¹, and the Gnostic heresy shews similar traces of Eastern influence. The debt of Neo-platonism to Oriental sources is indisputable, and when we observe the extent of the knowledge about Eastern beliefs exhibited, not only by Origen, but by orthodox writers like Clement and St Jerome, we cannot help wondering whether Christianity does not owe some of its developments,—monasticism and relic-worship, for instance,—to Buddhist influence. But this subject will be dealt with in a subsequent chapter.

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¹ One tradition says to Skythianus, the Alexandrian mentioned above. Terebinthus was his disciple.

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It should be remembered that from this time to the days of the great migration to Java, Indian shipping itself developed considerably. Mention has been already made of the ships, of considerable size, employed from the earliest times by Indian merchants. It was in the days of Eudoxus that the first Indian, a shipwrecked sailor, rescued by chance from a watery grave, reached Alexandria. The subsequent expansion in trade is marked by the rules for merchandise, shipping, and port-dues found in the Code of Manu². It was probably some time in the first century A.D. that the first or Eastern invasion of Java, by colonists from Kalinga, took place. Subsequent invasions by large bodies of adventurers from Gujarat and the Western ports, are probably some three or four centuries later¹. The interesting treatise on shipping, the *Yuktikalpataru* of Bhoja Narapati, may belong to this period. In this pamphlet, detailed directions for shipbuilding are given, and ships 176 cubits long, fitted with cabins, are referred to².

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² III. 158 ff.

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¹ The first Hindu colony reached Java from Kalinga about 75 A.D. The first king was Āditya. The earliest inscriptions are in Vengi (i.e. Kalinga) dialect, and *Kling* is the Javanese for India. The immigrants from Gujarat were Buddhists.

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² Mukerji, *Indian Shipping*, Ch. I. Rajendralāl Mitra, *Not. Skt. MSS.* I. 271.

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One of the most curious relics of the trade between Egypt and India was unearthed recently at Oxyrhynchus³. It is a papyrus of a Greek farce of the second century A.D. and contains the story of a Greek lady named Charition who has been shipwrecked on the Kanarese coast. The locality is identified by the fact that the king of the country addresses his retinue as ’Ινδῶν πρόμοι, and also by the discovery of the learned Dr Hultzsch⁴, that the barbarous jargon in which they address one another is actually Kanarese! The identification of the dialect is made possible by one of the characters, who interprets some of the words into Greek¹.

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³ *Oxyrhynchus Papyri*, Grenfell and Hunt, 1903, No. 413, p. 41 ff.

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⁴ *Hermes*, xxxix. p. 307. In the same way a Carthaginian in the *Mercator* of Plautus speaks Punic.

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¹ Thus he interprets κόττως as πιεῖν δός. The Kanarese for this is koḍisu. And so forth.

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Of other writers who refer to India, the earliest is Dio Chrysostom, who lived in the reign of Trajan and died in or after 117 A.D.² He mentions Indians among the cosmopolitan crowds to be found in the bazaars of Alexandria, and he says that they came "by way of trade." They made various assertions about their country, he adds, but they were not men of a very reputable class³. Chrysostom’s information about India, however, is not very accurate or striking. He makes the misleading statement that the poetry of Homer, the woes of Andromache and Priam, and the death of Hector and Achilles, had been translated into the Indian language and modes of expression⁴. Chrysostom has led many people to imagine that Greek dramas were actually performed and understood in India, but this can never have been the case. Probably he was led astray by the accidental resemblances between certain Indian and Greek stories. The plot of the Iliad,—the rape of Helen,—for instance, bears a distant likeness to the rape of Sītā in the Rāmāyaṇa. His assertion is repeated by Aelian¹.

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² For the literature of the subject, see especially Priaulx, Indian Travellers, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, and Indian Embassies to Rome (J.R.A.S. xix. p. 294).

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³ Or. xxxii. 373, ed. Morell.

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⁴ Or. liii. 544, ed. Morell.

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¹ V.H. XII. 48. Also by Plutarch, Vit. Alex.

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Much more accurate is the knowledge possessed by the Christian writer Clement of Alexandria, who died about 220 A.D. Clement derived much of his information from his tutor Pantaenus, one of the earliest Christian missionaries to visit India². Clement starts by telling us that the Brahmin sect take no wine and abstain from flesh. The latter was a doctrine which found much favour with Neo-platonists (as we see from Porphyry’s Περὶ ἀποχῆς τῶν ἐμψύχων). He goes on to add that they worship Pan and Herakles, —probably Brahmā, the “All-God,” and Śiva,— and abstain from women. But the most important of his statements are that the Brahmins despise death and set no value on life, because they believe in transmigration (παλιγγενεσία); and that the Σεμνοί (Śramaṇa or Buddhists) worship a kind of pyramid beneath which they imagine that the bones of a divinity of some kind lie buried³. This remarkable allusion to the Buddhist stūpa is the earliest reference in Western literature to a unique feature of Buddhism, and must have been derived from some informant intimately acquainted with the doctrines of Gautama. Clement distinguishes clearly between Buddhist and Brahmin,—Sarmanae and Brachmanae. Earlier writers like Megasthenes confuse them. Archelaus of Carrha (278 A.D.) and St Jerome (340 A.D.) both mention Buddha (Buddas) by name and narrate the tradition of his virgin birth¹. The Buddha story became gradually known in the West, until, by a coincidence hardly to be paralleled in literature, it was narrated, in the eighth century A.D. by John of Damascus as the life of a Christian saint. Under the guise of Saint Josaphat, Gautama the Bodhisattva found his way into the Christian Church, and was included in the Martyrology of Gregory XIII (1582)².

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² Yet he had predecessors, for he found there a Christian church said to have been founded by St Bartholomew, owning a Hebrew text of St Matthew’s Gospel. Eusebius, E.H. V. 10.

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³ Stromat. III. 194, ed. Dindorf.

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¹ The passages are given in McCrindle, *Ancient India*, pp. 184-5. Terebinthus, mentioned above, according to Archelaus, called himself the new Buddha, and said he was born of a virgin and brought up on a mountain by the angels !

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² For *Barlaam and Josaphat* see Max Müller, *Selected Essays*, I. 500. For text, *Loeb Classical Library*, London, 1914, and for the growth of the legend, Jacobs, *Barlaam and Josaphat*, 1896.

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We must now turn our attention to the very interesting work of Bardesanes the Babylonian on the Indian Gymnosophists. This treatise was extensively used by Porphyry, and there can be little doubt that it was through Bardesanes, that Indian philosophy exercised so great an influence on the development of Neo-platonism. Two important passages from the lost work of Bardesanes have been preserved, each shewing a most remarkably intimate knowledge of India on the part of the writer. His informant is stated to have been one Sandanes, Sandales, Dandamis or Damadamis, an Indian who came with an embassy to Syria to welcome the Emperor Elagabalus to the throne in 218 A.D. The first of these passages is to be found in the treatise Περὶ ἀποχῆς τῶν ἐμψύχων already referred to¹. It begins by distinguishing carefully between the Brahmins,—a hereditary priesthood, descended from a common ancestry, and the Sarmanes, or Buddhists, who are drawn from all classes. The Brahmin, he says, is not even subject to the king, and pays no tribute. He lives in the mountains or by the Ganges, as a solitary recluse, and devotes his time to solitary meditation and the service of the gods. The Sarmanes were quite different in their habits. They were drawn from all castes, and when they took their vows, they went to the village magistrate and made a declaration disposing of their goods. The candidate was then shaved, put on the robe of his order, and joined the fraternity. His wife went back to her relatives, and the state took charge of his children. Of life in a Buddhist monastery, the following account of Bardesanes is extremely interesting, and should be compared with that given by Hiuen Tsiang, the Chinese traveller², of life in the great Nālandā monastery four centuries later: “Their houses and temples are founded by the king, and in them are stewards who receive a fixed allowance from the state for the support of the inmates of the monastery, consisting of rice, bread, fruit, and herbs. When the monastery bell rings, all the strangers withdraw, and the monks enter and offer prayer. Prayer over, the bell is again rung, and the attendants give each monk a bowl of food, for two never eat out of the same dish. The bowl contains rice, but if anyone wants a variety of food, vegetables and fruits are added. Dinner is soon over, and the monks return to their several avocations. They are not allowed to marry or possess property. Both they and the Brahmins are held in such high esteem that the king himself will come and ask for their prayers and their counsel in times of emergency and danger.” The writer then goes on to describe the practice of self-immolation, which, though forbidden by Gautama, had become increasingly common among Buddhist ascetics.

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¹ De Abstinentia, IV. 17-18.

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² Life, trans. Beal, III. 111.

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The second passage, preserved for us by Stobaeus¹, is even more striking. After describing a system of Trial by Ordeal in which water was employed, somewhat as mentioned by Hiuen Tsiang, the writer goes on to the following remarkable description of a rock-temple. “The Indian ambassadors told me further that there was a large natural cave in a very high mountain almost in the middle of the country. Herein was a statue ten or twelve cubits high, standing upright, with its hands folded crosswise. And the right half of its face was that of a man, and the left half that of a woman. In like manner the right hand and right foot,—in a word, the whole of the right side,—were male, and the left female, and the spectator was wonderstruck at the combination, when he saw how indissolubly the two dissimilar halves coalesced into a single body. On the right breast was engraved the sun and on the left the moon, and on the arms a host of angels (*devas*), the sky, mountains, rivers and seas, plants and animals, and all the world contains.” After going on to say that this statue had been given by the chief god to his son at the creation of the world, Bardesanes adds that it was made of a very hard substance resembling wood, but proof against rot. Probably this was teak. On the head of the statue sat a god, as if on a throne, and the sweat ran down the statue in the hot season almost to the ground, so that the attendant Brahmins had to cool it with their fans. Then comes another curious passage. “In the depths of the cave, far behind the statue, is a long dark passage, and here, say the Indians, the devotees advance with lighted torches till they come to a door. Out of the door water gushes and forms a pool at the far end of the cave. All who desire to prove themselves must pass through the door. To those who have led a pure life the door opens readily, and they find within a clear, sweet fountain, the source of the pool without. But the wicked strive in vain to push past the door, for it closes fast upon them.”

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¹ Physica, I. 56, ed. Gaisford.

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There is little doubt that we have in this passage a description of one of the great Hindu rock-temples of the Deccan—Elephanta, Ajantā, or Kāṇheri¹. Sandanes, the informant of Bardesanes, probably came from the Deccan. In the *Periplus*², a certain Sandares or Sandanes is mentioned, probably Sundara Śātakarṇi. This Sandanes was therefore probably Sundara, a Śaka from the Deccan too. The androgynous image was no doubt Arddhanārīshvara, Śiva in his double aspect, and the god (or goddess) seated upon his head, the Ganges nestling in his matted locks. From this arose, perhaps, the legend of the “streams of sweat” flowing down the statue. The curious passage about the Door reminds us of a similar test said to be applied to candidates in the cave-temple at the Eleusinian mysteries and refers, no doubt, to some forgotten esoteric rite.

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¹ Burgess (*Elephanta*, p. 20, 1871 edn.) says that Bardesanes is describing the gigantic image at Elephanta which stands in the chapel on the left of the shrine of the Trimurti.

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² *Periplus*, § 52.

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Of other notices of India (passing over the purely fictitious account given by Philostratus of the wanderings of that prince of impostors, Apollonius of Tyana) we may select for mention a little pamphlet of the fifth century on the *Nations* of India, included in the Romance History of Alexander of the Pseudo-Kallisthenes ¹. The writer mentions having visited Southern India. There he was the guest of Moses, bishop of Adule, no doubt a Nestorian prelate. It is interesting to observe this early reference to the Christian Church in Southern India. He was deterred by the great heat from going far inland, but a friend of his, a Theban scholar, had shewn greater courage, and gave the writer some miscellaneous and not very accurate information about what he had seen. He visited Ceylon and was falsely informed that the king of that island was overlord of South India. He was told about the Laccadives, a group of " thousands of islands " (Laksha dvīpa), where the coconut was plentiful, and he observed that pork was never eaten in the East. He learnt that the pepper of Southern India was collected by the Bisadae, stunted men with large heads. These are the Besatae of the Periplus ², a name contemptuously given by the Indians to the aboriginal tribes, derived from vishāda, dullness ³. Of the Brahmins, the writer recounts the usual stories, with no novel or interesting particulars.

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¹ McCrindle, Ancient India, p. 178.

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² § 65.

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³ See p. 123, supra.

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We now come to the last voyage of the ancient world to visit India. Kosmas Indikopleustes, a monk of the sixth century A.D. travelled down the Red Sea, and took ship to India and Ceylon.

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The eleventh book of his *Christian Topography* gives an account of his experiences. His narrative resembles in many respects that of the writer referred to above. Like him, Kosmas found Christianity making good headway in Ceylon and South India. In Ceylon was a “Persian,” *i.e.* Nestorian, Church, with a ritual of its own and a presbyter and deacon appointed in Persia. In the pepper country of Male (Malabar) was another, and a third as far north as Kalyan, with a Persian bishop. Christianity was spreading rapidly in Persia, Baktria, and Turkestan, and even in Sokotra, as Kosmas learnt from travellers, was a bishopric with a large following. In the northern part of India the White Huns already ruled, but the trade ports still prospered¹. Of these Kosmas especially notices Sindu (the Indus² mouth), Orathra (Surāṣṭra), Kalyān, Sibor (Simylla or Chaul), Male (Malabar), Mangaroutha (Mangalore), and the Pepper-country. Next, he says, comes Ceylon, and then China. China did a flourishing trade with India in silk, aloes, cloves and sandalwood, and beyond it, says Kosmas, lies a vast expanse of sea. It is interesting to notice how the knowledge of China had increased since the days of Ptolemy. A century after this, we find Hiuen Tsiang sailing back to China *viâ* Sumatra by a regular route. Ceylon had in the days of Kosmas attained great prosperity. As at the present moment, it was the great *entrepôt* of trade from China, India and the West. "Its position is central," says Kosmas, "and it is a great resort of ships from India, Persia and Ethiopia, and despatches many of its own." Its native name, he continues, is Sieladiba (*Siṃhala dvīpa*, the island of the Sinhalese or Lion people, whence the modern Ceylon), but the Indians call it Tapropane (*Tāmraparṇī*). It had two kings,—probably the Sinhalese king of Anurādhapura, and the Tamil ruler of the north,—and these two monarchs were frequently at war with one another. The Sinhalese monarch possessed a gigantic sapphire¹, "as large as a pine-cone, fire-coloured, and flashing far and wide in the sunshine, a matchless sight." It was placed in a temple which stood on an eminence. This famous jewel was no fiction upon the part of Kosmas. Hiuen Tsiang, a century later, writes of it: "Every night, when the sky is clear, and without clouds, can be seen at a great distance the glittering rays of the gem placed on the top of the *stūpa* of Buddha’s tooth; its appearance is like that of a shining star in the midst of space²." Marco Polo had heard of it, but calls it a ruby.

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¹ Their king was named Gollas.

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² Like the Pseudo-Kallisthenes he identifies the Indus and the Phison of Genesis!

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¹ *Ὑάκινθος*. Perhaps amethyst.

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² Life of Hiuen Tsiang, trans. Beal, IV. 134.

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Kosmas repeats a story, already told by Pliny, of how a Persian and a Roman trader arrived simultaneously at one of the Ceylon ports. They were received in audience by the Sinhalese monarch. The Persian talked volubly of the greatness of his country, but the Roman was silent. Then the king turned to the Roman and said, " Have you nothing to say?" The Roman, for reply, handed him a Roman *aureus* and bade him compare it with the Persian *drachma*. When the king contrasted the finely stamped gold coin of the Roman with the rough silver one of the Sassanian dynasty, he at once recognised the superiority of Rome as a trading nation. In Pliny's version¹, a freedman of Claudius, Annius Plocamus by name, who farmed the Red Sea revenues, was carried out to sea by a gale and landed at Hippuri (Kudremale, in the gulf of Manār). Here he was detained and convinced the Sinhalese, of the greatness of Rome by shewing them the uniformity of weight and workmanship of the coins in his possession. Kosmas includes in his account of the East a description of the animals and plants which he had come across, and he often gives them, very accurately, their Indian names. Amongst the animals enumerated are the rhinoceros, the ox deer, the giraffe, the wild ox, the musk deer, the hog deer, the hippopotamus, and the unicorn (which he truthfully owns he never saw, " but only statues in the royal palace of Ethiopia ”). Among “fishes,” the seal, dolphin, and tortoise. Among plants, the coconut palm, and the pepper plant.

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¹ *N.H.* VI. 22. The narrative seems hardly appropriate to the days of Kosmas when Roman trade was fast dying out, owing to the destruction of the Empire of the West and the rivalry of the Sassanians. It had become a stock story, and was no doubt told in many forms.

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The long night of the Middle Ages was now settling down upon the Western world. The Neo-Sassanian Empire, with its great Persian renaissance, had manned a fleet which was fast sweeping the Roman vessels from Eastern waters. In 364 A.D., the first fatal step in the downfall of Rome had been taken, when the Empire was divided. In 410 came the Goths, and fifty years later the mightiest kingdom the world has ever seen had ceased to be. Yet even then Alaric’s demand for “three thousand pounds of pepper” as part of the ransom of Rome, shewed that Eastern luxuries still found their way in vast quantities to the Imperial city. The Roman coins¹ found in South India tell their own tale. After Septimius Severus (211 A.D.), they dwindle rapidly, though there is a single hoard belonging to the days of Arcadius and Honorius (395 A.D.). No later coins of Western Emperors have been unearthed. Trade with the Eastern Empire, in spite of Persian rivalry, struggled feebly on, and a few scattered specimens of the time of Anastasius (491 A.D.) and Justinus (518 A.D.) are recorded. The latest coin found in Ceylon belongs to the reign of Honorius. The latest recorded Eastern embassy to Constantinople reached that city in 530 A.D.¹

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¹ For this and much other valuable information in this chapter, I am indebted to Mr R. Sewell’s exhaustive article on Roman Coins found in India (J.R.A.S. 1904, p. 591).

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¹ Johannes Malala, 477, *apud* McCrindle, *Ancient India*, p. 212.

Appendix I. Ceylon in the Classics

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Besides the account given of Ceylon by Kosmas Indikopleustes, there are several notices of that island in the classics. Onesikritus, the pilot of Alexander, starts the legend that it was 5000 stadia long,—625 miles. Its actual length is 271½ miles. Strabo, Ptolemy, Pliny, and the writer of the *Periplus* repeat this, and often further exaggerate it. Pliny’s account is the fullest. It was seven days sail, he says, from the country of the Prasii (*i.e.* the Bengal ports), but the coast is treacherous and unsafe in the south-west monsoon. The sailors take birds to guide them to shore when out of sight of land. This, we have seen, is an old Buddhist custom. Pliny then goes on to tell the story of the freedman of Annius Plocamus who was wrecked on the coast, and captivated the Sinhalese king by shewing him Roman coins. The monarch then sent an embassy, headed by one Rachia (*Rājā*) to Claudius. This Rachia said that his father had often gone to trade with the Seres, beyond the Himalayas, where the “silent barter” of malobathrum and other goods went on, as described by the author of the *Periplus*. But as Pliny says that the Seres had “yellow hair and blue eyes,” it has been thought that he means the Cheras, a fair race living in the Mysore district². Pliny says the capital of Ceylon is Palaesimundus (perhaps *Palaisimanta*)³ a large city which may be Anurādhapura. He speaks of a great lake called Megisba, which may be one of the huge tanks, like Tissa Wēwa, of the Sinhalese monarchs. But he supposes it to be 375 miles round! The rest of Pliny’s account of Ceylon is a queer mixture of fact and fancy. The Sinhalese are depicted as an ideal race, living gentle, peaceful lives. The king is elected, and assisted by a council of thirty. The condemned criminal has a right of appeal to the people. All this panegyric, though quite untrue, may have been suggested by the gentle and peaceful nature of the Sinhalese, which, together with the influence of Buddhism, made Ceylon an unusually happy island. (See Emerson Tennant’s *Ceylon* London, 1859, vol. 1.)

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² Kennedy, J.R.A.S. 1904, p. 360 ff.

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³ Also in Ptolemy.

Appendix II. The Roman Emperors

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| Augustus . . . . . | 29 B.C.–14 A.D. |
| Tiberius . . . . . | A.D. 14–37. |
| Caligula . . . . . | A.D. 37–41. |
| Claudius . . . . . | A.D. 41–54. |
| Nero . . . . . | A.D. 54–68. |
| Galba, Otho, Vitellius ..... | A.D. 68–69. |
| Vespasian . . . . . | A.D. 69–79. |
| Titus . . . . . | A.D. 79–81. |
| Domitian . . . . . | A.D. 81–96. |
| Nerva . . . . . | A.D. 96–98. |
| Trajan . . . . . | A.D. 98–117. |
| Hadrian . . . . . | A.D. 117–138. |
| Antoninus Pius . . . . . | A.D. 138–161. |
| Marcus Aurelius . . . . . | A.D. 161–180. |
| Commodus . . . . . | A.D. 180–193. |
| Septimius Severus, etc. ..... | A.D. 193–211. |
| Caracalla . . . . . | A.D. 211–217. |
| Macrinus . . . . . | A.D. 217. |
| Heliogabalus . . . . . | A.D. 218–222. |

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Alexander Severus . . . . . A.D. 222–235. Maximinus } . . . . . A.D. 235–244. The Gordians } Philip . . . . . A.D. 244–249. Decius . . . . . A.D. 249. Gallus, Aemilianus ........... A.D. 249–253. Valerian . . . . . A.D. 253–260. Gallienus . . . . . A.D. 260–268. Claudius . . . . . A.D. 268–270. Aurelian . . . . . A.D. 270–275. Tacitus . . . . . A.D. 275–276. Probus . . . . . A.D. 276–282. Carus . . . . . A.D. 282–283. Carinus, Numerian . . . . . A.D. 283. Diocletian . . . . . A.D. 284–305. Constantius, etc . . . . . A.D. 305–323. Constantine I . . . . . A.D. 323–353. Constantine II . . . . . A.D. 353–361. Julian . . . . . A.D. 361–363. Jovian . . . . . A.D. 363.

Emperors of the East

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Valens ........... A.D. 364–379. Marcian ........... A.D. 450–457. Theodosius I ..... A.D. 379–395. Leo I . . . . . A.D. 457–474. Arcadius ......... A.D. 395–408. Leo II . . . . . A.D. 474. Theodosius II .... A.D. 408–450.

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[Figure: Kuvera. (From an Indo-Greek sculpture) (By permission of the Curator, Lahore Museum)]

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