Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c12.11

c12.11

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!