Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c12.70

c12.70

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.