A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c12.67

c12.67

The large quantities of gold and silver coins struck by all the Roman emperors down to Nero (A.D. 54-68) found in the interior of the Tamil land testify to the extent of the trade, the presence of Roman settlers in the Tamil country, and the periods of the rise, zenith and decay of this active commerce. Its beginnings may be traced to the reign of Augustus if not to an earlier time, as a phenomenally large number bearing his stamp (and that of Tiberius) have been found. In that reign, despite ‘embassies’ from the Pāndya ruler, this commerce was by no means extensive or economically important. Soon, however, it assumed new and unexpected proportions and ceased to be a mere trade in luxuries. After the death of Nero, the traffic was not so much confined to the Tamil land as before but spread more evenly along the Indian coasts, and was conducted by barter rather than with money—the emperors subsequent to Nero not being so well represented in the coin finds. Towards the end of the second century A.D. the direct trade between the Egyptian Greeks of the Roman empire and India declined, the traffic passing into the hands of the Arabians and, still more, the Auxumites of East Africa. A new era commenced with the rise of Constantinople in the fourth century A.D. Roman coins reappeared in South India, and embassies were received by Constantine from the people of the Maldives and Ceylon among others. Ceylon was becoming important in the trade of the Indian ocean at this time. But the activities of the Byzantine period bear no comparison with those of the earlier age which had drained the Roman empire of much of its treasure and evoked protests from the financiers of the empire as well as its moralists. The trade of the early Roman empire had wide ramifications and was bound up with much exploration and colonization on the part of Graeco-Romans and Indians. Says Schoff: ‘The numerous migrations from India into Indo-China, both before and after the Christian era, give ample ground for the belief that the ports of South India and Ceylon were in truth, as the Periplus states, the centre of an active trade with the Far East, employing larger ships, and in greater number, than those coming from Egypt.’ We shall see that when, after a long eclipse, the power of the Chola kings revived in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the seafaring instincts of the people had not deserted them and that, in the favourable conditions then obtaining, they attempted tasks more venturesome than anything they had achieved in the earlier age.