The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c7.s7.56

v1.c7.s7.56

The ports of the Deccan and of Ceylon were the principal places whence the Romans obtained most of their jewels and other articles of luxury. In the beginning the Egyptians and the Arabs acted as middlemen and conveyed these goods to Roman merchants and distributors. According to the *Periplus* the Arabs carried on trade ‘with Barygaza, sending their own ships there’.⁵ The Romans did not consider any price too high when they desired to satisfy their fancy for jewels, silk, and aromatics. After the conquest of Egypt in 30 B.C. by Octavius (Augustus), they established direct commerce with the Western ports of India. The epoch-making discovery of the monsoon winds by Europeans about A.D. 45 ushered in an era of brisk sea-borne trade between the Roman world and the Orient. The imports and exports of Barygaza described so graphically in the *Periplus* may be taken as typical of the commerce between the two countries.¹ Into this market-town were imported wine, copper, tin, and lead; coral and topaz; thin clothing and inferior sorts of cloth of all kinds; bright coloured girdles; borax, sweet cloves, flint glass, realgar, antimony, and gold and silver coins. For the vassal kings there were brought costly vessels of silver, singing boys, beautiful girls for the harem, fine wines, thin clothing of the finest wefts, and the choicest ointments. The exports consisted of spikenard, costus, bdellium, ivory, agate, carnelian, lycium, *cotton cloth of all kinds*, silk cloth, mallow cloth, yarn, long pepper ‘and such other things as are brought here from the various market towns’. Pliny observed that the Indian commodities were sold in the Roman markets at hundred times their original prices. Thus immense quantities of specie flowed into the Deccan in exchange for Indian merchandise. The Roman coins discovered in places as wide apart as Darphal and Nagdhara on the north-western, and Vinukoṇḍa, Nellore, and Cuddapah on the south-eastern fringe of the Deccan plateau show that from the time of Augustus (30 B.C.) the Deccan had close commercial relations with the Roman empire and that this traffic brought immense wealth to the Śaka and the Sātavāhana dominions.²