The anonymous author of the famous Periplus, dating from about the middle of the first century BCE, operated from the west coast of the Red Sea and went at least as far as Malabar. He travelled by the direct passage straight across; by this time this route had been sailed for some centuries. Most likely Indian or Arab sailors instructed Greeks and Romans in its use. Roman trade is also notable in the Indus Valley area long after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilisation, where traders, not necessarily or even mostly from 'Rome', imported manufactures like silver plate, glass vessels and wine, and took off goods even from Afghanistan and China. There have been other Roman finds at Kolhapur, at Begram, north of Kabul, and of course at Arikamedu in Coromandel.
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However, it could be that much trade which has been identified as Roman was really Greek, as indicated maybe by the many Peripluses, which are of course Greek.
While the old notion of a trade dominated by Romans is certainly incorrect, this is not to deny that there were extensive connections, regardless of who was involved. What is interesting, as showing a pattern which continued until very recent times, is the way India exported much, but took in little except precious metals, as writers in Rome at the time pointed out and objected to. In return for
Mediterranean bullion, India sent a vast variety of people and goods. These included spices, perfumes, jewels, textiles, ivory, and basic products like rice, sugar and ghee, and dyes like lac and indigo. Indian iron was considered to be very hard and pure. Exotic live animals arrived for the circuses, or to use as pets. Most of these goods had passed through many hands before they reached Rome, but some Indian people did make it that far, though most of these were specialists rather than traders. Mahouts often went with their elephants to Rome, along with Indian fortune tellers, conjurers and prostitutes.
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Contrary then to foreign dominance, a more correct picture would see India acting as fulcrum for a very widespread trade, in which many different routes were sailed, and many different people participated, including Greeks, Egyptians, Arabs and Indians. An early centre linking trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean was Berenike, an Egyptian port on the west coast of the Red Sea. It was founded in the third century BCE, and was abandoned some time after the sixth century CE. This ancient port city had an extensive trade with India. Even the preliminary excavation done so far by teams from Leiden University and the University of Delaware has found seeds, peppercorns, bamboo, glass and stone beads, coconut husks, teak wood, textiles, sail cloth and pottery dating back to a century either side of the beginning of the Common Era. There is a common Indian source for cloth found at Berenike and along the Silk Road to China. Berenike, then, was part of a very elaborate trade network.
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Two other ports flourished around the beginning of the Common Era. The first was Hormos, in the Red Sea, from which, so Strabo tells us, up to 120 vessels sailed each year to India. By this time at least, long-distance sailing was routine, covering this long passage of close to 3,000 nautical miles direct. The second, though there no doubt were many others, was Barygaza, in the Gulf of Cambay on the Narmada river. This great centre was, like all ports in this treacherous Gulf, difficult of access, so that local fishermen were appointed to go up the coast and guide merchant ships down the coast and into and up the estuary.
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Much of this data confirms the centrality of India in the whole trading system. In these centuries either side of the beginning of the Common Era the rise of centralised states in north India fostered trade, as also did the important Buddhist sangha, which provided a certain identity and cohesiveness for trading groups. We are assuming that there is a connection between centralised states and an increase in trade, the notion being that large states produce more demand for the luxuries which were, given constraints of technology, the main items which it was cost effective to carry over long distances.
The role of fisherfolk as pilots in the Gulf of Cambay may point to some direct state involvement in oceanic trade. In the case of the Tamil country, in southeast India, in the early historical period, from 300 BCE to 300 CE, cities were located on the coast, and were closely connected with overseas trade. When trade declined so did these port cities. The rulers of the time promoted this trade: they themselves were consumers of luxury goods, they developed ports and collected tolls and customs at them.
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So also Kautilya's famous Arthasastra, while concentrating its
prescriptions relating to water matters mostly to the conduct of river passages – fords and ferries and such like – also shows a very substantial state interest in arranging to provide assistance to those in distress at sea, along with the collection of customs duties.
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True that this normative account may have little connection with actual practice, yet at the least this and other Hindu texts, such as the Laws of Manu and the various Sastras, show a state awareness of maritime matters in India.
Apart from trade with the Gulf and the Red Sea, there were other connections across the western Indian Ocean. From very early on Sri Lanka acted as a hinge between the western and eastern oceans, as indeed one would expect given its location. On the other side, Ethiopia and India had contacts before the beginning of the Common Era. The first hard evidence comes from the Periplus, which also found Indian traders in Socotra, some of them permanently settled. Arabs also traded and settled on this island, and it is revealing that its name comes from Sanskrit.
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Further down the East African coast, we have described local maritime connections from very early on. By around the last century before the Common Era this local trade was integrated, to an extent, into the wider Indian Ocean world. This integration spread from north to south, that is starting in Somalia and incrementally spreading right down the coast. The focus of this trade was with the Red Sea, and while proto-Swahili people acted as mediators and collectors of goods in the embryonic port cities of the coast, the actual trade was handled by Arabs. Again then, if we look at Arab activity we get a useful corrective to the older notion of 'Roman' domination. Arabs traded extensively over the whole western ocean long before Islam, as indeed the Periplus noted. The author wrote, 'The Arab kings sent thither [to East Africa] many large ships, with Arab captains and agents. These are familiar with the inhabitants, and both dwell and intermarry with them; they know all their villages and speak their languages.'
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What products attracted traders to the Swahili coast? It seems that ivory was always important, finding ready markets in India and China. Trade in wood for Arabia probably also goes back far into history. In certain later times slaves for the Middle East were a major export, but this trade seems to have become important only around the eighth century when the Muslim empire centred on Baghdad needed them to drain the Tigris-Euphrates marshes. Roman pots have been found on Zanzibar island, dating from around the fifth century CE, though they were almost certainly carried not by Romans but by Persians. Other finds on the island confirm an extensive trade, with goods originating in India, China and the Middle East.
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In the third to the fifth centuries trade in the Indian Ocean was affected positively by the rise of the Sassanian empire in Persia. The sea played a central part in the general world view of the founder, Adashir I. There appears to have been some state encouragement and even direction, and certainly traders from Persia dominated trade in the Gulf and the western Indian Ocean. Some may even have reached southeast Asia and China.
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More usually western Indian Ocean ships used Sri Lanka as a trans-shipment place. Persians, and Axumites from the Axum port of Adulis on the southwest coast of the Red Sea, met traders from east Asia there.
When the Buddhist pilgrim Fa Hsien visited Sri Lanka in the early fifth century he found not only Chinese goods but also Chinese traders present. Similarly linking the eastern and western oceans was the southeast coastal area of Coromandel: for example, there is evidence of Tamil products on the Red Sea coast of Egypt, and an inscription in Thailand from the early part of the Common Era.
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Within the eastern ocean, there was extensive trade all around the shores of the Bay of Bengal, while within island southeast Asia there were whole more or less autonomous and very complex networks which go back millennia. From about 500 BCE there were local networks connecting the Vietnamese coast with Indonesia and then around the Malay peninsular and into Burma even, and also linking Thailand with the South China Sea. Later, Indian prestige goods entered this network, from around the start of the Common Era, and as we will see below, ideas went with these goods.
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The Buddhist pilgrim Fa Hsien writing in 415 CE went on a ship from Sri Lanka to Srivijaya, and there were 200 travellers, who Panikkar identified as being brahmanical merchants, on board.
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We will quote his account of his voyage at the end of this chapter.
Longer distance trade connected India and China. There are two ways to travel east from India and get to China: overland across the Isthmus of Kra in the Malay peninsula, or passing through the Straits of Melaka. It seems that the overland route was chosen in earlier times, until better and bigger ships made the all-sea route from, say, Sri Lanka to the South China Sea more cost effective. In the first century of the Common Era Funan, on the lower Vietnam coast, did well. The usual route was from India to the isthmus of Kra, and then to China via Funan. Indeed, this state expanded considerably in the next two centuries, until the sea route via Melaka took over. The seas of insular southeast Asia were then, from the sixth to the eleventh centuries, dominated by Srivijaya, and from the late thirteenth century by Majapahit. But by this time, as we will see in the next chapter, Islam was entering the region.
Yet again it must be stressed that our records in this period, and later, privilege long-distance, high-value trade. Yet this trade was and is very much superstructure. The base was coastal trade, and indeed a part of coastal trade was vital for the long-distance routes, for they fed local products into the wider circuit. Similarly, while the records often focus on glamorous valuable products, essentials were also carried. We have already described several routes where essentials were carried quite long distances. As before, this trade remains largely hidden from our records, but we do know that it was always important. The Periplus mentions bulk items being traded from India to the Red Sea and Egypt, such as grain, rice, ghee, sesame oil, cotton cloth and cane sugar, though this was not a direct trade for the cargoes were broken up at Socotra, or modern Somalia.
When we distinguish between luxuries and necessities, the essential point is that it is the latter which continues, unaffected by political rises and declines: indeed the very name implies this. Luxuries, on the other hand, suffer from a very labile, or discretionary, demand. 'Little and often usually outweighs big and rare.' This whole distinction is of great interest to political economy theorists, who
consider that an exchange of necessities shows a greater integration of the two areas concerned. However, in real life most ships carried both, as indeed is obvious, and as has been shown when the cargoes of old wrecks are studied. One would be unlikely to find a ship full only of pearls, gold, and fine handicrafts. Historians have spent far too much time on luxuries, just because they are privileged in the records: in reality 'the glamorous manifestations of high-prestige trade should generally be regarded as outgrowths from or intensifications of the routine patterns of redistribution'.
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Another obscure category of people have also used the sea from the very earliest times, that is fisherfolk. It may be however that fishing in our ocean was, at least for early people with primitive craft, more limited than in other oceans. The continental shelf in the Indian Ocean is mostly much narrower than in other oceans, so there is less area from which to take demersal fish. And coral often gets in the way. We can assume that traditional fishing was mostly done close inshore, and also that few would be full time piscatorial specialists: rather, most of them were peasants as well. We quoted some descriptions of their humble craft earlier in this chapter. Another category again is pearl fishing in three different locations: the Gulf, between India and Sri Lanka, and in the Sulu archipelago. Again the sailors and divers would probably not be specialists, but rather have occupations on land also for the time outside the pearl fishing season.
We will quote a vivid account of a storm in the Bay of Bengal presently, but there was another invariant hazard to navigation which was man-made, in other words the prevalence of piracy, something which continues to today. Piracy is a surprisingly controversial matter. Some have seen pirates as macroparasites, human groups that draw sustenance from the toil and enterprise of others, offering nothing in return. Others point out that they are at least a sign of prosperity, for they need something to prey on; similarly, only a rich port is worth plundering. In rather sanguine fashion, Horden and Purcell claim that they are not really separate from others at sea: 'Piracy is the continuation of cabotage by other means.'
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Piracy was endemic from the earliest times in both the Red Sea and the Gulf. Often it was a matter of tribal raiders simply extending their activities to the sea, this then again reflecting the fact that most people at sea at this time also had links and occupations on land.