CHENNAI:Maritime activity and trade has long been considered one of the best ways to strengthen ties between countries, and most of us think it recent. But did you know that even as far back as 60 AD, trade connected Indian ports to major sea ports in the west? Enthusiasts of history and archaeology in the city came together recently for a session at the Madras Literary Society, where renowned historian K R A Narasiah elaborated on The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, an ancient maritime document that helped scholars piece together ancient India’s trading history.
“The Periplus was probably written by a Greco-Roman merchant of the first century. It details all major ports of call, including those in ancient India starting from the coast of Gujarat to Tamil Nadu and beyond,” said Narasiah. The text was translated by William Schoff in 1912, a scholar who was able date it to 60 AD. “These major ports seem complex at first but a
lot of them correspond to trading ports in India.”
The book starts from the Red Sea port of Myos Hormos, where excavators in 2003 found a broken jar with inscriptions in the Tamil Brahmi script that reads paanai ori (pot suspended in rope net). “Other inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi were also found at the ancient Egyptian ports of Berenice in the late 1990s,” he added. This corroborate claims that trade flourished between Europe and the Tamil Sangam kingdoms.
The Roman philosopher, Pliny the Elder, has even mentioned in one of his texts that if the south-west monsoon happens to be blowing, it is possible to arrive at the nearest market in India, Muziris (an ancient seaport on the Malabar Coast). “The ancient kingdoms in India are mentioned through the trade routes, especially Syrastrene (modern Saurashtra in Gujarat) and also because of the trade items like spikenard, which were brought from the Himalayas, and also Caspapyrene (Kasyapapura or Kashmir) and Paropanisene (Hindu Kush),” he shared. “The Tamil Sangam kingdoms were mentioned as Damirica (Greek for Tamilakam) and the first ports of call were given as Naura (Kannur) and Tyndis (Kadalundi in Kozhikode) before moving onto the port of Muziris.”
He added that the Chera and Pandya kingdoms have been mentioned as Cerobothra and Pandian, and that ports in the Tamil country were of prime importance in trade with the Gangetic plain, from where merchants exported silk, ivory, spikenard, fine pearls, etc. “It supports the the claim that Mahabalipuram was a sea port — the Periplus clearly shows that it was instead Marakkanam that was a trade port, since Mahabalipuram has too many rocks on the seashore to serve as a sea port,” said Narasiah.
Arikamedu in Pondicherry was also another important site of trade with the Mediterranean that found mention in the Periplus, he said.