5
The period following the collapse of the Mauryan empire is somehow glossed over in history books as if the size of an empire is the only thing that matters. This is unfortunate as the period saw a boom in economic activity and mercantile trade. Merchant ships set sail from Satvahana and Kalinga ports, as well as those of the small kingdoms in the far south, to trade as far as Egypt in the west and Vietnam in the East.
As already discussed, Odiya–Bengali seafarers had been visiting and settling in Sri Lanka from the sixth century BC. At some point they also began to trade with South East Asia. However, in the initial phase, they did not have the confidence to sail directly across the Bay of Bengal. Instead, they hugged the coast till the Isthmus of Kra. This is the thin strip of land, now part of Thailand, from which the Malay peninsula hangs. Goods were then taken overland to the Gulf of Thailand from where they were loaded again on ships for ports in Cambodia and southern Vietnam. This explains why India’s eastern coast established links with faraway Vietnam before the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali that may appear closer on a map. Óc Eo, in Vietnam’s Mekong delta, seems to have become a major hub. From there, merchandise would be traded up the coast to China.
It is in the Mekong delta that we witness the establishment of the first Indianized kingdom of South East Asia around the first century BC. The Chinese called it the kingdom of Funan. There is an interesting legend about how this kingdom was founded. It is said that an Indian merchant ship was sailing through the region when it was attacked by pirates led by Soma, daughter of the chieftain of the local Naga clan. The Indians fought back and fended off the attackers led by a handsome young Brahmin called Kaundinya. Unfortunately, the ship had been damaged and had to be beached for repairs.
The merchants must have been worried about a second attack but luck turned in their favour. It appears Princess Soma had been impressed by Kaundinya’s bravery and had fallen in love! She proposed marriage and the offer was accepted. This union is said to have founded a lineage that ruled Funan for many generations. We have no way of knowing if this legend is based on true events but slightly different versions of the story are repeated in inscriptions by both the Chams of Vietnam and the Khmers of Cambodia—the royal families of both claim descent from Soma and Kaundinya. It is also repeated in contemporary Chinese records.1
Notice how Kaundinya acquired his throne through marriage to a warrior princess. Moreover, it was the princess who made the proposal. Given that royal legitimacy had been acquired through the female line, we find that matrilineal genealogies would be given a great deal of importance over the fifteen hundred years that these Indianized kingdoms flourished in this part of the world.
This founding myth also explains why the serpent (naga) became such an important royal symbol in Khmer iconography. More than a thousand years later, the mystical union between the king and a ‘serpent’ princess remained an important part of the court ceremonials at Angkor.2
So, who was Kaundinya? We know nothing about him except that he was a Brahmin from India but his name provides a clue. While Kaundinya is not a common first name, it is the name of a gotra (i.e. male lineage) of Brahmins who still live along the Tamil–Andhra–Odisha coastline. Perhaps this is not a coincidence.
By the end of the second century BC, Indian mariners appear to have learned enough about the monsoon winds and ocean currents to attempt a more southern route across the Indian Ocean to the islands of Indonesia. Odisha’s Lake Chilika was an important starting point for this voyage. It is a large brackish water lake with a small opening to the sea. The mariners of Kalinga, therefore, used the lake as a safe harbour. Even today, you are likely to find broken heaps of ancient pottery strewn along the lake’s shores.
Note that the ships did not sail out directly for Indonesia. Instead they used the north-eastern monsoon winds that blow from mid-November to sail down the coast to Sri Lanka. This was already a well-known route and the merchants probably stopped along the way to trade as well. In Sri Lanka, the ships would have taken in fresh water and supplies before using ocean currents to cross the Indian Ocean to the northern tip of Sumatra (called Swarnadwipa, or Island of Gold in Sanskrit texts). From here, the ships could choose to sail down the Straits of Malacca towards Palembang and take the sea route to Borneo and Vietnam. Alternatively, they could head south hugging the western coast of Sumatra to Bali and Java (called Yavadwipa, or Island of Barley/Grain).
After finishing their purchases and sales, most ships would have used the countercurrent to return to Sri Lanka, and then Odisha. If the sailors started from Odisha in mid-November, it is estimated that they would reach the islands of Java/Bali by mid-January. They would now have two months to conduct their business before they started their return journey in mid-March. This would allow them to get back to Sri Lanka in time to catch the early South-West monsoon winds in May that would take them home.3
The merchants of Kalinga were not the only ones making the journey to Indonesia. There were merchants from the Tamil, Andhra and Bengal coasts too. There were even horse traders from India’s north-west who made their way to the port of Tamralipti in Bengal and then sailed to Java and Sumatra. However, in the initial phase, it is the Sadhaba merchants of Kalinga who seem to have had a dominant influence. This is why Indians were known as ‘keling’ by the Malays and Javanese from ancient times although the term has acquired a somewhat derogatory connotation in recent times.
That era of maritime exploration and trade is still remembered in Odisha in folklore and festivals. The festival of Kartik Purnima takes place in mid-November when the winds shift and begin to blow from the north. This marks the time of year that ancient mariners would have set sail for Indonesia. Families, especially women and children, gather at the edge of a waterbody and place paper boats with oil lamps in the water. I witnessed the ritual on a beach near the temple town of Konark. Streams of people from nearby villages arrived before dawn to place their little boats in the water and watch them float away. A cool breeze blew from the north as promised and the full moon made the crashing waves glimmer. As per tradition, one must wait for the sun to rise. I watched my paper boat float away. This is how the families of the ancient mariners would have bid goodbye to their loved ones.
The maritime links to Kartik Purnima are remembered in many other ways. A fair is held every year in Cuttack called Bali Yatra which literally means ‘The Journey to Bali’. It is also a tradition to perform songs and plays based on the old folk tale about Tapoi. The story goes that there was a wealthy merchant, a widower, who had seven sons and a daughter. The daughter, the youngest, was named Tapoi and her father and brothers doted on her. One year, the merchant decided to take all his sons on a long voyage to a distant land. He left Tapoi behind in the care of his seven daughters-in-law with clear instructions that they look after the young girl.
Unfortunately, Tapoi’s sisters-in-law secretly hated her and mistreated her. She was made to cook, clean the cowshed and do all the washing. They even withheld food from her. After several months of tolerating all the physical and mental abuse, Tapoi eventually ran away into the forest. There she prayed to goddess Mangala, a form of Durga, who blessed her. A few days later, her father and brothers returned unexpectedly. They soon realized what had happened and brought Tapoi back from the forest. The evil sisters-in-law were punished. The folk tale not only hints at the tradition of long oceanic voyages but also expresses some of the inner anxieties of those who made these voyages—when will we get back home, what will happen to those left behind?
The most important Indian export was cotton textiles which would continue to be in much demand across the Indian Ocean rim till modern times. Excavations in South East Asia also show evidence of carnelian beads and a variety of metalware. By AD first century, we find that Indian merchants were also bringing along Mediterranean and West Asian products that they, in turn, had purchased from the Romans, Greeks and Arabs. Artefacts found in Sembiran in Bali clearly show that it was in close contact with Arikamedu, an Indo-Roman port, just outside Puducherry.4
Indian imports included Chinese silks, via ports in Vietnam, and camphor from Sumatra. The islands of Indonesia would have been a source of cloves, nutmeg and other spices. Many of the spices thought to be ‘Indian’ by medieval Europeans were actually from Indonesia except black pepper which grows along the south-western coast of India. Till the late eighteenth century, the world’s entire supply of cloves came from the tiny islands of Ternate and Tidore in the Maluku group.
Trade links with South East Asia unsurprisingly led to cultural exchange. Within a few centuries we see the strong impact of Indic civilization on the region—the Buddhist and Hindu religions, the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana, the Sanskrit language, scripts, temple architecture and so on. Despite the later impact of Islam, European colonial rule and postcolonial modernity, the influence of ancient India remains alive in place and personal names, commonly used words, and in the arts and crafts. Buddhism is still the dominant religion across Myanmar to Vietnam, while Hinduism survives in pockets such as Bali.
There are some cultural artefacts that seem to have survived with little change from the very earliest phase of contact between the two regions. One cannot look at traditional masks from Bali, Sri Lanka and the Andhra–Odisha coast without being struck by the similarity. The same is true of Wayang Kulit, the Indonesian art of shadow puppetry, and its equivalent in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. Imagine ancient mariners entertaining each other during the long nights of an ocean crossing by using their ship’s sail to enact shadow-puppet plays, cultural roots anchoring them as they made a perilous journey to distant lands.
One should not be under the impression that influences always flowed unidirectionally from India to South East Asia. Far from it, Indian civilization was enriched in many ways by influences from the east. One commonplace example is the custom of chewing paan (betel leaves with areca nuts, usually with a bit of lime and other ingredients). While it is common across the Indian subcontinent, the areca nut, called ‘supari’ in Hindi, is originally from South East Asia and was chewed across the region and as far north as Taiwan.
Paan is still widely consumed in India but, in recent years, has become less popular in the urban areas of South East Asia. Still, the leaf and nut continue to play an important cultural role and are used in many ceremonies. I have eaten them at a wedding in Bali and found old villagers chewing them in the Philippines. The Vietnamese too use it for many marriage-related ceremonies. It is quite possible that they were used by the warrior princess Soma when she sent the marriage proposal to Kaundinya.
The supari that one chews today in most parts of India gives no more than a mild buzz. The Khasis of Meghalaya, however, have preserved a strain that can be surprisingly strong. Perhaps they brought it with them during their prehistoric migrations from Sundaland. Surprisingly, the strongest that I have eaten came from a wild variety that I accidentally discovered in Singapore of all places. Suffice to say, the tiny nut packed the punch of a bottle of rum!
Of Tamils and Sinhalese
Most of the early known history of the far south of the Indian peninsula, what are now the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, is about the rivalries between three clans—the Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas. The Cholas had their heartland in the Kaveri delta, the Pandyas were further south near Madurai and the Cheras along the Kerala coast. Their relative strength waxed and waned over time but it is amazing how the same three clans battled each other over fifteen centuries (c. 300 BC to AD 1200)! Early Tamil poetry of the Sangam compilations provides vivid, if somewhat idealized, views of the times—prosperous cities, bustling bazaars and ports busy with merchant ships from foreign lands. The city of Madurai, the capital of the Pandyas, is described as follows in ‘Maduraikkanchi’, composed in the first century BC:5
The city walls are sky high and contain strong sally-ports and gateways old and strong,
On whose doorposts is carved great Lakshmi’s form.
Their strong built doors are blackened by the ghee poured as libation
In the wide long streets that are broad as rivers,
Crowds of folk of various professions and speech create a noise in the morning market-place while buying things
Excavations in Tamil Nadu in recent years have unearthed remains of significant urban centres from this period such as one found under the hamlet of Keezhadi, near Madurai, in 2015.6 The findings confirm that the cities mentioned in the Sangam literature are not imaginary even if the descriptions may have been embellished. Tamil nationalists of the twentieth century had attempted to use these texts to glorify some pristine Dravidian past but, ironically, Sangam literature is full of ‘northern’ influences. Far from being Dravidian purists, ancient Tamils credited the sage Agastya, a northerner, with formalizing Tamil grammar. The great Tamil kings similarly took great pride in building linkages with the epics. In other words, the very earliest Tamil texts suggest a people who were very proud of being part of a wider Indic civilization. As historian Nilakanta Sastri puts it, ‘But none can miss the significance of the fact that early Tamil literature, the earliest to which we have access, is already full of charged words, conceptions and institutions of Sanskritic and northern origin.’7
Far from being concerned with a pristine civilization, Sangam literature celebrates interactions with the rest of the world with descriptions of bustling ports and foreign trade. One of the texts also makes the first definite reference to a naval battle where Chera king Udiyanjeral defeated an unspecified local adversary and took a number of Greek merchants captive. The captives were later freed upon providing a large ransom.8
By the fourth century BC, some Tamil groups began to settle in northern Sri Lanka. There was already a significant population of settlers from Odisha–Bengal, and the local Vedda population had been sidelined, as mentioned earlier. Several small kingdoms gradually emerged, scattered across the island, but one of them, Anuradhapura, seems to have gained prominence due to the backing of Emperor Ashoka. According to the Mahavamsa, Ashoka sent his son Mahinda to convert the ruler of Anuradhapura, Devanampiya Tissa, to Buddhism, in the third century BC.
In 177 BC, two Tamil adventurers captured the throne of Anuradhapura and ruled it for twenty-two years. They would be followed a decade later by another Tamil ruler, Ellara, who would rule for forty-four years and earn a reputation for ensuring justice and good governance. However, after the first three decades of peace, Ellara would be challenged by Dattagamani, the Sinhalese ruler of a southern kingdom. This would lead to fifteen years of war that is said to have culminated in a face-to-face duel unto death where the younger challenger killed Ellara (a bit unfair given that Ellara would have been over seventy by this time).
Later writings would present this moment as the victory of a Sinhala son-of-the-soil over a Tamil intruder as well as the consummation of the island’s destiny as a Buddhist nation. However, as pointed out by K.M. de Silva, the island’s pre-eminent historian, this is not how it would have seemed at the time that the events took place. Most of the Sinhalese were not Buddhist at this stage and many of them seem to have sided with Ellara.9 Even the Mahavamsa agrees that Ellara was a good and popular king. Far from being so sure about who was the ‘son-of-the-soil’ in the second century BC, the Tamils and the Sinhalese would have seen themselves and each other as relatively recent immigrants.
We tend to think of the relations between the Sinhalese and Tamils of Sri Lanka (and by extension between Buddhists and Hindus) as being that of perpetual conflict, because we are influenced by the experience of the bloody Tamil separatist movement in the late twentieth century and its brutal suppression. The longer history, however, is much more complicated and involves both conflicts and alliances between kingdoms of the two ethnic groups at different points in time. If there is any pattern at all, there seems to have been a long-term alliance between the Sinhalese and the Tamil Pandyas of Madurai against other Tamil clans like the Cholas.
Moreover, the Sinhalese religion for most of its history was very eclectic and has always included strong Hindu elements. Upulvan, or Vishnu, is still worshipped by the Sinhalese as the guardian deity of Sri Lanka and virtually all major Buddhist temples have shrines to Hindu deities (called ‘devalas’). This is even true of the holiest of holies, the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy. As any visitor will notice, pilgrims entering the temple must first pass a number of Hindu shrines before reaching the main building. Even the nearby souvenir stalls sell an eclectic mix of Hindu and Buddhist icons.
After Dattagamani defeated Ellara and united the island, he established himself in Anuradhapura. Except for a couple of brief interruptions, the city would remain the capital of the island’s dominant kingdom for the next thousand years. Just like the political history of the southern tip of India was mostly about the rivalries between three clans, we find that this period of Lankan history would be dominated by the Moriya and Lamkanna clans. This was further complicated by intrigues within each clan. The politics of the times is best illustrated by the story of Sigiriya, one of the most spectacular historical sites in Asia.
Dhatusena, the king of Anuradhapura, was murdered by his son Kassapa in AD 477. Kassapa was the king’s eldest son but by a junior concubine and consequently not in the line of succession. So, he captured power with the help of Migara, his cousin, who was the army commander. The crown prince Moggallana, however, escaped to southern India (probably finding shelter in the Pandya court).
Kassapa then decided to build a new capital for himself at Sigiriya. It is a site dominated by a gigantic rock. The new capital was laid out at the foot of the rock while the palace was built on the top. I strongly recommend visitors take the trouble to climb the rock; a moderately fit person will take about an hour and a quarter to make the round trip. The top is like a miniature Machu Picchu and provides amazing views of the surrounding countryside.
Sigiriya’s moment in the sun, however, came to an abrupt end in AD 495 when Moggallana suddenly returned with an army of Indian mercenaries. He defeated Kassapa and killed him, and shifted the capital back to Anuradhapura. Sigiriya was gradually abandoned except for parts that were used as a Buddhist monastery. Nonetheless, medieval tourists would keep visiting the site for centuries, especially to admire the paintings of bare-breasted damsels that adorn a cave shelter halfway up the rock. These tourists expressed their admiration in graffiti love poems that can still be read. Here are some examples:10
Lovely this lady
Excellent the painter
And when I look
At hand and eye
I do believe she lives
We spoke
But they did not answer
Those lovely ladies of the mountain
They did not give us
Even the twitch of an eye-lid
It appears that some female visitors, seemingly irritated with their male companions, also left some graffiti:
You fools!
You come to Sihagiri and inscribe these verses
Yet not one of you brings wine and molasses
Remembering we are women.
Alexandria to Muzeris
Just as maritime trade boomed in the eastern Indian Ocean, there was a similar boom in trade between India’s west coast and the Greco-Roman world. The trade routes are described in detail in The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a manual written by an Egyptian–Greek merchant in AD first century.11 Some of the details suggest that the author had personally visited many of the places mentioned in the manuscript. Note that Erythraean Sea literally means Red Sea, but the term was used by the ancient Greeks more broadly to include the Indian Ocean.
The Periplus tells us that there were two routes from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. One of the routes started from the ports of what are now Israel and Lebanon and made its way overland via Petra to the Gulf of Aqaba. The magnificent rock-cut remains of the city of Petra in Jordan, now a World Heritage Site, show us how the Nabataeans had grown rich from trade.
The alternative route for Roman merchants to the Red Sea ran through the great port of Alexandria in Egypt. The city was a cosmopolitan melting pot and we have evidence that it had a population of Indians. From Alexandria there were two options. One could make one’s way directly from the Nile delta to Suez. This was not a new route and we know from Herodotus that the ancient pharaohs had attempted to build a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, and that the project had been completed during the rule of Persian emperor Darius in the sixth century BC. However, the canal kept getting silted up, and despite being re-excavated by the Ptolemies in the third century BC, part of the journey had to be made on foot. At the time The Periplus was written, the more popular option was to sail up the Nile to Coptos (Qift) and then make the eleven-day crossing through the desert to the port of Berenice (Berenike) on Egypt’s Red Sea coast.12
Archaeological excavations at Berenice have thrown up a variety of goods from India including peppercorns, seeds of the amla fruit (Indian gooseberry) from the lower Himalayas, cotton cloth, and even mung seeds from South East Asia. Pottery shards with Prakrit and Tamil markings have been found in a nearby settlement. Customs tokens, made of baked clay, have also been found in a rubbish pit. These tokens were given to merchants who had paid their taxes in Coptos and only the goods listed on the tokens were allowed to be loaded on outgoing ships by officials in Berenice. Customs receipts also mention carefully weighed pouches of coins—called marisippia. Many of these coins would make their way to the ports of India.
The first port down the coast from Berenice was a ‘fair-sized village’ called Adulis. This was a barren stretch of the coast, but Adulis served as the nearest access to the city of Aksum that had emerged as a major urban centre in the Ethiopian highlands. We are told that Aksum was eight days’ journey inland and was the source of ivory and rhino horn. At this stage, the Ethiopians had not yet converted to Christianity and one can still see gigantic stone obelisks in Aksum, probably carved in memory of the pagan kings of that period. The monarchs of Ethiopia would be crowned in Aksum till the twentieth century.
As the merchant fleets made their way further down the Red Sea, they would have to pass the point where the Arabian peninsula comes nearest to the African coast. This is the most likely place where our early ancestors had crossed over from Africa before colonizing the rest of the world. The Periplus warns us that contrary winds and strong currents made this place dangerous for ships. The Arabs would later name it Bab-el-Mandeb or Gateway of Tears.
After the narrow strait, the sea widens out to the Gulf of Aden. By AD first century, the Sabeans had been pushed out by rival clans and the coast was controlled by the Himyarites and the Hadramawt. The Periplus tells us that this region was the source of frankincense. We are told that the gum was collected from the trees by the king’s slaves and prisoners. Merchants, however, did not spend too much time here as it had a reputation for being unhealthy and ‘pestilential even to those sailing along the coast’. Instead they headed for the island of Socotra.
Socotra is a fragment left over from the break-up of the supercontinent of Gondwana and its long isolation has left it with unique flora and fauna. The island’s name is derived from Dwipa Sukhadhara, or ‘the Island of Bliss’ in Sanskrit. It is telling that an island so close to Arabia had a Sanskritic name and, The Periplus tells us that, in addition to Arabs and Greeks, it had a large population of Indians. One can still read graffiti left by these ancient mariners on the walls of Hoq cave on the island.
The traditional coastal route to India from Socotra was to head north to Oman. This coast was controlled by the Persians at that time and only ‘fish-eaters’ lived here. Indeed fishing still remains a very important source of food in this region. I have witnessed Omani fishermen selling their catch on the shore. The air is already heavy and hot by eight-thirty in the morning as the fishermen haul their catch to the market on the beach. The sea glistens a bright blue-green but the sun is relentless. In this treeless, barren landscape, man must live by the fruits of the sea.
Past the mouth of the Persian Gulf, the sailors would hit the Makran coast. From here, the ships would sail more directly east towards the Indus delta. The Periplus confirms that Sindh and parts of Gujarat were controlled by the Sakas (Scythians) and Parthians at that time. This fits with Satvahana inscriptions mentioned earlier that tell us of their wars with the Sakas.
Beyond the Indus, the text says that there was a large gulf that ran inland but was too shallow to be navigable. This is the Rann of Kutchh and one can see that, by AD first century, it was no longer possible to sail across it as in Harappan times. Next along the coast was the town of Baraca (probably Dwarka) after which the land gradually became more fertile and yielded a variety of crops—wheat, rice, sesame and, most importantly, cotton.
Having sailed past Saurashtra and the Gulf of Khambhat, the tired merchant ships would finally reach the estuary of the Narmada that led to the great port of Barygaza (Bharuch). The Periplus describes how shifting silt and sandbars made the entrance to the river perilous. Thus, the king of Barygaza appointed experienced fishermen as pilots to guide merchant ships. We are also warned of a wicked bore tide that could tear a ship from its moorings. The nautical details are so vivid that it is very likely that the author of The Periplus had personally visited the place.
The most important exports from Barygaza were different kinds of cotton textiles, which are still exported from this region. Iron and steel products would have also been exported as we know that these were coveted by communities living along the Red Sea. In exchange, one of the most important products ancient Indians imported was wine—and we are told that Italian wine was preferred over the Arabian and Syrian stuff; modern Indians would certainly agree with the verdict. The local kings also seem to have imported ‘beautiful maidens for the harem’. With imported Italian wines and beautiful maidens, it is fair to say that the Saka and Indian nobility of that period knew how to lead the high life.
The Periplus shows that the Romans were aware that from Barygaza, India’s western coast ran south in almost a straight line. The text lists a number of ports down the coast but arguably the most important was Muzeris (or Mucheripatanam as the Indians called it) which was the source of black pepper. We are told of how Arab and Greek ships flocked to the port. Excavations at the village of Pattanam, just north of modern Kochi, have recently allowed archaeologists to exactly identify the location of this ancient port. Many kinds of imported artefacts have been found here but some of the most common are wine and olive oil amphorae from as far away as France, Spain, Egypt and Turkey.13
The reason that the port of Muzeris was going through such a boom in international trade during the period The Periplus was written is that mariners had worked out in the previous century that they could use monsoon winds to sail directly between Socotra and southern India without hugging the coast. The author of The Periplus credits this discovery to a Greek pilot called Hippalus. It is curious that it took a Greek to work out how to harness the monsoon winds in the Arabian Sea when the Indians had been using them for generations in the Bay of Bengal to visit South East Asia. Perhaps ancient Arab and Indian mariners would have disputed Hippalus’s claim.
The Periplus mentions Greeks and Arabs in Muzeris but not the Jews. However, a small Jewish trading community would have existed by the time the manual was written and, within a few decades, an influx of refugees would expand it significantly. After the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, many Jewish refugees came to settle around Muzeris. Thus, India became home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. Their numbers have dwindled in recent decades due to emigration to Israel but their synagogues can still be visited in the Kochi–Kodungallur area.
Similarly, the Syrian Christian community claims descent from converts made by St Thomas who is said to have visited these parts in AD first century. Although the historical veracity of St Thomas’ visit has been disputed by scholars, it is reasonably certain that Christians visited and settled along the Kerala coast at an early stage.14 We know that a group of Christians fleeing persecution in the Persian empire came to India under the leadership of Thomas of Cana in AD 345. Seventy-two families settled near Muzeris and were given special trading privileges by the local Hindu king.15 A few centuries later, early Muslims would build the Cheraman Masjid, the world’s second oldest mosque, in the same general area. It is a testimony to the importance of ancient Muzeris that these early Jewish, Christian and Islamic sites are all located within a very short distance of each other. This is saying something at a time when the Christian community in Syria and Iraq is being systematically wiped out by the so-called Islamic State.
From The Periplus, we can gather that the Romans knew that the coast south of Muzeris ended in a cape—Kanyakumari—and that the island of Taprobane (i.e. Sri Lanka) lay beyond it. Given the repeated mention of the Pandyas, but not of the rival clans, it seems that The Periplus was composed at a time when the Pandyas were dominant.
We know from archaeological excavations that Roman traders made their way up the east coast as far as Arikamedu, close to modern Puducherry. It is a beautiful turn in the river but the visitor will find little to reflect its ancient history except a large number of pottery shards that lie scattered about. The Periplus gets increasingly garbled as one goes further up the east coast. It shows an awareness of the Gangetic delta and mentions oriental tribes, but the details are quite blurred. The inland city of Thinae is mentioned as the source of silk (is this a reference to China?). So, it is fair to say that this was the limit of what the Romans knew about the Indian Ocean in AD first century.
Indo-Roman trade boomed in AD first and second centuries. Emperor Trajan had the Nile–Suez canal re-excavated; it began just south of modern Cairo and headed due east to the Red Sea.16 About 120 ships made the round trip between India and the Red Sea ports every year. The availability of eastern luxuries transformed Roman tastes but the problem was that the empire ran a persistent trade deficit with India. This deficit had to be paid in gold and silver coins. Roman writer Pliny (AD 23–79) complained bitterly that, ‘Not a year passed in which India did not take fifty million sesterces away from Rome.’
In a world where precious metals were used for minting coins, this was equivalent to severe monetary tightening. The Romans initially tried to solve the problem by curtailing trade but eventually they would resort to debasing their coins (i.e. reducing the content of gold and silver). This would eventually cause distortions and inflation in the Roman empire. Interestingly, the Indians continued to accept the debased coins although they recognized the higher quality of the older, high-content coins which continued to circulate in the Indian Ocean long after the reigns of emperors who had issued them.
Notice the similarity with the modern world where China runs a persistent surplus against the United States and accepts dollars in exchange. Everyone accuses the US of printing too many dollars but China keeps accumulating them as reserves. In this way a symbiotic imbalance keeps the world economy going despite the distortions it causes. Indeed, such imbalances have been at the heart of most periods of global economic expansion and can be surprisingly persistent.17
Note that merchants were not the only people who travelled between the Roman empire and India. We know, for instance, that it was fashionable for wealthy Roman women to consult Indian astrologers. We also have the story of Demetrius, a student of Greek philosophy, who was wrongly accused of stealing from a temple and arrested in Egypt. After he was exonerated and freed with compensation, he gifted all his property to a friend and sailed to India to study Vedic philosophy.18 In other words, the shipping lines provided the infrastructure for all kinds of people to move back and forth across the seas.
The Waqwaq
Given the country’s central location, it is not surprising that links between the eastern and western Indian Ocean were routed through India. However, as the knowledge of the winds and sea currents improved, seafarers became confident enough to cross the ocean directly. One of the most intriguing examples of this is the colonization of Madagascar by the Indonesians.
Madagascar is located close to Africa but, as discussed earlier, the two land masses had separated about 160 million years ago when Gondwana split up. Thus, the island’s flora and fauna had evolved in isolation for a very long time and bore little resemblance to that of Africa next door. For instance, it was home to the elephant bird that stood three metres tall and weighed half a ton, the largest bird ever. Then there was the giant lemur that was larger than a gorilla and was the world’s largest primate.
At some point in the fifth century, Indonesian sailors in their outrigger boats began to visit the island. In terms of seamanship, this matches the exploits of their Polynesian cousins in the Pacific. Thus, an island so close to the origin of our species in Africa was first colonized from the other side of the Indian Ocean. Recent genetic studies show that the first permanent settlement of the island was done by a tiny group from Indonesia around AD 800, and may have included just thirty women.19 Similarly, the island’s main language, Malagasy, has been traced back to south Borneo. Reflecting the spread of Indic influences in their homeland, the settlers also brought certain Hindu rituals and words from Sanskrit that survive in traces.
Predictably, humans were a shock to the isolated and fragile ecosystem of the island. The extinction of the elephant bird and the giant lemur coincided with the arrival of people and it is difficult to escape the conclusion that these events are somehow related. We saw how the arrival of humans in Australia had a very similar impact.
The settlers would come to be known as the Waqwaq, probably after their ‘waqa’ canoes, and would be feared as pirates by medieval Arab merchants sailing down the East African coast. The Waqwaq also made regular raids on the mainland to acquire slaves. We have records of how they even made an unsuccessful attempt to capture the fortified port of Qanbalu, on the island of Pemba (in present-day Tanzania) in AD 945.20
Despite their notoriety, the Indonesians also introduced new crops to Africa. It is believed that many staples like banana, yam, breadfruit and sugar cane were brought here by the Waqwaq (note that there is a rival theory that some of these were introduced by the Indians). These crops would spread into the continent’s interior and would become a very important part of the local diet.
Over time, however, coastal Madagascar came to be dominated by the Arabs and Africans. Many of the Waqwaq then withdrew to the island’s central highlands where they slowly forgot their maritime culture. As Richard Hall puts it in Empires of the Monsoon, ‘Although they still buried their rulers in silver canoes, they could never go home again.’
Stitched Ships
One of the most common observations made by ancient and medieval travellers is that the ships of the Indian Ocean had hulls that were ‘stitched’ together with rope rather than nailed around a frame. This design most likely originated in India but seems to have been adopted by the Yemeni and Omani Arabs at an early stage. It is unclear why the Indians preferred to stitch together their ships when they were more than familiar with iron nails. Indeed, as demonstrated by Delhi’s famous Iron Pillar, they even had the technology for rust-resistant iron.
One possibility is that the stitched technique gave the hull a degree of flexibility. This meant that the ship was less likely to break up if it ran into a shoal or sandbar. This was no small concern given that the Indian coastline has few natural harbours and most of the ports were either in an estuary or require sailing through a narrow passage like that of Lake Chilika. Moreover, using the monsoon winds implied that the sailing season coincided with rough surf. This meant that arriving ships were often beached rather than tied by the quayside.
The Indo-Arab stitched ships, however, were not the only ones plying the Indian Ocean. The South East Asians had their own design derived from the outrigger canoes that their prehistoric ancestors had used when they left the flooding coasts of Sundaland to settle in the islands. Perhaps the best depiction of eighth-century Indonesian outrigger ships is carved on the panels of Borobudur, Java. Using the panels as their guide, a group of enthusiasts recently recreated the ‘Borobudur Ship’. Between August 2003 and February 2004, they further proved their point by sailing the reconstructed ship, named Samudra Raksha, from Java to Madagascar and then all the way to Ghana! The ship is now displayed at a museum in Borobudur.21
In addition to the local ship designs, the Indian Ocean also witnessed maritime technologies derived from outside the region. Greco-Roman ships were adapted from the designs that plied the Mediterranean. Later the Indian Ocean would see the entry of Chinese ships culminating in the voyages of Admiral Zheng He’s ‘Treasure Fleet’ in the fifteenth century. In other words, the Indians and Arabs were quite familiar with different ship designs. The advantages of the stitched design must have been significant if it remained the preferred technique till the Europeans arrived at the end of the fifteenth century. There are still a few coastal villages in India that have preserved the skill of stitching together fishing boats but it is a dying art.
The Bantu Migrations
Even as the Indian Ocean world was witnessing a boom in maritime trade, the interiors of sub-Saharan Africa were experiencing profound demographic changes. Today sub-Saharan Africa is so dominated by Bantu-speaking people that we tend to assume that Africa was always like this. However, linguistic and, more recently, genetic data confirm that the Bantu people originated in what is now Nigeria and Cameroon around 5000 years ago, that is, the third millennium BC.22
Around the first millennium BC, they began to expand out of their original homeland. Roughly speaking, one branch pushed directly south into equatorial central Africa, through what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Another branch pushed east towards the East African Rift Valley before migrating south through what is now Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Zimbabwe.
As they pushed into these new areas, the Bantu replaced or assimilated with the people who already lived there. Till their arrival, hunter–gatherers related to the Khoi-San had inhabited eastern and southern Africa. Central Africa had similarly been inhabited by the Pygmies. This fits in with a story told by Herodotus about an ancient expedition that had crossed the Sahara and come upon a land with forests and Pygmies.
The Bantu, however, steadily replaced both groups. The success of the Bantu seems to have been driven initially by their skills at farming but from around 600 BC, it was strengthened by locally developed iron technology. In Gabon, for instance, archaeological evidence shows iron-using farmers replacing the stone-tool users around 300 BC.23
The process of migration still took many centuries and had not yet penetrated the southern tip of Africa when the Europeans arrived there. Thus, when Bartholomew Diaz and Vasco Da Gama arrived at the Cape of Good Hope at the end of the fifteenth century, they encountered Khoi-San pastoralists and hunter–gatherers. It is estimated that the Khoi-San population at that time was around 50,000 in the south-western Cape. However, they would steadily lose territory to the Bantu tribes and to the Europeans who contemptuously called them the ‘Hottentots’.