We are too used to the medieval idea of a farm labourer who
never left his manor to recognise that the world was not always as ignorant as
it later became. From the time of Alexander in the 330s BC to the rise of
Christianity in the 330s AD, Greeks and Romans were often well-versed and
familiar in the oriental trade.
While there are several Roman bases in India, mainly in
Tamil areas of the south, there are no known Indian bases on Roman territory.
But since the Romans in Egypt had Red Sea shipping bases such as Berenice,
there could have been entrepôt cities where exotic animals and precious cargoes
could have been received for onward shipment.
We are fortunate to have a surviving guide to this trade,
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.
This tells us about Roman trade with India up to the second century AD. You
might consider it to be a briefing note for a merchants’ guild on the prospects
for successful trade in that area. Such peripli were part of a long-running
tradition of Greek writing about foreigners (xenoi), who were generally to be classified by the Greeks as
Dangerous Foreigners and Useful Foreigners. The Indian peoples were definitely
the latter, as the text relating to India has none of the common warnings about
hostile people which can be seen in the section relating to East Africa.
There is evidence for long-term contact between Europe,
North Africa and India. Zeus and his Italian version Iuppiter (Jupiter) are derived
from Dyaus Pita, a senior god from the Rig Veda, the father of Indra in Hindu
theology. Indra has the thunderbolt later assigned to Zeus. We have no idea how
the people who became Greek came across these Hindu gods, but they were
worshipped in Tamil lands. It does seem that Zeus only became chief god of the
Greeks after the collapse of Bronze-Age Mycenaean culture and the rise of
highland people like the Dorians, the so-called ‘Sons of Heracles’.
Ambrosia, the food or sometimes drink of the gods, the
substance which gives them immortality, is a word taken from the Sanskrit
‘Amrita’ which is the same substance and the same word, essentially a- (non-)
mer (death, the same root as ‘mort’ and ‘murder’). It has been claimed as a
survival in Indo-European religion, in which case it survived remarkably well.
Amrita also appears in the Rig Veda.
We have here two of many links between Europe and India.
This points not to chance religious survivals but towards enduring cultural
contacts. The Roman priests known as Flamines (singular Flamen) have a title
that is etymologically and functionally close to Brahmins, a high-status
priesthood forming part of the Rig Veda culture.
The third had been the invasion of western India by the army
of Alexander the Great, and the subsequent Indo-Greek kingdoms, which endured
for centuries, helped by the relative weakness of Persia after his destruction
of the Shahs. It took Persia some 450
years to recover its status, so until the recovery, the Romans had land routes
to India and beyond. The Periplus dates from the second century AD, the time
when sea routes to the east had become more useful.
Rome was familiar with the east during the Principate; after
all, Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis
Historia had written extensively about Brahmins. Pliny’s great interest in
minerals served him well too.
One very definite reason to otherwise invisible Indians in
the Roman world is the use of elephants in warfare. Hannibal used elephants against
Rome in 218BC as everyone knows, and African elephants are impossible to train.
The only elephant to survive Hannibal’s attack was his own mount, Surus, ‘the
Syrian’, suggesting it was an Indian elephant brought via Syria. Claudius
arrived to mark his conquest of (some of) Britain in AD43 with elephants. An
elephant eats 400 pounds of food a day, presumably more when in a cold climate.
It requires careful handling, which does suggest a squad of trained Indian
mahouts, with some men to spare, in case of injury or death, as well as a team
dedicated to providing its diet, and a mobile latrine team to prevent
animal-borne diseases spreading to the army. Just as a medieval knight needed
his support team of squires and grooms, the mounted Indian war elephant must
have required a strong support base.
What did the Romans trade with India? They had plenty of
things to buy from the East, but what did they sell? There was it seems an
export market for gold and silver coin, as well as copper, cloth, wine, and of
slightly darker impact, singing boys and young women for the harems of Indian
lords. Beasts for the amphitheatre and arena seem to have been a Roman import.
Trajan is recorded as importing large numbers of beasts, including tigers,
something not seen before in Europe.
Why did the trade decline? It seems to have flourished under
Augustus, as heir to the Ptolemies; he sent 120 ships a year from one Egyptian
port alone to India, a huge increase on the Hellenistic kings’ levels of trade.
Indian political visits became more frequent, and continued into the reign of
Justinian; however the revival of Persia and later that of Islam seem to have
closed that route for good.
