Page:Further India; (IA furtherindia00clif).pdf/28

 island sent to the Court of the Emperor Claudius. He states, among other things, that trade was carried on by the natives of Taprobane (Ceylon) with the Seres of northern China, though doubt is cast upon the matter by the fact that the Chinese arc described as fair-haired, blue-eyed giants. On the other hand it is significant that no mention is made of any commercial relations subsisting between the peoples of Ceylon and those of south-eastern Asia. This is, at the best, but negative evidence, yet it is noteworthy as seeming to indicate that the sea-route between India and China was not even then in general use, despite the fact that commercial intercourse between the two empires had been carried on overland from a period of remote antiquity.

Of Chryse, the Golden, Pliny, in fact, has nothing to tell us, and the author of the Periplus, whose personal knowledge did not extend beyond Nelkynda, probably Melisseram, on the Malabar coast, says of it only that it was situated opposite to the mouths of the Ganges and that it produced the best tortoise-shell found in all the Erythræan Sea. He speaks, however, of Thina, the land of silk, situated "where the seacoast ends externally," whence we may gather that Chryse was conceived by him as an island lying not only to the east of the Ganges, but also to the southward of the Chinese Empire. This indicates a distinct advance in knowledge, for the isle of Chryse, albeit still enveloped in a golden haze, was to the author of the Periplus a real country, and no mere mythical fairy-land. Rumours, it would seem, must have reached him concerning it—rumours upon which he