Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/136

 except India, or from the farther East by means of the Indian trade." It was this flow or "drain" of gold into India that so far back as the 1st century A.D. was the cause of alarm and regret to Pliny, who calculated that fully a hundred million sesterces, equivalent, according to Delmar, to £70,000 of modern English money, were withdrawn annually from the Roman Empire to purchase useless Oriental products such as perfumes, unguents, and personal ornaments. It was probably also the same flow of gold into India from outside that even earlier still, in the 5th century B.C., at least partially enabled the Indian satrapy of Darius, naturally the richest and most populous part of his empire (including as much of Afghanistan, Kashmir, and the Punjab as the Persian monarchs could keep in subjection), to pay him "the enormous tribute of 360 Euboic talents of gold-dust or 185 hundredweights, worth fully a million sterling, and constituting about one-third of the total bullion revenue of the Asiatic provinces."

We shall now enter upon a relation of the facts of this trade which served to create "the wealth of Ind," a brief survey of its course which undoubtedly is an important, though neglected, aspect