Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/171

 intercourse that has resulted in the incorporation of several Tamil words into the language of the Bible itself. The Roman coins found in Southern India in and near the Coimbatore district and at Madura are more numerous than the finds in the north. The chief reasons for the dearth of coins in the north are that the export to Rome of which we have mention in classical writers, in exchange for which Roman coins were brought to India, was mostly of products of South India and the Deccan, while the Kushan kings had the Roman coins melted down in a mass and new coins issued from the metal having exactly the weight of the aurei. Besides this significance of these finds of Roman coins, one interesting feature of the Andhra coins deserves to be carefully noted in this connection, conveying as it does a sure hint at maritime commerce, viz. that on many of these coins found on the east coast is to be detected the device of a two-masted ship, "evidently of large size," the suggestion of which is quite clear.

The stimulus to this Occidental trade of India came from the Roman Empire under Augustus.