Page:Origin and spread of the Tamils.djvu/44



SPREAD OF TAMIL CULTURE ABROAD 33 that India drained the Roman empire annually to the value of nearly 500,000 pounds ?' Strabo narrates the increase in trade with Egypt through the Red Sea, between B.C. 63 and 23 A.D.. The importance of Musiri, the sea-port capital of the ancient Cera kings, Mangalore (Nihias) and Gujarat, in this connection, is mentioned by the Periplus, Pliny and Ptolemy. The ships from Gujarat and also from Egypt were seen there. With the fall of the Roman empire, in the 4th century A.D., there was a set-back to trade relations. The South Indian trade now passed to the hands of Arab traders once again, and they continued to be the chief navigators of the Indian Ocean till the time of Marco Polo and the Portuguese. While all this was mainly from the West coast, there was an equally hrisk intercourse with the islands of the Archipelago, Polynesia and Malaysia, most probably through Ceylon in ancient times, and directly in later periods. These contacts were naturally from the east and southern coasts of the Peninsula. The intercourse was both cultural and commercial and was, as we shall see with the rest of Asia, with Africa and Europe (P.T.S., Stone Age in India, p. 43). Confining ourselves, for the time being, to the East coast, trade and other communications were active from very ancient times. There was contact with Polynesia which had a double rigger boat design as against the single outrigger of South India in Ceylon, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Pacific Islands