Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/161

 Aside from the obvious linking of Apologus and Ommana as Persian Gulf ports, in §§35 and 36, the text gives two further proofs. The "sewed boats" are such as are still made along this coast, and the wine mentioned in §36 as an export to India is referred to in §49 as an import at Barygaza from Arabia. The "many pearls" exported, and in fact the whole list of imports and exports in §36, suggest such a trade as now centers on Bahrein.

Müller, Fabricius, and McCrindle locate Ommana in the bay of Chahbar on the Makran coast (25° 15′N., 60° 30′E.), reckoning the six days' sail eastward from the Straits of Hormus; and Sir Thomas Holdich followed them in his Notes on Ancient and Mediaeval Makran (Geographical Journal, 1896; VII, 393–6). It is notable that in his Gates of India, 1910, (pp.299–300) he abandons this position and refers the activity of the Chahbar ports to the mediaeval period. General S.B. Miles (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, N.S., X, pp.164–5) argues for Sohar, on the Batineh coast of Oman, north of Muscat, the ocean terminus of an ancient and important caravan-route; but the location does not tally with the statement in the text, that Ommana was six days through, or beyond, the Straits.

Ommana was the center of an active and extensive shipping trade with India, conveniently located with reference to the trans-Arabian caravan-routes; and Glaser points out the probability that this coast of El Katan was also the "land of Ophir" of King Solomon's trading voyages; a trading center where the products of the East were received and reshipped, or sent overland, to the Mediterranean.

36. Copper is here mentioned as an article of export from India to the Persian Gulf. It is no longer extensively produced in India, but was formerly smelted in considerable quantities in South India, Rajputana, and at various parts of the outer Himalaya, where a killas-like rock persists along the whole range and is known to be copper-bearing in Kullu, Garhwal, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan. See the authorities cited in Watt, Commercial Products of India, p.401.

But it is possible that this copper imported at Ommana included also European copper, exported from Cana (§28) to the Indus mouth and Barygaza (§§39 and 49) and thence reshipped to the Persian Gulf. During the suspension of trade between the Roman and Parthian Empires, owing to war, this would have been a natural trade arrangement.

Pliny (VI, 26) speaks of copper, iron, arsenic, and red lead, as exports of Carmania, whence they were shipped to Persian Gulf and Red Sea ports for distribution; indicating again that Ommana was no Carmanian port.