Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/220



Periplus 210 Merchant Ship.png Merchant-ship of the 2d century, from a relief on a sarcophagus in the Lateran Museum.

and the coasts of Arabia and Africa, with which the trade was principally maintained. Both Buddhist and Brahman writings testify to its existence in the 5th century B.C.; but their evidence is late, as they are the product of the Northern Aryans, an inland race, who appeared in South India after its activities had been widely developed. Better evidence is given by the Dravidian alphabet, supposed to be from a Semitic (Himyaritic, or Phoenician) original, and to date from about 1000 B.C., whereas the Aryan, or Kharosthī, alphabet was formulated after the conquest, about 500 B.C. (R. Sewell, Hindu Period of Southern India, in Imp. Gaz., II, 322.)

"Sent from Arabia and by the Greeks" were the ships found by our author in the Chēra backwaters. The text has Ariaca, but the error is obvious, as the articles of trade were from foreign, and not Hindu, sources. "No Aryan language had penetrated into these kingdoms, which lived their own life, completely secluded from Northern India, and in touch with the outer world only through the medium of maritime commerce, which had been conducted with safety from very early times. The pearls of the Gulf of Manār, the beryls of Coimbatore, and the pepper of Malabar were not to be had elsewhere, and were largely sought by foreign merchants, as early as the 7th or 8th century B.C." (Vincent Smith, Early History, 334.)