As This Discovery Led Necessarily To A Direct
Communication Between Africa And India, And Grea'ly Enlarged The Knowledge
Of The Romans Respecting The Latter Country, As Well As Their Commercial
Connections With It, It Will Be Proper To Notice It In A Particular Manner.
This important discovery is supposed to have been made in the seventh year
of the reign of Claudius, answering to the forty-seventh of the Christian
era.
The following is the account given of it by the author of the Periplus
of the Erythrean Sea, as translated by Dr. Vincent:
"The whole navigation, such as it has been described from Adan in Arabia
Felix and Kane to the ports of India, was performed formerly in small
vessels, by adhering to the shore and following the indention of the coast;
but Hippalus was the pilot who first discovered the direct course across
the ocean, by observing the position of the ports and the general
appearance of the sea; for, at the season when the annual winds peculiar to
our climate settle in the north, and blow for a continuance upon our coast
from the Mediterranean, in the Indian ocean the wind is constantly to the
south west; and this wind has in those seas obtained the name of Hippalus,
from the pilot who first attempted the passage by means of it to the east.
"From the period of that discovery to the present time, vessels bound to
India take their departure either from Kane on the Arabian, or from Cape
Arometa on the African side. From these points they stretch out to the open
sea at once, leaving all the windings of the gulfs and bays at a distance,
and make directly for their several destinations on the coast of India.
Those that are intended for Limurike waiting some time before they sail,
but those that are destined for Barugaza, or Scindi, seldom more than three
days."
If we may credit Pliny, the Greek merchants of Egypt for some years after
the discovery of the monsoon, did not venture further out to sea than was
absolutely necessary, by crossing the widest part of the entry of the
Persian Gulf, to reach Patala at the mouth of the Indus; but they
afterwards found shorter routes, or rather stretched more to the south, so
as to reach lower down on the coast of India: they also enlarged their
vessels, carried cargoes of greater value, and in order to beat off the
pirates, which then as at present infested this part of the Indian coast,
they put on board their vessels a band of archers. Myos Hormos, or
Berenice, was the port on the Red Sea from which they sailed; in forty days
they arrived at Musiris, on the west coast of India. The homeward passage
was begun in December or January, when the north east monsoon commenced;
this carried them to the entrance of the Red Sea, up which to their port
they were generally favored by southerly winds.
As there is no good reason to believe that the ancients made regular
voyages to India, previously to the discovery of the monsoons; yet, as it
is an undoubted fact that some of the exclusive productions of that
country, particularly cinnamon, were obtained by them, through their
voyages on the Red Sea; it becomes an important and interesting enquiry, by
what means these productions were brought to those places on this sea, from
which the Romans obtained them. In our opinion, the Arabians were the first
who introduced Indian productions into the west from the earliest period to
which history goes back, and they continued to supply the merchants who
traded on the Red Sea with them, till, by the discovery of the monsoon, a
direct communication was opened between that sea and India.
At least seventeen centuries before the Christian era, we have undoubted
evidence of the traffic of the Arabians in the spices, &c. of India; for in
the 27th chapter of Genesis we learn, that the Ishmaelites from Gilead
conducted a caravan of camels laden with the spices of India, and the
balsam and myrrh of Hadraumaut, in the regular course of traffic to Egypt
for sale. In the 30th chapter of Exodus, cinnamon, cassia, myrrh,
frankincense, &c. are mentioned, some of which are the exclusive produce of
India; these were used for religious purposes, but at the same time the
quantities of them specified are so great, that it is evident they must
have been easily obtained. Spices are mentioned, along with balm and other
productions of Canaan, in the present destined by Jacob for Joseph. These
testimonies from holy writ are perfectly in unison with what we learn from
Herodotus; this author enumerates oriental spices as regularly used in
Egypt for embalming the dead.
It is sufficiently evident, therefore, that, at a very early period, the
productions of India were imported into Egypt. That the Arabians were the
merchants who imported them, is rendered highly probable from several
circumstances. The Ishmaelites, mentioned in the 37th chapter of Genesis,
are undoubtedly the Nabathians, whose country is represented by all the
geographers, historians, and poets, as the source of all the precious
commodities of the east; the ancients, erroneously supposing that cinnamon,
which we know to be an exclusive production of India, was the produce of
Arabia, because they were supplied with it, along with other aromatics,
from that country. The proof that the Nabathians and the Ishmaelites are
the same, is to be found in the evident derivation of the former name, from
Nebaioth, the son of Ishmael. The traditions of the Arabians coincide with
the genealogy of the Scriptures, in regarding Joktan, the fourth son of
Shem, as the origin of those trihes which occupied Sabaea and Hadraumaut, or
the incense country; Ishmael as the father of the families which settled in
Arabia Deserta; and Edom as the ancestor of the Idumeans, who settled in
Arabia Petraea.
Eight hundred years before the Christian era, the merchandize of the
Sabeans is particularly noticed by the prophet Isaiah; and even long before
his time, we are informed, that there were no such spices as the Queen of
Sheba gave to Solomon.
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