1. The first of the important roadsteads
established on the Red Sea, and the first also
of the great trading marts upon its coast, is the
port of Myos-hormos in Egypt. Beyond it
at a distance of 1800 stadia is Berenikê, which
is to your right if you approach it by sea.
These roadsteads are both situate at the furthest
end of Egypt, and are bays of the Red Sea.
Commentary.
(1) Myos Hormos.—Its situation is determined
by the cluster of islands now called
Jifâtîn [lat. 27° 12´ N., long. 33° 55´ E.] of
which the three largest lie opposite an indenture
of the coast of Egypt on the curve of which its
harbour was situated [near Ras Abu Somer, a
little north of Satâjah Island]. It was founded by
Ptolemy Philadelphos B. C. 274, who selected it as
the principal port of the Egyptian trade with
India in preference to Arsinoê,[16] N. N. E. of Suez,
on account of the difficulty and tediousness of the
navigation down the Heroöpolite Gulf. The vessels
bound for Africa and the south of Arabia left its
harbour about the time of the autumnal equinox,
when the North West wind which then prevailed
carried them quickly down the Gulf. Those bound
for the Malabar Coast or Ceylon left in July, and
if they cleared the Red Sea before the 1st of
September, they had the monsoon to assist their
passage across the ocean. Myos Hormos was
distant from Koptos [lat. 26° N.], the station on
the Nile through which it communicated with
Alexandria, a journey of seven or eight days along
a road opened through the desert by Philadelphos.
The name Myos Hormos is of Greek origin, and
may signify either the Harbour of the Mouse, or,
more probably, of the Mussel, since the pearl mussel
abounded in its neighbourhood. Agatharkhidês
calls it Aphroditēs Hormos, and Pliny
Veneris Portus. [Veneris Portus however
was probably at Sherm Sheikh, lat. 24° 36´ N. Off
the coast is Wade Jemâl Island, lat. 24° 39´ N.,
long. 35° 8´ E., called Iambe by Pliny, and perhaps
the Aphroditês Island of Ptolemy IV. v. 77.]
Referring to this name Vincent says: “Here if
the reader will advert to Aphroditê, the Greek
title of Venus, as springing from the foam of
the ocean, it will immediately appear that the
Greeks were translating here, for the native term
to this day is Suffange-el-Bahri, ‘sponge of the
sea’; and the vulgar error of the sponge being the
foam of the sea, will immediately account for
Aphroditê.”
The rival of Myos-Hormos was Berenikê, a
city built by Ptolemy Philadelphos, who so named
it in honour of his mother, who was the daughter
of Ptolemy Lagos and Antigonê. It was in the
same parallel with Syênê and therefore not far
from the Tropic [lat. 23° 55´ N.]. It stood nearly
at the bottom of Foul Bay (ἐν βάθει τοῦ Ἀκαθάρτου
so Κὀλπου), called from the coast being foul with
shoals and breakers, and not from the impurity of
its water, as its Latin name, Sinus Immundus, would
lead us to suppose. Its ruins are still perceptible
even to the arrangement of the streets,
and in the centre is a small Egyptian temple
adorned with hieroglyphics and bas-reliefs of
Greek workmanship. Opposite to the town is
a very fine natural harbour, the entrance of which
has been deep enough for small vessels, though
the bar is now impassable at low water. Its prosperity
under the Ptolemies and afterwards under
the Romans was owing to its safe anchorage and
its being, like Myos-Hormos, the terminus of a
great road from Koptos along which the traffic
of Alexandria with Ethiopia, Arabia, and India
passed to and fro. Its distance from Koptos
was 258 Roman miles or 11 days’ journey. The
distance between Myos-Hormos and Berenikê is
given in the Periplûs at 225 miles, but this is
considerably above the mark. The difficulty of
the navigation may probably have made the
distance seem greater than it was in reality.
2. The country which adjoins them on the
right below Berenîkê is Barbaria. Here the
sea-board is peopled by the Ikhthyophagoi,
who live in scattered huts built in the narrow
gorges of the hills, and further inland are the
Berbers, and beyond them the Agriophagoi
and Moskhophagoi, tribes under
regular government by kings. Beyond these
again, and still further inland towards the west
[is situated the metropolis called Meroê].
(2) Adjoining Berenikê was Barbaria
(ἡ Βαρβαρικὴ χώρα)—the land about Ras Abû
Fatima [lat. 22° 26´ N.—Ptol. IV. vii. 28]. The
reading of the MS. is ἡ Τισηβαρικὴ which Müller
rejects because the name nowhere occurs in any
work, and because if Barbaria is not mentioned
here, our author could not afterwards
(Section 5) say ἡ ἄλλη Βαρβαρία. The Agriophagoi
who lived in the interior are mentioned
by Pliny (vi. 35), who says that they lived principally
on the flesh of panthers and lions. Vincent
writes as if instead of Αγριοφάγων the reading
should be Ακριδοφάγων locust-eaters, who are
mentioned by Agatharkhidês in his De Mari
Erythraeo, Section 58. Another inland tribe
is mentioned in connection with them—the Moskhophagoi,
who may be identified with the
Rizophagoi or Spermatophagoi of
the same writer, who were so named because they
lived on roots of the tender suckers and buds
of trees, called in Greek μόσχοι. This being a
term applied also to the young of animals,
Vincent was led to think that this tribe fed on
the brinde or flesh cut out of the living animal as
described by Bruce.
3. Below the Moskhophagoi, near the
sea, lies a little trading town distant from Berenîkê
about 4000 stadia, called Ptolemaïs
Thêrôn, from which, in the days of the
Ptolemies, the hunters employed by them used
to go up into the interior to catch elephants. In
this mart is procured the true (or marine)
tortoise-shell, and the land kind also, which,
however, is scarce, of a white colour, and smaller
size. A little ivory is also sometimes obtainable,
resembling that of Adouli. This place
has no port, and is approachable only by boats.
(3) To the south of the Moskhophagoi lies
Ptolemaïs Thêrôn, or, as it is called by
Pliny, Ptolemaïs Epitheras. [On Er-rih
island, lat. 18° 9´ N., long 38° 27´ E., are the ruins
of an ancient town—probably Ptolemaïs Therôn—Müller
however places Suche here.—Ptol. I.
viii. 1.; IV. vii. 7; VIII. xvi. 10]. It was originally
an Ethiopian village, but was extended
and fortified by Ptolemy Philadelphos, who made
it the depôt of the elephant trade, for which its
situation on the skirts of the great Nubian forest,
where these animals abounded, rendered it peculiarly
suitable. The Egyptians before this had
imported their elephants from Asia, but as the
supply was precarious, and the cost of importation
very great, Philadelphos made the most
tempting offers to the Ethiopian elephant-hunters
(Elephantophagoi) to induce them to abstain from
eating the animal, or to reserve at least a portion
of them for the royal stables. They rejected
however all his solicitations, declaring that even
for all Egypt they would not forego the luxury of
their repast. The king resolved thereupon to procure
his supplies by employing hunters of his own.
4. Leaving Ptolemaïs Thêrôn we are conducted,
at the distance of about 3000 stadia, to
Adouli, a regular and established port of trade
situated on a deep bay the direction of which is
due south. Facing this, at a distance seaward
of about 200 stadia from the inmost recess of
the bay, lies an island called Oreinê (or ‘the
mountainous’), which runs on either side parallel
with the mainland. Ships, that come to trade
with Adouli, now-a-days anchor here, to avoid
being attacked from the shore; for in former
times when they used to anchor at the very
head of the bay, beside an island called
Diodôros, which was so close to land that the
sea was fordable, the neighbouring barbarians,
taking advantage of this, would run across to
attack the ships at their moorings. At the
distance of 20 stadia from the sea, opposite
Oreinê, is the village of Adouli, which is not
of any great size, and inland from this a three
days’ journey is a city, Kolöê, the first
market where ivory can be procured. From
Kolöê it takes a journey of five days to reach the
metropolis of the people called the Auxumitae,
whereto is brought, through the province
called Kyêneion, all the ivory obtained on
the other side of the Nile, before it is sent on to
Adouli. The whole mass, I may say, of the elephants
and rhinoceroses which are killed to supply
the trade frequent the uplands of the interior,
though at rare times they are seen near the coast,
even in the neighbourhood of Adouli. Besides
the islands already mentioned, a cluster consisting
of many small ones lies out in the sea to the
right of this port. They bear the name of
Alalaiou, and yield the tortoises with which
the Ikhthyophagoi supply the market.
(4) Beyond Ptolemaïs Thêrôn occurs
Adoulê, at a distance, according to the Periplûs,
of 3000 stadia—a somewhat excessive estimate.
The place is called also Adoulei and more
commonly Adoulis by ancient writers (Ptol. IV.
vii. 8; VIII. xvi. 11). It is represented by the
modern Thulla or Zula [pronounced Azule,—lat.
15° 12´-15° 15´ N., long. 39° 36´ E.].—To the West
of this, according to Lord Valentia and Mr. Salt,
there are to be found the remains of an ancient
city. It was situated on the Adoulikos
Kolpos (Ptol. I. xv. 11.; IV. vii. 8), now called
Annesley Bay, the best entrance into Abyssinia.
It was erroneously placed by D’Anville at Dokhnau
or Harkiko, close to Musawwâ [lat. 15° 35´ N.]
There is much probability in the supposition that
it was founded by a party of those Egyptians who,
as we learn from Herodotos (II. 30), to the number
of 240,000 fled from their country in the days of
Psammêtikḥos (B. C. 671-617) and went to as great
a distance beyond Meroë, the capital of Ethiopia, as
Meroë is beyond Elephantinê. This is the account
which Pliny (VI. 3-4) gives of its foundation,
adding that it was the greatest emporium of the
Troglodytes, and distant from Ptolemaïs
a five days’ voyage, which by the ordinary reckoning
is 2,500 stadia. It was an emporium for
rhinoceros’ hides, ivory and tortoise-shell. It had
not only a large sea-borne traffic, but was also a
caravan station for the traffic of the interior of
Africa. Under the Romans it was the haven
of Auxumê (Ptol. IV. vii. 25,—written also
Auxumis, Axumis), now Axum, the capital of the
kingdom of Tigre in Abyssinia. Auxumê was
the chief centre of the trade with the interior of
Africa in gold-dust, ivory, leather, hides and
aromatics. It was rising to great prosperity
and power about the time the Periplûs was
written, which is the earliest work extant in which
it is mentioned. It was probably founded by the
Egyptian exiles already referred to. Its remaining
monuments are perfectly Egyptian and not
pastoral, Troglodytik, Greek, or Arabian in their
character. Its name at the same time retains
traces of the term Asmak, by which, as we
learn from Herodotos, those exiles were designated,
and Heeren considers it to have been one
of the numerous priest-colonies which were sent
out from Meroë.
At Adouli was a celebrated monument, a
throne of white marble with a slab of basanite
stone behind it, both covered with Greek characters,
which in the sixth century of our era were
copied by Kosmas Indikopleustês. The
passage in Kosmos relating to this begins
thus: “Adulê is a city of Ethiopia and the
port of communication with Axiômis, and the
whole nation of which that city is the capital.
In this port we carry on our trade from
Alexandria and the Elanitik Gulf. The town
itself is about a mile from the shore, and as you
enter it on the Western side which leads from
Axiômis, there is still remaining a chair or
throne which appertained to one of the Ptolemys
who had subjected this country to his authority.”
The first portion of the inscription records that
Ptolemy Euergetês (247-222 B.C.) received from
the Troglodyte Arabs and Ethiopians certain
elephants which his father, the second king of the
Makedonian dynasty, and himself had taken in
hunting in the region of Adulê and trained to
war in their own kingdom. The second portion of
the inscription commemorates the conquests of an
anonymous Ethiopian king in Arabia and Ethiopia
as far as the frontier of Egypt. Adouli, it is
known for certain, received its name from a tribe
so designated which formed a part of the Danakil
shepherds who are still found in the neighbourhood
of Annesley Bay, in the island of Diset
[lat. 15° 28´, long. 30° 45´, the Diodôros perhaps
of the Periplûs] opposite which is the town or
station of Masawâ (anc. Saba) [lat. 15° 37´ N.,
long. 39° 28´ E.], and also in the archipelago of
Dhalak, called in the Periplûs, the islands of
Alalaiou. The merchants of Egypt, we learn
from the work, first traded at Masawwâ but afterwards
removed to Oreinê for security. This is an
islet in the south of the Bay of Masawwâ, lying
20 miles from the coast; it is a rock as its name
imports, and is of considerable elevation.
Aduli being the best entrance into Abyssinia,
came prominently into notice during the late
Abyssinian war. Beke thus speaks of it, “In our
recent visit to Abyssinia I saw quite enough to
confirm the opinion I have so long entertained,
that when the ancient Greeks founded Adule or
Adulis at the mouth of the river Hadâs, now only
a river bed except during the rains, though a
short way above there is rain all the year round,
they knew that they possessed one of the keys of
Abyssinia.”
5. Below Adouli, about 800 stadia, occurs
another very deep bay, at the entrance of which
on the right are vast accumulations of sand, wherein
is found deeply embedded the Opsian stone,
which is not obtainable anywhere else. The
king of all this country, from the Moskhophagoi
to the other end of Barbaria, is
Zôskalês, a man at once of penurious
habits and of a grasping disposition, but otherwise
honourable in his dealings and instructed
in the Greek language.
(5) At a distance of about 100 miles beyond
Adouli the coast is indented by another bay now
known as Hanfelah bay [near Râs Hanfelah in
lat. 14° 44´, long. 40° 49´ E.] about 100 miles from
Annesley Bay and opposite an island called Daramsas
or Hanfelah. It has wells of good water and a small
lake of fresh water after the rains; the coast is inhabited
by the Dummoeta, a tribe of the Danakil.
This is the locality where, and where only, the Opsian
or Obsidian stone was to be found. Pliny calls it an
unknown bay, because traders making for the ports
of Arabia passed it by without deviating from
their course to enter it. He was aware, as well as
our author, that it contained the Opsian stone, of
which he gives an account, already produced in the
introduction.
6. These articles which these places import
are the following:—
Ἱμάτια βαρβαρικα, ἄγναφα τὰ ἐν Ἀιγύπτω γινόμενα—Cloth
undressed, of Egyptian manufacture, for
the Barbarian market.
Στολὰι Ἀρσινοητικὰι—Robes manufactured at Arsinoê.
Ἀβόλλαι νόθοι χρωμάτιναι—Cloaks, made of a
poor cloth imitating a better quality, and dyed.
Λέντια—Linens.
Δικρόσσια—Striped cloths and fringed. Mantles
with a double fringe.
Λιθίας ὑαλῆς πλείονα γένη καὶ ἄλλης μορρίνης, τῆς
γινομένης έν Διοσπόλει—Many sorts of glass or
crystal, and of that other transparent stone
called Myrrhina, made at Diospolis.
Ὀρείχαλκος—Yellow copper, for ornaments and
cut into pieces to pass for money.
Μελίεφθα χαλκᾶ—Copper fused with honey: for
culinary vessels and cutting into bracelets and
anklets worn by certain classes of women.
Σίδηρος—Iron. Consumed in making spearheads
for hunting the elephant and other animals
and in making weapons of war.
Πελύκια—Hatchets.
Σκέπαρνα—Adzes.
Μάχαιραι—Swords.
Ποτήρια χαλκᾶ στρογγύλα μεγάλα—Drinking
vessels of brass, large and round.
Δηνάριον ὀλίγον—A small quantity of denarii:
for the use of merchants resident in the country.
Οἶνος Λαοδικηνὸς καὶ Ἰταλικὸς οῦ πολῦς—Wine,
Laodikean, i.e. Syrian, from Laodike, (now Latakia)
and Italian, but not much.
Ἔλαιον οὐ πολύ—Oil, but not much.
Ἀργυρώματα καὶ χρυσώματα τοπικῷ ῥυθμῷ
κατεσκευασμέναι—Gold and silver plate made according
to the fashion of the country for the king.
Ἀβόλλαι—Cloaks for riding or for the camp.
Καυνάκαὶ ἁπλοῖ—Dresses simply made of skins
with the hair or fur on. These two articles of dress
are not of much value.
These articles are imported from the interior
parts of Ariakê:—
Σίδηρος Ἰνδικὸς—Indian iron.
Στόμωμα—Sharp blades.
Ὀθόνιον Ἰνδικὸν τὸ πλατύτερον, ἡ λεγομένη μοναχὴ.—Monakhê,[17]
Indian cotton cloth of great width.
Σαγματογῆναι—Cotton for stuffing.
Περιζώματα—Sashes or girdles.
Καυνάκαὶ—Dresses of skin with the hair or fur on.
Μολόχινα—Webs of cloth mallow-tinted.
Σινδόνες ὀλίγαι—Fine muslins in small quantity.
Λάκκος χρωμάτινος—Gum-lac: yielding Lake.
The articles locally produced for export are
ivory, tortoise-shell, and rhinoceros. Most of
the goods which supply the market arrive any
time from January to September—that is, from
Tybi to Thôth. The best season, however, for
ships from Egypt to put in here is about the
month of September.
7. From this bay the Arabian Gulf trends
eastward, and at Aualitês is contracted to
its narrowest. At a distance of about 4000
stadia (from Adouli), if you still sail along the
same coast, you reach other marts of Barbaria,
called the marts beyond (the Straits), which occur
in successive order, and which, though harbourless,
afford at certain seasons of the year good
and safe anchorage. The first district you come
to is that called Aualitês, where the passage
across the strait to the opposite point of Arabia
is shortest. Here is a small port of trade,
called, like the district, Aualitês, which
can be approached only by little boats and rafts.
The imports of this place are—
Ὑαλὴ λίθια σύμμικτος—Flint glass of various
sorts.
Χυλός] Διοσπολιτικῆς ὄμφακος—Juice of the sour
grape of Diospolis.
Ἰμάτια βαρβαρικὰ σύμμικτα γεγναμμένα—Cloths
of different kinds worn in Barbaria dressed by
the fuller.
Σῖτος—Corn.
Οἶνος—Wine.
Κασσιτερος ὀλίγος—A little tin.
The exports, which are sometimes conveyed
on rafts across the straits by the Berbers
themselves to Okêlis and Mouza on the
opposite coast, are—
Ἀρώματα—Odoriferous gums.
Ἐλέφας ὀλίγος—Ivory in small quantity.
Χελώνη—Tortoise-shell.
Σμύρνα ἐλαχίστη διαφέρουσα δὲ τῆς ἄλλης—Myrrh
in very small quantity, but of the finest sort.
Μάκειρ—Macer.
The barbarians forming the population of the
place are rude and lawless men.
(6, 7) From this bay the coast of the gulf,
according to our author, has a more easterly
direction to the Straits, the distance to which
from Adouli is stated at 4,000 stadia, an estimate
much too liberal. In all this extent of coast the
Periplûs mentions only the bay of the Opsian-stones
and conducts us at once from thence to
Aualités at the straits. Strabo however, and
Juba, and Pliny, and Ptolemy mention several
places in this tract, such as Arsinoë, Berenîkê,
Epideirês, the Grove of Eumenês,
the Chase of Puthangelos, the Territory of the
Elephantophagoi, &c. The straits are called by
Ptolemy Deirê or Dêrê (i. e. the neck), a word
which from its resemblance in sound to the Latin
Dirae has sometimes been explained to mean
“the terrible.” (I. xv. 11; IV. vii. 9; VIII.
xvi. 12). “The Periplûs,” Vincent remarks,
“makes no mention of Deirê, but observes that
the point of contraction is close to Abalitês
or the Abalitik mart; it is from this mart that
the coast of Africa falling down first to the South
and curving afterwards towards the East is styled
the Bay of Aualitês by Ptolemy, (IV. vii.
10, 20, 27, 30, 39,) but in the Periplûs this name
is confined to a bay immediately beyond the
straits which D’Anville has likewise inserted in
his map, but which I did not fully understand
till I obtained Captain Cook’s chart and found it
perfectly consistent with the Periplûs.” It is the
gulf of Tejureh or Zeyla.
The tract of country extending from the Straits
to Cape Arômata (now Guardafui) is called
at the present day Adel. It is described by
Strabo (XVI. iv. 14), who copies his account of it
from Artemidoros. He mentions no emporium,
nor any of the names which occur in the Periplûs
except the haven of Daphnous. [Bandar Mariyah,
lat. 11° 46´ N., long. 50° 38´ E.] He supplies
however many particulars regarding the region
which are left unnoticed by our author as having
no reference to commerce—particulars, however,
which prove that these parts which were resorted
to in the times of the Ptolemies for elephant-hunting
were much better known to the ancients than
they were till quite recently known to ourselves.
Ptolemy gives nearly the same series of names
(IV. vii. 9, 10) as the Periplûs, but with some discrepancies
in the matter of their distances which
he does not so accurately state. His list is: Dêre,
a city; Abalitês or Aualitês, a mart; Malaô,
a mart; Moundou or Mondou, a mart;
Mondou, an island; Mosulon, a cape and a mart;
Kobê, a mart; Elephas, a mountain; Akkanai
or Akannai, a mart; Arômata, a cape
and a mart.
The mart of Abalitês is represented by the
modern Zeyla [lat. 11° 22´ N., long. 43° 29´ E.,
79 miles from the straits.] On the N. shore of the
gulf are Abalit and Tejureh. Abalit is 43 miles
from the straits, and Tejureh 27 miles from
Abalit. This is the Zouileh of Ebn Haukal
and the Zalegh of Idrisi. According to the
Periplûs it was near the straits, but Ptolemy
has fixed it more correctly at the distance from
them of 50 or 60 miles.
8. Beyond Aualitês there is another mart,
superior to it, called Malaô, at a distance
by sea of 800 stadia. The anchorage is an
open road, sheltered, however, by a cape protruding
eastward. The people are of a more peaceable
disposition than their neighbours. The
imports are such as have been already specified,
with the addition of—
Πλείονες χιτῶνες—Tunics in great quantity.
Σάγοι Ἀρσινοητικοι γεγναμμένοι καὶ βεβαμμένοι—Coarse
cloaks (or blankets) manufactured at Arsinoê,
prepared by the fuller and dyed.
Μελίεφθα ὀλίγα—A few utensils made of copper
fused with honey.
Σίδερος—Iron.
Δηνάριον οὐ πολὺ χρυσοῦντε καὶ ἀργυροῦν—Specie,—gold
and silver, but not much.
The exports from this locality are—
Σμύρνα—Myrrh.
Λίβανος ὁ περατικος ὀλίγὸς—Frankincense which
we call peratic, i.e. from beyond the straits, a little
only.
Κασσία σκληροτέρα—Cinnamon of a hard grain.
Δούακα—Douaka (an inferior kind of cinnamon).
Κάγκαμον—The gum (for fumigation) kangkamon.
‘Dekamalli,’ gum.
Μάκειρ—The spice macer, which is carried to
Arabia.
Σώματα σπανίως—Slaves, a few.
(8) Malaô as a mart was much superior to
Abalitês, from which our author estimates its
distance to be 800 stadia, though it is in reality
greater. From the description he gives of its
situation it must be identified with Berbereh
[lat. 10° 25´ N., long. 45° 1´ E.] now the most
considerable mart on this part of the coast.
Vincent erroneously places it between Zeyla and
the straits.
9. Distant from Malaô two days’ sail is
the trading port of Moundou, where ships
find a safer anchorage by mooring at an island
which lies very close to shore. The exports
and imports are similar to those of the preceding
marts, with the addition of the fragrant gum
called Mokrotou, a peculiar product of the place.
The native traders here are uncivilized in their
manners.
(9) The next mart after Malaô is Moundou,
which, as we learn from Ptolemy, was also the
name of an adjacent island—that which is now
called Meyet or Burnt-island [lat. 11° 12´ N.,
long. 47° 17´ E., 10 miles east of Bandar Jedid].
10. After Moundou, if you sail eastward
as before for two or three days, there comes
next Mosullon, where it is difficult to anchor.
It imports the same sorts of commodities as
have been already mentioned, and also utensils
of silver and others of iron but not so many,
and glass-ware. It exports a vast amount
of cinnamon (whence it is a port requiring
ships of heavy burden) and other fragrant
and aromatic products, besides tortoise-shell,
but in no great quantity, and the incense
called mokrotou inferior to that of Moundou, and
frankincense brought from parts further
distant, and ivory and myrrh though in small
quantity.
(10) At a distance beyond it of two or three
days’ sail occurs Mosulon, which is the name
both of a mart and of a promontory. It is mentioned
by Pliny (VI. 34), who says: “Further on is the
bay of Abalitês, the island of Diodôrus
and other islands which are desert. On the mainland,
which has also deserts, occur a town Gaza
[Bandar Gazim, long. 49° 13´ E.], the promontory
and port of Mosylon, whence cinnamon is
exported. Sesostris led his army to this point
and no further. Some writers place one town of
Ethiopia beyond it, Baricaza, which lies on the
coast. According to Juba the Atlantic Sea
begins at the promontory of Mossylon.” Juba
evidently confounded this promontory with Cape
Arômata, and Ptolemy, perhaps in consequence,
makes its projection more considerable than it is.
D’Anville and Gosselin thought Mossulon
was situated near the promontory Mete, where
is a river, called the Soal, which they supposed
preserved traces of the name of Mossulon. This
position however cannot be reconciled with the
distances given in the Periplûs, which would lead
us to look for it where Guesele is placed in the
latest description given of this coast. Vincent on
very inadequate grounds would identify it with
Barbara or Berbera. [Müller places it at Bandar
Barthe and Ras Antarah, long. 49° 35´ E.]
11. After leaving Mosullon, and sailing
past a place called Neiloptolemaios, and
past Tapatêgê and the Little Laurel-grove,
you are conducted in two days to Capo Elephant.
Here is a stream called Elephant
River, and the Great Laurel-grove called Akannai,
where, and where only, is produced the
peratic frankincense. The supply is most abundant,
and it is of the very finest quality.
(11) After Mosulon occurs Cape Elephant,
at some distance beyond Neiloptolemaios,
Tapatêgê, and the Little Laurel-grove. At the
Cape is a river and the Great Laurel-grove called
Akannai. Strabo in his account of this coast
mentions a Neilospotamia which however can
hardly be referred to this particular locality
which pertains to the region through which the
Khori or San Pedro flows, of which Idrisi (I. 45)
thus writes: “At two journeys’ distance from
Markah in the desert is a river which is subject
to risings like the Nile and on the banks of which
they sow dhorra.” Regarding Cape Elephant
Vincent says, “it is formed by a mountain conspicuous
in the Portuguese charts under the name
of Mount Felix or Felles from the native term
Jibel Fîl, literally, Mount Elephant. The cape
[Ras Filik, 800 ft. high, lat. 11° 57´ N., long. 50°
37´ E.] is formed by the land jutting up to the
North from the direction of the coast which is
nearly East and West, and from its northernmost
point the land falls off again South-East to
Râs 'Asir—Cape Guardafui, the Arômata of the
ancients. We learn from Captain Saris, an English
navigator, that there is a river at Jibel Fîl.
In the year 1611 he stood into a bay or harbour
there which he represents as having a safe
entrance for three ships abreast: he adds also that
several sorts of gums very sweet in burning were
still purchased by the Indian ships from Cambay
which touched here for that purpose in their
passage to Mocha.” The passage in the Periplûs
where these places are mentioned is very corrupt.
Vincent, who regards the greater Daphnôn
(Laurel-grove) as a river called Akannai, says,
“Neither place or distance is assigned to any
of these names, but we may well allot the rivers
Daphnôn and Elephant to the synonymous town
and cape; and these may be represented by the
modern Mete and Santa Pedro.” [Müller places
Elephas at Ras el Fîl, long. 50° 37´ E., and Akannai
at Ulûlah Bandar, long. 50° 56´ E., but they
may be represented by Ras Ahileh, where a river
enters through a lagoon in 11° 46´, and Bonah,
a town with wells of good water in lat. 11° 58´ N.,
long. 50° 51´ E.]
12. After this, the coast now inclining to the
south, succeeds the mart of Arômata, and a
bluff headland running out eastward which
forms the termination of the Barbarine coast.
The roadstead is an open one, and at certain
seasons dangerous, as the place lies exposed to
the north wind. A coming storm gives warning
of its approach by a peculiar prognostic, for the
sea turns turbid at the bottom and changes its
colour. When this occurs, all hasten for refuge
to the great promontory called Tabai, which
affords a secure shelter. The imports into this
mart are such as have been already mentioned;
while its products are cinnamon, gizeir (a finer
sort of cinnamon), asuphê (an ordinary sort),
fragrant gums, magla, motô (an inferior cinnamon),
and frankincense.
(12) We come now to the great projection
Cape Arômata, which is a continuation of Mount
Elephant. It is called in Arabic Jerd Hafûn
or Ras Asir; in Idrisi, Carfouna, whence the
name by which it is generally known. [The South
point 11° 40´ is Râs Shenarif or Jerd Hafûn;
the N. point 11° 51´ is Râs 'Asir.] It formed
the limit of the knowledge of this coast in the
time of Strabo, by whom it is called Notou
Keras or South Horn. It is described as a
very high bluff point and as perpendicular as if
it were scarped. [Jerd Hafûn is 2500 feet high.]
The current comes round it out of the gulf with
such violence that it is not to be stemmed without
a brisk wind, and during the South-West
Monsoon, the moment you are past the Cape to
the North there is a stark calm with insufferable
heat. The current below Jerd Hafûn is noticed by
the Periplûs as setting to the South, and is there
perhaps equally subject to the change of the
monsoon. With this account of the coast from
the straits to the great Cape may be compared
that which has been given by Strabo, XVI. iv. 14:
“From Deirê the next country is that which
bears aromatic plants. The first produces myrrh
and belongs to the Ichthyophagi and
Creophagi. It bears also the persea, peach or
Egyptian almond, and the Egyptian fig. Beyond is
Licha, a hunting ground for elephants. There
are also in many places standing pools of rainwater.
When these are dried up, the elephants
with their trunks and tusks dig holes and find
water. On this coast there are two very large
lakes extending as far as the promontory Pytholaus.
One of them contains salt water and is
called a sea; the other fresh water and is the
haunt of hippopotami and crocodiles. On the
margin grows the papyrus. The ibis is seen in
the neighbourhood of this place. Next is the
country which produces frankincense; it has a
promontory and a temple with a grove of poplars.
In the inland parts is a tract along the banks of a
river bearing the name of Isis, and another that
of Nilus, both of which produce myrrh and frankincense.
Also a lagoon filled with water from the
mountains. Next the watch-post of the Lion and
the port of Pythangelus. The next tract
bears the false cassia. There are many tracts
in succession on the sides of rivers on which
frankincense grows, and rivers extending to the
cinnamon country. The river which bounds this
tract produces rushes (φλους) in great abundance.
Then follows another river and the port of
Daphnus, and a valley called Apollo’s which
bears besides frankincense, myrrh and cinnamon.
The latter is more abundant in places far in the
interior. Next is the mountain Elephas, a
mountain projecting into the sea and a creek; then
follows the large harbour of Psygmus, a watering
place called that of Kunocephali and the
last promontory of this coast Notu-ceras (or the
Southern Horn). After doubling this cape towards
the south we have no more descriptions of harbours
or places because nothing is known of the sea-coast
beyond this point.” [Bohn’s Transl.] According
to Gosselin, the Southern Horn corresponds with
the Southern Cape of Bandel-caus, where commences
the desert coast of Ajan, the ancient
Azania.
According to the Periplûs Cape Arômata
marked the termination of Barbaria and the
beginning of Azania. Ptolemy however distinguishes
them differently, defining the former as
the interior and the latter as the sea-board of the
region to which these names were applied.
The description of the Eastern Coast of Africa
which now follows is carried, as has been already
noticed, as far as Rhapta, a place about 6 degrees
South of the Equator, but which Vincent places
much farther South, identifying it with Kilwa.
The places named on this line of coast are:
a promontory called Tabai, a Khersonesos;
Opônê, a mart; the Little and the Great Apokopa;
the Little and the Great Coast; the
Dromoi or courses of Azania (first that of
Serapiôn, then that of Nikôn); a number of
rivers; a succession of anchorages, seven in number;
the Paralaoi islands; a strait or canal;
the island of Menouthias; and then Rhapta,
beyond which, as the author conceived, the ocean
curved round Africa until it met and amalgamated
with the Hesperian or Western Ocean.
13. If, on sailing from Tabai, you follow
the coast of the peninsula formed by the promontory,
you are carried by the force of a strong
current to another mart 400 stadia distant, called
Opônê, which imports the commodities already
mentioned, but produces most abundantly
cinnamon, spice, motô, slaves of a very superior
sort, chiefly for the Egyptian market, and tortoise-shell
of small size but in large quantity
and of the finest quality known.
(13) Tabai, to which the inhabitants of the Great
Cape fled for refuge on the approach of a storm,
cannot, as Vincent and others have supposed, be
Cape Orfui, for it lay at too great a distance for
the purpose. The projection is meant which the
Arabs call Banna. [Or, Tabai may be identified
with Râs Shenarif, lat. 11° 40´ N.] Tabai, Müller
suggests, may be a corruption for Tabannai.
“From the foreign term Banna,” he says,
“certain Greeks in the manner of their countrymen
invented Panos or Panôn or Panô or Panôna
Kômê. Thus in Ptolemy (I. 17 and IV. 7) after
Arômata follows Panôn Kômê, which Mannert
has identified with Benna. [Khor Banneh is a salt
lake, with a village, inside Râs Ali Beshgêl, lat. 11° 9´
N., long. 51° 9´ E.] Stephen of Byzantium may be
compared, who speaks of Panos as a village on
the Red Sea which is also called Panôn.” The
conjecture, therefore, of Letronnius that Panôn
Kômê derived its name from the large apes
found there, called Pânes, falls to the ground.
Opônê was situated on the Southern shores
of what the Periplûs calls a Khersonese, which
can only be the projection now called Ras
Hafûn or Cape D’Orfui (lat. 10° 25´ N.).
Ptolemy (I. 17) gives the distance of Opônê
from Panôn Kômê at a 6 days’ journey, from
which according to the Periplûs it was only
400 stadia distant. That the text of Ptolemy is
here corrupt cannot be doubted, for in his tables
the distance between the two places is not far from
that which is given in the Periplûs. Probably,
as Müller conjectures, he wrote ὁδόν ἡμέρας (a day’s
journey) which was converted into ὁδόν ἡμερ. ϛ´ (a
six-days’ journey).
14. Ships set sail from Egypt for all these
ports beyond the straits about the month of
July—that is, Epiphi. The same markets are
also regularly supplied with the products of
places far beyond them—Ariakê and Barugaza.
These products are—
Σῖτος —Corn.
Ὀρυζα[18]—Rice.
Βούτυρον—Butter, i. e. ghî.
Ἔλαιον σησάμινον—Oil of sesamum.
Ὀθόνιον ἥ τε μοναχὴ καὶ ἡ σαγματογήνη—Fine
cotton called Monakhê, and a coarse kind for
stuffing called Sagmatogene.
Περιζώματα—Sashes or girdles.
Μέλι τὸ καλάμινον τὸ λεγόμενον σάκχαρι—The
honey of a reed, called sugar.
Some traders undertake voyages for this
commerce expressly, while others, as they sail
along the coast we are describing, exchange
their cargoes for such others as they can procure.
There is no king who reigns paramount over all
this region, but each separate seat of trade is
ruled by an independent despot of its own.
(14) At this harbour is introduced the mention
of the voyage which was annually made between
the coast of India and Africa in days previous to
the appearance of the Greeks on the Indian Ocean,
which has already been referred to.
15. After Opônê, the coast now trending
more to the south, you come first to what are
called the little and the great Apokopa (or
Bluffs) of Azania, where there are no
harbours, but only roads in which ships can conveniently
anchor. The navigation of this coast,
the direction of which is now to the south-west,
occupies six days. Then follow the Little
Coast and the Great Coast, occupying other six
days, when in due order succeed the Dromoi
(or Courses) of Azania, the one going
by the name of Sarapiôn, and the other
by that of Nikôn. Proceeding thence, you
pass the mouths of numerous rivers, and a succession
of other roadsteads lying apart one
from another a day’s distance either by sea or by
land. There are seven of them altogether, and
they reach on to the Puralaoi islands and the
narrow strait called the Canal, beyond which,
where the coast changes its direction from south-west
slightly more to south, you are conducted
by a voyage of two days and two nights to
Menouthias, an island stretching towards sunset,
and distant from the mainland about 300 stadia.
It is low-lying and woody, has rivers, and a
vast variety of birds, and yields the mountain
tortoise, but it has no wild beasts at all, except
only crocodiles, which, however, are quite
harmless. The boats are here made of planks
sewn together attached to a keel formed of a
single log of wood, and these are used for fishing
and for catching turtle. This is also caught in
another mode, peculiar to the island, by lowering
wicker-baskets instead of nets, and fixing
them against the mouths of the cavernous
rocks which lie out in the sea confronting the
beach.
(15) After leaving Opônê the coast first runs
due south, then bends to the south-west, and here
begins the coast which is called the Little and the
Great Apokopa or Bluffs of Azania, the
voyage along which occupies six days. This rocky
coast, as we learn from recent explorations, begins
at Râs Mabber [about lat. 9° 25´ N.], which is
between 70 and 80 miles distant from Ras Hafûn and
extends only to Râs-ul-Kheil [about lat. 7° 45´
N.], which is distant from Râs Mabber about 140
miles or a voyage of three or four days only. The
length of this rocky coast (called Hazine by the
Arabs) is therefore much exaggerated in the Periplûs.
From this error we may infer that our author,
who was a very careful observer, had not personally
visited this coast. Ptolemy, in opposition to Marînos
as well as the Periplûs, recognizes but one
Apokopa, which he speaks of as a bay. Müller
concludes an elaborate note regarding the Apokopa
by the following quotation from the work of
Owen, who made the exploration already referred to,
“It is strange that the descriptive term Hazine
should have produced the names Ajan, Azan
and Azania in many maps and charts, as the
country never had any other appellation than
Barra Somâli or the land of the Somâli,
a people who have never yet been collected under
one government, and whose limits of subjection
are only within bow-shot of individual chiefs.
The coast of Africa from the Red Sea to the river
Juba is inhabited by the tribe called Somâli.
They are a mild people of pastoral habits and
confined entirely to the coast; the whole of the
interior being occupied by an untameable tribe of
savages called Galla.”
The coast which follows the Apokopa, called
the Little and the Great Aigialos or Coast,
is so desolate that, as Vincent remarks, not a
name occurs on it, neither is there an anchorage
noticed, nor the least trace of commerce to be
found. Yet it is of great extent—a six days’
voyage according to the Periplûs, but, according
to Ptolemy, who is here more correct, a voyage of
eight days, for, as we have seen, the Periplûs has
unduly extended the Apokopa to the South.
Next follow the Dromoi or Courses of
Azania, the first called that of Serapiôn
and the other that of Nikôn. Ptolemy interposes
a bay between the Great Coast and the port
of Serapiôn, on which he states there was
an emporium called Essina—a day’s sail distant
from that port. Essina, it would therefore
appear, must have been somewhere near where
Makdashû [Magadoxo, lat. 2° 3´ N.] was built
by the Arabs somewhere in the eighth century A.D.
The station called that of Nikôn in the Periplûs
appears in Ptolemy as the mart of Tonikê.
These names are not, as some have supposed, of
Greek origin, but distortions of the native appellations
of the places into names familiar to Greek
ears. That the Greeks had founded any settlements
here is altogether improbable. At the
time when the Periplûs was written all the trade
of these parts was in the hands of the Arabs of
Mouza. The port of Serapiôn may be
placed at a promontory which occurs in 1° 40´
of N. lat. From this, Tonikê, according to
the tables of Ptolemy, was distant 45´, and its
position must therefore have agreed with that of
Torre or Torra of our modern maps.
Next occurs a succession of rivers and roadsteads,
seven in number, which being passed we
are conducted to the Puralaän Islands, and
what is called a canal or channel (διώρυξ). These
islands are not mentioned elsewhere. They can
readily be identified with the two called Manda
and Lamou, which are situate at the mouths of
large rivers, and are separated from the mainland
and from each other by a narrow channel. Vincent
would assign a Greek origin to the name of
these islands. “With a very slight alteration,”
he says, “of the reading, the Puralian Islands
(Πῦρ ἁλιον, marine fire,) are the islands of the
Fiery Ocean, and nothing seems more consonant
to reason than for a Greek to apply the name of
the Fiery Ocean to a spot which was the centre
of the Torrid Zone and subject to the perpendicular
rays of an equinoctial sun.” [The Juba
islands run along the coast from Juba to about
Lat. 1° 50´ S., and Manda bay and island is in Lat.
2° 12´ S.]
Beyond these islands occurs, after a voyage
of two days and two nights, the island of Menouthias
or Menouthesias, which it has
been found difficult to identify with any certainty.
“It is,” says Vincent, “the Eitenediommenouthesias
of the Periplûs, a term egregiously strange and
corrupted, but out of which the commentators
unanimously collect Menoothias, whatever may be
the fate of the remaining syllables. That this Menoothias,”
he continues, “must have been one of
the Zangibar islands is indubitable; for the distance
from the coast of all three, Pemba, Zangibar,
and Momfia, affords a character which is indelible;
a character applicable to no other island from
Guardafui to Madagascar.” He then identifies
it with the island of Zangibar, lat. 6° 5´ S., in preference
to Pemba, 5° 6´ S., which lay too far out
of the course, and in preference to Momfia, 7° 50´
S. (though more doubtfully), because of its being
by no means conspicuous, whereas Zangibar was
so prominent and obvious above the other two,
that it might well attract the particular attention
of navigators, and its distance from the mainland
is at the same time so nearly in accordance with
that given in the Periplûs as to counterbalance all
other objections. A writer in Smith’s Classical
Geography, who seems to have overlooked the indications
of the distances both of Ptolemy and the
Periplûs, assigns it a position much further to the
north than is reconcilable with these distances.
He places it about a degree south from the mouth
of the River Juba or Govind, just where an opening
in the coral-reefs is now found. “The coasting
voyage,” he says, “steering S. W., reached the
island on the east side—a proof that it was close
to the main.... It is true the navigator
says it was 300 stadia from the mainland; but as
there is no reason to suppose that he surveyed
the island, this distance must be taken to signify
the estimated width of the northern inlet separating
the island from the main, and this estimate
is probably much exaggerated. The mode of
fishing with baskets is still practised in the Juba
islands and along this coast. The formation of
the coast of E. Africa in these latitudes—where
the hills or downs upon the coast are all formed
of a coral conglomerate comprising fragments
of madrepore, shell and sand, renders it likely
that the island which was close to the main 16 or
17 centuries ago, should now be united to it.
Granting this theory of gradual transformation of
the coast-line, the Menouthias of the Periplûs
may be supposed to have stood in what is now
the rich garden-land of Shamba, where the
rivers carrying down mud to mingle with the
marine deposit of coral drift covered the choked-up
estuary with a rich soil.”
The island is said in the Periplûs to extend
towards the West, but this does not hold good
either in the case of Zangibar or any other island
in this part of the coast. Indeed there is no one
of them in which at the present day all the
characteristics of Menouthias are found combined.
Momfia, for instance, which resembles
it somewhat in name, and which, as modern
travellers tell us, is almost entirely occupied with
birds and covered with their dung, does not
possess any streams of water. These are found
in Zangibar. The author may perhaps have confusedly
blended together the accounts he had
received from his Arab informants.
16. At the distance of a two days’ sail from
this island lies the last of the marts of Azania,
called Rhapta, a name which it derives
from the sewn boats just mentioned. Ivory is
procured here in the greatest abundance, and
also turtle. The indigenous inhabitants are
men of huge stature, who live apart from each
other, every man ruling like a lord his own
domain. The whole territory is governed by
the despot of Mopharitis, because the
sovereignty over it, by some right of old standing,
is vested in the kingdom of what is called the
First Arabia. The merchants of Mouza farm
its revenues from the king, and employ in trading
with it a great many ships of heavy burden,
on board of which they have Arabian commanders
and factors who are intimately acquainted
with the natives and have contracted marriage
with them, and know their language and the
navigation of the coast.
(16) We arrive next and finally at Rhapta, the
last emporium on the coast known to the author.
Ptolemy mentions not only a city of this name,
but also a river and a promontory. The name
is Greek (from ῥάπτειν, to sew), and was applied
to the place because the vessels there in use
were raised from bottoms consisting of single
trunks of trees by the addition of planks which
were sewn together with the fibres of the cocoa.
“It is a singular fact,” as Vincent remarks, “that
this peculiarity should be one of the first objects
which attracted the attention of the Portuguese
upon their reaching this coast. They saw them
first at Mozambique, where they were called
Almeidas, but the principal notice of them in
most of their writers is generally stated at
Kilwa, the very spot which we have supposed to
receive its name from vessels of the same construction.”
Vincent has been led from this coincidence
to identify Rhapta with Kilwa [lat. 8° 50´ S.].
Müller however would place it not so far south,
but somewhere in the Bay of Zangibar. The
promontory of Rhaptum, he judges from the
indications of the Periplûs to be the projection
which closes the bay in which lies the island of
Zangibar, and which is now known as Moinanokalû
or Point Pouna, lat. 7° S. The parts beyond
this were unknown, and the southern coast of
Africa, it was accordingly thought by the ancient
geographers, began here. Another cape however
is mentioned by Ptolemy remoter than Rhaptum
and called Prasum (that is the Green Cape)
which may perhaps be Cape Delgado, which is
noted for its luxuriant vegetation. The same author
calls the people of Rhapta, the Rhapsioi
Aithiopes. They are described in the Periplûs
as men of lofty stature, and this is still a characteristic
of the Africans of this coast. The
Rhapsii were, in the days of our author, subject
to the people of Mouza in Arabia just as their
descendants are at the present day subject to the
Sultan of Maskat. Their commerce moreover still
maintains its ancient characteristics. It is the
African who still builds and mans the ships while
the Arab is the navigator and supercargo. The
ivory is still of inferior quality, and the turtle is
still captured at certain parts of the coast.
17. The articles imported into these marts
are principally javelins manufactured at Mouza,
hatchets, knives, awls, and crown glass of various
sorts, to which must be added corn and wine
in no small quantity landed at particular ports,
not for sale, but to entertain and thereby conciliate
the barbarians. The articles which these
places export are ivory, in great abundance
but of inferior quality to that obtained at
Adouli, rhinoceros, and tortoise-shell of fine
quality, second only to the Indian, and a little
nauplius.
18. These marts, we may say, are about the
last on the coast of Azania—the coast, that is,
which is on your right as you sail south from
Berenîkê. For beyond these parts an ocean,
hitherto unexplored, curves round towards sunset,
and, stretching along the southern extremities
of Ethiopia, Libya, and Africa, amalgamates
with the Western Sea.
19. To the left, again, of Berenikê, if you
sail eastward from Myos-Hormos across the
adjacent gulf for two days, or perhaps three, you
arrive at a place having a port and a fortress
which is called Leukê Kômê, and forming the
point of communication with Petra, the residence
of Malikhas, the king of the Nabatæans. It
ranks as an emporium of trade, since small
vessels come to it laden with merchandize from
Arabia; and hence an officer is deputed to
collect the duties which are levied on imports
at the rate of twenty-five per cent. of their
value, and also a centurion who commands the
garrison by which the place is protected.
(18, 19) Our author having thus described the
African coast as far southward as it was known on
its Eastern side, reverts to Berenikê and enters
at once on a narrative of the second voyage—that
which was made thence across the Northern head
of the gulf and along the coast of Arabia to the emporium
of Mouza near the Straits. The course
is first northward, and the parts about Berenikê
as you bear away lie therefore now on your left hand.
Having touched at Myos Hormos the course
on leaving it is shaped eastward across the gulf by
the promontory Pharan, and Leukê Kômê[19]
is reached after three or four days’ sailing. This
was a port in the kingdom of the Nabathæans
(the Nebaioth of Scripture), situated perhaps near
the mouth of the Elanitic Gulf or eastern arm of
the Red Sea, now called the Gulf of Akabah.
Much difference of opinion has prevailed as to
its exact position, since the encroachment of the
land upon the sea has much altered the line of
coast here. Mannert identified it with the modern
Yenbo [lat. 24° 5´ N., long. 38° 3´ E., the port
of Medina], Gosselin with Mowilah [lat. 27°
38´ N., long. 35° 28´ E.,] Vincent with Eynounah
[lat. 28° 3´ N., long. 35° 13´ E.—the Onne of
Ptolemy], Reichhard with Istabel Antai, and
Rüppel with Wejh [lat. 26° 13´ N., long. 36°
27´ E]. Müller prefers the opinion held by Bochart,
D’Anville, Quatremêre, Noel des Vergers, and
Ritter, who agree in placing it at the port called
Hauara [lat. 24° 59´ N., long. 37° 16´ E.] mentioned
by Idrisi (I. p. 332), who describes it as a
village inhabited by merchants carrying on a considerable
trade in earthen vases manufactured at
a clay-pit in their neighbourhood. Near it lies
the island of Hassani [lat. 24° 59´ N., long.
37° 3´ E.], which, as Wellsted reports, is conspicuous
from its white appearance. Leukê
Kômê is mentioned by various ancient authors,
as for instance Strabo, who, in a passage wherein
he recounts the misfortunes which befel the
expedition which Aelius led into Nabathaea,
speaks of the place as a large mart to which and
from which the camel traders travel with ease
and in safety from Petra and back to Petra
with so large a body of men and camels as to
differ in no respect from an army.
The merchandize thus conveyed from Leukê
Kômê to Petra was passed on to Rhinokoloura
in Palestine near Egypt, and
thence to other nations, but in his own time the
greater part was transported by the Nile to
Alexandria. It was brought down from India
and Arabia to Myos Hormos, whence it was
first conveyed on camels to Koptos and thence
by the Nile to Alexandria. The Nabathaean
king, at the time when our author visited Leukê
Kômê, was, as he tells us, Malikhas, a name
which means ‘king.’ Two Petraean sovereigns so
called are mentioned by Josêphos, of whom the latter
was contemporary with Herod. The Malikhas of
the Periplûs is however not mentioned in any other
work. The Nabathaean kingdom was subverted
in the time of Trajan, A.D. 105, us we learn from Dio
Cassius (cap. lxviii. 14), and from Eutropius
(viii. 2, 9), and from Ammianus Marcellinus (xiv. 8).
20. Beyond this mart, and quite contiguous
to it, is the realm of Arabia, which stretches to a
great distance along the coast of the Red Sea.
It is inhabited by various tribes, some speaking
the same language with a certain degree of
uniformity, and others a language totally different.
Here also, as on the opposite continent, the
sea-board is occupied by Ikhthyophagoi,
who live in dispersed huts; while the men of the
interior live either in villages, or where pasture
can be found, and are an evil race of men,
speaking two different languages. If a vessel
is driven from her course upon this shore she
is plundered, and if wrecked the crew on
escaping to land are reduced to slavery. For
this reason they are treated as enemies and captured
by the chiefs and kings of Arabia. They
are called Kanraîtai. Altogether, therefore,
the navigation of this part of the Arabian coast
is very dangerous: for, apart from the barbarity
of its people, it has neither harbours nor good
roadsteads, and it is foul with breakers, and
girdled with rocks which render it inaccessible.
For this reason when sailing south we stand off
from a shore in every way so dreadful, and
keep our course down the middle of the gulf,
straining our utmost to reach the more civilized
part of Arabia, which begins at Burnt Island.
From this onward the people are under a regular
government, and, as their country is pastoral,
they keep herds of cattle and camels.
(20) At no great distance from Leukê Kômê
the Nabathaean realm terminates and Arabia
begins. The coast is here described as most dismal,
and as in every way dangerous to navigation.
The inhabitants at the same time are barbarians,
destitute of all humanity, who scruple not to
attack and plunder wrecked ships and to make
slaves of their crews if they escaped to land. The
mariner therefore, shunned these inhospitable
shores, and standing well out to sea, sailed down
the middle of the gulf. The tribe here spoken of
was that perhaps which is represented by the
Hutemi of the present day, and the coast belonged
to the part of Arabia now called Hejid.
A more civilized region begins at an island
called Burnt island, which answers to the modern
Zebâyir [about lat. 15° 5´ N., long. 42° 12´ E.],
an island which was till recently volcanic.
21. Beyond this tract, and on the shore of a
bay which occurs at the termination of the left
(or east) side of the gulf, is Mouza, an established
and notable mart of trade, at a distance
south from Berenikê of not more than 12,000
stadia. The whole place is full of Arabian shipmasters
and common sailors, and is absorbed
in the pursuits of commerce, for with ships of its
own fitting out, it trades with the marts beyond
the Straits on the opposite coast, and also with
Barugaza.
(21) Beyond this is the great emporium called
Mouza, [lat. 13° 43´ N., long. 43° 5´ 14´´ E.] situated
in a bay near the termination of the Gulf, and at a
distance from Berenikê of 12,000 stadia. Here
the population consists almost entirely of merchants
and mariners, and the place is in the highest degree
commercial. The commodities of the country are
rich and numerous (though this is denied by
Pliny), and there is a great traffic in Indian
articles brought from Barugaza (Bharoch).
This port, once the most celebrated and most frequented
in Yemen, is now the village Musa about
twenty-five miles north from Mokhâ, which has
replaced it as a port, the foundation of which dates
back no more than 400 years ago. “Twenty miles
inland from Mokhâ,” says Vincent, “Niebuhr discovered
a Musa still existing, which he with great
probability supposes to be the ancient mart now
carried inland to this distance by the recession of
the coast.” [He must have confounded it with
Jebel Musa, due east of Mokhâ, at the commencement
of the mountain country.] It is a
mere village badly built. Its water is good, and
is said to be drunk by the wealthier inhabitants
of Mokhâ. Bochart identified Mouza with the
Mesha mentioned by Moses.
22. Above this a three days’ journey off lies the
city of Sauê, in the district called Mopharitis.
It is the residence of Kholaibos, the
despot of that country.
(22) The Periplûs notices two cities that lay
inland from Mouza—the 1st Sauê, the Savê
of Pliny (VI. xxvi., 104), and also of Ptolemy
(VI. vii., p. 411), who places it at a distance of
500 stadia S. E. of Mouza. The position and
distance direct us to the city of Taaes, which lies
near a mountain called Saber. Sauê belonged to a
district called Mapharitis or Mophareitês,
a name which appears to survive in the modern
Mharras, which designates a mountain lying
N. E. from Taaes. It was ruled by Kholaibos
(Arabicé—Khaleb), whom our author calls a tyrant,
and who was therefore probably a Sheikh who had
revolted from his lawful chief, and established
himself as an independent ruler.
23. A journey of nine days more conducts us
to Saphar, the metropolis of Kharibaêl, the
rightful sovereign of two contiguous tribes, the
Homerites and the Sabaïtai, and, by
means of frequent embassies and presents, the
friend of the Emperors.
(23) The other city was Saphar, the metropolis
of the Homerîtai, i.e. the Himaryi—the
Arabs of Yemen, whose power was widely
extended, not only in Yemen but in distant
countries both to the East and West. Saphar is
called Sapphar by Ptolemy (VI. vii.), who places
it in 14° N. lat. Philostorgios calls it Tapharon,
and Stephen of Byzantium Tarphara. It is now
Dhafar or Dsoffar or Zaphar. In Edrisi (I. p.
148) it appears as Dhofar, and he thus writes of
it:—“It is the capital of the district Jahsseb. It
was formerly one of the greatest and most famous
of cities. The kings of Yemen made it their
residence, and there was to be seen the palace of
Zeidan. These structures are now in ruins, and
the population has been much decreased, nevertheless
the inhabitants have preserved some
remnants of their ancient riches.” The ruins
of the city and palace still exist in the neighbourhood
of Jerim, which Niebuhr places
in 14° 30´ N. lat. The distance from Sauê to
Saphar in the Periplûs is a nine days’ journey.
Niebuhr accomplished it however in six. Perhaps,
as Müller suggests, the nine days’ journey is from
Mouza to Saphar. The sovereign of Saphar
is called by our author Kharibaêl, a name
which is not found among the Himyaritic kings
known from other sources. In Ptolemy the
region is called Elisarôn, from a king bearing
that name.
24. The mart of Mouza has no harbour, but
its sea is smooth, and the anchorage good, owing
to the sandy nature of the bottom. The commodities
which it imports are—
Πορφύρα, διάφορος καὶ χυδαία—Purple cloth, fine
and ordinary.
Ἱματισμίς Ἀραβικὸς χειριδωτὸς, ὅτε ἁπλοῦς καὶ ὁ
κοινὸς καὶ σκοτουλάτος καὶ διάχρυσος—Garments
made up in the Arabian fashion, some plain and
common, and others wrought in needlework and
inwoven with gold.
Κρόκος—Saffron.
Κύπερος—The aromatic rush Kyperos. (Turmeric?)
Ὀθόνιον—Muslins.
Ἀβόλλαι—Cloaks.
Λώδικες οὐ πολλαὶ, ἁπλοῖ τε καὶ ἐντόπιοι—Quilts, in
small quantity, some plain, others adapted to the
fashion of the country.
Ζῶναι σκιωταὶ—Sashes of various shades of colour.
Μύρον μέτριον—Perfumes, a moderate quantity.
Χρῆμα ἱκανὸν—Specie as much as is required.
Οἶνος—Wine.
Σῖτος οὐ πολύς—Corn, but not much.
The country produces a little wheat and a
great abundance of wine. Both the king and
the despot above mentioned receive presents
consisting of horses, pack-saddle mules, gold
plate, silver plate embossed, robes of great value,
and utensils of brass. Mouza exports its
own local products—myrrh of the finest quality
that has oozed in drops from the trees, both the
Gabiræan and Minœan kinds; white marble (or
alabaster), in addition to commodities brought
from the other side of the Gulf, all such as were
enumerated at Adouli. The most favourable
season for making a voyage to Mouza is the month
of September,—that is Thôth,—but there is
nothing to prevent it being made earlier.
(24) Adjacent to the Homeritai, and subject
to them when the Periplûs was written, were the
Sabæans, so famous in antiquity for their wealth,
luxury and magnificence. Their country, the
Sheba of Scripture, was noted as the land of
frankincense. Their power at one time extended
far and wide, but in the days of our author they
were subject to the Homerites ruled over by
Kharibaêl, who was assiduous in courting the
friendship of Rome.
25. If on proceeding from Mouza you sail
by the coast for about a distance of 300 stadia,
there occurs, where the Arabian mainland and
the opposite coast of Barbaria at Aualitês
now approach each other, a channel of no
great length which contracts the sea and encloses
it within narrow bounds. This is 60 stadia wide,
and in crossing it you come midway upon the
island of Diodôros, to which it is owing that
the passage of the straits is in its neighbourhood
exposed to violent winds which blow down
from the adjacent mountains. There is situate
upon the shore of the straits an Arabian village
subject to the same ruler (as Mouza), Okêlis
by name, which is not so much a mart of commerce
as a place for anchorage and supplying
water, and where those who are bound for the
interior first land and halt to refresh themselves.
(25) At a distance of 300 stadia beyond Mouza
we reach the straits where the shores of Arabia
and Africa advance so near to each other that the
passage between them has only, according to the
Periplûs, a width of 60 stadia, or 7½ miles. In the
midst of the passage lies the island of Diodôros
(now Perim), which is about 4½ miles long
by 2 broad, and rises 230 feet above the level of the
sea. The straits, according to Moresby, are 14½
geographical miles wide at the entrance between
Bab-el-Mandab Cape (near which is Perim) and
the opposite point or volcanic peak called Jibel
Sijan. The larger of the two entrances is 11 miles
wide, and the other only 1½. Strabo, Agathêmeros,
and Pliny all agree with the Periplûs in giving 60
stadia as the breadth of the straits. The first
passage of those dreaded straits was regarded as
a great achievement, and was naturally ascribed
to Sesostris as the voyage though the straits of
Kalpê was ascribed to Heraklês.
Situated on the shores of the straits was
a place called Okêlis. This was not a
mart of commerce, but merely a bay with
good anchorage and well supplied with water.
It is identical with the modern Ghalla or
Cella, which has a bay immediately within the
straits. Strabo following Artemidoros notes here
a promontory called Akila. Pliny (VI. xxxii. 157)
mentions an emporium of the same name “ex
quo in Indiam navigatur.” In xxvi., 104 of the
same Book he says: “Indos petentibus utilissimum
est ab Oceli egredi.” Ptolemy mentions
a Pseudokêlis, which he places at the distance
of half a degree from the emporium of
Okêlis.
26. Beyond Okêlis, the sea again widening
out towards the east, and gradually expanding
into the open main, there lies, at about the distance
of 1,200 stadia, Eudaimôn Arabia,
a maritime village subject to that kingdom of
which Kharibaêl is sovereign—a place with good
anchorage, and supplied with sweeter and better
water than that of Okêlis, and standing at
the entrance of a bay where the land begins to
retire inwards. It was called Eudaimôn (‘rich
and prosperous’), because in bygone days, when
the merchants from India did not proceed
to Egypt, and those from Egypt did not venture
to cross over to the marts further east, but both
came only as far as this city, it formed the common
centre of their commerce, as Alexandria
receives the wares which pass to and fro
between Egypt and the ports of the Mediterranean.
Now, however, it lies in ruins, the
Emperor having destroyed it not long before
our own times.
(26) At a distance beyond Okêlis of 1,200
stadia is the port of Eudaimôn Arabia, which
beyond doubt corresponds to 'Âden, [lat. 12°
45´ N., long. 45° 21´ E.] now so well-known as
the great packet station between Suez and India.
The opinion held by some that Aden is the Eden
mentioned by the Prophet Ezekiel (xxvii. 23) is
opposed by Ritter and Winer. It is not mentioned
by Pliny, though it has been erroneously
held that the Attanae, which he mentions
in the following passage, was Aden. “Homnae
et Attanae (v. 1. Athanae) quæ nunc oppida
maxima celebrari a Persico mari negotiatores
dicunt.” (vi. 32.) Ptolemy, who calls it simply
Arabia, speaks of it as an emporium, and places
after it at the distance of a degree and a half
Melan Horos, or Black Hill, 17 miles from
the coast, which is in long. 46° 59´ E. The place,
as the Periplûs informs us, received the name
of Eudaimôn from the great prosperity and
wealth which it derived from being the great
entrepôt of the trade between India and Egypt.
It was in decay when that work was written, but
even in the time of Ptolemy had begun to show
symptoms of returning prosperity, and in the time
of Constantine it was known as the ‘Roman Emporium,’
and had almost regained its former consequence,
as is gathered from a passage in the
works of the ecclesiastical historian Philostorgios.
It is thus spoken of by Edrisi (I. p. 51): “'Âden
is a small town, but renowned for its seaport
whence ships depart that are destined for Sind,
India, and China.” In the middle ages it became
again the centre of the trade between India and
the Red Sea, and thus regained that wonderful
prosperity which in the outset had given it its
name. In this flourishing condition it was found
by Marco Polo, whose account of its wealth,
power and influence is, as Vincent remarks,
almost as magnificent as that which Agatharkhidês
attributed to the Sabæans in the time of the
Ptolemies, when the trade was carried on in the
same manner. Agatharkhidês does not however
mention the place by name, but it was probably
the city which he describes without naming it as
lying on the White Sea without the straits, whence,
he says, the Sabæans sent out colonies or factories
into India, and where the fleets from Persis,
Karmania and the Indus arrived. The name of
Aden is supposed to be a corruption from
Eudaimôn.
27. To Eudaimôn Arabia at once succeeds
a great length of coast and a bay extending
2,000 stadia or more, inhabited by nomadic
tribes and Ikhthyophagoi settled in villages.
On doubling a cape which projects from it you
come to another trading seaport, Kanê, which
is subject to Eleazos, king of the incense
country. Two barren islands lie opposite to it,
120 stadia off—one called Orneôn, and the
other Troullas. At some distance inland
from Kanê is Sabbatha, the principal city
of the district, where the king resides. At
Kanê is collected all the incense that is produced
in the country, this being conveyed to it
partly on camels, and partly by sea on floats
supported on inflated skins, a local invention,
and also in boats. Kanê carries on trade
with ports across the ocean—Barugaza,
Skythia, and Omana, and the adjacent
coast of Persis.
(27) The coast beyond Aden is possessed partly
by wandering tribes, and partly by tribes settled
in villages which subsist on fish. Here occurs a
bay—that now called Ghubhet-al-Kamar, which
extends upwards of 2,000 stadia, and ends in a
promontory—that now called Râs-al-Asîdah or
Bâ-l-hâf [lat. 13° 58´ N., long 48° 9´ S.—a cape
with a hill near the fishing village of Gillah].
Beyond this lies another great mart called Kanê.
It is mentioned by Pliny, and also by Ptolemy,
who assigns it a position in agreement with the
indications given in the Periplûs. It has been
identified with the port now called Hisn Ghorâb
[lat. 14° 0´ N. long. 48° 19´ E.]. Not far from this
is an island called Halanî, which answers to the
Troullas of our author. Further south is another
island, which is called by the natives of the
adjacent coast Sikkah, but by sailors Jibûs.
This is covered with the dung of birds which in
countless multitudes have always frequented it,
and may be therefore identified with the Orneôn
of the Periplûs. Kanê was subject to Eleazos, the
king of the Frankincense Country, who resided at
Sabbatha, or as it is called by Pliny (VI. xxxii.
155) Sabota, the capital of the Atramitae or
Adramitae, a tribe of Sabæans from whom the
division of Arabia now known as Hadhramaut
takes its name. The position of this city cannot
be determined with certainty. Wellsted, who proceeded
into the interior from the coast near Hisn
Ghorab through Wadi Meifah, came after a day’s
journey and a half to a place called Nakb-el-Hajar,
situated in a highly cultivated district,
where he found ruins of an ancient city of the
Himyarites crowning an eminence that rose gently
with a double summit from the fertile plain. The
city appeared to have been built in the most solid
style of architecture, and to have been protected by
a very lofty wall formed of square blocks of black
marble, while the inscriptions plainly betokened
that it was an old seat of the Himyarites. A
close similarity could be traced between its ruins
and those of Kanê, to which there was an easy
communication by the valley of Meifah. This
place, however, can hardly be regarded as Sabbatha
without setting aside the distances given
by Ptolemy, and Wellsted moreover learned from
the natives that other ruins of a city of not less
size were to be met with near a village called
Esan, which could be reached by a three days’
journey.—(See Haines, Mem. of the S. Coast of
Arab.)
28. From Egypt it imports, like Mouza,
corn and a little wheat, cloths for the Arabian
market, both of the common sort and the plain,
and large quantities of a sort that is adulterated;
also copper, tin, coral, styrax, and all the other
articles enumerated at Mouza. Besides these
there are brought also, principally for the king,
wrought silver plate, and specie as well as
horses and carved images, and plain cloth of
a superior quality. Its exports are its indigenous
products, frankincense and aloes, and such
commodities as it shares in common with other
marts on the same coast. Ships sail for this
port at the same season of the year as those
bound for Mouza, but earlier.
(28) With regard to the staple product of this
region—frankincense, the Periplûs informs us that
it was brought for exportation to Kanê. It was
however in the first place, if we may credit Pliny,
conveyed to the Metropolis. He says (xv. 32)
that when gathered it was carried into Sabota
on camels which could enter the city only by
one particular gate, and that to take it by any
other route was a crime punished by death. The
priests, he adds, take a tithe for a deity named
Sabis, and that until this impost is paid, the
article cannot be sold.
Some writers would identify Sabbatha
with Mariabo (Marab), but on insufficient
grounds. It has also been conjectured that the
name may be a lengthened form of Saba (Sheba),
a common appellation for cities in Arabia Felix.
[Müller places Sabbatha at Sawa, lat. 16° 13´ N.,
long. 48° 9´ E.]
29. As you proceed from Kanê the land
retires more and more, and there succeeds
another very deep and far-stretching gulf,
Sakhalitês by name, and also the frankincense
country, which is mountainous and
difficult of access, having a dense air loaded
with vapours [and] the frankincense exhaled
from the trees. These trees, which are not of any
great size or height, yield their incense in the
form of a concretion on the bark, just as several
of our trees in Egypt exude gum. The incense
is collected by the hand of the king’s slaves, and
malefactors condemned to this service as a
punishment. The country is unhealthy in the
extreme:—pestilential even to those who sail
along the coast, and mortal to the poor wretches
who gather the incense, who also suffer from
lack of food, which readily cuts them off.
(29) The next place mentioned by our author
after Kanê is a Bay called Sakhalîtes, which
terminates at Suagros, a promontory which
looks eastward, and is the greatest cape in the
whole world. There was much difference of
opinion among the ancient geographers regarding
the position of this Bay, and consequently regarding
that of Cape Suagros.
30. Now at this gulf is a promontory, the
greatest in the world, looking towards the east,
and called Suagros, at which is a fortress
which protects the country, and a harbour, and
a magazine to which the frankincense which is
collected is brought. Out in the open sea,
facing this promontory, and lying between it
and the promontory of Arômata, which projects
from the opposite coast, though nearer to
Suagros, is the island going by the name of
Dioskoridês, which is of great extent, but
desert and very moist, having rivers and crocodiles
and a great many vipers, and lizards of
enormous size, of which the flesh serves for food,
while the grease is melted down and used as a
substitute for oil. This island does not, however,
produce either the grape or corn. The
population, which is but scanty, inhabits the
north side of the island—that part of it which
looks towards the mainland (of Arabia). It
consists of an intermixture of foreigners, Arabs,
Indians, and even Greeks, who resort hither for
the purposes of commerce. The island produces
the tortoise,—the genuine, the land, and
the white sort: the latter very abundant, and
distinguished for the largeness of its shell; also
the mountain sort which is of extraordinary size
and has a very thick shell, whereof the underpart
cannot be used, being too hard to cut,
while the serviceable part is made into moneyboxes,
tablets, escritoires, and ornamental articles
of that description. It yields also the vegetable
dye (κιννάβαρι) called Indicum (or Dragon’s-blood),
which is gathered as it distils from
trees.
(30) Some would identify the latter with Ras-el-Had,
and others on account of the similarity
of the name with Cape Saugra or Saukirah
[lat. 18° 8´ N., long. 56° 35´ E.], where Ptolemy
places a city Suagros at a distance of 6 degrees
from Kanê, But Suagros is undoubtedly Ras
Fartak [lat. 15° 39´ N., long 52° 15´ E.], which is
at a distance of 4 degrees from Hisn Ghorab,
or Kanê, and which, rising to the height of
2,500 feet on a coast which is all low-lying, is a
very conspicuous object, said to be discernible
from a distance of 60 miles out at sea. Eighteen
miles west from this promontory is a village
called Saghar, a name which might probably
have suggested to the Greeks that of Suagros.
Consistent with this identification is the passage
of Pliny (VI. 32) where he speaks of the island
Dioscoridis (Sokotra) as distant from
Suagros, which he calls the utmost projection
of the coast, 2,240 stadia or 280 miles, which is
only about 30 miles in excess of the real distance,
2,000 stadia.
With regard to the position of the Bay of
Sakhalitês, Ptolemy, followed by Marcianus,
places it to the East of Suagros. Marinos on the
other hand, like the Periplûs, places it to the west
of it. Muller agrees with Fresnel in regarding
Sakhlê, mentioned by Ptolemy (VI. vii. 41) as
1½ degree East of Makalleh [lat. 14° 31´ N., long
49° 7´ W.] as the same with Shehr—which is now
the name of all that mountainous region extending
from the seaport of Makalleh to the bay in which
lie the islands of Kurya Murya. He therefore
takes this to be in the Regio Sakhalîtês, and
rejects the opinion of Ptolemy as inconsistent
with this determination. With regard to Shehr
or Shehar [lat. 14° 38´ N., long. 49° 22´ E.] Yule
(M. Polo, II. vol. p. 440, note) says: “Shihr or Shehr
still exists on the Arabian Coast as a town and
district about 330 miles east of Aden.” The name
Shehr in some of the oriental geographies includes
the whole Coast up to Oman. The hills of
the Shehr and Dhafâr districts were the great
source of produce of the Arabian frankincense.
The island of Dioskoridês (now Sokotra)
is placed by the Periplûs nearer to Cape Suagros
than to Cape Arômata—although its distance
from the former is nearly double the distance
from the latter. The name, though in appearance
a Greek one, is in reality of Sanskrit origin; from
Dvîpa Sukhâdâra, i.e. insula fortunata, ‘Island abode
of Bliss.’ The accuracy of the statements made
regarding it in the Periplûs is fully confirmed by
the accounts given of it by subsequent writers.
Kosmas, who wrote in the 6th century, says that
the inhabitants spoke Greek, and that he met with
people from it who were on their way to Ethiopia,
and that they spoke Greek. “The ecclesiastical
historian Nikephoros Kallistos,” says Yule, “seems
to allude to the people of Sokotra when he says
that among the nations visited by the Missionary
Theophilus in the time of Constantius, were ‘the
Assyrians on the verge of the outer Ocean,
towards the East ... whom Alexander the
Great, after driving them from Syria, sent thither
to settle, and to this day they keep their
mother tongue, though all of the blackest, through
the power of the sun’s rays.’ The Arab voyagers
of the 9th century say that the island was
colonized with Greeks by Alexander the Great,
in order to promote the culture of the Sokotrine
aloes; when the other Greeks adopted Christianity
these did likewise, and they had continued to
retain their profession of it. The colonizing by
Alexander is probably a fable, but invented to
account for facts.” (Marco Polo II. 401.) The aloe,
it may be noted, is not mentioned in the Periplûs as
one of the products of the island. The islanders,
though at one time Christians, are now Muhammadans,
and subject as of yore to Arabia. The
people of the interior are still of distinct
race with curly hair, Indian complexion, and
regular features. The coast people are mongrels
of Arab and mixed descent. Probably in old times
civilization and Greek may have been confined
to the littoral foreigners. Marco Polo notes that
so far back as the 10th century it was one of the
stations frequented by the Indian corsairs called
Bawârij, belonging to Kachh and Gujarat.
31. The island is subject to the king of the
frankincense country, in the same way as
Azania is subject to Kharibaël and the despot
of Mopharitis. It used to be visited by
some (merchants) from Mouza, and others on
the homeward voyage from Limurikê and
Barugaza would occasionally touch at it, importing
rice, corn, Indian cotton and female-slaves,
who, being rare, always commanded a ready
market. In exchange for these commodities
they would receive as fresh cargo great quantities
of tortoise-shell. The revenues of the
island are at the present day farmed out by its
sovereigns, who, however, maintain a garrison
in it for the protection of their interests.
32. Immediately after Suagros follows a
gulf deeply indenting the mainland of Omana,
and having a width of 600 stadia. Beyond it
are high mountains, rocky and precipitous, and
inhabited by men who live in caves. The
range extends onward for 500 stadia, and beyond
where it terminates lies an important
harbour called Moskha, the appointed port to
which the Sakhalitik frankincense is forwarded.
It is regularly frequented by a number
of ships from Kanê; and such ships as come
from Limurikê and Barugaza too late in the
season put into harbour here for the winter,
where they dispose of their muslins, corn, and
oil to the king’s officers, receiving in exchange
frankincense, which lies in piles throughout the
whole of Sakhalitis without a guard to
protect it, as if the locality were indebted to
some divine power for its security. Indeed, it
is impossible to procure a cargo, either publicly or
by connivance, without the king’s permission.
Should one take furtively on board were it but
a single grain, his vessel can by no possibility
escape from harbour.
(32) Returning to the mainland the narrative
conducts us next to Moskha, a seaport trading
with Kanê, and a wintering place for vessels
arriving late in the season from Malabar and the
Gulf of Khambât. The distance of this place from
Suagros is set down at upwards of 1,100 stadia,
600 of which represent the breadth of a bay which
begins at the Cape, and is called Omana
Al-Kamar. The occurrence of the two names
Omana and Moskha in such close connexion led
D’Anville to suppose that Moskha is identical
with Maskat, the capital of Oman, the country
lying at the south-east extremity of Arabia, and
hence that Ras-el-Ḥad, beyond which Maskat lies,
must be Cape Suagros. This supposition is, however,
untenable, since the identification of Moskha
with the modern Ausera is complete. For,
in the first place, the Bay of Seger, which begins
at Cape Fartak, is of exactly the same measurement
across to Cape Thurbot Ali as the Bay of
Omana, and again the distance from Cape Thurbot
Ali [lat. 16° 38´ N., long. 53° 3´ E.] to Ras-al-Sair,
the Ausara of Ptolemy, corresponds almost
as exactly to the distance assigned by our author
from the same Cape to Moskha. Moreover
Pliny (XII. 35) notices that one particular kind
of incense bore the name of Ausaritis, and, as the
Periplûs states that Moskha was the great
emporium of the incense trade, the identification
is satisfactory.
There was another Moskha on this coast which
was also a port. It lay to the west of Suagros,
and has been identified with Koshîn [lat. 15° 21´
N. long. 51° 39´ E.]. Our author, though correct in
his description of the coast, may perhaps have erred
in his nomenclature; and this is the more likely
to have happened as it scarcely admits of doubt
that he had no personal knowledge of South
Arabia beyond Kanê and Cape Suagros.
Besides no other author speaks of an Omana
so far to westward as the position assigned to
the Bay of that name. The tract immediately
beyond Moskha or Ausera is low and fertile,
and is called Dofar or Zhafâr, after a famous
city now destroyed, but whose ruins are still to be
traced between Al-hâfâh and Addahariz. “This
Dhafâr,” says Yule (Marco Polo II. p. 442 note)
“or the bold fountain above it, is supposed to
be the Sephar of Genesis X. 30.” It is certain
that the Himyarites had spread their dominion as
far eastward as this place. Marco Polo thus describes
Dhafâr:—“It stands upon the sea, and has
a very good haven, so that there is a great traffic
of shipping between this and India; and the merchants
take hence great numbers of Arab horses
to that market, making great profits thereby....
Much white incense is produced here, and I will
tell you how it grows. The trees are like small
fir-trees; these are notched with a knife in several
places, and from these notches the incense is
exuded. Sometimes, also, it flows from the tree
without any notch, this is by reason of the great
heat of the sun there.” Müller would identify
Moskha with Zhafâr, and accounts for the discrepancy
of designation by supposing that our author
had confounded the name Maskat, which was
the great seat of the traffic in frankincense with
the name of the greatest city in the district which
actually produced it. A similar confusion he
thinks transferred the name of Oman to the
same part of the country. The climate of the incense
country is described as being extremely unhealthy,
but its unhealthiness seems to have been
designedly exaggerated.
33. From the port of Moskha onward to
Asikh, a distance of about 1,500 stadia, runs
a range of hills pretty close to the shore, and at
its termination there are seven islands bearing
the name of Zenobios, beyond which again
we come to another barbarous district not
subject to any power in Arabia, but to Persia.
If when sailing by this coast you stand well out
to sea so as to keep a direct course, then at
about a distance from the island of Zenobios
of 2,000 stadia you arrive at another island,
called that of Sarapis, lying off shore, say, 120
stadia. It is about 200 stadia broad and 600
long, possessing three villages inhabited by a
savage tribe of Ikhthyophagoi, who speak
the Arabic language, and whose clothing
consists of a girdle made from the leaves of the
cocoa-palm. The island produces in great
plenty tortoise of excellent quality, and the
merchants of Kanê accordingly fit out little
boats and cargo-ships to trade with it.
(33) Beyond Moskha the coast is mountainous
as far as Asikh and the islands of Zenobios—a
distance excessively estimated at 1,500
stadia. The mountains referred to are 5,000 feet in
height, and are those now called Subaha. Asikh is
readily to be identified with the Hâsek of Arabian
geographers. Edrisi (I. p. 54) says: “Thence
(from Marbat) to the town of Hâsek is a four
days’ journey and a two days’ sail. Before Hâsek
are the two islands of Khartan and Martan.
Above Hâsek is a high mountain named Sous,
which commands the sea. It is an inconsiderable
town but populous.” This place is now in ruins,
but has left its name to the promontory on which
it stood [Râs Hâsek, lat. 17° 23´ N. long. 55° 20´
E. opposite the island of Hasiki]. The islands of
Zenobios are mentioned by Ptolemy as seven in
number, and are those called by Edrisi Khartan
and Martan, now known as the Kuriyân
Muriyân islands. The inhabitants belonged to
an Arab tribe which was spread from Hâsek to
Râs-el-Ḥad, and was called Beit or Beni Jenabi,
whence the Greek name. M. Polo in the 31st
chapter of his travels “discourseth of the two
islands called Male and Female,” the position of
which he vaguely indicates by saying that “when
you leave the kingdom of Kesmacoran (Mekran)
which is on the mainland, you go by sea
some 500 miles towards the south, and then you
find the 2 islands Male and Female lying about
30 miles distant from one another.” (See also
Marco Polo, vol. II. p. 396 note.)
Beyond Asikh is a district inhabited by
barbarians, and subject not to Arabia but to Persis.
Then succeeds at a distance of 200 stadia beyond the
islands of Zenobios the island of Sarapis,
(the Ogyris of Pliny) now called Masira [lat. 20°
10´ to 20° 42´ N., long. 58° 37´ to 58° 59´ E.] opposite
that part of the coast where Oman now begins.
The Periplûs exaggerates both its breadth and its
distance from the continent. It was still
inhabited by a tribe of fish-eaters in the time of
Ebn Batuta, by whom it was visited.
On proceeding from Sarapis the adjacent
coast bends round, and the direction of the voyage
changes to north. The great cape which forms
the south-eastern extremity of Arabia called Ras-el-Had
[lat. 22° 33´ N. long. 59° 48´ E.] is here
indicated, but without being named; Ptolemy
calls it Korodamon (VI. vii. 11.)
34. If sailing onward you wind round with
the adjacent coast to the north, then as you
approach the entrance of the Persian Gulf you
fall in with a group of islands which lie in a
range along the coast for 2,000 stadia, and are
called the islands of Kalaiou. The inhabitants
of the adjacent coast are cruel and
treacherous, and see imperfectly in the daytime.
(34) Beyond it, and near the entrance to the
Persian Gulf, occurs, according to the Periplûs, a
group of many islands, which lie in a range along
the coast over a space of 2,000 stadia, and are
called the islands of Kalaiou. Here our author
is obviously in error, for there are but three groups
of islands on this coast, which are not by any
means near the entrance of the Gulf. They lie
beyond Maskat [lat. 23° 38´ N. long. 58° 36´ E.] and
extend for a considerable distance along the
Batinah coast. The central group is that of the
Deymâniyeh islands (probably the Damnia of
Pliny) which are seven in number, and lie nearly
opposite Birkeh [lat 23° 42´ N. long. 57° 55´ E.].
The error, as Müller suggests, may be accounted
for by supposing that the tract of country called
El Baṭinah was mistaken for islands. This tract,
which is very low and extremely fertile, stretches
from Birkeh [lat. 23° 42´ N. long. 57° 55´ E.]
onward to Jibba, where high mountains approach
the very shore, and run on in an unbroken chain
to the mouth of the Persian Gulf. The islands
are not mentioned by any other author, for the
Calacou insulae of Pliny (VI. xxxii. 150)
must, to avoid utter confusion, be referred to the
coast of the Arabian Gulf. There is a place called
El Kilat, the Akilla of Pliny [lat. 22° 40´ N.
long. 59° 24´ E.]—but whether this is connected with
the Kalaiou islands of the Periplûs is uncertain
[Conf. Ind. Ant. vol. IV. p. 48. El Kilhat, south
of Maskat and close to Ṣûr, was once a great
port.]
35. Near the last headland of the islands of
Kalaiou is the mountain called Kalon
(Pulcher),[20] to which succeeds, at no great
distance, the mouth of the Persian Gulf,
where there are very many pearl fisheries.
On the left of the entrance, towering to a
vast height, are the mountains which bear
the name of Asaboi, and directly opposite
on the right you see another mountain high and
round, called the hill of Semiramis. The
strait which separates them has a width of
600 stadia, and through this opening the Persian
Gulf pours its vast expanse of waters far up
into the interior. At the very head of this gulf
there is a regular mart of commerce, called the
city of Apologos, situate near Pasinou-Kharax
and the river Euphrates.
(35) Before the mouth of the Persian Gulf is
reached occurs a height called Kalon (Fair Mount)
at the last head of the islands of Papias—τῶν Παπίου νήσων.
This reading has been altered by
Fabricius and Schwanbeck to των Καλαιου νησων.
The Fair Mount, according to Vincent,
would answer sufficiently to Cape Fillam, if
that be high land, and not far from Fillam are
the straits. The great cape which Arabia
protrudes at these straits towards Karmania is
now called Ras Mussendom. It was seen from the
opposite coast by the expedition under Nearkhos,
to whom it appeared to be a day’s sail distant.
The height on that coast is called Semiramis, and
also Strongylê from its round shape. Mussendom,
the ‘Asabôn akron’ of Ptolemy, Vincent says,
“is a sort of Lizard Point to the Gulf; for all the
Arabian ships take their departure from it with
some ceremonies of superstition, imploring a blessing
on their voyage, and setting afloat a toy
like a vessel rigged and decorated, which if it is
dashed to pieces by the rocks is to be accepted by
the ocean as an offering for the escape of the vessel.”
[The straits between the island of Mussendom
and the mainland are called El Bab, and this is
the origin of the name of the Papiæ islands.—Miles’
Jour. R. A. Soc. N. S. vol. x. p. 168.]
The actual width of the straits is 40 miles.
Pliny gives it at 50, and the Periplûs at 75. Cape
Mussendom is represented in the Periplûs as in
Ptolemy by the Mountains of the Asabi which
are described as tremendous heights, black, grim,
and abrupt. They are named from the tribe of
Beni Asab.
We enter now the Gulf itself, and here the Periplûs
mentions only two particulars: the famous
Pearl Fisheries which begin at the straits and
extend to Bahrein, and the situation of a regular
trading mart called Apologos, which lies at
the very head of the Gulf on the Euphrates, and in
the vicinity of Spasinou Kharax. This
place does not appear to be referred to in any
other classical work, but it is frequently
mentioned by Arabian writers under the name of
Oboleh or Obolegh. As an emporium it took
the place of Terêdôn or Diridôtis, just as
Basra (below which it was situated) under the
second Khaliphate took the place of Oboleh
itself. According to Vincent, Oboleh, or a village
that represents it, still exists between Basra and the
Euphrates. The canal also is called the canal of
Oboleh. Kharax Pasinou was situated where
the Karûn (the Eulæus of the ancients)
flows into the Pasitigris, and is represented
by the modern trading town Muhammarah.
It was founded by Alexander the Great, and after its
destruction, was rebuilt by Antiokhos Epiphanes,
who changed its name from Alexandreia to Antiokheia.
It was afterwards occupied by an Arab
Chief called Pasines, or rather Spasines, who
gave it the name by which it is best known. Pliny
states that the original town was only 10 miles
from the sea, but that in his time the existing
place was so much as 120 miles from it. It was
the birth-place of two eminent geographers—Dionysius
Periegetes and Isidôros.
36. If you coast along the mouth of the
gulf you are conducted by a six days’ voyage to
another seat of trade belonging to Persia, called
Omana.[21] Barugaza maintains a regular
commercial intercourse with both these Persian
ports, despatching thither large vessels freighted
with copper, sandalwood, beams for rafters,
horn, and logs of sasamina and ebony. Omana
imports also frankincense from Kanê, while it
exports to Arabia a particular species of vessels
called madara, which have their planks sewn
together. But both from Apologos and
Omana there are exported to Barugaza and
to Arabia great quantities of pearl, of mean
quality however compared with the Indian sort,
together with purple, cloth for the natives,
wine, dates in great quantity, and gold and
slaves.
(36) After this cursory glance at the great
gulf, our author returns to the straits, and at once
conducts us to the Eastern shores of the æErythræan,
where occurs another emporium belonging
to Persis, at a distance from the straits of 6
courses or 3,000 stadia. This is Omana. It is
mentioned by Pliny (VI. xxxii. 149) who makes it
belong to Arabia, and accuses preceding writers
for placing it in Karmania.
The name of Omana has been corrupted in
the MSS. of Ptolemy into Nommana, Nombana,
Kommana, Kombana, but Marcian has preserved
the correct spelling. From Omana as from
Apologos great quantities of pearl of an inferior
sort were exported to Arabia and Barugaza. No
part however of the produce of India is mentioned
as among its exports, although it was the centre
of commerce between that country and Arabia.
37. After leaving the district of Omana
the country of the Parsidai succeeds, which
belongs to another government, and the bay
which bears the name of Terabdoi, from the
midst of which a cape projects. Here also is
a river large enough to permit the entrance of
ships, with a small mart at its mouth called
Oraia. Behind it in the interior, at the
distance of a seven days’ journey from the coast,
is the city where the king resides, called Rhambakia.
This district, in addition to corn, produces
wine, rice, and dates, though in the tract
near the sea, only the fragrant gum called
bdellium.
(37) The district which succeeds Omana belongs
to the Parsidai, a tribe in Gedrosia next neighbours
to the Arbitae on the East. They are
mentioned by Ptolemy (VI. xx., p. 439) and by
Arrian (Indika xxvi.) who calls them Pasirees,
and notes that they had a small town
called Pasira, distant about 60 stadia from the
sea, and a harbour with good anchorage called
Bagisara. The Promontory of the Periplûs is
also noted and described as projecting far into the
sea, and being high and precipitous. It is the Cape
now called Arabah or Urmarah. The Bay
into which it projects is called Terabdôn, a
name which is found only in our author.
Vincent erroneously identifies this with the Paragôn
of Ptolemy. It is no doubt the Bay which
extends from Cape Guadel to Cape Monze. The
river which enters this Bay, at the mouth of which
stood the small mart called Oraia, was probably
that which is now called the Akbor. The royal city
which lay inland from the sea a seven days’ journey
was perhaps, as Mannert has conjectured,
Rambakia, mentioned by Arrian (Anab. vi. 21)
as the capital of the Oreitai or Horitai.
38. After this region, where the coast is
already deeply indented by gulfs caused by the
land advancing with a vast curve from the east,
succeeds the seaboard of Skythia, a region
which extends to northward. It is very
low and flat, and contains the mouths of the
Sinthos (Indus), the largest of all the rivers
which fall into the Erythræan Sea, and which,
indeed, pours into it such a vast body of water
that while you are yet far off from the land at
its mouth you find the sea turned of a white
colour by its waters.
The sign by which voyagers before sighting
land know that it is near is their meeting with
serpents floating on the water; but higher up
and on the coasts of Persia the first sign of land
is seeing them of a different kind, called graai.
[Sansk. graha—an alligator.] The river has seven
mouths, all shallow, marshy and unfit for navigation
except only the middle stream, on which
is Barbarikon, a trading seaport. Before
this town lies a small islet, and behind it in the
interior is Minnagar, the metropolis of
Skythia, which is governed, however, by Parthian
princes, who are perpetually at strife among
themselves, expelling each the other.
(38) We now approach the mouths of the
Indus which our author calls the Sinthos, transliterating
the native name of it—Sindhu. In
his time the wide tract which was watered by this
river in the lower part of its course was called
Indoskythia. It derived its name from the
Skythian tribes (the Śâka of Sansk.) who after
the overthrow of the Graeco-Baktrian empire
gradually passed southward to the coast, where
they established themselves about the year 120
B. C., occupying all the region between the Indus
and the Narmadâ. They are called by Dionysios
Periegetes Notioi Skythai, the Southern
Skythians. Our author mentions two cities which
belonged to them—Barbarikon and Minnagar;
the former of which was an emporium
situated near the sea on the middle and only navigable
branch of the Indus. Ptolemy has a Barbarei
in the Delta, but the position he assigns
to it, does not correspond with that of Barbarikon.
Minnagar was the Skythian metropolis.
It lay inland, on or near the banks of the Indus.
39. Ships accordingly anchor near Barbarikê,
but all their cargoes are conveyed by the
river up to the king, who resides in the metropolis.
The articles imported into this emporium are—Ἱματισμὸς
ἁπλους ἱκανὸς—Clothing, plain and
in considerable quantity.
Ἱματισμὸς νόθος οὐ πολὺς—Clothing, mixed, not
much.
Πολύμιτα—Flowered cottons.
Χρυσόλιθον—Yellow-stone, topazes.
Κοράλλιον—Coral.
Στύραξ—Storax.
Λίβανος—Frankincense (Lôbân).
Ὑαλά σκεύη—Glass vessels.
Αργυρώματα—Silver plate.
Χρῆμα—Specie.
Οἰνος οὐ πολύς—Wine, but not much.
The exports are:—
Κόστος—Costus, a spice.
Βδέλλα—Bdellium, a gum.
Λύκιον—A yellow dye (Ruzot).
Νάρδος—Spikenard.
Λίθος καλλαïνος—Emeralds or green-stones.
Σάπφειρος—Sapphires.
Σηρικὰ δέρματα—Furs from China.
Ὀθόνιον—Cottons.
Νῆμα Σηρικὸν—Silk thread.
Ἰνδικὸν μέλαν—Indigo.
Ships destined for this port put out to sea
when the Indian monsoon prevails—that is,
about the month of July or Epiphi. The
voyage at this season is attended with danger,
but being shorter is more expeditious.
(39) Ships did not go up to it but remained at
Barbarikon, their cargoes being conveyed up
the river in small boats. In Ptolemy (VII. i. 61)
the form of the name is Binagara, which is less
correct since the word is composed of Min, the
Indian name for the Skythians, and nagar, a city.
Ritter considers that Ṭhaṭha is its modern representative,
since it is called Saminagar by
the Jâḍejâ Rajputs who, though settled in Kachh,
derive their origin from that city. To this view
it is objected that Ṭhaṭha is not near the position
which Ptolemy assigns to his Binagara. Mannert
places it at Bakkar, D’Anville at Mansura,
and Vincent at Menhabery mentioned
by Edrisi (I. p. 164) as distant two stations or 60
miles from Dabil, which again was three stations
or 90 miles from the mouth of the Indus, that is
it lay at the head of the Delta. Our author informs
us that in his time Minagar was ruled by
Parthian princes. The Parthians (the Parada of
Sanskrit writers) must therefore have subverted
a Skythian dynasty which must have been that
which (as Benfey has shown) was founded by
Yeukaotschin between the years 30 and 20
B.C., or about 30 years only after the famous Indian
Æra called Śâkâbda (the year of the Śâka) being
that in which Vikramâditya expelled the Skythians
from Indian soil. The statement of the Periplûs
that Parthian rulers succeeded the Skythian is
confirmed by Parthian coins found everywhere
in this part of the country. These sovereigns
must have been of consequence, or the trade
of their country very lucrative to the merchant
as appears by the presents necessary to ensure his
protection—plate, musical instruments, handsome
girls for the Harem, the best wine, plain cloth of
high price, and the finest perfumes. The profits
of the trade must therefore have been great, but if
Pliny’s account be true, that every pound laid out
in India produced a hundred at Rome, greater
exactions than these might easily have been supported.
40. After the river Sinthos is passed we
reach another gulf, which cannot be easily seen.
It has two divisions,—the Great and the Little
by name,—both shoal with violent and continuous
eddies extending far out from the shore, so that
before ever land is in sight ships are often
grounded on the shoals, or being caught within
the eddies are lost. Over this gulf hangs a
promontory which, curving from Eirinon first
to the east, then to the south, and finally to the
west, encompasses the gulf called Barakê,
in the bosom of which lie seven islands.
Should a vessel approach the entrance of
this gulf, the only chance of escape for those on
board is at once to alter their course and stand
out to sea, for it is all over with them if they
are once fairly within the womb of Barakê,
which surges with vast and mighty billows,
and where the sea, tossing in violent commotion,
forms eddies and impetuous whirlpools in every
direction. The bottom varies, presenting in
places sudden shoals, in others being scabrous
with jagged rocks, so that when an anchor
grounds its cable is either at once cut through,
or soon broken by friction at the bottom. The
sign by which voyagers know they are approaching
this bay is their seeing serpents floating
about on the water, of extraordinary size and of
a black colour, for those met with lower down
and in the neighbourhood of Barugaza are of
less size, and in colour green and golden.
(40) The first place mentioned after the Indus
is the Gulf of Eirinon, a name of which traces
remain in the modern appellation the Raṇ of
Kachh. This is no longer covered with water
except during the monsoon, when it is flooded by
sea water or by rains and inundated rivers. At
other seasons it is not even a marsh, for its bed is
hard, dry and sandy; a mere saline waste almost
entirely devoid of herbage, and frequented but by
one quadruped—the wild ass. Burnes conjectured
that its desiccation resulted from an upheaval
of the earth caused by one of those earthquakes
which are so common in that part of India.
The Raṇ is connected with the Gulf of Kachh,
which our author calls the Gulf of Barakê.
His account of it is far from clear. Perhaps, as
Müller suggests, he comprehended under Eirinon
the interior portion of the Gulf of Kachh,
limiting the Gulf of Barakê to the exterior portion
or entrance to it. This gulf is called that of
Kanthi by Ptolemy, who mentions Barakê only
as an island, [and the south coast of Kachh is
still known by the name of Kantha]. The islands
of the Periplûs extend westward from the neighbourhood
of Navanagar to the very entrance
of the Gulf.
41. To the gulf of Barakê succeeds that
of Barugaza and the mainland of Ariakê,
a district which forms the frontier of the kingdom
of Mombaros and of all India. The
interior part of it which borders on Skythia
is called Aberia, and its sea-board Surastrênê.
It is a region which produces abundantly
corn and rice and the oil of sesamum,
butter, muslins and the coarser fabrics which are
manufactured from Indian cotton. It has also
numerous herds of cattle. The natives are men
of large stature and coloured black. The metropolis
of the district is Minnagar, from which
cotton cloth is exported in great quantity to
Barugaza. In this part of the country there
are preserved even to this very day memorials
of the expedition of Alexander, old temples,
foundations of camps, and large wells. The
extent of this coast, reckoned from Barbarikon
to the promontory called Papikê, near
Astakapra, which is opposite Barugaza,
is 3,000 stadia.
(41) To Barakê succeeds the Gulf of Barugaza
(Gulf of Khambhât) and the sea-board
of the region called Ariakê. The reading of the
MS. here ἡ πρἡὸς Ἀραβικῆς χώρας is considered corrupt.
Müller substitutes ἡ ἤπειρος τῆς Ἀριακῆς χώρας,
though Mannert and others prefer Λαρικῆς χώρας,
relying on Ptolemy, who places Ariakê to
the south of Larikê, and says that Larikê
comprehends the peninsula (of Gujarât) Barugaza
and the parts adjacent. As Ariakê was however
previously mentioned in the Periplûs (sec.
14) in connexion with Barugaza, and is afterwards
mentioned (sec. 54) as trading with Muziris, it
must no doubt have been mentioned by the author
in its proper place, which is here. [Bhagvanlâl
Indraji Pandit has shewn reasons however for
correcting the readings into Αβαρατικη, the Prakrit
form of Aparântikâ, an old name of the western
sea board of India.—Ind. Ant. vol. VII., pp. 259,
263.] Regarding the name Larikê, Yule has
the following note (Travels of M. Polo vol. II.,
p. 353):—“Lâr-Deśa, the country of Lar,” properly
Lât-deśa, was an early name for the
territory of Gujrat and the northern Konkan,
embracing Saimur (the modern Chaul as I believe)
Thaṇa, and Bharoch. It appears in Ptolemy in
the form Larikê. The sea to the west of that coast
was in the early Muhammadan times called the sea
of Lâr, and the language spoken on its shores is
called by Mas’udi, Lâri. Abulfeda’s authority,
Ibn Said, speaks of Lâr and Gujarât as identical.
Ariakê (Aparântikâ), our author informs us,
was the beginning or frontier of India. That part
of the interior of Ariakê which bordered on Skythia
was called Aberia or Abiria (in the MS. erroneously
Ibêria). The corresponding Indian word
is Abhira, which designated the district near
the mouths of the river. Having been even in
very early times a great seat of commerce, some
(as Lassen) have been led to think from a certain
similarity of the names that this was the Ophir
of scripture, a view opposed by Ritter. Abiria is
mentioned by Ptolemy, who took it to be not a part
of India but of Indoskythia. The sea-board of
Ariakê was called Surastrênê, and is mentioned
by Ptolemy, who says (VII. i. 55) it was the region
about the mouths of the Indus and the Gulf of
Kanthi. It answers to the Sanskrit Surâshṭra.
Its capital was Minnagar,—a city which,
as its name shows, had once belonged to the Min
or Skythians. It was different of course from the
Minnagar already mentioned as the capital of Indo-Skythia.
It was situated to the south of Ozênê
(Ujjayinî, or Ujjain), and on the road which led from
that city to the River Narmadâ, probably near
where Indôr now stands. It must have been the
capital only for a short time, as Ptolemy informs
us (II. i. 63) that Ozênê was in his time the
capital of Tiashanes [probably the Chashṭana
of Coins and the Cave Temple inscriptions]. From
both places a great variety of merchandise was
sent down the Narmadâ to Barugaza.
The next place our author mentions is a promontory
called Papikê projecting into the Gulf
of Khambât from that part of the peninsula of
Gujarât which lies opposite to the Barugaza coast.
Its distance from Barbarikon on the middle mouth
of the Indus is correctly given at 3,000 stadia.
This promontory is said to be near Astakapra,
a place which is mentioned also by Ptolemy, and
which (Ind. Ant. vol. V. p. 314) has been identified by
Colonel Yule with Hastakavapra (now Hâthab
near Bhaunagar), a name which occurs in
a copper-plate grant of Dhruvasena I of Valabhi.
With regard to the Greek form of this name
Dr. Bühler thinks it is not derived immediately
from the Sanskrit, but from an intermediate old
Prakrit word Hastakampra, which had been
formed by the contraction of the syllables ava
to â, and the insertion of a nasal, according to
the habits of the Gujarâtîs. The loss of the
initial, he adds, may be explained by the difficulty
which Gujarâtîs have now and probably had 1,600
years ago in pronouncing the spirans in its proper
place. The modern name Hâthab or Hâthap may
be a corruption of the shorter Sanskrit form
Hastavapra.
42. After Papikê there is another gulf,
exposed to the violence of the waves and
running up to the north. Near its mouth is an
island called Baiônês, and at its very head it
receives a vast river called the Mais. Those
bound for Barugaza sail up this gulf (which
has a breadth of about 300 stadia), leaving the
island on the left till it is scarcely visible in the
horizon, when they shape their course east for
the mouth of the river that leads to Barugaza.
This is called the Namnadios.
(42) Beyond Papikê, we are next informed,
there is another gulf running northward into the
interior of the country. This is not really another
Gulf but only the northern portion of the Gulf
of Khambât, which the Periplûs calls the Gulf of
Barugaza. It receives a great river, the Mais,
which is easily identified with the Mahi, and
contains an island called Baiônês [the modern
Peram], which you leave on the left hand as you
cross over from Astakapra to Barugaza.
We are now conducted to Barugaza, the
greatest seat of commerce in Western India,
situated on a river called in the MS. of the Periplûs
the Lamnaios, which is no doubt an erroneous
reading for Namados, or Namnados or Namnadios.
This river is the Narmadâ. It is called
by Ptolemy the Namades.
43. The passage into the gulf of Barugaza
is narrow and difficult of access to those
approaching it from the sea, for they are carried
either to the right or to the left, the left being
the better passage of the two. On the right,
at the very entrance of the gulf, lies a narrow
stripe of shoal, rough and beset with rocks. It
is called Herônê, and lies opposite the village
of Kammôni. On the left side right against
this is the promontory of Papikê, which lies
in front of Astakapra, where it is difficult to
anchor, from the strength of the current and
because the cables are cut through by the sharp
rocks at the bottom. But even if the passage
into the gulf is secured the mouth of the
Barugaza river is not easy to hit, since the coast
is low and there are no certain marks to be seen
until you are close upon them. Neither, if it is
discovered, is it easy to enter, from the presence
of shoals at the mouth of the river.
(43) Barugaza (Bharoch) which was 30
miles distant from its mouth, was both difficult and
dangerous of access; for the entrance to the Gulf
itself was, on the right, beset with a perilous stripe
(tainia) of rocky shoal called Herônê, and on the
left, (which was the safer course,) the violent
currents which swept round the promontory of
Papikê rendered it unsafe to approach the shore or
to cast anchor. The shoal of Herônê was opposite
a village on the mainland called Kammôni,
the Kamanê of Ptolemy (VII. i.), who however
places it to the north of the river’s mouth. Again,
it was not only difficult to hit the mouth of
the river, but its navigation was endangered by
sandbanks and the violence of the tides, especially
the high tide called the ‘Bore,’ of which our author
gives a description so particular and so vivid as
suffices to show that he was describing what he
had seen with his own eyes, and seen moreover
for the first time. With regard to the name
Barugaza the following passage, which I quote
from Dr. Wilson’s Indian Castes (vol. II. p. 113) will
elucidate its etymology:—“The Bhârgavas
derive their designation from Bhargava, the
adjective form of Bhṛigu, the name of one of
the ancient Ṛishis. Their chief habitat is the district
of Bharoch, which must have got its name from
a colony of the school of Bhṛigu having been early
established in this Kshêtra, probably granted to
them by some conqueror of the district. In the
name Barugaza given to it by Ptolemy, we have
a Greek corruption of Bhṛigukshêtra (the territory
of Bhṛigu) or Bhṛigukachha (the tongueland of
Bhṛigu).” Speaking of the Bhârgavas Dr. Drummond,
in his Grammatical Illustrations, says:—“These
Brâhmans are indeed poor and ignorant.
Many of them, and other illiterate Gujarâtîs,
would, in attempting to articulate Bhṛigushêtra,
lose the half in coalesence, and call it Bargacha,
whence the Greeks, having no Ch, wrote it Barugaza.”
44. For this reason native fishermen appointed
by Government are stationed with well-manned
long boats called trappaga and kotumba
at the entrance of the river, whence they go out
as far as Surastrênê to meet ships, and pilot
them up to Barugaza. At the head of the gulf
the pilot, immediately on taking charge of a ship,
with the help of his own boat’s crew, shifts her
head to keep her clear of the shoals, and tows
her from one fixed station to another, moving
with the beginning of the tide, and dropping
anchor at certain roadsteads and basins when it
ebbs. These basins occur at points where the
river is deeper than usual, all the way up to
Barugaza, which is 300 stadia distant from
the mouth of the river if you sail up the
stream to reach it.
45. India has everywhere a great abundance
of rivers, and her seas ebb and flow with tides
of extraordinary strength, which increase with
the moon, both when new and when full, and
for three days after each, but fall off in the
intermediate space. About Barugaza they
are more violent than elsewhere; so that all of
a sudden you see the depths laid bare, and
portions of the land turned into sea, and the
sea, where ships were sailing but just before,
turned without warning into dry land. The
rivers, again, on the access of flood tide rushing
into their channels with the whole body of the
sea, are driven upwards against their natural
course for a great number of miles with a force
that is irresistible.
46. This is the reason why ships frequenting
this emporium are exposed, both in coming
and going, to great risk, if handled by those who
are unacquainted with the navigation of the
gulf or visit it for the first time, since the impetuosity
of the tide when it becomes full, having
nothing to stem or slacken it, is such that
anchors cannot hold against it. Large vessels,
moreover, if caught in it are driven athwart from
their course by the rapidity of the current till
they are stranded on shoals and wrecked, while
the smaller craft are capsized, and many that
have taken refuge in the side channels, being
left dry by the receding tide, turn over on
one side, and, if not set erect on props, are
filled upon the return of the tide with the very
first head of the flood, and sunk. But at new
moons, especially when they occur in conjunction
with a night tide, the flood sets in with such
extraordinary violence that on its beginning to
advance, even though the sea be calm, its roar is
heard by those living near the river’s mouth,
sounding like the tumult of battle heard far off,
and soon after the sea with its hissing waves
bursts over the bare shoals.
47. Inland from Barugaza the country is
inhabited by numerous races—the Aratrioi,
and the Arakhosioi, and the Gandaraioi,
and the people of Proklaïs, in which is
Boukephalos Alexandreia. Beyond
these are the Baktrianoi, a most warlike
race, governed by their own independent sovereign.
It was from these parts Alexander issued
to invade India when he marched as far as the
Ganges, without, however, attacking Limurikê
and the southern parts of the country. Hence
up to the present day old drachmai bearing the
Greek inscriptions of Apollodotos and
Menander are current in Barugaza.
(47) The account of the ‘bore’ is followed by an
enumeration of the countries around and beyond
Barugaza with which it had commercial relations.
Inland are the Aratrioi, Arakhosioi,
Gandarioi and the people of Proklaïs, a
province wherein is Boukephalos Alexandreia,
beyond which is the Baktrian nation. It has
been thought by some that by the Aratrioi are
meant the Arii, by others that they were the
Arâstrâs of Sanskrit called Aratti in the
Prakrit, so that the Aratrioi of the Periplûs
hold an intermediate place between the Sanskrit and
Prakrit form of the name. Müller however says
“if you want a people known to the Greeks and
Romans as familiarly as the well-known names
of the Arakhosii, Gandarii, Peukelitae, you may
conjecture that the proper reading is ΔΡΑΝΓΩΝ instead
of ΑΡΑΤΡΙΩΝ.” It is an error of course on the
part of our author when he places Boukephalos
(a city built by Alexander on the banks of the
Hydaspês, where he defeated Pôros), in the neighbourhood
of Proklaïs, that is Pekhely in the neighbourhood
of Peshawar. He makes a still more
surprising error when he states that Alexander
penetrated to the Ganges.
48. In the same region eastward is a city
called Ozênê, formerly the capital wherein
the king resided. From it there is brought
down to Barugaza every commodity for the
supply of the country and for export to our
own markets—onyx-stones, porcelain, fine muslins,
mallow-coloured muslins, and no small
quantity of ordinary cottons. At the same time
there is brought down to it from the upper
country by way of Proklaïs, for transmission
to the coast, Kattybourine, Patropapigic,
and Kabalitic spikenard, and another kind
which reaches it by way of the adjacent province
of Skythia; also kostus and bdellium.
(48) The next place mentioned in the enumeration
is Ozênê (Ujjain), which, receiving
nard through Proklaïs from the distant regions
where it was produced, passed it on to the
coast for export to the Western World. This
aromatic was a product of three districts, whence
its varieties were called respectively the Kattybourine,
the Patropapigic and the Kabolitic. What
places were indicated by the first two names
cannot be ascertained, but the last points undoubtedly
to the region round Kâbul, since
its inhabitants are called by Ptolemy Kabolitai,
and Edrisi uses the term Myrobalanos Kabolinos
for the ‘myrobolans of Kâbul.’ Nard, as Edrisi also
observes, has its proper soil in Thibet.
49. The imports of Barugaza are—
Οἶνος προηγουμένος Ἰταλικὸς—Wine, principally
Italian.
Καὶ Λαοδικηνὸς καὶ Ἀραβικὸς—Laodikean wine
and Arabian.
Χαλκος καὶ κασσίτερος καὶ μόλυβδος—Brass or
Copper and Tin and Lead.
Κοράλλιον καὶ χρυσόλιθον—Coral and Gold-stone
or Yellow-stone.
Ἱματισμὸς ἁπλοῦς καὶ νόθος πανταῖος—Cloth, plain
and mixed, of all sorts.
Πολύμιται ζῶναι πηχυαῖαι—Variegated sashes half
a yard wide.
Στύραξ—Storax.
Μελίλωτον—Sweet clover, melilot.
Ὕαλος ἀργὴ—White glass.
Σανδαράκη—Gum Sandarach.
Στίμμι—(Stibium) Tincture for the eyes,—Sûrmâ.
Δηνάριον χρυσοῦ καὶ ἀργυροῦν—Gold and Silver
specie, yielding a profit when exchanged for native
money.
Μύρον οὐ βαρύτιμον ὀυδὲ πολὺ—Perfumes or unguents,
neither costly nor in great quantity.
In those times, moreover, there were imported,
as presents to the king, costly silver vases, instruments
of music, handsome young women for
concubinage, superior wine, apparel, plain but
costly, and the choicest unguents. The exports
from this part of the country are—
Νὺρδος, κόστος, βδέλλα, ελεφας—Spikenard, costus,
bdellium, ivory.
Ὀνυχίνη λιθία καὶ μουρρίνη—Onyx-stones and
porcelain.
Λύκιον—Ruzot, Box-thorn.
Ὀθόνιον παντοῖον—Cottons of all sorts.
Σηρικὸν—Silk.
Μολόχινον—Mallow-coloured cottons.
Νῆμα—Silk thread.
Πέτερι μακρὸν—Long pepper and other articles
supplied from the neighbouring ports.
The proper season to set sail for Barugaza
from Egypt is the month of July, or Epiphi.
50. From Barugaza the coast immediately
adjoining stretches from the north directly
to the south, and the country is therefore called
Dakhinabadês, because Dakhan in the
language of the natives signifies south. Of this
country that part which lies inland towards the
east comprises a great space of desert country,
and large mountains abounding with all kinds
of wild animals, leopards, tigers, elephants, huge
snakes, hyenas, and baboons of many different
sorts, and is inhabited right across to the Ganges
by many and extremely populous nations.
(50) Barugaza had at the same time commercial
relations with the Dekhan also. This part
of India our author calls Dakhinabadês, transliterating
the word Dakshinâpatha—(the
Dakshinâ, or the South Country). “Here,” says
Vincent, “the author of the Periplûs gives the true
direction of this western coast of the Peninsula,
and states in direct terms its tendency to the
South, while Ptolemy stretches out the whole
angle to a straight line, and places the Gulf of
Cambay almost in the same latitude as Cape
Comorin.”
51. Among the marts in this South Country
there are two of more particular importance—Paithana,
which lies south from Barugaza,
a distance of twenty days, and Tagara, ten
days east of Paithana, the greatest city in the
country. Their commodities are carried down
on wagons to Barugaza along roads of extreme
difficulty,—that is, from Paithana a great
quantity of onyx-stone, and from Tagara
ordinary cottons in abundance, many sorts of
muslins, mallow-coloured cottons, and other
articles of local production brought into it from
the parts along the coast. The length of the
entire voyage as far as Limurikê is 700
stadia, and to reach Aigialos you must sail
very many stadia further.
(51) In the interior of the Dekhan, the Periplûs
places two great seats of commerce, Paithana,
20 days’ journey to the south of Barugaza, and
Tagara, 10 days’ journey eastward from Paithana.
Paithana, which appears in Ptolemy as
Baithana, may be identified with Paithana.
Tagara is more puzzling. Wilford, Vincent,
Mannert, Ritter and others identify it with Dêvagiri
or Deogarh, near Elurâ, about 8 miles from
Aurangâbâd. The name of a place called Tagarapura
occurs in a copper grant of land which was
found in the island of Salsette. There is however
nothing to show that this was a name of Dêvagiri.
Besides, if Paithana be correctly identified, Tagara
cannot be Dêvagiri unless the distances and directions
are very erroneously given in the Periplûs.
This is not improbable, and Tagara may therefore
be Junnar (i.e. Jûna-nagar = the old city), which
from its position must always have been an emporium,
and its Buddha caves belong to about
B.C. 100 to A.D. 150 (see Archæolog. Surv. of West.
India, vol. III., and Elphinstone’s History of
India, p. 223).
Our author introduces us next to another division
of India, that called Limurikê, which
begins, as he informs us, at a distance of 7,000 stadia
(or nearly 900 miles) beyond Barugaza. This
estimate is wide of the mark, being in fact about
the distance between Barugaza and the southern
or remote extremity of Limurikê. In the Indian
segment of the Roman maps called from their discoverer,
the Peutinger Tables, the portion of India
to which this name is applied is called Damirike.
We can scarcely err, says Dr. Caldwell
(Dravid. Gram. Intr. page 14), in identifying this
name with the Tami[l:] country. If so, the earliest
appearance of the name Tami[l:] in any foreign
documents will be found also to be most perfectly
in accordance with the native Tami[l:] mode of
spelling the name. Damirike evidently means
Damirike.... In another place in the same map
a district is called Scytia Dymirice; and it
appears to have been this word which by a mistake
of Δ for Λ Ptolemy wrote Λυμιρικὴ. The D
retains its place however in the Cosmography of
the anonymous geographer of Ravenna, who repeatedly
mentions Dimirica as one of the three
divisions of India and the one furthest to the East.
He shows also that the Tami[l:] country must
have been meant by the name by mentioning
Modura as one of the cities it contained.
52. The local marts which occur in order
along the coast after Barugaza are Akabarou,
Souppara, Kalliena, a city which
was raised to the rank of a regular mart in the
times of the elder Saraganes, but after
Sandanes became its master its trade was
put under the severest restrictions; for if Greek
vessels, even by accident, enter its ports, a guard
is put on board and they are taken to Barugaza.
(52) Reverting to Barugaza our author next
enumerates the less important emporia having
merely a local trade which intervenes between it
and Dimurikê. Those are first Akabarou,
Souppara, and Kalliena—followed by
Semulla, Mandagora, Palaipatmai,
Meligeizara, Buzantion, Toperon, and
Turanosboas,—beyond which occurs a succession
of islands, some of which give shelter to
pirates, and of which the last is called Leukê or
White Island. The actual distance from Barugaza
to Naoura, the first port of Dimurikê, is 4,500
stadia.
To take these emporia in detail. Akabarou
cannot be identified. The reading is probably corrupt.
Between the mouths of the Namados and
those of the Goaris, Ptolemy interposes Nousaripa,
Poulipoula, Ariakê Sadinôn, and Soupara. Nausaripa
is Nausari, about 18 miles to the
south of Surat, and Soupara is Sûpârâ near
Vasâï. Benfey, who takes it to be the name of a
region and not of a city, regards it as the Ophir
of the Bible—called in the Septuagint Σωφηρά.
Sôphir, it may be added, is the Coptic name for
India. Kalliena is now Kalyâna near
Bombay [which must have been an important
place at an early date. It is named in the
Kaṇhêri Bauddha Cave Inscriptions]. It is
mentioned by Kosmas (p. 337), who states that
it produced copper and sesamum and other
kinds of logs, and cloth for wearing apparel.
The name Sandanes, that of the Prince who
sent Greek ships which happened to put into its
port under guard to Barugaza, is thought by
Benfey to be a territorial title which indicated
that he ruled over Ariakê of the Sandineis.
[But the older “Saraganes” probably indicates
one of the great Śâtakarṇi or Ândhrabhṛitya
dynasty.] Ptolemy does not mention Kalliena,
though he supplies the name of a place omitted
in the Periplûs, namely Dounga (VII. i. 6)
near the mouth of the river Bênda.
53. After Kalliena other local marts occur—Semulla,
Mandagora, Palaipatmai,
Melizeigara, Buzantion, Toparon,
and Turannosboas. You come next to the
islands called Sêsekreienai and the island
of the Aigidioi and that of the Kaineitai,
near what is called the Khersonêsos, places
in which are pirates, and after this the island
Leukê (or ‘the White’). Then follow Naoura
and Tundis, the first marts of Limurikê,
and after these Mouziris and Nelkunda,
the seats of Government.
(53) Semulla (in Ptolemy Timoula and
Simulla) is identified by Yule with Chênval
or Chaul, a seaport 23 miles south of Bombay;
[but Bhagvanlâl Indraji suggests Chimûla in
Trombay island at the head of the Bombay
harbour; and this is curiously supported by one
of the Kanhêri inscriptions in which Chemûla
is mentioned, apparently as a large city, like
Supârâ and Kalyâna, in the neighbourhood].
After Simulla Ptolemy mentions Hippokoura
[possibly, as suggested by the same,
a partial translation of Ghoḍabandar on
the Choḍa nadi in the Ṭhaṅa strait] and Baltipatna
as places still in Ariakê, but Mandagara
Buzanteion, Khersonêsos, Armagara,
the mouths of the river Nanagouna,
and an emporium called Nitra, as belonging to
the Pirate Coast which extended to Dimurikê, of
which Tundis, he says, is the first city. Ptolemy
therefore agrees with our author in assigning the
Pirate Coast to the tract of country between
Bombay and Goa. This coast continued to be
infested with pirates till so late a period as the
year 1765, when they were finally exterminated by
the British arms. Mandagara and Palaipatma
may have corresponded pretty nearly in situation
with the towns of Rájapur and Bankut. Yule
places them respectively at Bankut and Debal.
Melizeigara (Milizêguris or Milizigêris of
Ptolemy, VII. i. 95), Vincent identifies with Jaygaḍh
or Sidê Jaygaḍh. The same place appears in Pliny
as Sigerus (VI. xxvi. 100). Buzantium may be
referred to about Vijayadrug or Esvantgadh, Toparon
may be a corrupt reading for Togaron,
and may perhaps therefore be Devagaḍh which
lies a little beyond Vijayndrug. Turannosboas
is not mentioned elsewhere, but it may have been,
us Yule suggests, the Bandâ or Tirakal river.
Müller placed it at Acharê. The first island on
this part of the coast is Sindhudrug near Mâlwan,
to which succeeds a group called the Burnt Islands,
among which the Vingorla rocks are conspicuous.
These are no doubt the Heptanêsia of
Ptolemy (VII. i. 95), and probably the Sêsikrienai
of the Periplûs. The island Aigidion
called that of the Aigidii may be placed at Goa,
[but Yule suggests Angediva south of Sadaśivagaḍh,
in lat. 14° 45´ N., which is better]. Kaineiton
may be the island of St. George.
We come next to Naoura in Dimurikê. This
is now Honâvar, written otherwise Onore,
situated on the estuary of a broad river, the
Śarâvatî, on which are the falls of Gêrsappa,
one of the most magnificent and stupendous
cataracts in the world. If the Nitra of Ptolemy
(VII. i. 7) and the Nitria of Pliny be the same as
Naoura, then these authors extend the pirate
coast a little further south than the Periplûs does.
But if they do not, and therefore agree in their
views as to where Dimurikê begins, the Nitra
may be placed, Müller thinks, at Mirjan or Komta,
which is not far north from Honâvar. [Yule
places it at Mangalur.] Müller regards the first
supposition however as the more probable, and
quotes at length a passage from Pliny (VI. xxvi.
104) referring thereto, which must have been excerpted
from some Periplûs like our author’s, but
not from it as some have thought. “To those
bound for India it is most convenient to depart
from Okêlis. They sail thence with the wind
Hipalus in 40 days to the first emporium of India,
Muziris, which is not a desirable place to arrive
at on account of pirates infesting the neighbourhood,
who hold a place called Nitrias, while it is
not well supplied with merchandize. Besides,
the station for ships is at a great distance from
the shore, and cargoes have both to be landed and
to be shipped by means of little boats. There
reigned there when I wrote this Caelobothras.
Another port belonging to the nation
is more convenient, Neacyndon, which is
called Becare (sic. codd., Barace, Harduin and
Sillig). There reigned Pandiôn in an inland
town far distant from the emporium called Modura.
The region, however, from which they
convey pepper to Becare in boats formed from
single logs is Cottonara.”
54. To the kingdom under the sway of
Kêprobotres[22] Tundis is subject, a village
of great note situate near the sea. Mouziris,
which pertains to the same realm, is a city
at the height of prosperity, frequented as it
is by ships from Ariakê and Greek ships from
Egypt. It lies near a river at a distance from
Tundis of 500 stadia, whether this is measured
from river to river or by the length of the sea
voyage, and it is 20 stadia distant from the
mouth of its own river. The distance of Nelkunda
from Mouziris also nearly 500
stadia, whether measured from river to river or
by the sea voyage, but it belongs to a different
kingdom, that of Pandiôn. It likewise is
situate near a river and at about a distance
from the sea of 120 stadia.
(54) With regard to the names in this extract
which occur also in the Periplûs the following
passages quoted from Dr. Caldwell’s Dravidian
Grammar will throw much light. He says (Introd.
p. 97):—“Muziris appears to be the Muyiri
of Muyiri-kotta. Tyndis is Tuṇḍi, and the
Kynda, of Nelkynda, or as Ptolemy has it, Melkynda,
i. e. probably Western kingdom, seems to
be Kannettri, the southern boundary of Kêrala
proper. One MS. of Pliny writes the second part
of this word not Cyndon but Canidon. The first
of these places was identified by Dr. Gundert, for
the remaining two we are indebted to Dr. Burnell.
“Cottonara, Pliny; Kottonarike, Periplûs, the
district where the best pepper was produced. It
is singular that this district was not mentioned
by Ptolemy. Cottonara was evidently the
name of the district. κοττοναρικον the name of the
pepper for which the district was famous. Dr.
Buchanan identifies Cottonara with Kaḍatta-naḍu,
the name of a district in the Calicut country
celebrated for its pepper. Dr. Burnell identifies it
with Koļatta-nâḍu, the district about Tellicherry
which he says is the pepper district.
Kadatta in Malayâlam means ‘transport, conveyance,’
Nâdû, Tam.—Mal., means a district.”
“The prince called Kêrobothros by Ptolemy (VII.
i. 86) is called Kêprobotros by the author of the
Periplûs. The insertion of π is clearly an error,
but more likely to be the error of a copyist than
that of the author, who himself had visited the
territories of the prince in question. He is called
Caelobothras in Pliny’s text, but one of the MSS.
gives it more correctly as Celobotras. The name
in Sanskrit, and in full is ‘Keralaputra,’ but both
kêra and kêla are Dravidian abbreviations of kêralâ.
They are Malayâļam however, not Tamil abbreviations,
and the district over which Keralaputra ruled
is that in which the Malayâļam language is now
spoken” (p. 95). From Ptolemy we learn that the
capital of this prince was Karoura, which has
been “identified with Karûr, an important town
in the Koimbatur district originally included in the
Chêra kingdom. Karûr means the black town....
Ptolemy’s word Karoura represents the Tami[l:]
name of the place with perfect accuracy.” Nelkunda,
our author informs us, was not subject to
this prince but to another called Pandiôn. This
name, says Dr. Caldwell, “is of Sanskrit origin,
and Pandæ, the form which Pliny, after Megasthenês,
gives in his list of the Indian nations,
comes very near the Sanskrit. The more recent
local information of Pliny himself, as well as the
notices of Ptolemy and the Periplûs, supply us with
the Dravidian form of the word. The Tami[l:] sign
of the masc. sing. is an, and Tami[l:] inserts i euphonically
after ṇḍ, consequently Pandiôn, and still
better the plural form of the word Pandiones,
faithfully represents the Tami[l:] masc. sing. Pâṇḍiyan.”
In another passage the same scholar says:
“The Sanskrit Pâṇḍya is written in Tamil Pâṇḍiya,
but the more completely tamilized form Pâṇḍi
is still more commonly used all over southern
India. I derive Pâṇḍi, as native scholars always
derive the word, from the Sanskrit Pâṇḍu, the
name of the father of the Pâṇḍava brothers.”
The capital of this prince, as Pliny has stated, was
Modura, which is the Sanskrit Maṭhurâ pronounced
in the Tami[l:] manner. The corresponding
city in Northern India, Maṭhurâ, is written by the
Greeks Methora.
Nelkunda is mentioned by various authors under
varying forms of the name. As has been already
stated, it is Melkunda in Ptolemy, who places it in
the country of the Aii. In the Peutingerian Table
it is Nincylda, and in the Geographer of Ravenna,
Nilcinna. At the mouth of the river on which
it stands was its shipping port Bakare or Becare,
according to Müller now represented by Markari
(lat. 12° N.) Yule conjectures that it must have
been between Kanetti and Kolum in Travancore.
Regarding the trade of this place we may quote a
remark from Vincent. “We find,” he says, “that
throughout the whole which the Periplûs mentions
of India we have a catalogue of the exports and
imports only at the two ports of Barugaza and
Nelcynda, and there seems to be a distinction fixed
between the articles appropriate to each. Fine
muslins and ordinary cottons are the principal
commodities of the first; tortoise shell, precious
stones, silk, and above all pepper, seem to have been
procurable only at the latter. This pepper is said
to be brought to this port from Cottonara, famous
to this hour for producing the best pepper in the
world except that of Sumatra. The pre-eminence
of these two ports will account for the little that
is said of the others by the author, and why he has
left us so few characters by which we may distinguish
one from another.”
Our author on concluding his account of Nelkunda
interrupts his narrative to relate the incidents
of the important discovery of the monsoon
made by that Columbus of antiquity Hippalus.
This account, Vincent remarks, naturally excites a
curiosity in the mind to enquire how it should
happen that the monsoon should have been noticed
by Nearkhos, and that from the time of his voyage
for 300 years no one should have attempted a
direct course till Hippalus ventured to commit
himself to the ocean. He is of opinion that there
was a direct passage by the monsoons both in
going to and coming from India in use among
the Arabians before the Greeks adopted it, and
that Hippalus frequenting these seas as a pilot or
merchant, had met with Indian or Arabian traders
who made their voyages in a more compendious
manner than the Greeks, and that he collected
information from them which he had both the prudence
and courage to adopt, just as Columbus, while
owing much to his own nautical experience and
fortitude was still under obligations to the Portuguese,
who had been resolving the great problems
in the art of navigation for almost a century previous
to his expedition.
55. At the very mouth of this river lies
another village, Bakare, to which the ships
despatched from Nelkunda come down empty
and ride at anchor off shore while taking in
cargo: for the river, it may be noted, has sunken
reefs and shallows which make its navigation
difficult. The sign by which those who come
hither by sea know they are nearing land is
their meeting with snakes, which are here of a
black colour, not so long as those already mentioned,
like serpents about the head, and with
eyes the colour of blood.
(55) Nelkunda appears to have been the
limit of our author’s voyage along the coast of
India, for in the sequel of his narrative he defines
but vaguely the situation of the places which he
notices, while his details are scanty, and sometimes
grossly inaccurate. Thus he makes the Malabar
Coast extend southwards beyond Cape Comorin
as far at least as Kolkhoi (near Tutikorin) on the
Coromandel coast, and like many ancient writers,
represents Ceylon as stretching westward almost
as far as Africa.
56. The ships which frequent these ports
are of a large size, on account of the great
amount and bulkiness of the pepper and betel
of which their lading consists. The imports
here are principally—
Χρήματα πλεῖ στα—Great quantities of specie.
Χρυσόλιθα—(Topaz?) Gold-stone, Chrysolite.
Ἰματισμὸς ἁπλοὸς οὐ πολὺς—A small assortment
of plain cloth.
Πολύμιτα—Flowered robes.
Στίμμι, κοράλλιον—Stibium, a pigment for the
eyes, coral.
ὕαλος ἀργὴ χαλκὸς—White glass, copper or
brass.
Κασσίτερος, μόλυβδος—Tin, lead.
Οἵνος οὐ πολύς, ὡσεὶ δὲ τοσοῦτον ὅσον ἐν Βαρυγάζοις—Wine
but not much, but about as much as at
Barugaza.
Σανδαράκη—Sandarach (Sindûrâ).
Ἀρσενικὸν—Arsenic (Orpiment), yellow sulphuret
of arsenic.
Σῖτος ὅσος ἀρκέ σει τοῖς περὶ το ναυκλήριον, διὰ τὸ μὴ τοὺς ἐμπόρους
αὐτῷ χρῆσθαι—Corn, only for the use of the ship’s company, as the
merchants do not sell it.
The following commodities are brought to it
for export:—
Πέπερι μονογενῶς ἐν ἐνὶ τόπω τούτων τῶν ἐμπορίων γεννώμενον πολύ τῇ
λεγομενῇ Κοττοναρικη—Pepper in great quantity, produced in only one of
these marts, and called the pepper of Kottonara.
Μαργαρίτης ίκανὸς καὶ διάφορος—Pearls in great
quantity and of superior quality.
Ἐλέφας—Ivory.
Ὀθόνια Σηρικὰ—Fine silks.
Νάρδος ἡ Γαγγητικὴ—Spikenard from the Ganges.
Μαλάβαθρον—Betel—all brought from countries
further east.
Λιθία διαφανὴς παντοία—Transparent or precious
stones of all sorts.
Αδάμας—Diamonds.
Ὑάκινθος—Jacinths.
Χελώνη ἥτε Χρυσονησιωτικὴ καὶ ἡ περὶ τὰς νήσους θηρευομένη τὰς
προκειμένας αὐτῆς τῆς Λιμυρικῆς—Tortoise-shell from the Golden Island,
and another sort which is taken in the islands which lie off the coast
of Limurikê.
The proper season to set sail from Egypt for
this part of India is about the month of July—that
is, Epiphi.
57. The whole round of the voyage from
Kanê and Eudaimôn Arabia, which we
have just described, used to be performed in
small vessels which kept close to shore and
followed its windings, but Hippalos was the
pilot who first, by observing the bearings of the
ports and the configuration of the sea, discovered
the direct course across the ocean; whence as,
at the season when our own Etesians are
blowing, a periodical wind from the ocean likewise
blows in the Indian Sea, this wind, which
is the south-west, is, it seems, called in these
seas Hippalos [after the name of the pilot who
first discovered the passage by means of it].
From the time of this discovery to the present
day, merchants who sail for India either from
Kanê, or, as others do, from Arômata, if
Limurikê be their destination, must often change
their tack, but if they are bound for Barugaza
and Skythia, they are not retarded for
more than three days, after which, committing
themselves to the monsoon which blows right
in the direction of their course, they stand far
out to sea, leaving all the gulfs we have mentioned
in the distance.
58. After Bakare occurs the mountain
called Pyrrhos (or the Red) towards the south,
near another district of the country called
Paralia (where the pearl-fisheries are which
belong to king Pandiôn), and a city of the name
of Kolkhoi. In this tract the first place
met with is called Balita, which has a good
harbour and a village on its shore. Next to
this is another place called Komar, where is
the cape of the same name and a haven. Those
who wish to consecrate the closing part of their
lives to religion come hither and bathe and
engage themselves to celibacy. This is also
done by women; since it is related that the
goddess (Kumârî) once on a time resided at the
place and bathed. From Komarei (towards the
south) the country extends as far as Kolkhoi,
where the fishing for pearls is carried on.
Condemned criminals are employed in this service.
King Pandiôn is the owner of the fishery.
To Kolkhoi succeeds another coast lying
along a gulf having a district in the interior
bearing the name of Argalou. In this single
place are obtained the pearls collected near the
island of Epiodôros. From it are exported
the muslins called ebargareitides.
(58) The first place mentioned after Bakare
is Pyrrhos, or the Red Mountain, which extends
along a district called Paralia. “There are,”
says Dr. Caldwell (Introd. p. 99), “three Paralias
mentioned by the Greeks, two by Ptolemy ...
one by the author of the Periplûs. The Paralia
mentioned by the latter corresponded to Ptolemy’s
country of the Ἄïοι, and that of the Καρεοι,
that is, to South Travancore and South Tinnevelly.
It commenced at the Red Cliffs south of
Quilon, and included not only Cape Comorin
but also Κόλχοι, where the pearl fishing was carried
on, which belonged to King Pandiôn. Dr.
Burnell identifies Paralia with Parali, which
he states is an old name for Travancore, but I am
not quite able to adopt this view.” “Paralia,” he
adds afterwards, “may possibly have corresponded
in meaning, if not in sound, to some native word
meaning coast,—viz., Karei.” On this coast is a
place called Balita, which is perhaps the Bammala
of Ptolemy (VII. i. 9), which Mannert identifies
with Manpalli, a little north of Anjenga.
[Transcriber’s Note: There is no Paragraph 59]
60. Among the marts and anchorages along
this shore to which merchants from Limurikê
and the north resort, the most conspicuous are
Kamara and Podoukê and Sôpatma,
which occur in the order in which we have
named them. In these marts are found those
native vessels for coasting voyages which trade
as far as Limurikê, and another kind called
sangara, mode by fastening together large
vessels formed each of a single timber, and also
others called kolandiophônta, which are of great
bulk and employed for voyages to Khrusê
and the Ganges. These marts import all the
commodities which reach Limurikê for
commercial purposes, absorbing likewise nearly
every species of goods brought from Egypt,
and most descriptions of all the goods exported
from Limurikê and disposed of on this
coast of India.
(60) We now reach the great promontory called
in the Periplûs Komar and Komarei, Cape
Kumârî. “It has derived its name,” says Caldwell,
“from the Sans. Kumârî, a virgin, one of the
names of the goddess Durgâ, the presiding divinity
of the place, but the shape which this
word has taken is, especially in komar, distinctively
Tamilian.” In ordinary Tamil Kumârî
becomes Kumări; and in the vulgar dialect
of the people residing in the neighbourhood of
the Cape a virgin is neither Kumârî nor Kumări
but Kŭmăr pronounced Kŏmar. It is remarkable
that this vulgar corruption of the Sanskrit is
identical with the name given to the place by the
author of the Periplûs.... The monthly bathing in
honor of the goddess Durgâ is still continued at
Cape Comorin, but is not practised to the same
extent as in ancient times.... Through the continued
encroachments of the sea, the harbour the
Greek mariners found at Cape Comorin and the
fort (if φρουριον is the correct reading for βριάριον
of the MS.) have completely disappeared; but a
fresh water well remains in the centre of a rock, a
little way out at sea. Regarding Kolkhoi, the
next place mentioned after Komari, the same
authority as we have seen places it (Ind. Ant. vol.
VI. p. 80) near Tuticorin. It is mentioned by
Ptolemy and in the Peutinger Tables, where it is
called ‘Colcis Indorum’. The Gulf of Manaar was
called by the Greeks the Colchic Gulf. The Tami[l:]
name of the place Kolkei is almost identical with
the Greek. “The place,” according to Caldwell, “is
now about three miles inland, but there are abundant
traces of its having once stood on the coast, and
I have found the tradition that it was once the seat
of the pearl fishery, still surviving amongst its inhabitants.”
After the sea had retired from Κόλχοι ... a
new emporium arose on the coast. This was
Kâyal, the Cael of Marco Polo. Kâyal in turn
became in time too far from the sea ... and Tuticorin
(Tûttrukuḍi) was raised instead by the
Portuguese from the position of a fishing village
to that of the most important port on the southern
Coromandel coast. The identification of Kolkoi
with Kolkei is one of much importance. Being
perfectly certain it helps forward other identifications.
Kol. in Tami[l:] means ‘to slay.’ Kei is
‘hand.’ It was the first capital of Pandiôn.
The coast beyond Kolkhoi, which has an inland
district belonging to it called Argalou, is
indented by a gulf called by Ptolemy the Argarik—now
Palk Bay. Ptolemy mentions also a promontory
called Kôru and beyond it a city called Argeirou
and an emporium called Salour. This Kôru
of Ptolemy, Caldwell thinks, represents the
Kôlis of the geographers who preceded him,
and the Koṭi of Tami[l:], and identifies it with
“the island promontory of Râmeśvaram, the
point of land from which there was always the
nearest access from Southern India to Ceylon.”
An island occurs in these parts, called that of
Epiodôros, noted for its pearl fishery, on
which account Ritter would identify it with
the island of Manaar, which Ptolemy, as Mannert
thinks, speaks of as Νάνιγηρίς (VII. i. 95). Müller
thinks, however, it may be compared with Ptolemy’s
Kôru, and so be Râmeśvaram.
This coast has commercial intercourse not only
with the Malabar ports, but also with the Ganges
and the Golden Khersonese. For the trade with
the former a species of canoes was used called
Sangara. The Maļayâlam name of these, Caldwell
says, is Changâdam, in Tuļa Jangâla, compare
Sanskrit Samghâdam a raft (Ind. Ant. vol. I.
p. 309). The large vessels employed for the
Eastern trade were called Kolandiophonta, a name
which Caldwell confesses his inability to explain.
Three cities and ports are named in the order of
their occurrence which were of great commercial
importance, Kamara, Podoukê, and Sôpatma.
Kamara may perhaps be, as Müller thinks,
the emporium which Ptolemy calls Khabêris,
situated at the mouth of the River Khabêros
(now, the Kavery), perhaps, as Dr. Burnell suggests,
the modern Kaveripattam. (Ind. Ant. vol.
VII. p. 40). Podoukê appears in Ptolemy as
Podoukê. It is Puduchchêri, i. e. ‘new
town,’ now well known as Pondicherry; so Bohlen,
Ritter, and Benfey. [Yule and Lassen place it at
Pulikât]. Sôpatma is not mentioned in
Ptolemy, nor can it now be traced. In Sanskrit
it transliterates into Su-patna, i. e., fair town.
61. Near the region which succeeds, where
the course of the voyage now bends to the east,
there lies out in the open sea stretching towards
the west the island now called Palaisimoundou,
but by the ancients Taprobanê.
To cross over to the northern side
of it takes a day. In the south part it gradually
stretches towards the west till it nearly
reaches the opposite coast of Azania. It produces
pearl, precious (transparent) stones,
muslins, and tortoise-shell.
(61) The next place noticed is the Island of
Ceylon, which is designated Palaisimoundou,
with the remark that its former name was
Taprobanê. This is the Greek transliteration of
Tâmraparnî, the name given by a band of colonists
from Magadha to the place where they first
landed in Ceylon, and which was afterwards extended
to the whole island. It is singular, Dr.
Caldwell remarks, that this is also the name of
the principal river in Tinnevelly on the opposite
coast of India, and he infers that the colony
referred to might previously have formed a settlement
in Tinnevelly at the mouth of the Tâmraparṇi
river—perhaps at Kolkei, the earliest residence
of the Pâṇḍya kings. The passage in the
Periplûs which refers to the island is very corrupt.
62.(Returning to the coast,) not far from the
three marts we have mentioned lies Masalia,
the seaboard of a country extending far inland.
Here immense quantities of fine muslins are
manufactured. From Masalia the course of
the voyage lies eastward across a neighbouring
bay to Dêsarênê, which has the breed of
elephants called Bôsarê. Leaving Dêsarênê
the course is northerly, passing a variety of
barbarous tribes, among which are the Kirrhadai,
savages whose noses are flattened to the
face, and another tribe, that of the Bargusoi,
as well as the Hîppioprosôpoi or Makroprosôpoi
(the horse faced or long faced
men), who are reported to be cannibals.
(62) Recurring to the mainland, the narrative
notices a district called Masalia, where
great quantities of cotton were manufactured.
This is the Maïsôlia of Ptolemy, the region in
which he places the mouths of a river the Maisôlos,
which Benfey identifies with the Godâvarî,
in opposition to others who would make it the
Krishnâ, which is perhaps Ptolemy’s Tuna. The
name Maisôlia is taken from the Sanskrit Mausala,
preserved in Machhlipatana, now Masulipatam.
Beyond this, after an intervening gulf running
eastward is crossed, another district occurs, Desarênê,
noted for its elephants. This is not mentioned
by Ptolemy, but a river with a similar name,
the Dôsarôn, is found in his enumeration of
the rivers which occur between the Maisôlos and
the Ganges. As it is the last in the list it may
probably be, as Lassen supposes, the Brâhmini.
Our author however places Desarênê at a much
greater distance from the Ganges, for he peoples
the intermediate space with a variety of tribes
which Ptolemy relegates to the East of the river.
The first of these tribes is that of the Kirrâdai
(Sanskrit, Kirâtas), whose features are of the
Mongolian type. Next are the Bargusoi, not
mentioned by Ptolemy, but perhaps to be identified
with the cannibal race he speaks of, the
Barousai thought by Yule to be possibly the
inhabitants of the Nikobar islands, and lastly the
tribe of the long or horse-faced men who were also
cannibals.
63. After passing these the course turns
again to the east, and if you sail with the ocean
to your right and the coast far to your left, you
reach the Ganges and the extremity of the continent
towards the east called Khrusê (the
Golden Khersonese). The river of this region
called the Ganges is the largest in India;
it has an annual increase and decrease like the
Nile, and there is on it a mart called after it,
Gangê, through which passes a considerable
traffic consisting of betel, the Gangetic spikenard,
pearl, and the finest of all muslins—those
called the Gangetic. In this locality also there
is said to be a gold mine and a gold coin called
Kaltis. Near this river there is an island of
the ocean called Khrusê (or the Golden),
which lies directly under the rising sun and at
the extremity of the world towards the east.
It produces the finest tortoise-shell that is found
throughout the whole of the Erythræan Sea.
(63) When this coast of savages and monsters
is left behind, the course lies eastward, and leads
to the Ganges, which is the greatest river of
India, and adjoins the extremity of the Eastern
continent called Khrusê, or the Golden. Near
the river, or, according to Ptolemy, on the third of
its mouths stands a great emporium of trade
called Gangê, exporting Malabathrum and cottons
and other commodities. Its exact position
there are not sufficient data to determine. Khrusê
is not only the name of the last part of the continent,
but also of an island lying out in the ocean
to eastward, not far from the Ganges. It is the
last part of the world which is said to be inhabited.
The situation of Khrusê is differently defined by
different ancient authors. It was not known to
the Alexandrine geographers. Pliny seems to
have preserved the most ancient report circulated
regarding it. He says (VI. xxiii. 80): “Beyond the
mouth of the Indus are Chryse and Argyre
abounding in metals as I believe, for I can hardly
credit what some have related that the soil consists
of gold and silver.” Mela (III. 7) assigns to it a very
different position, asserting it to be near Tabis,
the last spur of the range of Taurus. He therefore
places it where Eratosthenês places Thînai, to the
north of the Ganges on the confines of the Indian
and Skythian oceans. Ptolemy, in whose time the
Transgangetic world was better known, refers it
to the peninsula of Malacca, the Golden Khersonese.
64. Beyond this region, immediately under
the north, where the sea terminates outwards,
there lies somewhere in Thîna a very great
city,—not on the coast, but in the interior of
the country, called Thîna,—from which silk,
whether in the raw state or spun into thread
and woven into cloth, is brought by land to
Barugaza through Baktria, or by the Ganges to
Limurikê. To penetrate into Thîna is not
an easy undertaking, and but few merchants
come from it, and that rarely. Its situation is
under the Lesser Bear, and it is said to be conterminous
with the remotest end of Pontos,
and that part of the Kaspian Sea which adjoins
the Maiôtic Lake, along with which it issues by
one and the same mouth into the ocean.
(64) The last place which the Periplûs mentions
is Thînai, an inland city of the Thînai or
Sinai, having a large commerce in silk and
woollen stuffs. The ancient writers are not at all
agreed as to its position. Colonel Yule thinks it
was probably the city described by Marco Polo
under the name of Kenjan-fu (that is Singan-fu
or Chauggan,) the most celebrated city
in Chinese history, and the capital of several of
the most potent dynasties. It was the metropolis
of Shi Hwengti of the T’Sin dynasty, properly
the first emperor, and whose conquests almost
intersected those of his contemporary Ptolemy
Euergetês—(vide Yule’s Travels of Marco Polo,
vol. II. p. 21).
65. On the confines, however, of Thînai
an annual fair is held, attended by a race of men
of squat figure, with their face very broad, but
mild in disposition, called the Sesatai, who in
appearance resemble wild animals. They come
with their wives and children to this fair, bringing
heavy loads of goods wrapped up in mats
resembling in outward appearance the early
leaves of the vine. Their place of assembly is
where their own territory borders with that of
Thînai; and here, squatted on the mats on which
they exhibit their wares, they feast for several
days, after which they return to their homes in
the interior. On observing their retreat the
people of Thînai, repairing to the spot, collect the
mats on which they had been sitting, and taking
out the fibres, which are called petroi, from the
reeds, they put the leaves two and two together,
and roll them up into slender balls, through
which they pass the fibres extracted from the
reeds. Three kinds of Malabathrum are thus
made—that of the large ball, that of the middle,
and that of the small, according to the size of
the leaf of which the balls are formed. Hence
there are three kinds of Malabathrum, which
after being made up are forwarded to India by
the manufacturers.
66. All the regions beyond this are unexplored,
being difficult of access by reason of the
extreme rigour of the climate and the severe
frosts, or perhaps because such is the will of
the divine power.
