Imperial Rome, Indian Ocean Regions and Muziris

New Perspectives on Maritime Trade

K.S. Mathew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138234802
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351997515
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The battle of Actium waged in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt in 30 BC to the Roman Empire opened up avenues for increased commercial contact between the Roman Empire, South Asia in general and India in particular and the port of Muziris was the premier trading post of India. In this volume, eminent international scholars from the USA, Switzerland, United Kingdom, France, Italy as well as India provide detailed analysis of maritime trade in the Indian Ocean region in the early historic period.

CHAPTER 1
Introduction

K.S. MATHEW

After Julius Caesar came to power in 44 BCE the Roman Republic, quickly became the Roman Empire. The outcome of the famous Battle of Actium on 2 September 31 BCE, the final war of the Roman Republic, constituted an important milestone in the transition of the Republic into the status of an ‘Empire’. The annexation of Egypt in 30 BCE to the Empire opened up the avenues for increased commercial relations of the Roman Empire with South Asia in general and India in particular. The ongoing trade in spices available on the western coast of India was augmented by leaps and bounds. The fact that Romans used to come to India for trade fleeing from the poverty they experienced in their country even before the dawn of the Christian era was acknowledged even by a well-known Roman poet like Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BCE-27 BCE).¹ Barbaricum (Barbarikon, a port near Karachi) and Barygaza (Broach) on the north-western coast of India and Naura, Tyndis, Muziris, Nelcynda and Becare on the Malabar Coast were some of the ports with which traders from the Roman Empire had vibrant commercial relations. As Pliny the Elder (c. 23-79 CE) qualifies, Muziris was the premier emporium of India (Primum emporium Indiae).² It was a haven of vessels from various parts of the world, as reported by the author of Periplus of the Erythraean Sea in the first century CE.³

Some historians made use of the classical writings of Strabo, Pliny, Tacitus, Ptolemy and sources like Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and the Peutinger table related to the Roman Empire in Greek and Latin and brought to light the details of trade between Imperial Rome and India. E.H. Warmington worked on the commerce between the Roman Empire and India from a Western point of view covering the period from the victory of Augustus Octavian (ruling from 29 BCE-14 CE) up to the death of Marcus Aurelius (161-80 CE).⁴ Strabo, writing at the time of Augustus (+14 CE), states that 120 ships left for the East every year from the Egyptian port of Myos Hormos.⁵ Sir Mortimer Wheeler in his Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontiers speaks of Indian merchants going to Egypt occasionally and Greek merchants from there coming to India now and then for carrying pepper and other spices, especially pepper to Egypt in the second century BCE and affirms that pepper from south India reached the Mediterranean in considerable quantities in the early part of the first century BCE.⁶ He used references in Sangam literature to speak of the import of gold to Muziris and export of pepper in exchange.⁷ H.G. Rawlinson, like other scholars, underlines the favourable milieu in the Roman Empire for the development of maritime and intercontinental trade after the annexation of Egypt to the Empire in 30 BCE. Piracy was put down and the trade routes were made safe as a result of Pax Romana on account of which demand for oriental luxuries increased in an hitherto unprecedented manner. Based on the writings of Pliny, he highlights the great demand in the Roman Empire for pepper which was sold at the astronomical price of 15 denarii a pound even in the days of Pliny.⁸ He refers to Pliny again on the grievance of the Romans for the drain of gold to India, China and Arabia.⁹ The writings of Strabo were consulted by him to discuss the details of the number of ships (120 ships) which left from Myos Hormos, the Egyptian port, to India every year.¹⁰ Periplus Maris Erithraeae was also used by him to learn about Roman trade with Indian ports both on the western and eastern coasts. Drawing on the Periplus, he details the Roman trade route to India via the Red Sea touching Muza, the modern town of Mocha, Okelis, Aden and Kane (Qana) where the ships headed directly to Barygaza or ports of peninsular India.¹¹ Rawlinson has also referred to the work of Ptolemy, the Alexandrian geographer, for identifying some of the ports beyond the mouth of the Ganges.

M.P. Charlesworth in his book, Trade-Routes and Commerce of the Roman Empire, devotes a chapter to a discussion of the sea route to India and Ceylon. He refers to the works of Strabo and Ptolemy and also the Periplus of Erythraean Sea. He adds that ships leaving Egypt in July reached the Indian ports by the end of September and returned from India by the end of November and arrived at Alexandria in February.¹² The necessary things for facilitating trade and offering security to the traders and their vessels/merchandise were provided by the Roman rulers especially since the time of Augustus. The vessels trading with the East left from one of the three ports such as Arsinoe at the head of the Gulf of Suez, Myos Hormos, half way down the coast of Egypt and distant from Coptos by seven days’ journey and finally Berenike at the extreme limit of the Egyptian province of the Roman Empire.

Information available in classical writings in Greek, Latin and Tamil prompted research scholars to identify the ports and throw light on the dynamics of maritime trade between India and Rome by retrieving material evidence through scientific excavations after explorations, collection of surface findings and digging trial pits. The pioneering attempt to locate a Roman settlement and centre of trade was made in Arikamedu on the eastern coast of peninsular India.

The earliest reference to the ancient ruins in Arikamedu is found in the accounts of a French astronomer, Guillaume Le Gentil who was in Pondicherry in 1768-71.¹³ He makes mention of 10-ft high walls built with large-sized bricks on the high bank of the Ariyankuppam River and also of terracotta ring wells which could be dated back to the first century BCE and first century CE. But the historical importance of the site was highlighted later.

In 1937, for the first time, Arikamedu attracted the attention of scholars. Children from the village of Arikamedu, known to the French as Virampatnam, brought to a French antiquarian a number of finds picked up from the area. It was Gabriel Jouveau Dubreuil (1885-1945) who studied the finds from the surface of the mound and the river bank as early as 1937. In 1940, Krichenassamy Covoudar who had dug an area of 60 × 30 m to the depth of 0.8 m for the purpose of planting coconut trees found Mediterranean shipping amphorae and several other fragments from the debris. They were brought to the notice of Dubreuil.¹⁴ He made some more study and named it ‘ville romaine’ and identified in 1941 Arikamedu with Poduke emporium of the classical writers. The archaeological site of Arikamedu is situated four km south of the modern town on the right bank of Ariyankuppam or Gingee River just about 1 km before it empties into the Bay of Bengal.

The French scholars attached to École Française de Extrême-Oriente and Indian investigators carried on some useful digging at the site. Between 1941 and 1944, excavations on a small scale were initiated under the direction of L.Faucheux and R. Sarleau. Some parts of the site were declared protected by the French government subsequently.

In 1944 excavations were conducted under the direction of Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Director-General of Archaeology in India, and sherds of Italian red-glazed ‘Arretine’ ware and amphorae from the Mediterranean, together with a Roman lamp and a second Graeco-Roman gem were discovered from the site.¹⁵ The Arretine ware belonged to the early first century CE. In 1945 a systematic excavation was carried out for three months by Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) under the direction of Wheeler himself. The work was resumed for the French government by J.M. Casal in 1947-8.¹⁶ He continued excavations for three seasons from 1947 to 1950 and dug out a lot of material. No further excavation in the site was taken up after 1950. Vimala Begley and her team consisting of Peter Francis Jr., Iravatham Mahadevan, K.V. Raman, Steven E. Sidebotham, Kathleen Warner Slane and Elisabeth Lyding Will resumed the excavations for three seasons from 1989 to 1991-2.

Rome and India, the Ancient Sea Trade edited by Vimala Begley and Richard Daniel de Puma contains some interesting studies on the artefacts obtained from the site of Arikamedu and other places connected with Roman trade with India.¹⁷ Later the details of the excavations during the period from 1989 to 1992 were edited and brought out by Vimala Begley.¹⁸ By now it has been established firmly that Arikamedu was the Poduke of the classical writers and it was connected with Muziris on the Malabar Coast through the Palghat pass, as assumed by a number of scholars.

Muziris of the classical writers is located in the lower Periyar basin not far from the Arabian Sea, as indicated in the Greek, Latin and Tamil sources.

Classical works in Indian and Western languages give clear indications regarding the location of Muziris on the bank of River Periyar, slightly away from the sea-shore. It is further added that cargoes for import had to be unloaded from the ocean-going ships onto smaller vessels that could carry the goods through the river to the town of Muziris and commodities for export also had to be loaded on such vessels for transfer to the big vessels anchored in the sea. As in the case of Arikamedu, the well-known trade settlement of foreigners in ancient time, Muziris was not on the sea-shore, but on the banks of a river opening out into the sea. It is to be borne in mind that the devastating flood in River Periyar in 1341 CE played havoc with the geomorphology of the lower Periyar Valley. The fourth-century Peutingerian table also points out the location of Muziris. Taking all these into account we have to assess the attempts made by scholars in the recent past to locate Muziris of the Roman times.

Till the end of the 1990s Cranganore or Kodungalloor in Trichur district of Kerala was considered to be the location of Muziris. A few chance surface findings, explorations and trial excavations prompted scholars to search for Muziris in places other than Cranganore. Several attempts have been made in the recent past to situate Muziris in the lower Periyar Valley. Shajan K. Paul during his researches leading to his Doctorate in the Department of Marine Geology, Cochin University of Science and Technology, is reported to have come across some potteries in Pattanam near North Parur in 1996/7. Detailed explorations and excavations were initiated with the assumption that Pattanam (10°09'24''N 76°12'33''E) situated 2 km north of North Parur in Vadakkekkara village, in the district of Ernakulam, Kerala, and 9 km south of Kodungalloor, could be the lost port of Muziris. Pattanam is 3.32 m above the mean sea level, with its highest point about 3-4 m. The core area of the mound is c. 45 hectares and is surrounded by low-lying and marshy land.

A new turn of events has taken place with the attempts made by the Centre for Heritage Studies (CHS) situated in the premises of the Tripunithura Palace near Cochin. K.P. Shajan and Selvakumar, a participant in the excavations in Arikamedu under Vimala Begley, conducted some excavations in Pattanam under the direction of the Registrar of CHS, Gopi in 2004 and 2005. M.G.S. Narayanan, an eminent historian and a former Director-General of CHS, delivered the keynote address at an international workshop held in 2003 at CHS. This was published later as ‘Maritime History of Kerala: Notes for a Master Plan’ in which he complimented the attempts of Selvakumar and Shajan, and expressed his opinion that the findings of these scholars would strengthen the assumption that Pattanam could be identified with Muziris. He added that more studies and scientific excavations should be conducted.¹⁹ The potteries unearthed from Pattanam were identified as pieces of Roman amphorae with the assistance of Roberta Tomber from the British Museum and V. Selvakumar, K.P. Shajan and his colleagues published an article on the findings from Pattanam in 2004 itself.²⁰ They put forward the hypothesis that Pattanam could be associated with Muziris. Explorations and digging of trenches were done under the aegis of the CHS, Tripunithura and the scholars came across evidences of commercial activity and habitation. The cover page of the journal of CHS vol. 2 (2005) carried the images of a Cera coin and potsherd unearthed from the trenches dug in Pattanam. Reports of the excavation in the trial pits conducted by Shajan and Selvakumar were also brought out in this volume of the journal.²¹ Tomber wrote an article in the same volume about the Roman amphorae.²² The new government that came to power in Kerala under the Left Democratic Front does not seem to have promoted the activities of CHS related to the excavations in Pattanam and a new project with the caption Muziris Heritage Project was launched. One of the items included in the new project came into the hands of the Kerala Council of Historical Research, Thiruvananthapuram of which this writer was one of the founding members.

Discovery of ‘surface finds’ of potsherds and beads from Pattanam by the Centre for Cultural and Ecological Studies (CCES), Union Christian College, Aluva in late 1990s also marked the beginning of the attempts to identify Muziris. Two different agencies in the same period, probably without any mutual contacts, brought to light the potsherds pointing to the possible Roman settlement in Pattanam. But nothing considerable is reported to have been done in this regard by the CCES.

The excavations headed by P...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Reconstructing Networks of Trade and Exchange in the Indian Ocean during the Early Historic Period: Case Studies from Anuradhapura (Sri Lanka)
• 3. Local Networks and Long-distance Trade: The Role of the Exchanges between Sri Lanka and India during the Mediterranean Trade
• 4. From the Mediterranean to South Asia: The Odyssey of an Indiana Merchant in Roman Times
• 5. Wars, Trade and Treaties: New, Revised and Neglected Sources for the Political, Diplomatic, and Military Aspectss of Imperial Rome's Relations with the Red Sea Basin and India, from Augustus to Diocletian
• 6. Roman Ports on the Red Sea and their Contacts with Africa, Arabia and South Asia: Acient Literary and Recent Archaeological Evidence
• 7. The Port of Sumhuram (Khor Rori): New Data on its History
• 8. South Arabian Pottery outside South Arabia
• 9. Maritime Trade Contacts of Odisha, East Coast of India, with the Roman World: An Appraisal
• 10. Assessing the Early Historic Indian Ocean Trade through Ceramics
• 11. Ancient Ports of Kerala: An Overview
• 12. International Maritime Trade: Evidences from Vizhinjam Excavations, South Kerala
• 13. Examining the Hinterland and Foreland of the Port of Muziris in the Wider Perspective of the Subcontinent's Long-distance Networks
• 14. Muziris and the Trajectories of Maritime Trade in the Indian Ocean in the First Millennium CE
• 15. A Muziris Export: Schidai or Ivory Trimmings
• 16. The Roman Pottery from Pattanam
• 17. Money Matters: Indigenous and Foreign Coins in the Malabar Coast (Second Century BCE-Second Century CE)
• Bibliography
• List of Contributors
• Index