Know what a 2,000year-old Greek merchant’s manual forecasts about the Indian monsoon and oceanic trade

Know what a 2,000year-old Greek merchant’s manual forecasts about the Indian monsoon and oceanic trade
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Perhaps, the story of the oceanic trade is a reminder of India’s gregarious past. With the penny of thoughts, if you know enough about the ancient Indian—the fact should be no alien that long before the Europeans "explored" the Indian Ocean, traders from Arabia, Gujarat, and other coastal areas used triangle-sailed shipping vessels to harness the seasonal monsoon winds.

Eventually, the British presence in India has its roots in the trade fare as well. Men like Robert Clive, of the British East India Company, was agile enough to become fabulously wealthy, and with wealth came to power, and traders took control of huge swaths of India — The story of the rise of British in India. Their artful way to domestic politics was cautious and remarkable after the government backups.

Apparently, one of the early arriving accounts that form the part of this complex network of trade find mentions of India; as described in the Greek text, Periplus Maris Erythraei or the Periplus of the Erythraean. To elaborate, this remarkable handbook was scripted about the mid of the first century CE and was particularly meant for Greek merchants trading between Egypt, East Africa, southern Arabia, and India.

In fact, at times prior in history, with the information of modern navigation and ships, India’s location at the center of the oceanic geography made its way to the rise as the pivotal point of world trade and economy.

Consequently, according to some estimates, this sophisticated; wide-ranging commerce played a key role in the subcontinent. India at the time and for centuries later was accounted for being nearly a fifth of the world’s GDP.

Meanwhile, the Periplus of the Erythraean shows ways with two trade routes that finds it’s an origin at Egyptian ports: one is the East African coast through Tanzania, and the other one is through the Arabian peninsula and the Persian Gulf to western India.

As you read the book, you could not only find narratives in detail of numerous cities, ports, and harbors on these routes but India’s western coast, from Karachi down to Kanyakumari on the southernmost tip, which takes almost half of the space in narration.

There are these mentions of the Erythraean Sea means “red sea” but that’s not the pointer to the water body we know as the Red Sea. By contrast, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the western Indian Ocean, when united makes the Erythraean Sea—as of the ancient Greek and Roman geographers.

Written over 1,900 years ago before Vasco da Gama “explored” the trade route to India, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea was considered as a window into the diverse world of the Indian Ocean.

More so, according to Casson, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is a guide for merchants emphasizing knowledge of trade and products that could be bought and sold on each port – something akin to a modern shoppers’ guide. The descriptions of the places on these oceanic routes are colorful and the reporting style is direct and detailed giving the impression that the author, an Egyptian Greek who remains anonymous, was writing from personal experience.

Navigating the Monsoons

For a background, Indian and Arab mariners had wielded diligently the Indian Ocean years before Greek ships entered these waters. To ensure a safe voyage, these seamen needed to maneuver the monsoons, those seasonal winds that in the western Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea, blow from the southwest during the summer and from the northeast during the winter.

Until over a century before the Periplus was scripted, as the goods were frequently traded between India and the Mediterranean, the Greek merchants had to rely primarily on their Indian and Arab counterparts to access India on a primary basis. At that time, the authority of the monsoon showers was so vital to this entire trading world that for every port that the Periplus mentions, it also makes note of the most suitable months for taking on the trading journey.

But then, the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, tells us more of the three essentials— the overlooked aspects of the ancient Indian Ocean trade. Firstly, Periplus mentions— the ports, harbors, and metropolises located on the Indian Ocean coasts, which may not be popular today but were some of the most vibrant trading centers of the world at that time.

Secondly, the Periplus gives the modern reader a fascinating glimpse into the “bestsellers” traded across the Indian Ocean two millennia ago. The most frequently mentioned and perhaps also the most surprising from today’s vantage point is tortoiseshell procured from India and Africa. 

Thirdly, it is evident that even at its earliest, trade between India and the Mediterranean across the Indian Ocean was highly progressive. Thereby, a stable economic system was the requirement of the hour to support these complicated linkages of the commercial and social networks.

Consequently, proper evidence from the Periplus can be found of how merchants had to navigate restrictive rulers and their officials, face the threat of pirates and negotiate with vendors who made hard bargains.

Trade was conducted through barter as well as with money. Maritime ports were linked, particularly in India, to webs of internal riverine routes and inland trading and production centers.

Over time, more stabilized and methodological banking and capital generating systems came in to place.

The world that the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea describes and that developed, over the centuries, into a network of some of the world’s richest cities is far removed from our own times.

However, one thing is clear from the Periplus: that as early as the first century CE, India was part of an interconnected global network. And as much as it was part of the old it was also a cosmopolitan, multi-lingual, dynamic world.

For centuries before the European trading companies “discovered” it, the Indian Ocean was placed where merchants without ships of the navy that ruled the high seas. And trade without colonialism flourished.