A Book of Conquest The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia
NOTES TO PAGES 28-30 193
- Monica L. Smith, "The Dynamic Realm of the Indian Ocean: A Review,"
Asian Perspectives vol. 36, no. 2 (fall 1997), pp. 245-259.
IO. For the classical study, see E. H. Warmington, The Commerce between the
Roman Empire and India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928).
Also, Mortimer Wheeler, Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers (Harmonds-
worth, UK: Penguin, 1954). And most recently, G. W. Bowersock, Roman
Arabia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
- See Lionel Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei: Text with Introduction,
Translation, and Commentary (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1989).
- See Ranabir Chakravarti, Trade in Early India (Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2001) for a fuller discussion of the historiographical issues surrounding
India and the Indian Ocean trade.
- See Grant Parker, "Ex Oriente Luxuria: Indian Commodities and Roman Ex-
perience," fournal of Economic and Social History of the Orient 45, no. 1,
(2002), pp. 40-95.
- See J. W. McCrindle, Ancient India as Described by Ktesias the Knidian
(London: Triibner and Co., 1882) and J. W. McCrindle, Ancient India as De-
scribed by Megasthenes and Arrian (London: Triibner and Co., 1877).
- The logical extension of India as a site of immense wealth and immense
wisdom is the emergence, in medieval accounts, of descriptions that place
Paradise "in or beyond" India, "in the desert, impassable for people, in the
oriental zone." For an excellent overview, see Rudolf Wittkower, "Marvels
of the East: A Study in the History of Monsters," fournal of the Warburg'and
Courtauld Institutes 5 "(1942), pp. 159-197. Such linkages prospered into
other supernatural geographies, 'as in the thirteenth-century long poem
L'image du Monde or the Hereford Mappa Mundi. They also contributed to
the development of the rich mythography of Prester John. India, established
thusly by Greek and Roman sources, remained ossified in the medieval Eu-
ropean mind as the "fantastic, realized beyond the horizons of the everyday
world." See Natalie Lozovsky, The Earth Is Our Book: Geographical Knowl-
edge in the Latin West ca. 400-rooo (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, 2000).
- See Derek Kennet and Regina Krahl, Sasanian and Islamic Pottery from Ras
al-Khaimah (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2004).
- The historiographical and etymological links between Sarandip, the Ar-
abic Sarandib, Sinhala-dvipa, Ceylon, and current-day Sri Lanka are rather
convoluted. See James E. Tennent, Ceylon: An Account of the Island,
Physical, Historical, and Topographical, with Notices of Its Natural His-
tory, Antiquities and Productions (London: Longman, Green, Longman,
and Robe\ts, 1860) and W. J. van der Meulen, "Suvan:1advipa and the Chryse
Chersonesos," Indonesia 18 (1974). My thanks to Sonam Kachru for the
references.
- J. W. McCrindle, The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1898), p. 366.
- See David Whitehouse, "Sasanian Maritime Activity," in The Indian Ocean
in Antiquity, ed. Julian Reade (London: Kegan Paul International, 1996).
