East of the Malabar coast and north of Ceylon was the Coromandel coast.
Roman Empire ships brought back goods from here, the most important
being pearls. Some traffic between the Malabar and Coromandel coasts is
known to have come overland by oxcart, and small sea craft also scurried
back and forth. But Roman ships rounding Cape Comorin at the tip of India
faced contrary winds followed by a narrow strait with dangerous shallows,
underwater reefs, and a string of islands whimsically known as Adam’s
Bridge that served as a barrier to larger ships. Nor was it particularly safe to
take the long way around the southern end of Ceylon, where the waters were
also dangerous. Nevertheless, preliminary archaeological work at the
Coromandel port of Poduca (Arikamedu) unearthed large quantities of
Roman remains, including pottery that once held olive oil and garum, not
typical items in the Indian diet, indicating a trading station. Coromandel
ports faced eastward to the Ganges delta in one direction and to Chryse, the
lands of Southeast Asia in the other. Yavana merchants stationed at Poduca
would forward incoming goods by land or sea to associates in Musiris and
hence on to Alexandria and Rome. More recent excavation, however, has
brought closer scrutiny, and now there is some question as to whether eating
garum and using olive oil warrants the assumption of a Roman trading sta-
tion. Whether Greeks or Indians lived at Poduca, it does seem to have
occupied a nodal position tying the trade of Southeast Asia and the Bay of
Bengal with the Malabar coast and beyond to the Mediterranean from as
early as the second centuryBCE.
Yavana merchants probably didn’t go much farther into the Bay of Bengal
than Poduca; at least that is what thePeriplusimplies. In explaining where
he got his information on India, Strabo states:“as for the merchants who
now sail from Egypt...as far as India, only a small number have sailed as far
as the Ganges,”which is an indication that at least some of them went that
far. Bay of Bengal trade was clearly in the hands of Indian merchants aboard
Indian ships. The rapid development of a half dozen or so ports known to
have been used on the Coromandel coast peaked in the second centuryCEas
a by-product of the increasing demands of the Mediterranean-to-Indian
Ocean system. Development on the east coast was not uniform, and there
were long stretches between ports not touched by the new commercial
economy. ThePeripluswarns of one such area between the Coromandel coast
and the Ganges delta where there were“numerous barbaric peoples, among
whom are the Kirradai, a race of wild men withflattened noses, and another
people, the Bargysoi, and the Horses Faces, who are said to be cannibals.”
East coast ports were generally close to river estuaries, the largest being in
the Ganges delta, a port the Periplus calls simply “Ganges” (actually
Tamralipti, modern Tamluk south of Calcutta). Its major exports included
nard, malabathrum, Chinese silk, pearls, and a veryfine locally made cotton
cloth similar to muslin. The only Western export in evidence was Roman
money.
108 Following thePeriplus