Pliny seems to agree and notes that the monsoon wind was henceforth
named after Hippalos, and the geographer Claudius Ptolemy named the sea
after him as well.
One matter is obvious: neither Hippalos nor Eudoxus discovered the
monsoons. Indian Ocean sailors did that long before. Nor did western sailors
begin using the monsoons on a significant scale for at least a century or so
after Eudoxus and Hippalos. Incidentally, Eudoxus’adventures did not end
here. He was sent out on a second trip to India but on his return was blown
off course and landed somewhere on the East African coast. The local people
provided pilots to help him get back to Egypt, an indication that this route
was already well traveled.
The word“monsoon”means seasonal wind resulting from temperature
variation between land and sea. Air is either sucked toward the center of the
Eurasian land mass during the hot months or shoved out to sea in the cold
months. From November to April the monsoon blows from the northeast–a
steady, fair-weather, balmy wind–a sailor’s delight. From April to October
the monsoon turns around and blows from the southwest, bringing high,
sometimes ferocious winds, turbulent seas, and frequent storms. At the
height of this season in late June, July, and early August, the water was in
such an uproar that ports were closed and maritime activity put on hold on
the west coast of India. With the wind at their backs, sailors could use the
monsoons to push their sails across the seas. But they had to judge their
departure times just right to prevent being caught in violent weather or, if
they arrived too late, to miss the return wind and suffer a long layover. The
full force of the monsoon hit different areas at different times, and bad
weather did not prevail in all places during the entire southwest monsoon
season. Furthermore, the monsoon arrived and departed in stages, so there
were transition periods during which the winds could be variable. Sailors had
to determine when the wind was usable, which differed from place to place.
Once learned, maritime trade routes were set by the pattern of the winds; it
was all a matter offinessing Mother Nature. In thefirst centuryBCEonly the
boldest Mediterranean sailors were pioneering the Indian trade; within a
century the mid-ocean had become a highway.
As traders from the Mediterranean were poised to move into the Indian
Ocean, the political backdrop was changing as well. During thefirst century
BCEthe Eastern Mediterranean came under Roman domination, culminating
in the overthrow of the Ptolemies and the conquest of Egypt. The Romans
were interested in the Red Sea to Indian Ocean voyage because it was a way
around the land routes to the east, now under control of their enemy, the
Parthian Empire. Given the preliminary work already done, the Romans
were able to plug rather easily into the preexisting trade network. The
Romans brought stability, capital resources, and a virtually insatiable new
market to the western edge of the Indian Ocean, and the intensity and
volume of trade increased accordingly. Henceforth the Roman navy patrolled
88 When India was the center of the world