Chronology of Gujarat

SR No.: 006799
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: M R Majumdar
Publisher: Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
Publication Year: 1960
Total Pages: 494
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 10 MB

Page 98

CHRONOLOGY OF GUJARAT
A.D. C. 39
Yakşadeva III attained the status of Sūri' in Vira Samvat 585 i.e. V. S. 115. When he was in Mahuvā, the Mlecchas plundered this city and took as prisoners this Sūri, 500 Jaina monks and Jāvadasāha. But one Śrāvaka who had become a Mleccha, got this Sūri released and sent him along with his men to Khatta-Kūpa ( Khāțu). Thinking that the Jaina church would perish if there were no Jaina monks, eleven boys were offered to this Sūri. He thereupon gave them Dikṣā. Later on, this Sūri went to Āhada. There, too, he was offered some boys who renounced the world. This event took place in about V. S. 95. (A.D. 39)-(JPI, Pt. I, p. 22).
C. 50
The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is the first Greek record of organised trading with the nations of the East, in vessels built and commanded by subjects of the Western World. “Periplus' or 'Guide-book' was the name applied to a numerous class of writing in Roman times, which answered for sailing-charts and the traveller's hand-book. The notes give an exhaustive survey of the imports and exports, of its markets and of the conditions and alliances of its peoples of the inter-national trade between the great empires of Rome, Parthia, India and China, when human culture and commerce had centered in the countries bordering on the Persian Gulf. A commercial system was developed for the inter-change of products between Egypt and the nations of the Ancient India, having its centre of exchanges near the head of the Persian Gulf, the peoples of which region-the Arab tribes and the ancestors of the Phoenicians - were the carriers or intermediaries.
The muslins and spices of India were received from Indian traders in their ports on either side of the Gulf of Aden. Changes in topography of India, the westward shifting of the Indus delta, the shoaling of the harbours in the Kaccha region, and the disorder incidental to great invasions of Asiatic peoples, however, sapped the vigour of the Indian Sea-trade.-( The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, Tr. by W. F. Schoff, 1912: Introduction).
C. 50
The earlier and the lower date and authorship of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea' are fixed from internal evidence. The Scythians of the Periplus were the Saka tribe, who having been driven from Eastern Turkestan by the Yuechi overran Baluchistan, the lower valley and the adjacent parts of the coast of India itself. In Para 38 of the text is mentioned 'the Sea-coast of Scythia' around the mouth of the Indus and the metropolis of Scythia, Minnagara, which was subject to Parthian princes at war among themselves'. The reference to the anarchy in the Indo-Parthian or Saka region in Para 41, does not suggest the consolidated power of that king of Surāṣtra and Ujjain who founded the so-called Śaka era' of 78 A.D.; and this indicated a date earlier than that era.-(Introduction', p. 10: The Periplus, Tr. by W. F. Schoff).