Indian Antiquary Vol 08

SR No.: 032500
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 404
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 376

332
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
Persian Gulf and the peninsula of India." The Periplús could not have been compiled from a single voyage; indeed, at that period, the ships were committed to the monsoon, and did not approach the coast except where they had to receive or deliver goods. Now, here, the narrator proceeds from one port to another without seeming to quit the coast. For this it would be necessary that a ship should be under his orders, as might no doubt be done for a political personage, but this is not natural. In attributing the compilation of the Periplús to the agent of a company, it is clear that this agent might have seen a number of the places himself, and that, for the rest, he was aided by notes supplied by his colleagues. On the whole, I am in accord with Dodwell, in taking the expression emperors in the plural. Doubtless some scholars have remarked that this circumstance is no, a sufficient argument, and that the word emperors might designate emperors in general; the remark is just; but as we shall see this is not the only argument.19
The vessels sailed from Myos Hormos, a port in the same latitude with Koptos and Thebes, and it was from these two cities that the merchandise of eastern Asia descended the Nile to Alexandria, by the same route that the commerce of Europe was conveyed to the shores of the Red Sea. A road, of which traces are still found, led from the Red Sea to the Nile. All that in Egypt related to the navigation of the eastern seas, formed a special administration entrusted to the direction of the functionary charged with the administration of Upper Egypt.18 None but ships of small draught went up as far as the present town of Suez.
This state of things rose from the dangers presented by the navigation of the sea towards the north, which has only been changed in these latter times from the application of steam to navigation. An Arab writer in the first half of the tenth century of our era says: "Vessels from the Persian Gulf which enter the Red Sea stop at Jedda. They dare not advance beyond that, because of the difficulties of the navigation and the great number of rocks which rise from the water. Add to this,
11 Vopiscus, Historia Augusta, on Firmus.
13 M. Vivien de Saint Martin in Le nord de l'Afrique dans l'antiquité grecque et romaine, strongly supports the opinion of M. Ch. Müller, For the western shore of the Red Sea and the coast of Zanzibar, he has compared (pp. 195 ff.), the account of Ptolemy and that of the Periplus, and is taken with the idea that Ptolemy is not only later than the author of the Periplús, but that when writing he had it under his eye. Now the statement of the Periplus is almost from beginning to end a rectification of that of Ptolemy. At least if Ptolemy has jumbled matters we must admit that this illustrious geometer, who appears never to have left his country, had only defective information at command, and that the author of the Periplus, coming after him, in respect to the memoir of his pre
[DECEMBER, 1879.
that on the coasts there is neither government nor inhabited places. A ship that sails in this sea requires to seek every night for a place of refuge for fear of being dashed against the rocks; it proceeds by day but stops by night. This sea indeed is foggy and liable to disagreeable exhalations. Nothing good is found at the bottom of this sea nor at its surface."
In the time of Pliny the naturalist, the Roman vessels did not come even so far as Myos Hormos, but stopped to the south of it at Berenikê under the tropic of Cancer and almost in the latitude of Syene.15 A special road placed this port in communication with the Nile valley. Why this difference? We know that in the third century of our era the barbarous populations called Ble myes pressed Egypt on the south and threatened the security of the caravans.16 This was probably the cause of the change.
The ship took a southern course. Under Augustus, Abyssinia was subject to a queen who lived in the interior, in the district called the Isle of Meroe. In the 3rd century the capital had been removed near the coast to Axum, a few marches from the sea, and having Adulis, a place much frequented, for its port. At the time of the arrival of the ship at A dulis, the country was under a native prince, who is called Zorkáns and who like most barbaric princes of that age was initiated in Greek letters. It is this prince's name which serves as M. Charles Müller's chief argument for placing the Periplús about the year 80 of our era.
The Ethiopien chronicles, properly speaking, do not commence till after the 10th century. For the preceding periods we have only lists of the names of kings, which do not always agree among themselves. These lists were published by Salt in 1816," and reproduced with more exactitude in 1853 by Dillmann, a German orientalist.18 Ordinarily the names of persons are preceded by the letters za, of which the meaning is not known. Now on the authority of Salt, Müller remarks that under a date corresponding to a little before 80 A.D. there was a king called Hêglê, and he does not hesitate to recognize in this the name of
decessor, profited by his position to supply so far what was still wanting: thus the reputations of both are saved (see below, p. 377).
13 Recueil des inscriptions grecques et latines de l'Egypt, par Letronne, t, II. p. 35. He was Στρατηγὸς τῆς ̓ινδικῆς καὶ Ἐρυθρᾶς θαλάσσης,
1 Relations des voyages des Arabes et des Persans dans l'Inde et la Chine, tom. I. p. 142.
15 Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. VI. c. xxvi..
18 See the observations of Letronne, Mém. de l'Acad. des inscr. tom. IX. p. 156; tom. X. pp. 185 seqq.
17 Salt, Abyssinia, pp. 460 ff.; conf. also Ind. Ant. vol. VII. p. 235.
18 Journal of the German Oriental Soc. vol. VII. p. 338.