66 THE ROUTES OF INDIAN COMMERCE. The Caravan Routes. The earliest trade between the East and West was carried on by caravans, and, long after the sea routes by the Red Sea and Persian Gulf began to be used, the land trade continued to be more important than the sea-borne. The earliest of these caravan routes were those between Egypt, Arabia, and Assyria, and the first notices we have of them are in the Bible. In Gen. ii. 11, 12, we are told, of the land of Havilah, that there was gold there, and bdellium and the onyx stone. Havilah is in Arabia Felix to the north of Ophir, and the passage simply indicates the route through which the Bdellium or Musk of India was received in Egypt in the time of Moses. The passage, Psalm xlv. 8, “All thy garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, "whereby they have made thee glad," is generally supposed to allude to the tablets and alabastra, or scent bottles, in which perfumes were kept in ancient times. But it may also be translated "Out of the ivory palaces of the Minæans," a people of Arabia Felix, who, like their neighbours, the Sabæans, and the Gerrhæans on the Persian Gulf, were the chief carriers of the Indian trade, and renowned in all ancient times for their fabulous opulence and luxury. In Gen. xxxvii. 25, we read that the sons of Israel sat down in Dothau to eat bread, "and they lifted up their eyes, " and looked, and behold a company of Ishmaelites came from "Gilead with their camels, bearing spicery (Gum Tragacanth), "and balm (produced by Balsamodendron Opobalsamum and "Gileadense), and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt," and that as the "Midianites, merchantmen" passed by, "his brethren " "sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites," who were probably_travelling by the immemorial caravan route, through Canaan and Edom and Midian, from Chaldæa into Egypt, the route by which Israel afterwards sent his sons into Egypt with balm and honey, spices and myrrh, nuts and almonds, for a present to "the man," their brother, who was now Governor over the land. Many beautiful and sublime scripture images are taken from this trade, as in Isaiah lxiii. 1, "Who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah?" and in the Song of Solomon iii. 6, "Who is this "that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, per"fumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of "the merchant? * * * they all hold swords, being expert "in war, every man hath his sword upon his thigh, because of "fear in the night;" passages giving also a vivid picture of a Mecca caravan of the present day, and of the dangers besetting it, with its rich merchandise of China, India, and Persia. As we learn from the account of the wars, both of Moses and of Gideon with the Midianites, they were a very wealthy Arab people, living partly by predatory incursions into the neighbouring territories, and partly by carrying on a caravan trade, across the intervening deserts, with the powerful states of Egypt and Chaldæa. There was an immemorial commerce between India and the nations of the Mediterrancan, and of the three principal routes it in different ages followed, that by Kirman, Gerrha, and Petra was probably the oldest of all. There was no other route between India and Europe where so small a space of sea had to be traversed, and the coast of Arabia is visible over the Straits of Ormuz from Kirman. The produce of India came to Kirman and Ormuz, and was thence carried across the Persian Gulf to Gerrha, the emporium of the pearl fishery still carried on among the Bahrein islands, the ancient Tylos and Aradus, which, with Muscat, were the original seats of those seafaring Arabs, who afterwards established themselves in Phoenicia, and carried their settlements from port to port along the eastern, southern, and western shores of the Mediterranean from Tyre and Sidon to the coasts of Mauretania, and Andalusia. The Indian caravan routes extended across the peninsula from Masalia, now Masulipatam, by Tagara, now Dowlatabad (Deoghir), and Barygaza, now Baroach, to Pattala, now Tatta, on the Indus. Pattala was in communication with the great port of Barbarike, at the mouth of the Indus, and with Taxila in the Punjab, the Takhsasila of the Hindus, and evidently represented by the vast ruins surrounding the modern Manikyala. It was near this city that Alexander crossed the Indus, at the ford where the Emperor Akbar, A.D. 1581, built the fortress of Attock, "the Limit or "Barrier;" and it was a place of great importance, as the point at which all the caravan routes in India and leading into India converged: for the route from Pattala was here joined by one from Palibothra, the modern Patna, the continuation of a line from China across the Himalayas; and here, also, the different lines from Seres or China, through the Cashmere valley, and from Sarmatia [now Russia], Media, and Mesopotamia, through the Bamian and Kyber passes first entered India. There was another route from Carmania (Kirman) through the Bolan pass, connected with the route between Taxila and Pattala. The Indian caravan traders appear to have known nine routes through Afghanistan and Baluchistan to Herat and Candahar, where they fell in with the roads leading to Ecbatana, or to Persepolis and Shushan, according as their destination was the northern portion of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, or the southern. Besides Barbarike, Barygaza, Musiris and Masalia became great places of export, when once the sea was opened to the trade of India. The caravan trade which the Arabian merchants of Gerrha and Sabæa collected at Petra, the Edomites, or Idumæans, or Nabateans, as they are later called, carried thence into Egypt and Canaan, and the Phoenician Arabs distributed round the shores of the Mediterranean. Their chief cities, Sidon and Tyre and Tarsus, rapidly became great. Sidon and Tarsus must have first risen into notice. Homer does not mention Tyre, but he constantly alludes to, and describes the metal work, jewelry, and other art wares of Sidon [Il. vi. 290-291; xxiii. 743; Od. iv. 84, 618; xiii. 285; xv. 118, 424.] In the xvi. Book of the Odyssey he gives an exact description, of inestimable value, of the first meetings of the Greek farmers with the Phoenician merchants on the coasts and among the islands of ancient Greece; and of the manner in which the Phoenicians conducted their early trade in the Ægean Sea. "Freighted, it seems, with toys of every sort, A year they traffick, and a year they load. With gold and amber chains, elaborate frame: She straight pursued, and seized my willing arm; * * * * Arriving then, where tilting on the tides, * Prepar'd to launch, the freighted vessel rides, Aboard they heave us, mount their decks, and sweep The rape of lo by the Phoenicians, those of Europa and Medea by the Greeks, and that of Helen in the next generation, all clearly shew that from the beginning the famous merchant princes of Tyre and Sidon were notorious among their neighbours for piracy. The prophet Joel, in the 8th cent. B.C., the great period of the maritime ascendency of the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean, long before Herodotus, and only a little later than Homer, bears testimony to the same fact, when [chap. iii., v. 3 to 8], in denouncing God's judgments against the enemies of Judah and Jerusalem, he writes: "And they have cast lots for "my people, and have given a boy for an harlot, and sold a girl "for wine that they might drink. Yea, and what have ye to do "with me, O Tyre and Sidon, and all the coast of Palestine ? The children also of Judah and Jerusalem have ye sold "unto the Grecians, *** and I will sell your sons and your "daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they "shall sell them to the Saboans, to a people far off, for the Lord "hath spoken it." This quotation proves also how greatly the system of barter prevailed in this primitive commerce of the Phoenicians and Greeks, a practice which Homer has described with great minuteness, Il. vii. 467–475 :- "And now the fleet, arrived from Lemnos sands, A thousand measures to the royal tent; Euncus, whom Hypsipyle of yore To Jason, shepherd of his people, bore. The rest they purchas'd at their proper cost, And well the plenteous freight supply'd the host : Each, in exchange, proportion'd treasures gave: Some brass, or iron; some an ox, or slave." The Phoenicians of Tarsus finding abundance of wood close at hand in Mount Taurus, the excellence of their ships gave them for a long time the pre-eminence in the navigation of the Mediterranean, and passed into a proverb. This seems to be the simple explanation of the expressions "ships of Tarshish" and navy of Tarshish" so often occurring in the Bible, which still puzzle many people, who suppose that ships trading with Tarshish in Spain are meant. Milton's picture of "a ship of Tarsus" may be fitly hung beside Homer's of " a ship of Sidon: "A stately ship 66 Of Tarsus, bound for th' isles Of Javan or Gadire, Homer's description of the first attempts of the Greeks to trade in the Mediterranean is another proof how commerce, in its beginnings, is little better than piracy; indeed it is very slowly that men discover that it is more profitable to get what they want by peaceful means than by violence and robbery and war; and still longer does it take them to learn the value of honest dealing in trade. In the xvii. Book of the Odyssey the Greeks, who were not then so civilised as the Sidonians, are described as running up the mouths of the Nile, landing, ravag ing the villages and towns of the Delta, within reach, and rapidly retreating to their ships with their booty. "By Egypt's silver flood, our ships we moor; Our spies commission'd straight the coast explore, But impotent of mind with lawless will The country ravage, and the natives kill. * * * * * Thus the Greeks began, as the Arabs before them, plundering where they dared, and, where this was impossible, trafficking, until they were gradually changed from wandering pirates into wealthy merchants, and public-spirited and patriotic citizens, and Athens became the mother of arts and eloquence. Four hundred years after the time of Homer, Miletus, the Queen of the Ionian cities, had become the rival of Tyre, and with her colonies at Cyzicus, Sinope, Tanais, Olbia, and Miletopolis, the modern Cherson, monopolised the Asiatic trade through Asia Minor and the Black Sea. Though Miletus was destroyed on the suppression of the Ionian revolt, it rapidly regained a considerable portion of its old importance, until the conquests of Alexander the Great and the foundation of Alexandria, ruined its commerce for ever. The Persian Gulf Route. The first reference we have to the trade by the Persian Gulf is in the Bible, in 2 Chron. viii. 4, where it is written that Solomon built "Tadmor in the wilderness, and all the "store cities which he built in Hamath," by which he hoped to divert a portion of the Persian Gulf trade to Jerusalem. It was through this trade that Nineveh and Babylon, Seleucia, Ctesiphon, AI Modayn, Bussora, and Baghdad, in succession, rose to empire in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates; and it was this trade which chiefly contributed to the power of Tyre when at the height of her greatness and fame. From the cities of the Tigris and Euphrates, the produce of China, India, Persia, and Arabia, was carried by Tadmor and by Hamath and Damascus, into Canaan, and Edom, and Egypt. This line supplied also Tyre and Sidon, to which there was a more northerly route also by Emesa and Heliopolis or Baalbec. Another line led north-west by Chalcis and Beræa, and through the valley of the Orontes to Haleb, or Aleppo, and Antioch, and Seleucia, now Suadeia, and thence, over Mount Taurus through Asia Minor, to the cities on the Ionian coast. These were also in communication with Assyria by a more easterly route, connected with that leading between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, over the Caucasus into Sarmatia, which again was quite distinct from that leading from Sarmatia beyond the Sea of Aral to Bactriana and India. The trade of Tyre is described by Ezekiel with the greatest accuracy, and is the fullest account we possess of the commerce of the old world about B.C. 600. Tyre is represented, in chapter xxvi., as rejoicing against Jerusalem.-"Aha, she is broken that was "the gates of the people, she is turned unto me: I shall be replenished now she is laid waste." "Therefore," says Ezekiel, "thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, "and will cause many nations to come up against thee, as the "sea causeth his waves to come up, and they shall destroy "the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers. I will also 66 scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. "It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of "the sea" and then, in the next chapter, the prophet goes on to describe the trade of Tyre, a description which freshens one in reading it like a walk in the face of the sea breeze on the Cannebiere, among the shipping round the old port of Marseilles. Among other imports are enumerated ivory, and ebony, "emeralds," purple, and broidered work, fine linen, and coral, and agate, bright iron, cassia, and calamus, precious cloths for chariots, precious stones and gold and Haran, and Canneh, and Eden (Aden); the merchants of Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad were. her merchants "in all sorts of things, in blue clothes and broi"dered works, and in chests of rich apparel bound with cords, "and made of cedar, among thy merchandise." This is completely an Indian trade, as is still more clearly seen in the literal translation of the chapter by Michaelis. The trade of Babylon, as described in the Book of the Revelation, ch. xviii, about A.D. 100, is the same trade still between Bombay, the Persian Gulf, and East African coast" the merchandise of gold and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and |