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Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 3, p. 257.

CHAPTER V COMMERCE AND TRADE I. History of Foreign Trade THE first four chapters of this volume, dealing with Agricul- ture, Forests, Mines and Minerals, and Arts and Manufactures, have incidentally included many details of the foreign trade of India. In the present chapter it is proposed to sum up the leading features, The chief trade of India has always been with countries Early lying to the west. In the earliest times traffic naturally passed commerce. by land. It began with the exchange of commodities between neighbouring tribes, and by degrees a regular route was estab- lished between the Caspian or Black Sea and the Indus, by way of the Oxus and the Hindu Kush. The difficulties of trans- port must always have prevented this route from being used for any but valuable articles of small bulk. About the com- mencement of the seventh century B.C. traffic by sea sprang up between the Persian Gulf and India and even China'. From the head of the Gulf caravans followed the great road through Mesopotamia to Syria or Egypt. Rice, sandal-wood, and peacocks were carried by this route from India. Although trade in the Red Sea had been developed at an early period, it was not until the discovery by Hippalus (about A.D. 47) of the possibility of using the regular winds of the monsoons that a third route to India was opened, which gave a consider- able impetus to trade. An anonymous writer of the first cen- tury A. D. has described the trade in some detail, and from his work we learn that India exported spices, precious stones, and large quantities of muslin and other cotton goods2. In return India took gold, silver, brass or copper, tin, lead, coral, and cloth. The value of this trade must have been con- 1 It has generally been held that the traffic by sea was much older; but see J. Kennedy in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1898, p. 241. 2 J. W. MeCrindle, Commerce and Navigation of the Erythraean Sea, 1879. VOL. III. S