In a region beyond Bactria a species of corn was found which must unquestionably have been maize, since the grains are said to have been as large as olive stones,[[2614]] and to maize only can we apply Herodotus’s description of the wheat found in Babylonia, the straw of which was encircled by leaves four inches in diameter, and its return from two to three hundredfold. Now, in wheat, I believe, so prodigious an increase is all but impossible, whereas a still greater return might be obtained from the Indian corn. A lady whom I knew at Thebes counted eighteen hundred grains in one ear of Syrian maize which was, probably, not less than nine inches in circumference; and from such grain the return mentioned by Herodotus[[2615]] is not at all extraordinary.
The millet and sesamum of Babylonia are likewise mentioned, though it is probable that, owing to the difficulty of carriage, it only exported small quantities to be used as seed. Barn-door fowls were introduced into Greece from Persia, and always continued to be known by the name of the Median birds.[[2616]] Peaches, too, and various other kinds of fruit, as we have already mentioned in the book on Country Life, were brought to Greece from the Persian empire.
This country likewise exported the oil of white violets used in the bath, and the odour of which they enjoyed during their repasts;[[2617]] shaggy winter cloaks seem to have been obtained from northern Persia, together with dyed leather,[[2618]] resembling the shagreen and marocco of present times, brought partly from Babylonia, partly from Persia Proper, which likewise supplied the world with carpets exquisitely variegated with figures of animals.[[2619]]
The Persians also imported furs, but do not appear to have exported them, the use of these articles being little known to the Greeks.[[2620]]
Respecting the commerce carried on with India the notions of the ancients were confused, chiefly because the various commodities passing through other countries were often confounded with their indigenous productions. We know, however, that from this rich land came many of the spices and precious stones in use among the Greeks,—as the diamond, the ruby, the sapphire,[[2621]] and the finest kind of pearls,[[2622]] the most fragrant spikenard,[[2623]] with costus,[[2624]] and amomum,[[2625]] and cinnamon,[[2626]] and cassia,[[2627]] and odoriferous reeds.[[2628]] Thence also was obtained a kind of cyperos,[[2629]] whose juice was bitter, and of yellow colour, and appears to have been used for removing hair from the skin.
Another Indian export was the bark called narcapthon,[[2630]] which, together with wood of aloes obtained from the same country, was used as a perfume.[[2631]] Black, white, and long pepper,[[2632]] were likewise among the productions of India, which found their way to the west, together with sugar, the art of manufacturing and refining which appears to have been known to the Hindûs from the remotest antiquity. The whiteness of the Indian sugar, as well as that it was loafed may be inferred from a passage of Dioscorides, who compares it to salt, and says, that it broke easily beneath the tooth.[[2633]]
There was in India, moreover, a kind of myrrh produced from a thorny shrub, of which no exact description is given.[[2634]] But one of its most celebrated productions was the spikenard, which is said to have grown upon a mountain at the foot of which flowed the Ganges. The malabathron,[[2635]] another export of the Indian peninsula, was from the similarity of its odour by some of the ancients confounded with the leaf of the spikenard, as it appears to have been by the moderns with the piper betel, or the Canella Silvestris Malabarica. But from the description of Dioscorides, it is clearly neither the one nor the other; for, while the betel is a parasite cultivated on terra firma, like the vine and the Canella Silvestris, the malabathron was, we are told, an aquatic plant, floating on the surface of lakes, or the waters of morasses, without the slightest connexion with the soil beneath, like the little lentil of the marshes: its leaves when gathered were strung on a linen thread, and in that manner hung up to dry, after which they were laid by for exportation. Occasionally, during the heats of summer, the malabathron lakes were dried up, upon which the natives were accustomed to scatter heaps of brushwood over their whole site and set them on fire, so that the entire surface of the earth might be burned, without which, it was supposed the plant would no more appear. Among the uses of the malabathron was the sweetening of the breath, which was done by placing a leaf under the tongue. Thrown into coffers or wardrobes it communicated a perfume to raiment, and preserved it from the moth. The uses to which the wood of aloes was put were in some respects similar, as it was kept in the mouth to sweeten the breath, and sprinkled, when reduced to powder, over the body to repress perspiration.
A coarse kind of bdellion,[[2636]] and a species of lycion were reckoned among the productions of India.[[2637]] From an island on the coast was obtained a precious bark called macer,[[2638]] of great medicinal virtue; aloes, too, was thence exported in abundance. The artichoke[[2639]] was plentifully produced on the banks of the Indus, as well as in the mountains of Hyrcania and Khawaresmia. The substance denominated onyx shell,[[2640]] procured from a fish resembling the myrex, was found in certain Indian marshes, where a species of spikenard is said to have flourished. On the drying up of the waters in the great heats of summer, these shells were found strewed over the soil, and exported for their odoriferous and medicinal qualities. The great lizard, called the land crocodile,[[2641]] has likewise been enumerated among the productions of India. Other Indian commodities were fine muslins,[[2642]] ivory, and tortoise shell,[[2643]] from Taprobana,[[2644]] a rich species of marble,[[2645]] steel of the finest quality,[[2646]] peacocks,[[2647]] and a large, beautiful breed of white oxen.[[2648]]
Two kinds of indigo, employed both in painting and dyeing were exported from Hindùstân.[[2649]] Of these the one is said to have been a natural production which exuded from certain canes and hardened in the sun, the other was artificial, consisting of the substance which adhered to the copper vessels wherein artificers dyed blue. Having been scraped thence it was supposed to be dried and introduced into commerce. These accounts have already, by other authors, been shown to be erroneous, but they prove at least that indigo was in common use among the ancients, though we understand nothing of the means by which it was produced, or how it was cultivated.[[2650]]
The cotton tree appears to have been grown in India[[2651]] from the remotest antiquity, where the natives manufactured from it the finest fabrics, as calicoes, and chintzes, and muslins, regarded even as superior to the manufactures of Greece.[[2652]]