"The whole navigation, such as it has been described from Adan in Arabia Felix and Kanè to the ports of India, was performed formerly in small vessels, by adhering to the shore and following the indention of the coast; but Hippalus was the pilot who first discovered the direct course across the ocean, by observing the position of the ports and the general appearance of the sea; for, at the season when the annual winds peculiar to our climate settle in the north, and blow for a continuance upon our coast from the Mediterranean, in the Indian ocean the wind is constantly to the south west; and this wind has in those seas obtained the name of Hippalus, from the pilot who first attempted the passage by means of it to the east.
"From the period of that discovery to the present time, vessels bound to India take their departure either from Kanè on the Arabian, or from Cape Arometa on the African side. From these points they stretch out to the open sea at once, leaving all the windings of the gulfs and bays at a distance, and make directly for their several destinations on the coast of India. Those that are intended for Limurike waiting some time before they sail, but those that are destined for Barugaza, or Scindi, seldom more than three days."
If we may credit Pliny, the Greek merchants of Egypt for some years after the discovery of the monsoon, did not venture further out to sea than was absolutely necessary, by crossing the widest part of the entry of the Persian Gulf, to reach Patala at the mouth of the Indus; but they afterwards found shorter routes, or rather stretched more to the south, so as to reach lower down on the coast of India: they also enlarged their vessels, carried cargoes of greater value, and in order to beat off the pirates, which then as at present infested this part of the Indian coast, they put on board their vessels a band of archers. Myos Hormos, or Berenice, was the port on the Red Sea from which they sailed; in forty days they arrived at Musiris, on the west coast of India. The homeward passage was begun in December or January, when the north east monsoon commenced; this carried them to the entrance of the Red Sea, up which to their port they were generally favored by southerly winds.
As there is no good reason to believe that the ancients made regular voyages to India, previously to the discovery of the monsoons; yet, as it is an undoubted fact that some of the exclusive productions of that country, particularly cinnamon, were obtained by them, through their voyages on the Red Sea; it becomes an important and interesting enquiry, by what means these productions were brought to those places on this sea, from which the Romans obtained them. In our opinion, the Arabians were the first who introduced Indian productions into the west from the earliest period to which history goes back, and they continued to supply the merchants who traded on the Red Sea with them, till, by the discovery of the monsoon, a direct communication was opened between that sea and India.
At least seventeen centuries before the Christian era, we have undoubted evidence of the traffic of the Arabians in the spices, &c. of India; for in the 27th chapter of Genesis we learn, that the Ishmaelites from Gilead conducted a caravan of camels laden with the spices of India, and the balsam and myrrh of Hadraumaut, in the regular course of traffic to Egypt for sale. In the 30th chapter of Exodus, cinnamon, cassia, myrrh, frankincense, &c. are mentioned, some of which are the exclusive produce of India; these were used for religious purposes, but at the same time the quantities of them specified are so great, that it is evident they must have been easily obtained. Spices are mentioned, along with balm and other productions of Canaan, in the present destined by Jacob for Joseph. These testimonies from holy writ are perfectly in unison with what we learn from Herodotus; this author enumerates oriental spices as regularly used in Egypt for embalming the dead.
It is sufficiently evident, therefore, that, at a very early period, the productions of India were imported into Egypt. That the Arabians were the merchants who imported them, is rendered highly probable from several circumstances. The Ishmaelites, mentioned in the 37th chapter of Genesis, are undoubtedly the Nabathians, whose country is represented by all the geographers, historians, and poets, as the source of all the precious commodities of the east; the ancients, erroneously supposing that cinnamon, which we know to be an exclusive production of India, was the produce of Arabia, because they were supplied with it, along with other aromatics, from that country. The proof that the Nabathians and the Ishmaelites are the same, is to be found in the evident derivation of the former name, from Nebaioth, the son of Ishmael. The traditions of the Arabians coincide with the genealogy of the Scriptures, in regarding Joktan, the fourth son of Shem, as the origin of those trihes which occupied Sabæa and Hadraumaut, or the incense country; Ishmael as the father of the families which settled in Arabia Deserta; and Edom as the ancestor of the Idumeans, who settled in Arabia Petræa.
Eight hundred years before the Christian era, the merchandize of the Sabeans is particularly noticed by the prophet Isaiah; and even long before his time, we are informed, that there were no such spices as the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon. That Sheba is Sabæa, or Arabia Felix, we learn from Ezekiel:--"The merchants of Sheba and Ramah, they were thy merchants: they occupied in thy fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones and gold." Six hundred and fifty years after Isaiah bore his testimony to the commerce of Sabæa, we have the authority of Agatharcides, that the merchants of this country traded to India; that the great wealth and luxury of Sabæa were principally derived from this trade; and that, at the time when Egypt possessed the monopoly of the Indian trade, with respect to Europe, the Sabeans enjoyed a similar advantage with regard to Egypt.
Having thus established the fact, that, from the earliest period of which we have any record, the Arabians were the merchants who brought the cinnamon, &c. of India into the west, we must, in the next place, endeavour to ascertain by what means and route this commerce was carried on; and we think we can prove that the communication between Arabia and India, at a very early period, was both by sea and land.
There were many circumstances connected with Arabia and the Arabians, which would necessarily turn their thoughts to maritime affairs, and when they had once embarked in maritime commerce, would particularly direct it to India. The sea washed three sides of the peninsula of Arabia: the Arabians were not, like the Egyptians, prejudiced, either by their habits or their religion, against the sea. The monsoons must have been perceived by them, from part of the sea-coast lying within their influence; and it can hardly be supposed that a sea-faring people would not take advantage of them, to embark in such a lucrative trade as that of India. "There is no history which treats of them which does not notice them as pirates, or merchants, by sea, as robbers, or traders, by land. We scarcely touch upon them, accidentally, in any author, without finding that they were the carriers of the Indian Ocean." From the earliest period that history begins to notice them, Sabæa, Hadraumaut, and Oman, are described as the residences of navigators; and as these places are, in the earliest historians, celebrated for their maritime commerce, it is reasonable to suppose that they were equally so before the ancient historians acquired any knowledge of them.
We cannot go farther back, with respect to the fact of the Arabians being in India, than the voyage of Nearchus; but in the journal of this navigator, we find manifest traces of Arabian navigators on the coast of Mekran, previous to his expedition: he also found proofs of their commerce on the coast of Gadrosia, and Arabic names of places--a pilot to direct him, and vessels of the country in the Gulf of Persia. Large ships from the Indus, Patala, Persis, and Karmania came to Arabia, as early as the time of Agatharcides; and it is probable that these ships were navigated by Arabians, as the inhabitants of India were not, at this time, and, indeed, never have been celebrated for their maritime enterprize and skill. The same author mentions a town, a little without the Red Sea, from whence, he says, the Sabeans sent out colonies or factories into India, and to which the large ships he describes came with their cargoes from India. This is the first historical evidence to prove the establishment of Arabian factories and merchants in the ports of India. In the time of Pliny, the Arabians were in such numbers on the coast of Malabar, and at Ceylon, that, according to that author, the inhabitants of the former had embraced their religion, and the ports of the latter were entirely in their power. Their settlements and commerce in India are repeatedly mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, and likewise their settlements down the coast of Africa to Rhaptum, before it was visited by the Greeks from Egypt. For, besides their voyages from India to their own country, they frequently brought Indian commodities direct to the coast of Africa. At Sabaea, the great mart of the Arabian commerce with India, the Greeks, as late as the reign of Philometor, purchased the spices and other productions of the east. As there was a complete monopoly of them at this place, in the hands of the Arabians, the Greek navigators and merchants were induced, in the hopes of obtaining them cheaper, to pass the Straits of Babelmandeb, and on the coast of Africa they found cinnamon and other produce of India, which had been brought hither by the Arabian traders.