Abstract
The ancient port-town of Muziris was situated on the western coast of Kerala in present-day India. It was famed for its spice trade, notably the shipment of pepper and cinnamon, which were indigenous to the Malabar region. The significance of this port town in the ancient spice route is evident in literary sources, from Pliny (Natural History) and Strabo (Geographica) to the Sangam epic works of Chithalai Chathanar (Silapadikaram) and Illango Adigal (Manimekalei). The Muziris economy depended on the spice trade. The Sangam works describe the wars that were waged between Chera and the Pandyan kingdoms to win monopoly rights to the ancient spice routes. The Muziris-Vienna Papyrus, a second century AD parchment, speaks of the huge quantity of pepper that was traded from Muziris to Alexandria through Koptos and Berneike in a ship named Hermopollen. The parchment also describes the taxes that were imposed on these commodities, and the well-organised merchant guilds based at Muziris. This substantiates the claims of the Peutinger Tablet regarding Roman soldiers being stationed at Muziris to protect their commodities from pirates. Literary sources are therefore invaluable to an understanding of the trans-oceanic trade of Muziris, which not only conveyed goods, religion, architecture and culture to and from the port, but also underpinned the state and economy of this particular place.
In analyzing the ancient trading relations between Malabar and the external world, literary evidence such as the Sangam works and the writings of foreign thinkers like Pliny and Strabo can be synthesised with available historical data to provide a picture of the commerce of the port of Muziris. Prominent among the foreign accounts is a first-century work called Periplus Marea Erythrea, which is a travelogue of a merchant and describes the various port towns he visited. The author speaks vividly about the Malabar and the commodities that were traded to and from that coast. Imported into Muziris were great quantities of coins, topaz, thin clothing, figured linens, antimony, coral, crude glass, copper, tin, lead, wine and orpiment, as well as wheat carried to feed the sailors. The exports included ‘pepper coming from Kottanara, a great quantity of fine pearls, ivory silk clothes, Gangetic Nard from Ganges, Malabrathum from the interior, transparent stones of all kinds, diamonds and sapphires and tortoise shells’. 1
Ever since Hippalus discovered the trade winds, trade had flourished on the Malabar coast as the ancient navigators were attracted there in their quest for rich cargoes of spices and aromatics. Many travelers’ accounts, like that of Cosmos Indicoplastus, state that the ships left Myos Hormes in Egypt in June-September and reached the Indian Ocean by September where the North Western monsoon carried their ships to Malabar. 2 The Vienna Papyrus (or Muziris-Vienna papyrus) was written against the backdrop of Alexander’s conquest of Egypt in 332 BC. Taken from the Persians to serve as a pivotal centre for trade with the East, especially India, Alexander established a peaceful commercial atmosphere by acknowledging many Egyptian beliefs, while the Egyptians in turn ordained him as their Pharaoh. 3 A new city known as Alexandria was founded, where annual festivals were held to attract travelers and merchants.
The works of Classical geographers and Tamil poets refer in unequivocal terms to the prosperity of Muziris in the days of Roman trade. Pliny refers to Muziris as the most important port of India (‘Primum Emporium Indiac’) and in fact the first Emporium (Pliny NH 6, 26) of the Romans in India. He also says that foreign ships anchored at a distance from the port, with cargoes loaded into ‘vallams’ and shipped ashore. This reference ratifies the verses from the Sangam texts, which relate that the ships could not anchor at the port because the water was not deep enough. Pliny further describes the harbour as crowded with many and all kinds of ships, as well as large warehouses and places of worship in the interior. 4 A verse in Agananuru (149) refers to the thriving town of Muchiri: ‘there the beautiful ships of Yavanas bringing gold come, splashing the white foam in the water of periyar which belong to Cheras and return laden with pepper’. 5
Though Roman trade had declined by the fifth century, Muziris still controlled her trading routes and her commercial economy continued to flourish. Supporting this contention is an intriguing fragment of a loan contract called Vindob. G 40822, 6 which is also known as the Muziris Papyrus because it records details about a cargo consignment brought back from Muziris aboard a Roman merchant ship called the Hermapollon (see Table 1). This document provides a rare insight into the quantity of the port’s trade. The Muziris-Vienna Papyrus, which dates back to the second century, is a loan contract, incorporating a cargo list, signed by a merchant and a financier from Alexandria, Egypt, regarding the financing of a commercial voyage to Muziris by the Hermapollon. According to Greek mythology, Hermes was a messenger god known for his speed, which is an appropriate name that could be assigned to a merchant ship that depends on the winds speed for a successful passage. The agreement speaks of a quantities of the commodities and the expected taxes from the various ports in Egypt like Alexandria, Myos Hormes, and Coptos.
The Peutinger Tablet, which is held at Heidleberg University, Germany, is an important source relating ancient settlement of Romans and Greeks at Muziris. Its illustration of the temple of Augustus indicates that there existed coherent caste and tolerant religious systems dating back to at least the first century AD in Kerala. 7 It has a map that infers that 1200 Roman soldiers were stationed in the town for the protection of the Roman commerce from the depredations of pirates (see Figure 1). The author of Periplus confirms the threatening presence of pirates, as does Pliny and the Peutinger Tablet, which states that there were Roman soldiers who were stationed at Pattanam to guard the commodities. The problem of pirates is also mentioned in the Sangam literature. Malaipadukam by Perunakaushinar speaks about an incident wherein Utiyan Cheralatan I was killed by the Chera prince. This is substantiated in Silapadikaram, who gave his daughter in marriage to Nannan I of Tulunad, partly to extend his influence northwards, and partly to establish an alliance with the pirates who preyed on the Roman ships coming to Muziris. But Nannan I continued to help the pirates, which precipitated war.
The Tabula Peutingeriana showing Muziris.
Nature of Exchange
The Muziris Papyrus deals with the shipping of commodities from Muziris to Alexandria, but it has always been a matter of debate as to what might be the return commodity in the transaction. The Papyrus in itself shows how advanced the trade was in the ancient Egyptian world. There is ample evidence to show that there were Yavana trading settlements at Muziris, as well as a temple of Augustus, as illustrated in the Peutinger Tablet. But whereas an effective merchant guild was clearly operating in Alexandria, there is no sign of a similar organization in Muziris. This seems to reflect deficiencies in the available evidence, perhaps because the ancient Greek language is hard to comprehend, or the natives of Muchiri knew classic Greek language, or there are no written documents in the Sangam period that cite the commodities in exchange. Whatever the reason, the trade is ‘silent’ in the documents.
The ‘Silent Trade’
Herodotus (484–425 BCE), in his work the ‘Histories’ (c 440 BCE), wrote about his travels and the culture, business, trade and tastes of the peoples he met. It was Herodotus who presented the geography of India for the first time, and it was he who first articulated the concept of the ‘Silent Trade’. This concept was developed in Hamilton’s classic work, 8 which defines the ‘Silent trade’– also known as the ‘Dump trade’ or the ‘Depot trade’– as a specialised form of barter in which goods are exchanged without any direct contact between the traders. Literally, a group goes to a customary spot, deposits the goods to be traded and withdraws, sometimes giving a signal such as a call or a gong strike. Another group then comes to leave a second set of articles and retreats. The first group returns, removing these goods if they are satisfied or leaving them until they are satisfied. Herodotus reported that the Silent trade was conducted in many ancient places with which Muchiri had trading contacts, notably Africa, Serbia, India and Taprobane (Sri Lanka).
The most famous case was described in a Carthaginian account of trade along coastal West Africa, cited by Herodotus:
It is their custom, on arriving amongst them, to unload their vessels, and dispose their goods along the shore. This done, they again embark, and make a great smoke from on board. The natives seeing this, come down immediately to the shore, and placing a quantity of gold by way of exchange for the merchandise, retire. The Carthaginians then land a second time, and if they think the gold equivalent, they take it and depart; if not they again go on board their vessels. The inhabitants return and add more gold, till the crews are satisfied.
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According to Hamilton, two types of Silent trade are discernible: a long distance type between traders from state societies (Rome, Egypt) and people from tribes or chiefdoms (Muchiris); and a short distance type between traders from tribes or chiefdoms and band organizations. In this classification, the trade at Muchiris belongs to the first category, where the society was of a semi-tribal character, in which there was a chief or a king, but few, if any, state institutions. This is why there is little written evidence concerning this business. The evolution of a strong monarchy with all its features can be only seen during the late seventh century AD. Even the excavations revealed scant evidence regarding the commodities exchanged, and there is an acute absence of information in the literature, although Sangam texts do provide us with some detail on matters like the exchange of salt for pepper.
One important difference that is typically found between the parties engaged in silent trade is the level of cultural evolution. The Romans, Egyptian Arabs, Chinese and other long distance traders came from state societies and traded mainly with people at the chiefdom level. The differences of physical appearance in race as well as dress and hair style were characteristic of the parties engaged in silent trade. If we can judge from the wider ethnography, each party would consider the other as ugly and perhaps not fully human. Differences of language were always present and these differences were of a major order. That is, they are usually of different historically-derived language families with basic differences in grammatical and phonemic structure.
In addition to the ‘pre-conditions’ for the silent trade, 10 a few ‘conduct-conditions’ were always present. Trade took place according to a conventional system that developed around a social contract designed to ensure the continuation of the trade. Even though the amount ‘said’ was extremely limited, and the transfer of information from one side to the other was very slow, there was communication between the parties about the initiation of trade and what was considered to be a fair trade. It was literally, rather than figuratively, ‘silent’. The Carthaginians used a smoke signal to indicate their readiness to trade and waited until the proper amount of gold had been deposited next to their goods before they took the gold.
The trade at Muziris was essentially of a silent barter form, reflecting the differences in the languages spoken by participants. There were particular places where commodities were exchanged. The Peutinger Tablet identifies the temple of Augustus as a special emporium as well as a place of worship and, at times, a granary. In Purananuru 343, it is noted:
With its streets, its houses, its covered fishing boats, where they sell fish, where they pile up rice; with the shifting and mingling crowd of a boisterous river-bank where the sacks of pepper are heaped up; with its gold deliveries, carried by the ocean-going ships and brought to the river bank by local boats … the city of the gold-collared Kuttuvan (Chera chief), the city that bestows wealth to its visitors indiscriminately, and the merchants of the mountains, and the merchants of the sea, the city where liquor abounds, yes, this Muciri, where the rumbling ocean roars, is given to me like a marvel, a treasure.
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The wealth here is pepper and other spices that were sold at a higher price abroad. The goods from ships were brought to banks using boats, which might actually employ the native people, but the commodities were guarded by the Yavanas themselves. This shows that since the merchants had to wait until the next favourable season to set sail, they had to wait at the port, so the commodities which were required, like rice, had to be imported, as they were not produced at Muziris. Even so, the Purananuru 343 infers that there was agriculture in the town of Muziris, but the rice was considered inferior.
Footnotes
1.
W. H. Schoff, The Periplus of the Erythreanean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the 1st Century (Longmans Green and Co, 1912), 302.
2.
E. O. Winstedt (ed.), The Christian Topography of Cosmos Indicoplastes (Cambridge, 1909), 88.
3.
S. E. Sidebotham, Berenike and the Ancient Maritime Spice Route (University of California Press, 2011), 150.
4.
Holland Philemon, Pliny’s Natural History in 37 Books (Oxford University Press, 1847), Volume 1, 148.
5.
Raul Mc Laughlin, Rome and the Distant East: Trade Routes to the Ancient Lands of Arabia, India and China (Oxford University Press, 2010), 48–50.
6.
D. Rathbone, ‘The “Muziris” Papyrus (SB XVIII 13167): Financing Roman Trade with India’, Alexandrian Studies II in Honor of Mostafa el Abbadi (Alexandria, BSAA, 2001), 39–50.
7.
A. Sreedhara Menon, A Survey of Kerala History (DC Books, 2007), 61.
8.
P. J. Hamilton, The Silent Trade: A Contribution to the Early History of Human Intercourse (Edinburgh, Green & Sons, 1903), 105.
9.
William Beloe, Herodotus (London, Jones, 1830), 242–3.
10.
Otley H. Beyer, ‘Early Chinese Relations with Malay Lands’, Asia, 21 (1921), 924–70.
11.
Nenmara P. Visvanathan (ed.), Silapadikaram (Trissur, 1986), 3 Volumes, 120.