Hippalus determined that the prevailing winds in the Indian Ocean reversed direction seasonally, and thereby theorized that one could sail to India via open ocean, out of sight of land, and return when the winds reversed. In about 45 A.D., he successfully sailed from the mouth of the Red Sea to the delta of the Indus River, and thence to ports along the Malabar Coast. The spring and summer monsoons upon which he had gambled then safely returned his vessel, now filled with Indian goods, to Egypt. A record of his voyage was preserved in the writings of the Roman historian Pliny, as well as in an anonymous document written in the first century, the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, (i.e., Indian Ocean), a guide for mariners wishing to trade with India.
Both the Peripfus and Pliny helped relay the new reports about India. The Peri plus described the coasts from the Indus to the Ganges delta, as well as information about Sri Lanka based on secondary sources. Pliny records information clearly based on actual navigation of the waters east of India, noting that "the sea between Taprobana [Sri Lanka] and the Indian mainland is shallow, not more than 18 feet deep, but in certain channels the depth is such that no anchors can rest on the sea-bed." He also noted the voyage to Ceylon from Prasii being made in seven days "in boats built of papyrus and with the kind of rigging employed in the Nile."
The new sailing method brought India much closer to Europe and the Mediterranean, and this, in turn, brought Southeast Asia that much closer as well. With Roman sailors frequenting the eastern coast of India by the second century A.D., Asian commodities were reaching the Mediterranean world in generous quantities, silks generally coming by land via Antioch (Syria), and spices by sea via Alexandria. Merchandise being sent on to Italy was generally shipped to Pozzuoli, near Naples.
Though profit rather than knowledge was the driving force (Pliny remarking that "India is brought near by lust for gain"), more extensive commerce provided new channels through which geographers could enrich their storehouse of data. The fact that products from eastern Asia reached Rome meant that ideas, information, and perhaps even geographic data, could make that journey as well.
The range of marketable Asian goods increased as well. Diverse commodities were imported, from 'exotic' Asian animals to asbestos (used for oil lamp wicks) and slave women- a far greater range of valuables than just silks and spices. An ivory statue of an Indian goddess of fortune, Lakshmi, unearthed in the twentieth century in the remains of Pompeii, was clearly acquired before the city was buried by Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Chinese earthenware and bronzes have been excavated in Roman cities, and Roman traders appear to have reached China in the second and third centuries A.D. Roman coins, directly or indirectly, reached the kingdom of Funan in the Mekong River delta as early as the second century.
In our day of cheap, plentiful spices, it is difficult to imagine the fuss made about spice-producing regions in ancient times, and indeed up until relatively recent times. Two thousand years ago, Pliny wondered similarly:
It is amazing that pepper is so popular. Some substances attract by their sweetness, others by their appearance, yet pepper has neither fruit nor berries to commend it. Its only attraction is its bitter flavor, and to think that we travel to India for it! Both pepper and ginger grow wild in their own countries, yet they are purchased by weight as if they were gold and silver.
Chryse and Argyre
Gold and silver, in fact, characterize the earliest extant specific Western reference to Southeast Asia. Pomponius Mela (fl. 37-43 A.D.), a Roman geographer and native of southern Spain, largely carried on the Greek tradition about the East, perpetuating stories about Amazons, people without heads, griffins, and other such characters, but adds two lands which lay to the east of India. One was Chryse, said to boast soil of gold, the other Argyre, said to have soil of silver:
In the vicinity of Tamus is the island of Chryse; in the vicinity of the Ganges that of Argyre. According to olden writers, the soil of the former consists of gold, that of the latter is of silver and it seems very probable that either the name arises from this fact or the legend derives from the name.
Mela was quoting earlier, unknown sources and he goes on to vaguely menrion the possibility of a Southeast Asian peninsula:
Between Colis [southeastern tip of Asia] and Tamus [China'] the coast runs straight. It is inhabited by retiring peoples who garner rich harvests from the sea.
Pliny also alludes to a Southeast Asian peninsula. Noting that the Seres [Chinese) wait for trade to come to them, he lists three rivers of China, which are followed by "the promontory of Chryse", and then a bay. Elsewhere in his Natural History, however, Pliny refers to Chryse as an island. The discrepancy probably results from his having compiled news of the 'land of gold' from contact via land (peninsula) and sea (island). It was more often mapped as an island in medieval mappaemundi.
Fig 29. World map after Strabo/Mela. An anonymous sixteenth century manuscript. (30.5 x 43.5 cm) [Sidney R. Knafel]
Fig. 30 The 'Turin' world map, twelfth century. Of the two islands in the ocean sea immediately above Adam and Eve, the righthand one represents the Southeast Asian realms of Argyre and Chryse. Reproduced from the facsimile in Nordenskiold, Facsimile Atlas, Stockholm, 1889.
Fig. 31 'Turin' world map (detail). Adam and Eve, the Serpent and the island of Chryse and Argyre.
Chryse most likely represented Malaya, while Argyre was probably Burma, perhaps Arakan. Both are seen as islands in the world map after Mela (fig. 9), Chryse being the island off the east Asian coast, and Argyre the island at the Ganges delta next to Taprobana. On the twelfth-century 'Turin' world map (figs. 30 & 31), they appear as a single island in the easternmost ocean sea, the right-hand isle of the two immediately above Adam and Eve (the left-hand isle is simply designated insula, and thus may have been intended for either Chryse or Argyre).
Mention of Chryse is also made in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, which describes Chryse as "the last part of the inhabited world toward the east, under the rising sun itself, " a land from which comes "the best tortoise-shell of all the places on the Erythr;can Sea." The work's anonymous author then described the land of This (China) and city of Thint£, from which raw silk, silk yarn, and silk cloth, acquired through silent barter, were brought overland to India.99 Isidorus Hispalensis (Isidore of Seville, ca. 560-636 A.D.), in his Etymologiae, one of the most popular cosmographies of the Middle Ages, also placed the lands of Chryse and Argyre in the southeastern extreme of the world, along with Taprobana and Tyle (Tile, an island near India).
Interestingly, Chryse and Argyre are reminiscent of some aspects of Buddhist cosmology where the waters that pour forth from Sumeru flow into four canals separated by four mountains, of which one is gold, another silver, and theother two, precious stones and crystal.100 The image of four canals separating four landmasses, can also be compared with a view of the Arctic region found in a medieval European text and used in later world maps by the Renaissance cartographers Ruysch (1507, fig. 56), Fine (1 531, fig.48) and Mercator (1569).
The search for gold also promoted intra-Asian maritime trade in the Indian Ocean during the first century A.D. As a result of the disruption by internal disorders of the traditional routes through the steppes of Central Asia to Siberian gold reserves, new sources for the metal, a medium of exchange between various Asian peoples, were sought. Rome decreased the gold content of its coins and introduced measures to halt their exportation. At the same time, new ocean-going vessels and navigational techniques made it more feasible for Indian merchants to pursue the 'Islands of Gold' to their east.
The association of Southeast Asia with gold was so strong that Josephus, in his Antiquities of the jews