Crossings : Early Mediterranean Contacts with India
Contents: Preface. 1. Early Mediterranean contacts with India: an overview/Romila Thapar. 2. The date of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea in the light of South Arabian evidence/Christian Robin. 3. The Periplus and the political history of India/Gerard Fussman. 4. On the name of the Hipalus (Hippalus) wind in pliny/Santo Mazzarino. 5. Rome and the Notia of India: relations between Rome and Southern India from 30 BC to the Flavian period/Federico De Romanis. 6. Romanukharattha and Taprobane: relations between Rome and Sri Lanka in the first century AD/Federico De Romanis. 7. The dromedary of the Peticii and trade with the east/Andre Tchernia. 8. Winds and coins: from the supposed discovery of the Monsoon to the Denarii of Tiberius/Andre Tchernia. Bibliography.
"Relationships between east and west have always fascinated historians of Greece and Rome, whether ancient or modern. Roman trade with India, which took off massively in the first century CE and continued actively over several centuries, proved immensely alluring and profitable to ancient Roman investors, bankers and merchant-mariners but disturbing to moralists, who viewed the hemorrhage of western wealth to the east with deep foreboding.
Modern Euro-centric scholarship has until the recent past been preoccupied with Greco-Roman sources and the problems they posed. But in the last few decades Indian archaeology, literature and history have added new dimensions and stimulated radical reappraisals of the routes to India and Sri Lanka, the trading networks in both the Indian and Roman world and the impact of such trade on the Roman and Indian economies.
This book collects and translates into English some of the studies that have been recently published by French and Italian scholars. It also includes a specially contributed overview by the eminent Indian historian Romila Thapar that demonstrates how far the ethnocentric vision of Indo-Roman history has shifted. The intention is to open up European scholarship to Indian scholars and encourage the ongoing dialogue between scholars on both sides of the Indian Ocean."
