COMMERCIAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST 25
at a time when more serious events such as the intrigues of Agrippina and Messalina’s violent death too much occupied the minds of the Roman historian to make an adequate mention of it. The embassy was sent by Chundra Muka Siwa King of Celyon who ruled from 44 to 52 A. D. [1]
Other embassies soon followed. The second came to Trojan in A. D. 107, third to Antonius Pius A. D. 138, fourth to Julian A. D. 361 and the fifth to Justinian A. D. 530. The natives of Indian make no mention of these embassies. They are recorded by Roman historian and barely so, consequently it is very difficult to infer regarding the object of these embassies. They however serve to demonstrate that intercourse between India and Rome was constant and alive and that “during the reign of Servius, his son Commodus, and the pseudo antonines”, when Alexandria and Palmyra were both occupied with commerce and were both prosperous. Roman intercourse with India was at its height. Then Roman literature gave more of its attention to Indian matters and did not, as of old, confine itself to quotation from the historians of Alexander or the narratives of the Seleucidian Ambassadors, but drew its information from other and independent sources. [2]
Other evidences mostly of a literary character strengthen the same conclusion. Dr. Hirth in his “China and the Roman Orient” quotes Sung-Shu, a Chinese historian 500 A.D. writing about the period 420-478 A. D. saying; “As regards Ta-ts’in (Syria) and I’ien Chu (India) far out on the western ocean, we have to say that, although the envoys of the two Han dynasties have experienced the special difficulties of this road. Yet traffic in merchandise has been effected, and the goods have been sent out to the foreign tribes, the force of winds, driving them far away across the waves of the sea. There are lofty ranges of mountains quite different from those we know and a great variety of populous tribes having different names and bearing uncommon designations, they being of a class quite different from our
1 cf.J.R.A.S. 1860 Vol. XVIII, p. 349-50.
2 cf J.R.A.S. Vol. XIX, p. 276.