COMMERCIAL RELATIONS IN THE MIDDLE EAST 29
Yavana (foreign) merchants, where many articles were always exposed for sale. Here were also the headquarters of the foreign traders who had come from beyond the seas and who spoke various tongues. Vendors of fragrant pastes and powders, of flowers and incense, tailors who worked on silk, wool, or cotton, traders in sandal, aghil, coral, pearl, gold, and precious stones, grain merchants, washermen, dealers in fish baits, butchers, blacksmiths, braziers, carpenters, copper smiths, painters, sculptors, goldsmiths cobblers, and toy-makers all had their habitation in Maravar-Pakkam.” [1]
The trade routes from India to the west may be conveniently divided under two heads. (1) The land routes and (2) The marine route.
It is truely said that individual migration is a habit of civilized man. Ancient folks, because of their strong gregarious instinct or because of the want of security, always moved in bands. This habit of theirs is well depicted in their methods of trade. Compelled to be peddlars, fear of competition was never too strong to break the tradings. Caravan which moved from place to place with their loaded animals under conditions so unfavourable that easygoing modern man with all the keen business instinct in him will rather quit worshipping the mamon rather than undergo the difficulties ill-compensated by gain. Speaking of the Caravan Mr. Harbur says, “The very course of the Caravan was not a matter of free choice, but of established custom. In the vast steppes of sandy deserts, which they had to traverse, nature had sparing allotted to the traveller a few scattered places of rest, where, under the shade of palm trees, and beside the cool fountains at their feet, the merchant and the beast of burden might enjoy the refreshment rendered necessary by so much suffering. Such places of repose became centreparts of commerce, and not unfrequently the sites of temples and sancturies, under the protection of which the marchants prosecuted his trade, and to which the pilgrim resorted.” [2] Being subject to these conditions the Caravan route was never a straight one, it was always zigzag and when we look
1 Mookerjee R. K. “ Indian Shipping ” , p. 135-136.
2 Quoted in the Calcutta Review, Vol. 19, p. 345 .