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to market, and how much easier to get the various wild animal skins from Tibet and Turkestan to the Indus mouth!
As to the “most excellent iron of the Seres” mentioned by Pliny, it is open to question whether this was not Indian steel, more cor- rectly described in the Periplus as coming from the Gulf of Cambay to the Somali coast— and Egypt It was produced in Haidarabad, a short distance north of Golconda, and was shipped to the Panjab and Persia to be made into steel; the famous Damascus blades of the middle ages being derived mainly from this source. (Tavernier, Travels , Ball’s ed., I, 157.) See also under § 6.
39. Cloth . — It is uncertain whether this should be connected with the following item, yarn, both being silk, or whether it is a separate item. If the latter, as seems probable, it would be muslin, as noted under §38 — the sindon of the Greeks, long a staple product of the Panjab and Sind.
39. Silk yarn.— According to the Periplus, the Roman traders found silk at the mouths of the Indus and Ganges, at the Gulf of Cambay, and in Travancore, whither it had been brought by various routes from N. W. China.
The principal highway for silk, at this time as well as later, was through Turkestan and Parthia. As the demand in Mediterranean countries grew more insistent, the restrictions of the Parthian govern- ment became more severe, and quarrels over the silk trade were at the root of more than one war between Rome and Parthia, or later between the Byzantine Empire and Sassanian Persia. This effort of Constantinople to reach China direct, without dependence on Meso- potamia, led to alliances with Abyssinia, for the sea trade, and with the Turks, for a route north of the Caspian; but no permanent result was reached until the 6th century, when a couple of Christian monks under Justinian succeeded in bringing back from China the jealously- guarded silk-worm’s eggs, from which the silk culture was introduced into Greece, and imports from the East diminished.
At the time of the Periplus, Rome and Parthia being at war, the sea-route was the only one open to the Roman silk traders.
See also under §§ 49, 56 and 64.
39. IndigO, a dye produced from Indigofera tinctoria, Linn., order Leguminosa; and allied species, of which about 25 exist in West- ern India alone, and about 300 in other tropical regions. Concerning the modern production see Watt {op. cit., 664). It was valued in Western Asia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean countries as a dye and a medicine. Pliny says (XXXV, 25-7) :
