Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/60

24 THE CLOSING OF THE OLD TEADE PATHS Of this great commerce, while Egypt still remained a Koman prefecture, two accounts by actual traders exist. " The Circumnavigation of the Indian Ocean " describes it within a hundred years after the discovery of the monsoon winds by the pilot Hippalus. Written probably by a -Greek merchant who had settled at the southern Red Sea emporium of Berenice and voyaged to the East, its composition is assigned to a date between 80 and 161 A. D. It gives the seaports on the route, specifies as many as ninety-five of the chief articles of traffic, and forms a wonderfully complete presentment of the state of Indo-Egyptian trade in the first century of our era. " The Christian Topography of the Universe/' by Cosmas Indicopleustes (circ. 535-547 A. D.), takes up the story about four hundred years later. Its author, a merchant and apparently also a navigator, had be- come a monk of Alexandria in later life, and wrote out in his cell the recollections of his voyage. To these he adds much cosmical speculation, " not built on his own opinions or conjectures," he assures us, " but drawn from Holy Scripture and from the mouth of that divine man and great master, Patricius. ' ' Apart from such mystical physics, he gives an account of the trade of Malabar and the Eastern Archipelago, with topographical details and notices of Indian products, in some respects fuller and more exact than can be found in the Arab geographers of the next seven cen- turies. In his time Ceylon had become famous as the meeting-place of the merchants of the East and West;