Hippalos and the direct sea route to India: conditions and circumstances of the so-called discovery
2020, 29, No. 1
The Jan Kochanowski University in Kielce
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Abstract
One of the most important questions concerning Indo-Roman trade relations still in need of resolution is whether the discovery of the transoceanic sea route to India was a gradual process, building on years of navigational experience, or a one-time event that threw the seas open to sailing on a commercial scale. Historians tend to focus on the who and when of that first open-sea passage, without going into the boundary conditions necessary for such a voyage or the circumstances that made it actually possible. In the case of the open-sea route to India, a circumstance of significance for the issue is the ransacking of the port of Arabia Eudaimon (on the southern Yemeni coast), which had been an essential stopover for ships plying the trade between Egypt and India. With the port out of operation in the 1st century AD—this according to the navigational guide Periplus Maris Erythraei—and a tenative blockade on inshore sailing in this part of Bab el-Mandeb (which indeed the Periplus does not mention), the resumption of active trade with India necessitated the discovery of a transoceanic route that would avoid troubled waters. This paper specifically considers the conditions and circumstances that would have stood behind the discovery of a transoceanic route across the Indian Ocean.
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