The Commerce and Navigation of the Erythraean Sea; Being a Tr. of the Periplus Maris Erythraei, and of Arrian's Account of the Voyage of Nearkhos, by J.W. McCrindle. Repr., with Additions, from the Indian Antiquary (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 Excerpt: ... manufactured from Indian cotton. It has also numerous herds of cattle. The natives are men of large stature and coloured black. The metropolis of the district isMinnagar, from which called by M a s'a d i, L a r i. Abulfeda's authority, Ibn Said, speaks of L&r and Gujarat as identical." A r i a k e (Aparantika), our author informs us, was the beginning or frontier of India. That part of the interior of Ariake which bordered on Skythia was called A b e r i a or Abiria (in the MS. erroneously Iberia). The corresponding Indian word is A b h i r a, which designated the district near the mouths of the river. Having been even in very early times a great seat of commerce, some (as Lassen) have been led to think from a certain similarity of the names that this was the 0 p h i r of scripture, a view opposed by Bitter. Abiria is mentioned by Ptolemy, who took it to be not a part of India but of Indoskythia. The sea-board of Ariake was calledSurastrene, and is mentioned by Ptolemy, who says (VII. i. 55) it was the region about the mouths of the Indus and the Gulf of Kanthi. It answers to the Sanskrit S u r a s ht r a. Its capital was M i n n a g a r, --a city which, as its name shows, had once belonged to the Mia or Skythians. It was different of course from the Minnagar already mentioned as thecapital of IndoSkythia. It was situated to the south of 0 z e n e (Ujjayini, orUjiain), and on the road which led front that city to the River Narmada, probably near where Indor now stands. It must have been the eapital only for a-short time, as Ptolemy informs as (II. i. 63) that Ozene was in his time the cotton cloth is exported in great quantity to Barngaza. In this part of the country there are preserved even to this very day memorials of the expedition of Alexander, old templ...