Rawlinson, H. G. Intercourse between India and the western world from the earliest times to the fall of Rome

(Cambridge :  University Press,  1916.)

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India and the Roman Empire      147

of India, included in the Romance History of
Alexander of the Pseudo-Kallisthenes ^. The writer
mentions having visited Southern India. There
he was the guest of Moses, bishop of Adule,
no doubt a Nestorian prelate. It is interesting
to observe this early reference to the Christian
Church in Southern India. He was deterred by
the great heat from going far inland, but a friend
of his, a Theban scholar, had shewn greater courage,
and gave the writer some miscellaneous and not
very accurate information about what he had
seen. He visited Ceylon and was falsely informed
that the king of that island was overlord of South
India. He was told about the Laccadives, a
group of " thousands of islands " {Laksha dvlpa),
where the coconut was plentiful, and he observed
that pork was never eaten in the East. He learnt
that the pepper of Southern India was collected
by the Bisadae, stunted men with large heads.
These are the Besatae of the Periplus^, a name
contemptuously given by the Indians to the
aboriginal tribes, derived from vishdda, dullness^.
Of the Brahmins, the writer recounts the usual
stories, with no novel or interesting particulars.

We now come to the last voyage of the ancient
world to visit India. Kosmas Indikopleustes,
a monk of the sixth century a.d. travelled down
the Red Sea, and took ship to India and Ceylon.

1 McCrindle, Ancient India, p. 178.

^§65.

^ See p. 123, supra.

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