Pliny's Natural History
Topic: Economy of Early India: Agriculture, Trade, Guilds, Coinage · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
Natural History is a large Latin encyclopaedia by the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, completed c. 77 CE. It covers plants, animals, places and trade, and it is an important foreign source on Indo-Roman commerce. Pliny complained that Romans spent huge sums on Eastern luxuries such as pepper, pearls, fine cloth and spices. He said this money flowed out of the Roman empire to India. His complaint matches the hoards of Roman coins found in south India.
Example
Pliny wrote that India drained the Roman empire of about 50 million sesterces (Roman coins) every year. He said India, China and Arabia together took around 100 million sesterces.
Don't confuse with
- Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: a Greek sailor's guide of c. 1st century CE, giving first-hand details of ports and goods. Pliny's work is a general Latin encyclopaedia.
Related concepts
- Trade routes
- Uttarapatha
- Dakshinapatha
- Indian Ocean trade
- Hippalus
- Indo-Roman trade
- Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
- Ptolemy's Geography
- Muziris
- Arikamedu