Socotra
Topic: Economy of Early India: Agriculture, Trade, Guilds, Coinage · NCERT: Class 7, Ch 7 "The Gupta Era: An Age of Tireless Creativity"
Meaning
Socotra is an island in the Arabian Sea. It lies on the sea route that linked India with the Red Sea and the Mediterranean world. In the early centuries CE, Indian traders often stopped there. So did traders from Egypt, Arabia and the Greek world. The island shows how far Indian sea trade reached and how mixed these trading crowds were.
Example
In the Hoq cave on Socotra, visitors left many inscriptions. Some are in Brahmi, an old Indian script. Others are in Greek and South Arabian scripts. The cave also has Indian pottery and a drawing of a stupa, a dome-shaped Buddhist monument. Together they show that Indian sailors kept coming back to the island over several centuries.
Don't confuse with
- Sopara: Sopara was a port on India's own west coast. Socotra is an island far out in the Arabian Sea that Indian traders visited on their voyages west.
Related concepts
- Trade routes
- Uttarapatha
- Dakshinapatha
- Indian Ocean trade
- Hippalus
- Indo-Roman trade
- Periplus of the Erythraean Sea
- Pliny's Natural History
- Ptolemy's Geography
- Muziris