Marine Routes Across the Indian Ocean (Maritime Silk Roads) and Beyond

Seaborne trade goes back to the third millennium BCE involving the Harrapan Trade with Oman, Bahrein and Sumer, though becomes more noticeable after 600 BCE.⁶¹ The good relationship between the huge Mauryan Empire of India (324–187 BCE) and the Seleucids (the Greek-derived state that encompassed much of west Asia) probably led to increasing importance of the north India to Persian Gulf marine route.

Important Gulf ports included El Dur, which has demonstrated commercial contacts involving India, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Persia and the Mediterranean. Nearby Mleiha has a similar heritage.⁶² On the Arabian coast, Khor Rori (Sumhuram) in modern Dhofar, Oman, was a key port for the movement of frankincense, and it had been settled for several centuries. Archaeology has shown contacts with India, the Gulf and Mediterranean. Qana in the present Yemen is another ancient port – it was described in the Periplus Maris Erythraei (a first-century CE navigational text) as another frankincense hub and there was direct trade with north-west India, at least in the first century CE. The island of Socotra is an important site for aloes, frankincense and Dragon’s Blood. Texts and inscriptions have shown the island was visited by sailors of different nationalities between the first century BCE and sixth century CE. In the Red Sea, the port of Adulis may have been active since the second millennium BCE, and later became the main port of the Axumite kingdom. Further north, Berenike was established in the third century BCE by the Ptolemies to gain access to the sea. Nearby Myos Hormos probably had a similar origin; both were to become vital to the Roman spice trade. Indian finds have been made at both of these sites as well as many other places, e.g. Socotra, Khor Rori.⁶³

Early trade routes further east probably used Sri Lanka (Tabropane) as a hub, either routing along the east Indian coast or direct through the Malacca Straits and east to the Indonesian archipelago or north to China. Products peculiar to the Moluccas (nutmeg, mace, cloves), for example, would have necessarily needed to use a maritime route for at least part of their journey to the West. Ships from Southeast Asia were sailing to India, Sri Lanka and the East African coast, with exchanges between mainland Southeast Asia and India from at least the fourth century BCE and possibly centuries earlier.⁶⁴ Chinese interaction with Indian ports may have developed around the same time but expanded in the first century BCE.⁶⁵ More local trade around Southeast Asia and the South China Sea would have been established earlier. The trade between Southeast Asia and southern Chinese ports was known as the ‘Nanhai’ trade and involved spices, aromatics, woods, pearls, etc., which flourished from the first century CE.