It was already pointed out in a previous section that the Malabar coast got into touch with the western world, Egypt, Western Asia, and across as far as the western extremity of Europe. The Hebrew references to various articles of Indian, particularly South Indian, production, the Baveru Jatakal which apparently relates to Babylon, the Supparaka2 Jataka and a story in the Kathasaritsagara relative to the westward voyage from the port of Patri, and the Sanskrit origin of the name of the island Sokotra, all these might be cited as evidence of westward trade, at any rate, as arguing familiarity with navigation on that side. That Indians did take part in these distant voyages is directly stated in the reference in Tacitus to a Hindu sailor having been stranded in the region of the North Sea, and that in Eudoxus, to the famished Hindu sailor who piloted the Greeks across the Arabian Sea to the Malabar Coast.3 There is further evidence of a reference in an Egyptian inscription to a Sophon-Indos (Subhanu the Indian)1 in the heart of Egypt, apparently along the road from the chief Red Sea port to Alexandria. The busy and the profitable character of the western trade and the part that the Roman empire took in it in the early centuries of the Christian era have already been indicated. The question in these circumstances would naturally arise whether the Tamils had any knowledge of the Eastern Archipelago and whether they ever came into direct touch with it.

1 The Jatakas, Trans, by Cowell, etc., No. 339, TIT, p. 83. 2 No. 463, IV, 86-90. Trans, by Cowell and Rouse. 3 Macrindle's Ancient India, p, 110.