Roman India

A few days ago - I'd missed this - Vridar pointed to "India" as economically tied with Rome at its coin-productive peak. Maybe Antonius Pius, the boring one of the Five Good Ones. (I'd prepend Vespasian, Titus, and the underrated Domitian; GK Chesterton - whom I'm now reading - would subtract Marcus Aurelius.)

The map with the orange dots is quite illuminating: Ireland's coast and deep Pictland are economic dependents, as are all Germans and (for the amber) Balts, even Slavs. We don't get hoards at the Fezzan; these might have been uprooted in antiquity by fleeing Garamantes. There's a bit of Saba' and the Ge'ez part of Ethiopia. Before running into the Indian Ocean.

Ireland and Yemen hosted Roman embassies, as (more seriously) the Crimea. What's most-interesting here is south India.

I cannot but be reminded of differing definitions of "India" in the postHellenistic era. Iranians and, I think, Greeks defined "India" as, basically, the Sanskrit Sindh - that is, the Indus river. This was a land definition. I understand from Arabian studies that west-Arabians and Romans had a sea definition. They even considered their own Yemen-Oman strip in "India".

With that in mind, we can talk of a Roman India: Dravidian rather than Indic, Krishna and even Buddha rather than the Vedas (famously "Indo-Iranian"). Sanskrit civilisation might not yet be Persianate but it is at least paraIranian.

I don't know if the Romans had an embassy at Sri Lanka but Rome was certainly sending (a lot) more money over there than to, say, Ireland. The coins don't lie. Hence why Pius needed a post in Yemen.

As Vridar goes: the peak of Dravidian-Roman interconnexion will be that second century AD. When Christianity is really getting started. The language of this commerce although Roman won't be Latin; it will be Greek and Aramaic.