The Same Author Mentions A Town, A Little Without The Red Sea, From Whence, He Says, The Sabeans Sent Out Colonies Or Factories Into India, And To Which The Large Ships He Describes Came With Their Cargoes From India.

This is the first historical evidence to prove the establishment of Arabian factories and merchants in the ports of India.

In the time of Pliny, the Arabians were in such numbers on the coast of Malabar, and at Ceylon, that, according to that author, the inhabitants of the former had embraced their religion, and the ports of the latter were entirely in their power. Their settlements and commerce in India are repeatedly mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, and likewise their settlements down the coast of Africa to Rhaptum, before it was visited by the Greeks from Egypt. For, besides their voyages from India to their own country, they frequently brought Indian commodities direct to the coast of Africa. At Sabaea, the great mart of the Arabian commerce with India, the Greeks, as late as the reign of Philometor, purchased the spices and other productions of the east. As there was a complete monopoly of them at this place, in the hands of the Arabians, the Greek navigators and merchants were induced, in the hopes of obtaining them cheaper, to pass the Straits of Babelmandeb, and on the coast of Africa they found cinnamon and other produce of India, which had been brought hither by the Arabian traders.

The evidence of the land trade between Arabia and India, from a very early period, is equally clear and decisive:

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