47. "Vincent has noted the fact that in his interview with the Greek, he (the King) addressed him by the epithet of Roomi, " su_ (Rwmeu~ ", the term which has been applied from time immemorial in India to the powers who have been successively in possession of Constantinople, whether Roman, Christian, or Mahommedan" (Tennent's Ceylon, vol. i, p. 542, note 2).
48. Gr. taj moni/taj . This is a Latin word, and should be monh&taj . Monêta was a name of Juno, in whose temple money was coined. Proprie, nota numinis impressi moneta est.
49. Gr. no&misma . This would be an aureus. Constantine the Great coined aurei of seventy-two to the pound of gold, and at this standard the coin remained to the end of the empire.
50. This word is generally written miliarh&sion, a silver drachma of which twenty made a daric, which was equivalent to an Attic stater. Among the imports of Barygaza (Bharoch) enumerated in the Periplus we find gold and silver denarii ---- dhna&rion xrusou~n kai\ a)rgurou~n .
51. "This story," says Tennent (Ceylon, vol. i, p. 542), "would, however, appear to be traditional, as Pliny relates a somewhat similar anecdote of the ambassadors from Ceylon in the reign of Claudius, and of the profound respect excited in their minds by the sight of the Roman denarii."
52. Gr. leukoi\ Ou}nnoi . The absence of the rough breathing from the name is notable, since another form of it is Xou~noi . About the year 100 of our aera the most warlike tribes of the Huns, impatient of bearing longer the Chinese yoke, turned their faces westward, and having left behind them the mountains of Imaus, directed their march, some to the Oxus, and others to the Volga. "The first of these colonies", says Gibbon in his 26th Chapter, "established their dominion in the fruitful and extensive plains of Sogdiana, on the eastern side of the Caspian, where they preserved the name of Huns, with the epithet of Euthalites or Nephthalites. Their manners were softened, and even their features were insensibly improved by the mildness of the climate, and their long residence in a flourishing province which might still retain a faint impression of the arts of Greece. The white Huns, a name which they derived from the change of their complexions, soon abandoned the pastoral life of Scythia." Sir William Hunter, at p. 170 of his work on The Indian Empire, says: "The latest writer on the subject (the fortunes of the Scythian or Tartar races in Northern India) believes that it was the White Huns who overthrew the Guptas between 465 and 470 A.D. He (Dr. J. Ferguson) places the great battles of Korur and Maushari, which 'freed India from the Sâkas and Hunas', between 524 and 544 A.D. Cosmas Indicopleustes, who traded in the Red Sea about 535 A.D., speaks of the Huns as a powerful nation in Northern India in his days."
53. Even as the army of Xerxes and his beasts of burden drank up the Scamander.----See Herodot. vii, 43.
54. The Blemmyes were fierce predatory nomads of the Nubian wilds and the regions adjacent. Emeralds were found in the mines of Upper Egypt, and were no doubt shipped from Adule for the Indian markets by the Ethiopian traders who bought them from the Blemmyes. If taken to Barygaza (Bharoch), they could be transported thence by a frequented trade-route to Ujjain, thence to Kabul, and thence over the Hindu Kush to the regions of the Oxus.
55. Pliny has preserved from Megasthenes a section of his Indika, in which he states the number of elephants kept by each of the Indian kings in his time.
56. A custom still in vogue.
57. Gen. ii, 10-12.
58. This is an incorrect form of paide/rwj , a kind of opal.
59. Gr. li/qon pra&sinon .
This text was transcribed by Roger Pearse, 2003. All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely.
Greek text is rendered using the Scholars Press SPIonic font, free from here .