In recent years, a considerable number of Indic epigraphic documents have been discovered that originated outside the Indian subcontinent. Most of them are directly related to the commercial activities of Indian merchants and seafarers across the complex network of trade routes that connected the Indian world with the West in the early centuries of the Common Era.
These inscriptions are of various types – from short scratches on broken shards, scribbled graffiti in a remote natural cave on the isolated island of Socotra, to a recently discovered Buddhist dedication in a temple of Isis on the Red Sea coast. Although many of them are short and not always easy to evaluate, these scattered texts are of eminent importance for our knowledge of Indian Ocean trade links and the role of Indian merchants in these trading activities.
The lecture will reassess the available epigraphic evidence and discuss its implications for the history of intercontinental trade in the first centuries of the Common Era.
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