stern-looking Yavana, while dumb Mlecchas, in complete armour and using gestures, watched in the antechamber all night. Likewise the poet Nakkirar exhorts a Pandya prince to drink in peace the cool and fragrant wine brought by the Yavana in their good ships (or bottles = skins?). From the very beginning of the Roman Empire the Pandya people had probably taken the leading part in encouraging the Romans to come and trade, for they had sent, as we have seen, an embassy to Augustus.

Prosperous as the Chera and Pandya Kingdoms were at this time, the largest, richest, and most flourishing Tamil State was the Chola Kingdom, of which the coast is called Aegialos by the Periplus, stretching roughly from the Pennar river and Nellore to Pudukottai and the Valiyar or the Varshalai, or perhaps even the Vaigai river on the south. Its capital Argaru (Uraiyur, destroyed in the seventh century), now part of Trichinopoly, was famed for its muslins and perhaps for its own pearl-fisheries in the Palk Strait, but its greatest emporium was Kaviripaddinam or Pukar, Puhar (the Camara of the Periplus, on the river Chabari or Chaberis of Ptolemy), a busy place on the east coast at the mouth of the northern branch of the Kaveri or Cauvery river. We learn a great deal about it from Tamil literature, and since town and harbour are now buried beneath the sand near Tranquebar, the accounts which we have are all the more interesting. The river could take heavily laden ships without forcing them to slacken sail, and these ships brought wares of all kinds to the platforms and warehouses of the town; merchants and artizans had their own streets, and the place was particularly favoured by Greeks who soon resided near the warehouses and exposed attractive wares for sale; the magnificent palace of the Chola king had been built partly with the help of Greek carpenters, who appear to have been a class of worker in particular demand in India at this time. Thus long before the Empire began Eudoxos had taken artizans with him when he set out for India; again, according to the later tradition accepted in the fourth century, St. Thomas was induced to go to India because he met an Indian merchant who had been sent by Gudnaphar (reigning in A.D. 45) to fetch him a skilful carpenter; it is true that older tradition makes St. Thomas the evangelist not of India, but of Parthia, and does not make him suffer martyrdom at all. But since Gudnaphar (or Gundaphar) of the Acta Thomae is the Gondophernes of Indo-Parthian coins, both legends (?) come from the same origin, and reflect travel to North-west India. Lastly, an inscription of Rhodes tells us of one Amphilochos whose renown in his art reached furthest Indus. If this is not mere boasting, and if India is not Ethiopia, he may have been an architect who visited India.