Along the coasts of the Chola Kingdom lighthouses were placed for the use of merchants, and one wonders whether the idea was taken from the Greeks resident in the kingdom, or from the famous lighthouse at Alexandria when the Pandyan embassy visited the Roman Empire in the time of Augustus. Of the three important Chola marts given by the Periplus-Camara, which we have described, Poduce (Pondicherry or else Pulicat), and Sopatma-the last-named, called Sopaddinam (Madras?) in Tamil poems, was furnished with one of these lighthouses. All three marts traded with the regions of the Ganges and the Malay Peninsula, with the coast of Malabar, and with Ceylon, in large ships of their own, and a Tamil poem shews that the far-famed Saliyur (Selur, Salur, Delur in Ptolemy), opposite the north end of Ceylon, was a similar mart, ever crowded with ships which had crossed the dangerous ocean and from which costly wares were landed. The Periplus shews that the Greeks imported into the kingdom more merchandise of ther own than they did elsewhere, but the author had not been beyond Cape Comorin himself, and so is content to give a general statement.

Of Ceylon the author knew little except that pearls, precious stones, muslins, and tortoise-shell came from there; he gives its name Palaesimundu, and says that the northern part was a day's distance from the coast of India, but enumerates no ports or marts, and exaggerates the size of the island tenfold, and makes it almost touch the Azanian district of the east coast of Africa, but he is not so ill -informed as Pomponius Mela, who not only exaggerates the size of Ceylon in a similar manner, but is also uncertain whether it was an island or the eastern end of the supposed great southern Continent. As I shall shew, Greek merchants were generally contend to find the products of Ceylon in the marts of the west coast of India, without visiting the island itself. Few coins have been found there for certain dating before Nero, and even after him only about a dozen dating before the end of the second century.

Of the eastern coast of India beyond the limits of the Chola Kingdom the Periplus has only a short summary without records of ports and cities, but it draws attention to the region of Masalia (Masuli-patam), famed for its muslins (and probably as the trade-centre of Andhra kings), and of Dosarene (Orissa), famed for its ivory. From the Chola Kingdom northwards Andhra kings controlled the coast and the marts, and Roman trade did not flourish yet so far east, though we need not doubt that the wealth and literary activity of at least the nearer Tamil States at this time were due to their traffic with the Roman Empire, as well as the Arabians, Burma, Malay, and regions beyond. In regions included in the ancient Chera, Pandya, and Chola Kingdoms have been found large numbers of Roman