'India's Pompeii' uncovered

The first construction boom began about 2,000 years ago, when Ashoka the Great was founding the first Indian empire, when Julius Caesar reigned over Rome, when traders from the Mediterranean found their way to what is now an obscure Maharastra village... But another construction boom threatens the existence of an area they say could well reveal itself as "the Pompeii of India", the legendary Roman city buried by a volcano and lost for 1,600 years... A dusty village museum houses a treasure-trove of 23,852 pieces of stone and terracotta sculptures, replicas of Roman coins and lamps, miniature inkpots, jewellery and household vessels and ivory... Ter's link to ancient Rome and Greece from Ter ran through Nalasopara, now the second-last stop on Mumbai's western commuter line and then a port that linked middle India to the Mediterranean... Ter's ascent came after trade with the Roman Empire under the Satavahana dynasty that ruled Dakshinapatha or the Deccan. A 1st century Greek navigation document The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea is history's earliest reference to Tagara or Ter. It calls it a great emporium where merchants brought goods like muslin and carnelian, which were traded with the Romans... Jamkhedkar points to ivory figures "comparable to those from Pompeii". Later, terra cottas are cast in double moulds, suggesting craftsmen were influenced by Western techniques.

http://www.maharashtratourism.gov.in/mtdc/Default.aspx?strpage=Museums_Maharashtra.html

"The two museums at Kolhapur and Ter together have priceless antiquities reflecting on the ancient past of Maharashtra and its contacts with the Roman world. Ter, ancient Tagara, today a neglected villaged in the Osmanbad district was an international marketing centre as early as the 1st century A.D. Of great value is the famous ivory figure of Shree Laxmi. At Kolhapur, is a hoard of beautiful bronzes, among which is a beautiful figure of the Greek Sea God, Poseidon."

http://www.livius.org/man-md/mauryas/mauryas.html

"After the death of Ashoka, the Mauryan empire declined. In c.240, the Bactrian leaders -who were of Greek descent- revolted from their Seleucid overlords, and although king Antiochus III the Great restored order in 206, the Bactrian leader Euthydemus declared himself independent within a decade. Not much later, the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom expanded into Drangiana and Gandara. The invasion of the Punjab, which took place in 184, revitalized the Greek culture in the region south of the Hindu Kush mountain range, where Euthydemus' son Demetrius created a new kingdom, consisting of Gandara, Arachosia, the Punjab and even a part of the Ganges valley... when king Menander reunited the Indo-Greek kingdom in c.125, the westerners were able to invade the heartland of the already contracted Mauryan empire, and even captured Patna. Never has a Greek army reached a more eastern point.... King Menander converted and became something of a Buddhist saint. One of the holy texts of Buddhism is called Milindapañha, 'Questions of Menander'."

update:

Historical Plunder
by Samyabrata Ray Goswami
Monday, April 9, 2007
Tagara is Maharashtra's oldest city, referred to as an important trading town by the second-century AD Greek geographer and astronomer, Ptolemy. It finds mention in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea -- a first-century AD account of contemporary trade and navigation -- as one of the two famous trading centres on the Indian west coast, the other being Pratishthana, modern Paithan in Aurangabad district... "Today, in the absence of political will, Ter's legacy is being ripped apart. A storehouse of artefacts from the second century BC to the 15th-16th centuries AD, it's an archaeologist's dream turning into his worst nightmare," complains A. Jamkhedkar, former director of the state archaeological department. The first excavation of Ter had begun in 1901 under the Raj. The remains of a stupa, a Roman-style temple and a wooden rampart that has a clear Roman influence have been the major finds so far.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/periplus.html

20. Directly below this place is the adjoining country of Arabia, in its length bordering a great distance on the Erythraean Sea. Different tribes inhabit the country, differing in their speech, some partially, and some altogether. The land next the sea is similarly dotted here and there with caves of the Fish-Eaters, but the country inland is peopled by rascally men speaking two languages, who live in villages and nomadic camps, by whom those sailing off the middle course are plundered, and those surviving shipwrecks are taken for slaves. And so they too are continually taken prisoners by the chiefs and kings of Arabia; and they are called Carnaites. Navigation is dangerous along this whole coast of Arabia, which is without harbors, with bad anchorages, foul, inaccessible because of breakers and rocks, and terrible in every way. Therefore we hold our course down the middle of the gulf and pass on as fast as possible by the country of Arabia until we come to the Burnt Island; directly below which there are regions of peaceful people, nomadic, pasturers of cattle, sheep and camels...

reprises:

At Empire's Edge:
Exploring Rome's Egyptian Frontier
by Robert B. Jackson
Pliny the Elder also added a warning: "The subject is one well worthy of our notice, seeing that in no year does India drain us of less than 550,000,000 sesterces giving back her own wares, which are sold among us at fully 100 percent their first cost." Romans were not the only ones to comment on the nature of their trade with India. A Tamil poem from the second or third century A.D. includes the following passage: "The beautiful vessels, the masterpieces of the Yavanas [Westerners], stir white foam on the Periyar, river of Kerala, arriving with gold and departing with pepper." Despite the discovery in southern India of some six thousand silver denarii and gold aurei, which seems to corroborate these statements, scholars disagree about whether such an economic imbalance actually occurred. Certainly the Romans spent vast sums of money on Asian luxuries, but they might also have used a barter system. Roman amphora, pottery, glass, lamps, and other items have been excavated in India, Sri Lanka, and Arabia, and Roman beads (gold or silver, set in glass) have been uncovered in the Rufiji Delta of Tanzania... In addition, the Greek/Egyptian author of Periplus Maris Erythraei (Circumnavigation of the Red Sea) identifies specific places where bartering was or was not possible. [pp 88-89]

[at] Qusier al-Qadim, from the first and second centuries A.D... were inscribed with Tamil graffiti in the Brahmi script and likely came from Arikamedu in southern India (not far from the modern town of Pondicherry). These constitute the first Indian Tamil inscriptions ever found in Egypt, and their discovery, next to a small iron forge, raises the possibility that a small community of Indian merchants or metalworkers lived at Qusier al-Qadim... researchers found items typical of the east, for example, teak and cloth made from jute. [pp 82-83]
India And The Roman Empire
Fine muslins, jewels, especially beryls and pearls, drugs, spices and condiments from India were in great demand. The volume of trade was, therefore, increased to an unprecedented extent. The sea-borne trade between India and Rome received great impetus in the reign of Emperor Claudius by Hippalaus' discovery, in 45 A.D., of the existence of the monsoon winds, blowing regularly across the Indian Ocean. According to Pliny nearly L 5,50,000 flowed every year from Rome to India to pay for the balance of trade. This statement is borne out by the huge hoards of Roman coins unearthed in Indian soil in Tamilnadu.
Arts of the Silk Roads
by John Major
Asia Society
A mirror from India with an ivory handle carved in the shape of a female fertility deity was buried under volcanic ash at Pompeii in 79 CE. Among the first images of Buddhist deities in human form were those carved in the province of Gandhara (present-day Pakistan) in the 2nd century CE. Unlike anthropomorphic Buddhist images carved farther south in India, these Gandharan figures, which were based on provincial Roman models, wear heavy, toga-like robes and have wavy hair. The figural tradition of Buddhist art spread through Central and East Asia and also to Southeast Asia, taking on local and regional characteristics.
Rome's East India Company
[Field Notes]
A sturdy 100-foot-long Roman trading vessel bound for India foundered off the Red Sea port of Quseir, Egypt. The ship settled 200 feet below the surface, where it remained undisturbed until a group of British and American archaeologists discovered it in 1993. Douglas Haldane believes the ship was part of a fleet sent by the Roman emperor Augustus -- who seized control of Egypt after the naval battle of Actium in 31 B.C. -- to control trade in the Indian Ocean. He predicts that gold, silver and other precious metals used as currency will be found on board, as well as wine from the Campania region of southern Italy.

Hershel Shanks, the editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, has recently published findings indicating that Jews living in the Roman Empire in 79 AD when the southwestern Italian city of Pompeii was destroyed by a massive eruption of the Mount Vesuvius volcano, believed that it was Divine retribution for the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Roman general Titus nine years earlier. Citing archeological evidence in a paper entitled "The Destruction of Pompeii -- God's revenge?" in the July/August edition of the magazine, Shanks told the Jerusalem Post that Book 4 of the Sibylline Oracles, an ancient mystical text, includes a passage which says in part; "When a firebrand, turned away from a cleft in the earth [Vesuvius] In the land of Italy, reaches to broad heaven It will burn many cities and destroy men. Much smoking ashes will fill the great sky And showers will fall from heaven like red earth. Know then the wrath of the heavenly God." He also points to ancient graffiti scrawled on the walls near Pompeii which includes references to "Sodom and Gomorra." The eruption of Vesuvius "attacked the core of Roman society," Shanks concluded. "There's very good reason to conclude there was a perceived connection and in the eyes of some, God was clearly at work."

Jews saw Pompeii as retribution for destruction of the Temple

YouTube: Evidence of Christianity in First Century Pompeii

In 1939, Italian archeologist Prof Maiuri, discovered an artifact in the ruins of ancient Pompeii, that had a very Indian origin. This ivory statuette which survived the disaster and lasted all these 2000 years was identified by Prof Maiuri as that of the Goddess Lakshmi and dated to around 1AD. It has since then been quoted as the ‘Goddess Lakshmi statue in Pompeii' in many books & articles... in terms of iconography and technique, the closest comparisons can be made with ivory figurines recovered from the central and northwestern parts of the sub-continent and datable to the 1st century A.D. Two of these examples were found at the sites of Bhokardan and Ter in central India and a third was excavated in Begram, Afghanistan along with a large cache of ivory, bone, glass, and metal objects. Although these four figurines are not perfect matches, their shared iconographic and compositional features suggest that they may have been produced in the same region (probably central India) before being distributed to other regions. This small, rare sculpture, found in a modest dwelling in Pompeii, represents nonetheless an important indication of a trade relations that existed already by the 1st century A.D. between the Roman Empire and India.

Goddess Lakshmi statue in Pompeii | The Mysterious India | 2015-03-19

Goddess Lakshmi statue in Pompeii | The Mysterious India | 2015-03-19

Roman gold coins excavated in Pudukottai India

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