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to a Semitic, native Arabian activity. This would have been a couple of thousand years before Solomon’s day.
41. Syrastrene. — Sanscrit, Surdshtra; the modern Kathiawar. The name survives in the modern Surat, which owes its name to Arabic domination. At the time of the Periplus this peninsula, to- gether with the opposite coast of Cutch and Cambay, was subject to the Saka or Indo-Parthian dynasties.
41. A fertile country. — Gujarat is still one of the richest regions in India, its prosperity being largely due to the 60 seaports fringing its coast-lines and to the fertility of its deep black soil, which is particularly adapted to the cultivation of cotton. Horses, cattle, sheep and grain are exported in large numbers to Bombay and other parts of India.
41. Rice. — Oryza, Linn., order Graminea. The species now most generally cultivated is Oryza sativa. There are various wild varieties, one of importance being Oryza coarctata (Roxb. ) or O. triti- coides, which was native in the Indus and Ganges valleys, and also apparently in Mesopotamia (see Watt, op. cit., 823-5). This wild variety resembles wheat and seems to have been mistaken for it by Strabo and some of the Greek writers on India.
Oryza sativa , the cultivated form, is native in India, Burma, and Southern China. It is the principal food of Asia, and doubtless was so at the time of the Periplus, when it was exported to Arabia and East Africa. It was cultivated in China, according to Stanislas Julien, as early as 2800 B. C., and probably somewhat later in India. Watt thinks the cultivation began rather in Turkestan, whence it spread to China, India and Persia in the order named, the changing climate also forcing its wild habitat southwards. He thinks that coin- cides with the region through which the Dravidian invaders passed until they culminated in the Tamil civilization. He also cautions against the tempting derivation of the Greek word oryza and the Arabic al-ruzz (from which the modern rice, riso, riz , arroz, etc. ), from the Tamil arisi, thinking that they are rather from the old Persian virinzi (Sanscrit vrihP), indicating an early connection before migrations had radiated from Central Asia.
41. Sesame oil, expressed from the seeds of Sesamum Indicum, D. C., order Pedalinea-, an annual plant cultivated throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the globe for the oil obtained from the seed. Originally, perhaps, it was a native of Africa, but was regularly cultivated in India long before it reached the Mediterranean countries. At the time of the Periplus it is safe to assume that sesame
