ADDITIONAL NOTES. XXIX
Greek ships to India was named after him (Periplus, ch. 57;
Pliny, 6. 100, 104). Some scholars assign him to the first
century B.C.; but the absence of references to him in Strabo
indicates that he made his great discovery, at the earliest, in the
reign of Augustus. In all probability the exploration of the direct
route began in the opening years of the Christian era, and was the
result of a Roman expedition to Aden, c. i B.C., which wrested
that station from the control of the Sabaean Arabians. (Periplus,
ch. 26; Pliny, 2. 168.)
Hippalus probably took off from C. Fartak on the South Arabian
coast and found the Indian mainland near Barygaza (mod. Broach).
Subsequent Greek skippers followed a more southerly course; soon
after 50 A.D. the boldest of them (profiting perhaps by the in-
voluntary voyage of exploration of Annius Plocamus' agent, p. 272)
made for Muziris (Cranganore) and Nelkynda (Kottayam) in
southern India. On these voyages of discovery see M. P. Charles-
worth, Classical Quarterly', 1928, pp. 92-100; E. H. Warmington,
in Andent Explorers^ pp. 73-80.
Pp. 280, 281. Eastern Asia
The island of Ceylon was not frequently visited by Greek
traders, and geographers were left to make rather wild guesses as
to its size (p. 345). On the other hand Greek merchants found
their way to the inland capitals of the chief Indian rajahs?
From the time of Nero occasional seafarers crept up th^ east
coast of India as far as the Ganges. Early in the second century
one of the most remarkable of ancient pioneers, who was appro-
priately named Alexander, made a short cut across the Bay of
Bengal and continued his journey along the coast of Siam to
a Chinese port named Kattigara, which is usually identified with
Hanoi in the Bay of Tongking, though some would place it on the
site of Hang-Chow, at the mouth of the Yang-tse-Kiang (so Hennig,
Klio, 1929-30, pp. 256 ff.). Alexander and his successors probably
cut across the Malayan isthmus by land, for ancient geographers
seemingly had no clear information about Singapore and the
Sumatra Straits. On the other hand some of Alexander's followers
worked northward from Malaya to Burma, and in 166 A.D. a
company of Greek adventurers, who styled themselves 'envoys'