Ingo Strauch, who presented a paper on the discovery of Tamil and Sanskrit inscriptions, written respectively in Tamil-Brahmi and Kharoshthi scripts, in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, has also published extensively on a series of comparable inscriptions found on the island of Socotra in the Republic of Yemen, specifically in a cave context.
Socotra functioned as a crucial intermediate maritime station linking Bharat with the western world within the ancient transoceanic trade network. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st century CE) explicitly refers to the island as an important trading centre in the Indian Ocean commercial circuit.
More than one hundred inscriptions have been discovered on Socotra. Of these, a significant portion are in Sanskrit, while the remaining inscriptions belong to South Arabian and Aramaic linguistic traditions. The Sanskrit inscriptions are written in the Brahmi script and are dated broadly to the 2nd-4th centuries CE.
These Sanskrit records have been classified into three broad categories:
First type: simple personal names, most likely engraved by individual merchants or visitors marking their presence. Examples include names such as Vishnudatta and Bhattiputra.
Second type: inscriptions giving both father and son names, for example Ajita suno Ajita and codakaputro colika.
Third type: more complete records ending with a “has come” suffix, such as “Ajitivarman, son of Samgharangin, has come.”
In addition to the inscriptions, several auspicious Hindu symbols, including the Nandipada, have been identified among the cave graffiti.
Taken together, the epigraphic evidence indicates that the presence in these regions was not limited to a single individual such as “Sikai Korran,” nor only to Tamil traders. Rather, the material clearly points to multiple merchants from different parts of the Indian subcontinent travelling along these maritime routes and leaving inscriptions at various halting points.
(Courtesy: “Indian Inscriptions from the Cave Hoq on Suqutra, Yemen,” by Ingo Strauch and Michael D. Bukharin.)
TS Krishnan is a Tamil scholar, historian and author.
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