Barygaza, the ancient Indian port town, where Plato is a biscuit and the salty scent of history is everywhere

A huge board straddles the street, greeting travellers as soon as they get off the train: ‘Now at Bharuch! McAloo Tikki™+Coke@₹55.’

As I walk under it, I consider how the Greek scholar Ptolemy, who in circa 140 CE catalogued the greatest cities of the world, wrote, “to the west of the river Narmada is a mart of commerce, the city of Barygaza.” Along with Muziris in Kerala, it was, in hoary yore, one of the two magnificent ports of India.

Of Muziris, there’s nothing left above ground. Barygaza continued to be a harbour up to recently. I do accept that things may have changed since Ptolemy’s time, such as Barygaza being renamed Bharuch. But if it has a McDonald’s, it must still constitute a blip on the radar of globalisation.

Reaching the riverbed, which is now grassland where cattle graze, I notice that the Narmada is only a distant bluish line on the horizon. So that explains why there’s no shipping happening today. But massive fortifications still stretch along the former riverfront. These may have originated as a mud fort as early as the 3rd century BCE.

Tracing the fortifications on winding lanes through the old town, I pass a medieval-looking bakery. A few steps later, the aroma of fresh bread forces me to turn back. There are metal canisters filled with hot cookies. I ask the baker what his speciality is, and he rattles off names, of which I catch one: ‘Aflatoon’. The Indian name for the Greek philosopher Plato… I order half a kilo, thinking they’re a legacy of Mediterranean cuisine. However, the aflatoons prove to be flavoured with South Indian spices such as cardamom—unlikely to be Greek. But Jawaharlal Nehru, in The Discovery of India, notes that according to a certain European scholarly interpretation, Plato’s The Republicmay be based ‘upon Indian thought’.

It is also a known fact that after Plato’s mentor Socrates was forced to drink poison in 399 BCE, the budding philosopher started travelling extensively to get out of his funk. He went to Egypt, where it is not unthinkable that he encountered Indian ideas, particularly on reincarnation, which is something that does feature in his writings.

History slips away

While munching on my platonic biscuits, I ask around for ‘Malbari Darwaja’ which would seem to be where merchandise arrived from South India, including the cardamom that goes into the aflatoons. Soon I spot something that looks like a submerged gateway and thinking it is the historical Malbari Darwaja, I start snapping. A passing gentleman informs me that this is the old town’s sewer outlet. Feeling foolish, I tell him that I’ve never seen such an elegant sewage channel before. He advises me to take the next left instead.

Bust of a policeman from earlier times. | Photo Credit: ZAC O’YEAH

The route leads through a charming clifftop slum where goats crowd the path and smiling women cook outside their huts. The path emerges into a street with proper houses and I ask a group who stand idly chatting if the way downhill will lead to Malbari Darwaja. One lady in headscarf nods: “It is gone.”

“Where did it go?” I ask, perhaps a little stupidly.

“It belonged to historic times.”

“Where exactly was it then?”

“Right where you stand, hence this area is called Malbari Darwaja.”

Wondering whether there might not be a ‘darwaja’ after all, I amble down the hill. Unsurprisingly, there’s a substantial bit of intact wall at the bottom of the street and within it stands an ornate but forlorn gateway. I understand why the lady didn’t think there was a gate anymore—because this too is a sewage canal. Of the nine city gates, this appears to be the only one remaining in near-perfect condition while the others mostly exist as location names. The bastion towering over the gate is a popular hangout for kite fliers.

The Periplus, that authoritative ancient Greek marine guidebook, knew the city as the point from where ‘the adjoining coast extends in a straight line from north to south; and so this region is called Dachinabades, for ‘dachanos’, in the language of natives, means ‘south’.’ One, of course, recognises a form of the word ‘dakshin’ and ‘Deccan’, the latter even now refers to peninsular India south of Bharuch. If we take the name literally, the Malbari Darwaja area perhaps had a settlement of South Indians and traders from even further East. Peeking at maps of the historical spice trade, the town looks like a convenient midway halt and transhipment point—three major caravan routes north, east and south converged here as well—between the Spice Isles of Southeast Asia and luxury consumer markets in the Roman Empire.

The walkway within the bailey is overgrown and filled with colourful plastic trash bags chucked down the slope from the houses above. I try valiantly to follow the wall westwards in the hoofsteps of a gang of jolly goats that graze along it, but can’t go into the thickets beyond a hundred metres.

Mullahs relax outside a mosque in Furja Bandar. | Photo Credit: ZAC O’YEAH

Using a roundabout route, I reach Furja Bandar where I spot sturdy iron bollards dating back to when the river was still used for shipping. The river is so silted up that its grass reaches the top of the quay and cattle feast on it. Mullahs outside a mosque ask me to join them for a cup of oversweet tea. One tells me how steamships came up to this point once upon a time and offloaded wares. It is convenient to recall that Greek geographer Strabo, in his book on world geography published in 23 CE, spoke of up to 120 ships sailing from the Red Sea to India in a single season. I imagine Barygaza would have been a lively harbour with motley crews of Africans, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans looking for a good time while ashore.

Within minutes of me leaving the mullahs, one youngster stops his motorbike and asks me if I want ‘something’. He grins widely. From years of travel writing I’ve learnt that this is the most common way for pushers and pimps to accost potential clients—innocuous enough to mean nothing special, but opening possibilities for anything and everything. Later, I’m informed by an upper-class gentleman I chat with that harbour or no harbour, Furja is still the town’s baddest area and nobody in his sane mind should go there alone.

The next day, I tour Shuklaseri, the genteel Brahmin locality of the old town where the founder-president of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Kanaiyalal Munshi, grew up. I also pay my respects at the nearby Bhrigu Rishi temple which is dedicated to the founder of the city, who lived many thousands of years ago. The Vedic saint was a scholar whose works on astronomy and medicine were on par with those of the Greeks, and his son Chyavana is famous for having had a team of doctors develop India’s biggest selling vitamin-rich wonder-tonic, Chyawanprash.

Instead of seeking out the newly opened branch of McDonald’s, at lunchtime I hit one of the many pizza parlours—hoping to find a connection to the ancient Greco-Roman trade. Perusing the menu, I ask what toppings go on the Italian pizza.

“We put noodles on it.”

Spaghetti pizza doesn’t sound very Roman, so I go for the safest option: veg. It is a great pizza for ₹70 and when I ask what cheese they use, the answer is, of course, Amul. That explains why cheesy pizzas are so popular here. We’re barely 100 km from India’s dairy capital, Anand.

Hi-tech city

To figure out Bharuch’s real history, I climb to the old town’s citadel, which stands on a hilltop between Furja Bandar and Malbari Darwaja, to pay a visit to the oldest library of south Gujarat, the mid-19th century Raichand Dipchand Library that has a fine collection of rare manuscripts in Gujarati. The helpful librarian digs out books and offers me a nice desk to sit at.

Although the Bharuch of today is a high-tech zone of chemical and petrochemical industries, as well as pharmaceuticals and peanuts processing, it is also a city with a distinct heritage. Chatting with people, I occasionally hear that their hometown is 10,000 years old. While the city bespeaks of great age, it is difficult to figure out exactly how ancient anything is. It is old and new at the same time; the most traditional bazaars offer the latest selfie-centred smartphone brands.

Based on my reading, the port was incorporated into the Mauryan Empire during Ashoka’s grandfather Chandragupta’s time, but Ashoka’s death in the 230s BCE marked the end of that empire. Until the mid-1st century CE, it remains unclear who ruled here, but the Periplus, written in circa 80 CE, claims that the Greek drachma was common currency in Barygaza. Subsequently a local ruler, Nahapana, started minting his own pseudo-drachmas sometime around 100 CE, so there was a deep Greek influence.

Later, I’m informed by an upper-class gentleman I chat with that harbour or no harbour, Furja is still the town’s baddest area and nobody in his sane mind should go there alone.

The Greeks involved in this hypothetical ‘Greek era’ were presumed to be left-behinds of Alexander the Great’s horde that had set up an empire called Bactria (with its capital in today’s Afghanistan). The British colonial district gazetteer, in fact, inserts a possible Bactrian-Greek period during 180 BCE to 100 BCE, then rather curiously adds the contradictory statement that ‘this view is now disproved’.

Whatever the case, in 45 CE the monsoon system, also known as ‘trade winds’, was scientifically documented by a Greek sailor named Hippalus. This information made the crossing from the Red Sea to the Indian coast literally a breeze—and long-distance trade became highly attractive. Although there are no exact figures, those 120 ships per year mentioned by Strabo may have multiplied. Indian merchants got into investing heavily in the lucrative ocean trade, their boats got more advanced and could hold up to 700 passengers and much merchandise, though the ships built by Romans for the India trade were up to 10 times bigger.

Maritime trade

Captains probably didn’t mind paying custom duties and piloting fees, since the local ruler maintained the port well and saw to it that ships reached safe by providing trained pilots—these were evidently available as far away as the next ports down the line, which sounds like a clever strategy to bring more business to Barygaza. Such a system would explain why the Periplus makes a special mention of gifts for Indian rulers: beautiful girls, fancy garments and silver tableware.

Gifts also went in the opposite direction. One particularly exotic consignment was sent for Emperor Augustus in 20 BCE, along with a trade offer. This was the first Indian embassy to make a serious mark in European history due to the various amazing animals—giant snakes and turtles—and the presence of an Indian holy man. The latter self-immolated to prove a point during his philosophical discourse in Athens, which made such a sensation that a monument was erected over his pyre mentioning that he had come all the way from Barygaza. The tomb remained an attraction for hundreds of years, but was gone when I flew to Athens to look for it, although we may note that A.L. Basham in his The Wonder That Was India proposes that ‘when St Paul wrote “though I give my body to be burned, and have no charity, it profiteth me nothing”, he had in mind this incident of some 60 or 70 years earlier, of which he had heard from his Athenian colleagues.’

This event creates a direct link between the emperor of Rome and Barygaza at a stage just before overseas trade hit the big time. Augustus may have personally negotiated with the delegation, the unnamed leader of which carried an official letter written in Greek on the skin of a lamb, by an Indian king whose name is unclear but who essentially invited merchants to visit India freely to pursue whatever commerce they wished as long as it didn’t involve criminal activities. It is thought that this king was of the Pandyan dynasty, which makes him Tamil. Aside from the noteworthy fact that he audaciously set down the rules of engagement to the Roman emperor, the fact that a king sitting in Madurai sent a letter in Greek is in itself quite remarkable, implying that speakers of that language were already settled in Tamil Nadu.

As I’m sitting at my borrowed reading desk, I start chatting with a local poet, K.K. Rohith, habitué of the library. He plays for me a phone recording of a singer reciting his poetry in Gujarati, which is about love and pain. We step out to catch the sunset from the citadel’s ramparts, but as we pass an ancient looking mansion, I ask the poet who, if anybody, lives in it today.

The poet starts banging on all the doors. It has at least four entrances so it takes a lot of banging before a girl calls down from the rooftop, asking what we want. He tells her that we have come for a visit. Accepting that succinct explanation, she lets us into a dimly lit hall with antique furniture and stuffed animal heads on the walls. She looks strangely out of place, casually dressed and speaking perfect English. It turns out that she’s the youngest member of a Muslim family of great antiquity, descended from Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, the Sufi saint who came to India in 1191. I’m awed. So I ask her what she does for a living, is she also a saint?

“No, I’m a doctor and I’ve spent the last seven years studying medicine in China.”

She politely shows us around the mansion where a large sitting room is filled with memorabilia—essentially her family’s collection, which includes antique glass lamps, Chinaware, swords and English-manufactured clocks, one of which dates to the 1500s. Nothing particularly Greek about it, but the unexpected encounter makes me totally appreciate that I’m in a glorious town full of ancient heritage.

The author is fascinated with places where tourists don’t go, especially if there’s something to eat that he hasn’t tried before.