Muzuris Papyrus (recto side)

The recto side of this document called the Muziris Papyrus, dated to the 2nd century AD (discovered in 1985), is a loan agreement drawn up in Muzuris, on the southwest coast of India, in present day Kerala, between two foreign traders resident there, regarding a shipment of merchandize from Muziris to Alexandria, Egypt on the merchant ship Hermapollon. According to the first century Roman historian Pliny the Elder, merchant ships had mastered using the Monsoon winds to travel from the Middle East to trading cities on the west coast of India. "If the wind, called Hippalus (south-west Monsoon), happens to be blowing it is possible to arrive in forty days at the nearest market in India, Muziris by name." (Pliny the Elder, "The Natural History." John Bostock, Henry Thomas Riley (translators and editors)(1855); Gregory R. Crane (Chief editor). Taylor and Francis; Tufts University: Perseus Digital Library. Retrieved 24 May 2009).