India: The Nexus of International Trade in the First Millennium

India has one of the oldest continuously practiced botanical-medical systems in the world. This passage from the Rg Veda, dated to 1500 - 900 BC, extol healing plants and the healer who has mastery of the healing herbs: “those herbs, the firstborn of the gods, three ages of the world ago, those I will worship in my thoughts, the hundred and seven virtues, of those with new (tawny sprouts) ….... With whom the herbs have come together like kingly chiefs and to the gathering that …..is called a healer (bhisaj) a demon-killer, the plague-dispeller….” (translation by Heinrich Zimmer in Hindu Medicine, 1948). This 19th century palm leaf manuscript is an example of one medium used for documenting traditional knowledge systems of India.

Fine muslins and dyed cotton textiles were major items imported from India (see commodities listed from the Muziris Papyrus). Techniques for making fine woven cotton from the perennial Indian cotton plant Gossypium arboretum and dyeing textiles with extracts of madder root (Rubia tinctorum L.) or indigo plant (Indigofera tinctoria) were perfected in India since antiquity. Dyeing fibers of cotton with plant dyes were multistep processes involving complex chemistry. Until synthetic indigo was manufactured in Europe in the 19th century, India was the major source of indigo dye and indigo dyed cottons.

This is one of many manuscript fragments on Indian medicines found at the Buddhist library at Dunhuang, China. According to Chen Ming, reported in the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University, 2005, these fragments deal with Indian medical concepts of Tri-dosa, Mahabhuta, and diseases resulting from abnormal Dosas. Manuscripts on Indian medicine in many Central Asian languages were also discovered at the caves.

By the middle of the second millennium, Indian botanicals were essential items of European life as medicines, food flavorings and items of privilege. The face mask of the Plague Doctor in this image was described to be filled with aromatic spices, including Indian black pepper, believed to be effective against bubonic plague that devastated Europe in the 15th century.

Spices and medicinal plants once exclusively products of India are now cultivated in many parts of the tropics and are widely available. There is vigorous demand and trade in spices in the 21st century due to current interest in the culinary and medicinal properties of spices all around world. This spice shop in Thekkady Hills of Kerala with sacks of Black Pepper, dried Ginger, Cardamom, Turmeric and Cinnamon, still supplies spices to local and international customers.

This composite image from Fort Kochi shows many scenes from contemporary spice trade in Southern India. The large thatch-covered river boats, once used for transport of commodities through the backwaters, are now converted to motorized tourist vessels. The other images are of the India Pepper and Spice Trade Association Building, where auctions are still held for spices sales, ‘Godowns’ with sacks of Black Pepper, mounds of dried Ginger and Turmeric, and images of the Kochi Synagogue, closely associated with the history of the spice trade. And on the lower left are two spice merchants signaling with fingers of covered hands, negotiating prices the traditional way. It was not customary to bid prices out loud, the idea was that in the heat of the open bidding prices may get elevated irrationally!

Over centuries global trade brought distant cultures and communities in contact and had lasting consequences on the history of the world.


This exhibition is part of a series on the India Spice Trade. Do explore the other sections here:

2. In Search of Knowledge and Riches: Communities in Indian Spice Trade

3. Europeans Enter Indian Spice Trade

4. Portuguese and Dutch Records of Indian Medicine

5. British and the Botanical Wealth of India