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Hippalus was a first century BCE Greek navigator credited by the writer of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea and by Pliny the Elder with discovering the direct route from Arabia Felix to India over the Indian Ocean. He is conjectured by some to have been the captain of the ship of Eudoxus of Cyzicus, the Greek explorer.In discussions of the history of the Trade between India and the Greco-Roman World he was until recently said to have discovered the Monsoon wind also called Hippalus. In the Periplus we read however that he discovered the new route by plotting the correct location of the trade ports along the Indian coast, and the scheme of the sea. The historian André Tchernia explains that the connection between the wind and the navigator was based on common pronunciation: in the Hellenistic Era the name of the wind was written as Hypalus, only in Roman times the spelling Hippalus came in use. The wind had already been known in Hellenistic times and had before been used by Arab and Indian sailors to cross the Indian Ocean.
The use of the monsoon by Roman sailors from the first century BCE onwards to travel directly from Arabia Felix to India greatly contributed to the prosperity of trade contacts between Roman Egypt and the regions in southern India now known as Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
In modern times a crater on the moon was named after the navigator.
Reference
- Federico De Romanis and André Tchernia, Crossings: Early Mediterranean Contacts with India (New Delhi 1997)
Ancient Greeks
