ing prestige to the Sassanid dynasty.

Again, not far from the time of Boethius, in the sixth century, the
Egyptian monk Cosmas, in his earlier years as a trader, made journeys to
Abyssinia and even to India and Ceylon, receiving the name _Indicopleustes_
(the Indian traveler). His map (547 A.D.) shows some knowledge of the earth
from the Atlantic to India. Such a man would, with hardly a doubt, have
observed every numeral system used by the people with whom he
sojourned,[329] and whether or not he recorded his studies in permanent
form he would have transmitted such scraps of knowledge by word of mouth.

As to the Arabs, it is a mistake to feel that their activities began with
Mohammed. Commerce had always been held in honor by them, and the
Qoreish[330] had annually for many generations sent caravans bearing the
spices and textiles of Yemen to the shores of the Mediterranean. In the
fifth century they traded by sea with India and even with China, and
[H.]ira was an emporium for the wares of the East,[331] so that any numeral
system of any part of the trading world could hardly have remained
isolated.

Long before the warlike activity of the Arabs, Alexandria had become the
great market-place of the world. From this center caravans traversed Arabia
to Hadramaut, where they met ships from India. Others went north to
Damascus, while still others made their way {83} along the southern shores
of the Mediterranean. Ships sailed from the isthmus of Suez to all the
commercial ports of Southern Europe and up into the Black Sea. Hindus were
found among the merchants[332] who frequented the bazaars of Alexandria,
and Brahmins were reported even in Byzantium.

Such is a very brief resume of the evidence showing that the numerals of
the Punjab and of other parts of India as well, and indeed those of China
and farther Persia, of Ceylon and the Malay peninsula, might well have been
known to the merchants of Alexandria, and even to those of any other
seaport of the Mediterranean, in the time of Boethius. The Br[=a]hm[=i]
numerals would not have attracted the attention of scholars, for they had
no zero so far as we know, and therefore they were no better and no worse
than those of dozens of other systems. If Boethius was attracted to them it
was probably exactly as any one is naturally attracted to the bizarre or
the mystic, and he would have mentioned them in his works only
incidentally, as indeed they are mentioned in the manuscri