gems, Pliny, coral, Romanukharatta, Sri Lanka

This essay is all about the arrival in Rome of a certain Rachias, an ambassador from Taprobanê, as recounted by Pliny. We would still like to clear up some facts about the name Rachias which then could be the same as Raki mentioned in the cave inscriptions in Sri Lanka. It is a Sinhalese name, indicating an important personage, the contemporary of Claudius. One can thus confirm, through a confrontation with Sinhalese epigraphs, the historicity of the episode Pliny had preserved. Thus questioning the Sinhalese origin of the name we will valorise the account of a Roman historian justifying it. We will try to pay our debt to Pliny by refuting the accusations directed at him by some scholars such as Raschke, saying that Pliny is for the gullible, accusing him of believing in deep-sea yarns and presenting them as truly historical facts. We shall try on the one hand to give an interpretation of Sinhalese epigraphic sources as well as chronicles mentioning sending of an embassy to the country of the Romans by the king Bhātikābhaya. On the other hand, to bring to the fore what lies behind the name: Rachias, cited by Pliny alluding to these very rock inscriptions. Following that, we could establish a connexion between the different elements, starting with the bilingual graffiti discovered in the eastern desert of Egypt, which had been cut by Paminis Heraklēou Lysas, the Greek freedman of Publius Annius Plocamus, whose name appears in Pliny in the same passage in which he calls up the ambassador Rachias. It’s all about giving the appropriate value to that episode worthy of interest in the history of links between the Rome of Cæsars and Sri Lanka.