With reference to the 'Indian Ocean', which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. It was called by the Ancient Greeks as Erythraean Sea.
2. It is spread on the either side of equator.
Select

Question

With reference to the 'Indian Ocean', which of the following statements is/are correct ?
1. It was called by the Ancient Greeks as Erythraean Sea.
2. It is spread on the either side of equator.
Select the correct answer from the code given below :
Code :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, Both 1 and 2. Statement 1 is the standard historical point. Ancient Greek geographers knew these waters as the Erythraean Sea, Erythra Thalassa, the 'red sea' in the literal sense — and the name did not mean what 'Red Sea' means on a modern map. At its widest use, most famously in the first-century-CE Greek navigational handbook the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, the term covered the present-day Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean as a single sailing region, the whole world of the monsoon trade that carried Roman gold to Indian ports and pepper and cotton back. In narrower usage it meant the north-western Indian Ocean, the waters around Socotra between Cape Guardafui and the Hadhramaut coast. Either way, the Greeks' name for the Indian Ocean was the Erythraean Sea, and the statement stands. Statement 2 is straightforwardly true and is a matter of reading a globe. The Indian Ocean runs from roughly thirty degrees north, at the head of the Persian Gulf, down to sixty degrees south, where it meets the Southern Ocean, so the equator cuts across it and it lies in both hemispheres. Because Asia walls it in on the north, its northern reach is short and by far the greater part of its area lies south of the equator — the opposite of the impression a candidate carries from an atlas page centred on India. Both statements being correct, the answer is option (b).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) It accepts the geography and rejects the history, and the history is sound. The Erythraean Sea is not an invented label: it is the name under which these waters enter Greek geographical writing, and it survives in the title of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, the first-century merchant's guide to the ports of the Red Sea, East Africa and western India. Candidates reject statement 1 because 'Erythraean' sounds like 'Red Sea' and they assume the Greeks meant only that narrow gulf; in Greek usage the term was far wider.  (c) Both statements are in fact correct, so this option requires two independent errors. It is the choice of a candidate who doubts the Greek name and simultaneously thinks of the Indian Ocean as a northern-hemisphere sea because the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal dominate the Indian map. Neither doubt survives contact with the facts: the Greek name is attested, and the ocean stretches from about thirty degrees north to the Antarctic waters at sixty degrees south.  (d) This is the more interesting mistake, because it comes from a real but misapplied piece of knowledge. The Indian Ocean is the only ocean shut in by land on the north — Asia blocks it at roughly thirty degrees north — and a candidate who has learnt that fact sometimes converts it into 'the Indian Ocean does not extend far', or thinks of it as lying north of the equator around India. The truth is the reverse: the northern limit is short precisely because of the landmass, while the southern arm runs all the way to sixty degrees south, so most of the ocean is in the southern hemisphere and the equator passes through it. Statement 2 is correct.

Concept: The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the oceans, about 70.56 million square kilometres, roughly a fifth of the world's ocean surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west, Australia to the east and the Southern Ocean to the south at sixty degrees south, and it is the only ocean named after a country. Its defining peculiarity is that northern wall of land: unlike the Atlantic and the Pacific, which run from Arctic to Antarctic, the Indian Ocean is cut off at about thirty degrees north, which is why it cannot develop a cold northern current system and why its northern circulation instead reverses twice a year with the monsoon winds. Its average depth is about 3,741 metres and its deepest known point lies in the Sunda or Java Trench, about 7,290 metres.

State PCS 2025 Q130 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q130 — Geography PYQ with Answer