Cochin is an ancient city set on the Arabian sea with strong indigenous cultural representation as well as foreign influences and cultural from the Arabs, Jewish, Portuguese and the British. Colonial Portuguese and British Churches stand surrounded by ancient temples and a Synagogue.   The hospitality and habits of many cultures have blended to an amalgamation of what today is thought if a Kerala Culture.  Cochin was a tolerant center of intellectuals, religion freedom, trade and the arts. South India’s most important trading since 1st century A.D. Fine hand-loomed skills from the interior of India and precious spices such as cardamom, black and white pepper, and nutmeg were traded to middle eastern Arab brokers from the 1st to 18th century who followed the monsoon winds each year to bring back precious cargo to caravans that delivered these precious items to Rome and later to other European nations where there value was worth more than gold. At one point of time the Roman Senate in the 4th century proposed a law to control the amount skills and spices that could be purchased from India as so much Roman gold had been sent on these items that the treasury was alarmed. In fact so much gold was traded to Cochin that they in turn purchased large amounts of materials and goods from interior and Northern part of India that the Kushan rulers were able to in the beginning of the 1st millennium melt Roman gold coins down and then produce gold coinage of their own.