This paper examines textual traditions within Byzantine and Indian scholarship to understand the idea of India that existed amongst Byzantine scholars and vice-versa.  The paper begins by focusing on an enigmatic text; the Christian Topography of Cosmas to demonstrate that the Byzantine view of India was exoticising with the sub-continent serving as the ‘óther’ which existed at the far edges of the Roman world, another that needed to be constantly documented and reported for the people back home. This paper then throws light on the process of ‘other’ ing, as evident in the contemporary Sangam texts produced in the Tamil region, with Byzantium being clubbed with all other outsiders to ‘Tamilakam’ as ‘ýavanas . The process of othering did not simple stop here and the final part of the paper analyses the manner in which the Byzantine empire was represented by Islamic scholars as a symbol of decadence and profligacy; the culmination of this world view being reflected in the works of the eighteenthcentury Indian scholar Shah Waliullah.  Thus, this paper tries to present a brief understanding of the manner in which Indian and Byzantine texts represented each other, a representation characterized by a deliberate other-ing of one another.