140 J. HORNELL ON 



Each of these regions has its own boat types, its own characteristics in weather, 

 climate and coast formation. In frequent cases characteristic boat types are co- 

 extensive in range with the Hmits of race and language or the influence of foreign 

 sea-trade. The North- West Coast is arid and stony, with physical and climatic condi- 

 tions closeh^ approximating to those of Arabia and, as we shall see, Arab boat designs 

 are dominant and characteristic. In Bombay itself we get the same types mingled 

 with others truly Indian in origin, but southward in the much indented coast, moist 

 and well wooded, that stretches to Goa and Mangalore, we find Arab influence ousted 

 by indigenous and Polynesian types, but reviving partially in Malabar where though 

 the Malayali adheres to the indigenous dug-out design, the Arab type is largely built 

 at those Mappilla centres where the strain of Arab blood is appreciable, as for example 

 at Calicut, Beypore and Ponnani. 



Turning Cape Comorin we find that Polynesian and indigenous types have held 

 their own successfully against the Arab. The former influence at the present day is 

 found best developed on the Ceylon side among the vSinhalese ; in India it is seen in 

 strength in the north-west corner of the Gulf of Mannar and universally in Palk Bay 

 and Strait ; elsewhere on this section of the Indian coast indigenous designs of cata- 

 maran and canoe are well-marked and unusual. 



Northward of Point Calimere is the real home of the catamaran, a truly Indian 

 type, specialized for use upon the surf-beaten Coromandel and northern Telugu coasts 

 where the catamaran and masula boat must continue to hold their own wherever 

 there be no harbours of refuge, such as Madras and Cocanada. 



In Bengal the smaller coast craft have little importance, the types seen being 

 really varieties of Ganges dinghis and of dug-out canoes, whilst in Burma, Mongolian 

 and Malay influence is paramount, modified in type by local conditions and the 

 innate unskillfulness of the Burman in boatcraft. 



River craft are types apart and throughout India are all very archaic in their 

 general features, resembling ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian types so closely 

 that they vivify scenes on the Nile and the Tigris in the days of Rameses and 

 Assurbanipal. 



The North- West Coast. 



vSailing along the Mekran coast, past the mouths of the Indus and thence past 

 Kutch and Kathiawar to the Gulf of Cambay, the Arab voyager finds this coast but 

 a continuation and outlier of his own arid sandy home-land ; this has been the only 

 land in India that the Arab has occupied even temporarily, Sind and the lower 

 valley of the Indus having been occupied by the Arab Kasim early in the eighth cen- 

 tury, though we have records of Arab naval raids on this coast as early as 636 A.D., 

 only four years after the Prophet's death. 



Although Arab domination in Sind and the adjacent lands was short-lived, trade 

 with the Persian Gulf and the south of Arabia has existed from time immemorial, 

 and it is therefore natural to find Arab influence exclusively dominant in boat and 

 ship design everywhere along this coast. Whether in the great kotia, the Indian 



