INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 169 



to outside influences. The same inference may be drawn regarding the Point 

 Cahmere kalla dhonis which are employed solely in traffic with the north of Ceylon. 

 The latter also are manned by devout Hindu crews, who are accustomed to worship 

 at the shrine of Mari Amman in Kodikarai after each voyage is safely accomplished. 



In special danger or storm the seamen call upon her for help, shouting Amma !, 

 Amma !, and vow offerings (of money) that they may reach shore in safety. Usually 

 the money vowed is tied in a cloth and nailed to the mast then and there. A 

 Brahman officiated in the temple as pujari at the time of my visit ; in the com- 

 paratively recent days when these dhonis were numerous, the Amman temple was 

 accounted rich — so regular and continuous was the stream of offerings. 



In the days when rail and steamer traffic had not bitten deeply into the coast 

 trade, these kalla dhonis ran between Kodikarai and Kayts, the little deep-water 

 port of Jaffna in Ceylon. As recently as 1886 they were busily employed in ferry- 

 ing passengers and cattle across to Ceylon, and a writer describing the harbour 

 of Kayts in that year ("Ceylon Literary Register," Vol. I, p. 24) records seeing about 

 thirty of these boats moored alongshore. 



They carried passengers for as little as 12 annas each, to and from Ceylon, 

 a low rate that encouraged much coming and going, so much so that many Jaffna 

 shopkeepers and tobacco growers living at Vedaranniyam, being able to pay week- 

 end visits to their families in Ceylon, preferred to leave them there rather than 

 transplant them to India. Were the present Ceylon quarantine restrictions to be 

 renloved, with the opening of the railway to Vedaranniyam, it is probable that 

 this old and natural route for traffic between Ceylon and the Coromandel coast 

 would revive and bring fresh prosperity to the neighbourhood of Point Calimere. 



The East Coast. 



Along the whole of the East Coast of India the true catamaran is the charac- 

 teristic fishing craft. Except for the use of big sewn-plank boats used in shore 

 seining and of various forms of backwater and river boats which ply in the estuaries 

 and occasionally venture seawards, the catamaran is dominant the moment Cape 

 Calimere is turned. The surf -beaten sandy coast line that runs with few interrup- 

 tions from Tan] ore to Orissa scarce knows any other sail but the brown triangle of 

 these sea-going specialized rafts ; that their Tamil name, for onxe purely descriptive — 

 kathu mar am or "tied logs" — -has become an English word bespeaks the uniqueness 

 of their design. Our ancients, without previous experience of such weird craft, 

 having no name whereby to speak of them, had perforce to use the native term 

 and this has persisted, as the craft itself will persist for centuries to come as the only 

 possible type for use on such an exposed and harbourless coast. 



Two distinct types of catamaran exist, the finer and more elaborate model being- 

 found on the Coromandel coast, from Cape Calimere to the delta of the Kistna ; the 

 other, more primitive and less efficient, along the coast further north. 



The former type is the catamaran at its highest possible state of development — 

 the furthest possible evolution of the raft idea that shares with the dug-out the honour 



