INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 179 



the barque, the brig, and the topsail schooner. Even to-day East Coast harbours 

 often contain a goodly collection of wooden brigs and schooners with here and there 

 a barque with high poop and pai nted imitation gun-ports, that are wholly European 

 of the early nineteenth century in appearance. Of Portuguese influence the larger 

 three-masted Maldivian trader seems the only instance but a most interesting one, as 

 it reproduces for us almost all the outstanding features of the fifteenth century 

 caravels used by Columbus. The Dutch in spite of their skill in ship-building and 

 first-class seamanship appear to have left no trace on Indian ship-designing. Pro- 

 bably both they and the Portuguese did exercise a great deal of influence on 

 design in their day, this being lost or overlaid by British and Erench design as these 

 powers displaced their predecessors. 



Of modern European influence upon boat designing scarcely a trace exists, 

 except in the isolated case of the Pamban dhoni, a transom or square-sterned 

 lugger used largely in ferrying pilgrims to and from Rameswaram island in the pre- 

 viaduct days. 



The small coaster class built in the north of Ceylon, generally called Jaffna 

 dhonis, are weatherly vessels running to 150 tons' burden, and deserve particular 

 notice from the many archaic features surviving in their build. Technically known 

 in Tamil as padagu, they hail mostly from the little port of Valaveddithurai. The 

 majority are owned and manned by more than usually devout Hindus, the remain- 

 der by Muhammadans (Eabbais). 



Their rig is that of a fore and aft two-masted schooner with enormously 

 developed bowsprit and head sails. Primarily the rig is European — almost the only 

 foreign point about these boats, but in process of adoption the number of head sails 

 has been increased beyond anything seen elsewhere, as many as five jibs being in 

 regular use. Stem and stern are sharp and somewhat raked; the former ends 

 in an inwardly coiled ornamental head in Hindu dhonis, called surul {a?(irj>m)^ the 

 bowsprit being placed on the starboard side. In Moslem ships, no surul is seen, 

 the stem passing forwards to give support to the bowsprit, which here is placed 

 in the median line. 



The surul in Hindu padagus bears three horizontal white bars painted on the 

 aft edge (PI. VI, fig. i) ; these represent the three ash lines used by Saivite Hindus 

 as their sect mark and the sign of their god. In these boats it has the same signifi- 

 cance. Beneath it in a tiny recess in the bows is the little shrine of the god, 

 before which one of the crew, who acts as pujari, with the aid of an assistant performs 

 worship daily and in particular before leaving port. On a shelf in the recess a 

 blowing conch and other items of the ceremony are usally kept. In the ritual 

 followed, a lamp is kept alight on the shelf, incense is burned, the conch is blown, 

 a bell rung, a coconut broken, libation made, and plantains and betel offered to the 

 god. 



Eore and aft is a short deck ending in each case in a high transverse breakwater, 

 2^ to 3 feet in height, sloping towards amidships. The waist between is undecked, 

 but is covered in by a penthouse roofing of palm leaves overlaid and strengthened 



