190 J. HORNELL ON INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 



In Burma an entirely different type of river craft is in use, bigget, smarter, and 

 better built by far than the rough and archaic Bengal rice carriers. To quote the 

 description given by Warington Smy the in his charming ' ' Mast and Sail " : — 



" Owing to the prevalence of the southerly sea breeze which blows upstream for 

 many months after the end of the cool season, these boats are rigged only for run- 

 ning up against the stream. When going against the wind they punt or pull along 

 with the current, and never beat to windward. The squaresail, or square-headed lug, 

 is the only sail practically known in Burma. And in these boats the mast is a tri- 

 angle formed of two spars meeting at the apex in a manner already familiar to us in 

 ancient Egyptian drawings of the third and fourth dynasties, and still also used in 

 the Red River of Indo-China.' The yard is a standing spar supported by a network 

 of halyards. The sail and its topsails are brailed up to the mast, and when set are 

 hauled out along the yard from the deck. A crowd of these craft running before the 

 fresh south wind up the broad Irawaddi form a fine sight in their way." 



The most beautiful work in these boats is about the stern and the steersman's 

 seat upon which the Burman loves to bestow his most elaborate and careful wood 

 carving. Here, as Warington Smy the remarks," the classical scholar may recognize 

 his old friend the ancient Ku/3epr,/r^;; sitting in state raised aloft beneath his a4>\a%rov ; 

 and he may study almost the identical method in which Greek heroes and Roman 

 merchantmen used to sling their oar-blade rudders on the quarter, following the Egyp- 

 tian example which takes one back to the very earliest days of man's boat-building. 



Some up-river forms of boats among the Burmans and Talaings are very pretty 

 and elegant. The fiddle-head 'clipper ' or ' schooner' bow shape is a great favourite, 

 although, owing to the shallowness and rounded-up form of the ends of these canoe- 

 built craft, the lower edge of the stem is frequently carried right out of water." 



For minor river and creek work, dug-out canoes are everywhere in evidence in 

 Burma, the design light and more elegant than that of Malabar. In Burma proper 

 the clipper bow and overhanging stern common to the large river craft are adopted, 

 giving an exceedingly graceful appearance. In the Shan States on the great Inle 

 Lake, the fishermen use a narrow shallow design very lightly hollowed along its length 

 except at either end where it is left flat to form a tiny platform. Both ends are broad 

 and truncated, terminating in two short claw-like horns. It is virtually a hollowed- 

 out plank rather than a dug-out trea trunk ; its draft is exceedingly small and its form 

 such that it can be poled with ease over weed-grown shallows where no deep dug-out 

 could pass. 



I It was also the common mast form in Java in the 8th century as shown in the Boro Budur sculptures in that 

 island. — J. H. 



