PART II.— A REVIEW OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF ANCIENT 

 SEA-TRADE WITH INDIA. 



Before discussing the ethnological bearing of the facts enumerated in Part I^ and 

 seeing what light they shed on the question of trade intercourse between India and 

 the surrounding nations and races prior to the modern historical Indian sea-era which 

 dates from the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498 A.D., we require to review our 

 knowledge of the subject as obtained from sculptures, drawings, and inscriptions in 

 respect of the most ancient nations, and from historical writers and geographers 

 in classical and mediaeval days. Taken more or less in order of their age, we may list 

 the countries or races that have had or may have had trade intercourse with India 

 as follows : — -Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian, Phoenician and Jewish, Greek, 

 Saba^an and Arab, Chinese, and finally Malay and Polynesian. 



The Egyptians. 



The ancient Egyptians have not commonly been accounted a sea-faring race but 

 we have ample evidence, in the frequent representations of boats and galleys of 

 sizes from a one-man punt to large sea-going cargo galleys, and from the important 

 part played by boats in funeral ceremonies, that they were no mean boat-builders 

 and sailors, though it is not unlikely that the pilots and crews employed on ships 

 engaged in oversea trade were often recruited from coast people not necessarily Egyp- 

 tian by race. Even as far back as the pre-dynastic period which probably lasted 

 till after 4000 B.C., we see crude representation of boats painted on pottery and in 

 rude incised pictures on the rocks. Besides the light boats in which they attacked 

 the hippopotamus and the crocodile with harpoons and lances, they built vessels of 

 considerable size on the Nile, apparently propelled by many oars ; sailing ships were 

 rare but were not unknown. 



In the old kingdom which lasted from 2980 to 2475 B.C.,' in every town and on 

 every large estate ship-building was constant. There were many different styles of 

 craft from the heavy cargo boat for grain and cattle to the magnificent galley of the 

 noble, rigged with a great square sail. 



It is important to note that while in the oldest Egyptian boats as depicted on 

 prehistoric pottery their one mast was a single spar, representations of those belong- 

 ing to the dynasties from the 4th to the nth frequently show the mast as double, 

 formed of two spars stepped apart but so inclined in A-form as to meet at the mast- 

 head. From the nth dynasty the single- spar mast alone survives. 



Sneferu of the 4th dynasty, who ruled circa 2900 B.C., built vessels nearly 170 feet 

 long for traffic and administration on the Nile. He opened up commerce with the 



' All these ancient Egyptian dates are still problematical. Some authorities would put the earlier of these dates 

 over 2000 years further back. I employ the chronology adopted by J. H Breasted in A History of the Ancient Egyp- 

 tians, I^ondon, 1908. 



