INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 193 



while the less valuable and more bulky were carried in small Indian or Arab coast 

 craft from Malabar and Gujarat to Babylon itself which then was nearer the sea than 

 at the present day. 



The insatiable needs of that magnificent potentate King Solomon {circa 950 B.C.) 

 appear to have been the cause of the first great attempt to open up d^irect sea-trade 

 with India. For this purpose he found it necessary to enter into a working partner- 

 ship with the greatest sea-king of the time, Hiram of Tyre, who aided him with tim- 

 ber from Lebanon, with shipwrights to build vessels, and with sailors and pilots to 

 take them eastward to Ophir which cannot well have been other than a great mart 

 on the West Coast of India,' where the produce of the gold mines of Hyderabad,' 

 of the spice lands of Malabar, and of the gem-workings of Ceylon, were concentrated 

 to meet the foreign merchant-king's requirements, just as, at a later age, this role 

 was occupied first by Broach and later by Surat. 



To plan a lengthy trading voyage from the head of the Red Sea and across the 

 Indian Ocean without preliminary exploration is unthinkable ; Egyptian sailors manj'- 

 centuries before had found their way to Punt, and where they went, the Phoenicians 

 would find it easy to follow. Saba, the Biblical Sheba, occupying the south-west cor- 

 ner of Arabia and comprising Aden and Musa among her ports, was probably the 

 usual mart where Egyptian and Phoenician products were exchanged for the spices, 

 gold and precious stones of India and Ceylon. If so, it is a fair inference that Solomon's 

 ''wisdom" in equipping a fleet for direct trade with India, had the elimination of 

 very greedy middlemen in the persons of Sabaean traders as its mainspring of action. 

 Here I may mention that the term Sabaean as equivalent to Arab lasted at least till 

 400 A.D., as Fa-hien who travelled in India and Ceylon A.D. 399-414 in describing 

 Anuradhapura in Ceylon (Beale's translation), says: "In the city there are many 

 Vaisya elders and Sabaean merchants whose houses are stately and beautiful." 

 I^egge, a competent authority upon Chinese, remarks (as quoted in the Ceylon Literary 

 Register, Vol. II, p. 216), "Sabaean as Mr. Beale's rendering of them (the Chinese 

 characters) is probably correct. I suppose the merchants were Arabs, forerunners of 

 the so-called Moormen, who still form so important a part of the mercantile commu- 

 nity of Ceylon." 



The prophet Ezekiel in his " Dirge of Tyre " ^ enumerated among the merchants 

 who traded in her markets, those of " Sheba with spices, precious stones and gold." 

 Of these, spices are not typical products of Arabia, and if Saba bartered them with 

 Tyre, it was as a trade intermediary between Tyre and India. 



1 Possibly Ophir was not the name of any particular city ; it may have been the name of some district on the West 

 Coast of India. It is noteworthy that in the Septuagint it appears as "S-M^dpa. and that Sophir is the Coptic name for 

 India (M'Crindle's Translation of the " Periplus," p. 127). Supara near Bassein, mentioned as Souppara in the " Peri- 

 plus" as an important town and rival of Broach, would also answer fairly well as an outlet for the gold of Hyderabad, 

 but H. G. Rawlinson (India and the Western World, p. 12) on the other hand considers Ophir to have been an Arabian 

 trading port at the mouth of the Persian Gulf on the coast of Oman. This I doubt greatly. The Phoenicians were too 

 expert seamen to require three years for a round voyage to Oman and back, whereas to a port on the Indian coast, this 

 period would be reasonable under the conditions then prevailing. 



2 Ezekiel xxvii. 22. 



