200 J. HORNELL ON 



shows clearly that these were not well suited to the longer and more dangerous voy- 

 ages to China, and the same writer has left a description of the vessels engaged in the 

 Indo-China trade which shows them to have been typical junks. That he makes no 

 mention of any other class of vessel engaged in this trade as he would certainly have 

 done had there been any, seems to show that the accepted idea of the meeting of 

 Chinese with Arab vessels at Kayal, Ouilon, Calicut and Deli was the normal one, in 

 spite of the fact that there was an Arab settlement in Canton dating from 300 A.D. 

 The inference is that the Arab traders utilized Chinese vessels for their operations, 

 just as Arab firms, were there any now in China, would in all probability be shipping 

 Chinese goods to India in British-built steamers. This view receives complete con- 

 firmation from Ibn Batuta's statement that the voyage to China from Malabar is so 

 dangerous that it can only be undertaken in large vessels which are built only at 

 Zaitiin and Sin Kilan in. Cliina} This traveller himself when he wished to proceed 

 to China took passage in a Chinese junk then lying off Calicut. 



The Arabs prior to Muhammad's time had been content with their role of peace- 

 ful traders and sea-carriers ; under the impetus of fanaticism and the lust for power 

 and wealth which increased with each succeeding success, within four years of the 

 Prophet's death, two Arab naval expeditions were sent from Uman and Bahrein 

 against Thana and Broach on the Bombay coast and against Debal in Sind (A.D. 637). 

 Other raids took place in 662 and 664, and in 712 the youthful Muhammad Kasim 

 advanced into Sind to claim damages for a Sinhalese ship seized off the port of Debal 

 (probably the modern Karachi) . Kasim himself went overland, but the great war 

 engines — catapults requiring 500 men to work them — were transported by sea ; the size 

 of the vessels must have been considerable for the carriage of such heavy and bulky 

 cargo. After a brilliant campaign he settled himself in the Indus valley and thus 

 early established a naval base of the utmost value to Arab sea-traders. This in- 

 timate relationship of Sind with Arabia has ever since been maintained with the result 

 that Sind boat designs, as already noted, are purely Arab in every respect. 



With the Bombay and Malabar coast, Arab relations were almost equally intimate 

 but there they never obtained direct territorial power although indirectly the adhe- 

 sion of certain coast potentates — notably the semi-mythical Cheruman Perumal, Lord 

 of Malabar, and at later date the sea-kings of Cannanore — to their faith, gave them 

 enormous influence. Their power on the coasts of Southern India had reached a high 

 level when the Portuguese arrived, and it is more than probable that if Vasco da 

 Gama had not brought European power to India, the Arabs would have made a bid 

 for extensive religious domination exactly as they did successfully in Java and Sumatra 

 at the same period. The Portuguese arrived at India at one of the great psycho- 

 logical moments in the history of India and destroyed the one great chance the Arabs 

 had of founding coast kingdoms in India on the decline of the Vijayanagar power. 



Originally the chief object of sea- trade with India was the desire in Europe for 

 its spices and precious stones and fine cottons ; with the growth of great states in 



1 Tsiuen-chau (near Amoy) and Canton respectively, according to Yule. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. II, 

 p. 190. Liondon, 1871. 



