INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 201 



the Deccan and the south, the export of horses from the Persian Gulf became to Arab 

 shipowners even more important. Marco Polo as usual is a mine of information on 

 Arab trade. He tells how in one of the kingdoms of Java the lycss (Sumatra) "the 

 idolators hy frequent trade with Saracen merchants are converted to the law of Muham- 

 rnad " ; how in the south of India the kings of Ma'abar (the Arab name for the Pan- 

 dyan country on the Gulf of Mannar) buy their horses from Ormuz, Aden and other Arab 

 ports. Still more valuable is his description of the Arab ships he saw at Ormuz : — 



" Their ships are wretched affairs and many of them get lost ; for they have no 

 iron fastenings and are only stitched together with twine made from the husk of the 

 Indian nut. They beat this husk until it becomes like horse-hair and from this they 

 spin twine and with this stitch the planks of the ships together. It keeps well and is 

 not corroded by the sea- water, but it will not stand well in a storm. The ships are 

 not pitched but are rubbed with fish oil. They have one mast, one sail, and one rud- 

 der, and have no deck but only a cover spread over the cargo when loaded. This 

 cover consists of hides, and on the top of these hides, they put the horses which they 

 take to India for sale. They have no iron to make nails of, and for this reason they 

 use only wooden trenails in their shipbuilding and then stitch the planks with the 

 twine as I have told you. Hence 'tis a perilous business to go a voyage in one of 

 these ships, and many of them are lost for in that Sea of India the storms are often 

 terrible." ' 



From this vv^e gather the valuable fact that the Axoh ships of the Kerman coast 

 at the end of the thirteenth century continued to be built in the same manner as when 

 the author of the Periplus saw them in the first century of our era and remarked upon 

 the strangeness of sewing the planks of the hull together instead of using nails for the 

 purpose. The sea-going boats of the Laccadive islands and some of the shore boats 

 of the Malabar and Coromandel coasts continue the plank- sewn tradition to the present 

 day, no metal bolts being employed in their construction. Marco Polo's description 

 further indicates the probability that the mizzen mast had not yet been introduced. 

 The dhow of the thirteenth century also appears to have had no high poop, otherwise 

 such a prominent feature would surely have been remarked by this traveller whose 

 descriptions are always accurate and detailed of what he himself saw. The type 

 was apparently a small edition of the large Kathiawar Dhangi, sharp and compara- 

 tively low at the stern. The addition of the aft castle or poop with richly decorated 

 transom stern, as seen in the Arab Baggala and the Indian Kotia of the present day, 

 appears to have been adopted from the Portuguese caravels ; the resemblance be- 

 tween them is most striking and convincing. 



Beyond this we need not follow the course of Arab trade and ship design. It 

 merges henceforward into the realm of every-day knowledge. 



The Chinese and India. 



Chinese trade next requires attention. We have seen how an Arab colony was 

 founded in Canton about 300 A.D. We have Chinese travellers in India and Ceylon 



I Yule's Marco Polo, Vol. I, p. 102 (1871). 



