INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 211 



" Among the marts and anchorages along this shore to which merchants from 

 Damirike ^ (Malabar Coast) and the north resort, the most conspicuous are Kamara 

 (Kaveripattanam), Poduke and Sopatma/^ which occur in the order in which we have 

 named them. In these marts are found those native vessels for coasting voyages 

 which trade as far as Damirike and another kind called Sangara, ' monoxyla ' of the 

 largest sort, and also others called Kolaniiophonta which are of great bulk and em- 

 ployed for voyages to the Ganges and Khruse " (Golden Chersonese or Malay Penin- 

 sula.) '^ 



Besides these references we have records of the invasion by sea [circa 1025 A.D.) 

 of the Burmese coast by South Indian (Chola) powers and it is certain that Indian 

 kings during the early centuries of our era carried their arms by sea to the coasts of 

 Sumatra and Java, where indeed a peaceful Indian penetration had begun probably 

 some centuries B.C. Particularly marked was the extension of Indian commerce in 

 the time of Chandragupta, a great warrior statesman brought to the front by the im- 

 pact of Europe upon India. It is even probable that he was of the Persian royal 

 family as Dr. Spooner has argued, and Greek influence may have had much to do 

 with the energy he infused into the commercial intercourse of India with the outer 

 world. In his day great progress was made in traffic with the far east and it is 

 probable that even then (316-292 B.C.) Hindus began to found settlements in Java, 

 Siam and Cambodia, and to introduce Brahmanism into those countries. Trade 

 with Chavakam, meaning Sumatra and Java, is alluded to frequently in several of the 

 very old Tamil poems quoted by Kanakasabhai Pillai iti his Tamils 1800 years ago. 

 The early Arab writers indeed considered Sumatra and Java as being part of 

 India. ^ Abu Zaid {c. 916 A.D.) relates a story of an old invasion of the Pandyan 

 country by the Maharaja of Java — incidentally mentioning that it was about 10 days' 

 sail between the two kingdoms, " but when the wind is light the journey may take as 

 much as 20 days." 



The frequent references to countries on the nothern and eastern shores of the Bay 

 of Bengal and to Java and Sumatra further east, in the oldest classical writers of 

 South India, show very clearly that intercommunication was easier and more frequent 

 than we usually realize, and this infers fairly large and seaworthy vessels. 



P'rom very early days trade between Ceylon and Bengal was important. The 

 chank bangles esteemed so necessary by Hindu ladies in Bengal were obtained entirely 

 from the South Indian and Ceylon fisheries and the muslins of Bengal returned in 

 exchange. Fa Hian, the Chinese Buddhist who travelled in India betwen 399 and 

 414 A.D., is one of the first writers who specifically mention this Bengal mercantile 

 shipping in ancient days ; in a passage describing his pilgrimage to see the Buddhist 



1 I adopt Damirike in place of the Limurike of the MSS. as suggested by Rawlinson, loc. cit., p. 120. 



2 Poduke may be Pondicherry (Puducheri) as suggested by other authors, but I beheve Rawlinson is in error in 

 identifying Sopatma with Madras. It is more likely to be represented by the now decayed port of Kistnapatam fur- 

 ther north. 



s Probably sangara were double-canoes (sangadam, Tamil), while kolandiophonta, or kolandia as Schoff prefers to 

 call them, were possibly outrigger ships. See p 215 for a discussion of this question. 



+ As instance Al Masudi, who died 956 A.D. Sumatra was usually confounded with Java under the name Zabaj. 



