INDIAN BOAT DESIGNS. 22S 



one seeing a crowd of Hoogly dinghis, if he has any acquaintance with Egyptian 

 paintings and remains, can fail to be struck by the similarity between the Indian 

 design and that of the ancient small boats of the Nile. Indeed the Ganges to-day 

 in respect of the craft covering her waters, presents a scene much more like that 

 common on the Nile in the days of the Pharoahs than is its present-day aspect. We 

 have the same multitude of high-sterned, low-prowed boats steered by a single 

 paddle at the stern, while in larger craft we have the same design carried out on a 

 greater scale, the high curved stern retained while the forward part is kept low to 

 permit the use of oars. Ths Egyptian square sail is conserved and, most remark- 

 able of all, in the great river cargo boats of the Ganges many of them retain the 

 primitive quarter steering paddle favoured in ancient Egypt, and in both the shaft 

 of the paddle is provided with a cross bar or tiller at one side, some distance from the 

 end, for its easier manipulation by the steersman. Figures 26 and 27 show the iden- 

 tity of the idea involved as practised by the ancient Egyptians and the river-men of 

 Bengal. In cases where a rudder is used in the larger boats, it assumes the balanced 

 form in which a considerable portion of the blade is placed forward of the turning 

 axis exactly as in the fixed quarter steering paddle from which it is evidently 

 evolved. 



A still older form of rudder is seen on the upper Indus ; there the larger river 

 craft are usually steered by an extremely long oar over the centre of the stern. In 

 this we have a survival of an Egyptian practice in use in the time of the Twelfth 

 Dynasty and for sotne time preceding. Models showing this point clearly have been 

 found by Prof. Flinders Petrie in tombs of the former period.' Prior to the adoption 

 of this method, Egyptian river craft had been steered by several paddlers, who stood 

 on the overhanging counter. The next development was to have a powerful steering 

 oar suspended on either quarter — a notable sequence, as the natural inference, did we 

 not have this Egyptian evidence, is to deduce the modern rudder from the median 

 steering oar of the 12th dynasty vessels. 



In still another detail — the oculus— do Indian river craft show their affinity with 

 ancient Egyptian types. The cargo carriers of the Ganges such as are to be seen at 

 Benares unloading stone and firewood often show an ornamental brass " eye" on each 

 bow (PI. VI, fig. 4). In Egypt this oculus, with eyebrow shown almost exactly the 

 same in detail as we see to-day in the Ganges boats, was placed on the funeral boat 

 wherein the mummy of the departed was ferried across the Nile to the tomb. It 

 symbolized the eye of Osiris guiding the dead on the voyage to that other land not 

 to be entered without the aid of this deity and his shallop. The Romans and Greeks 

 extended the practice ; they endowed all their sea-going vessels with the oculus, a cus- 

 tom still lingering in the south of Italy. In Indian waters the only survivals I know 

 are upon Ganges cargo craft, the Kallathoni of Point Calimere and the Hindu coaster 

 of the north of Ceylon (PI. VI, figs. 3 and 2). In ancient India the custom was wide- 

 spread. 



' Chatterton, ij. Keble, Sailing Ships, London, 1909, p. 34. 



