History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce, Volume 1 (of 4)

by W. S. Lindsay

Of the more eastern portions of India little was then known. Indeed, so late as the geographer Ptolemy, so erroneous are his ideas of the size and position of even the great island of Ceylon, and of the peninsula of Hindustan, that it is certain he obtained the information he has recorded from the reports of persons of no scientific acquirements. His description of the character of the coasts and of the chief ports are, on the other hand, more accurate than might have been expected, considering that his only source of information was from the lips of unscientific sailors or merchants who had merely visited the places he notices. Thus, in his account of Ceylon, we find a fair description, not only of the sea coast of the island, but of the trade then carried on, and, especially of the nature of the intercourse conducted by the different nations who frequented its excellent harbours. Ptolemy, also, notices the productions for which Ceylon was then celebrated, as rice, honey, ginger, aromatic drugs, pearls, and precious stones, and especially the beryl and the hyacinth. He likewise mentions gold and silver, with a special reference to its elephants and tigers. Indeed, his description of the island resembles in all material points that given by Cosmas Indicopleustes, four centuries later. Both agree in stating that the shores were occupied by foreigners, who held the harbours and the chief seats of commerce, leaving the interior to the aboriginal inhabitants.

Ptolemy speaks also of many small islands west of Ceylon—doubtless the Maldives—and of those to the eastward, now called the Sunda Islands, more especially of Jabadia (now Java), which he describes as the richest of them all. Many other islands are also noticed by him which cannot now be identified; it seems also probable that he knew something of the Straits of Sunda, between Java and Sumatra. Indeed, he mentions boats peculiar to the Java sea, as observed also by Pliny, constructed of planks fastened together by trenails instead of iron. Moreover, his account of India beyond the Ganges, and of the various ports and cities of the peninsulas of Malacca and Serica (China), proves at least this, that long before his time these countries were accessible to navigators, and that Ceylon was the common mart for the trade of all the vessels bound thence to the westward.

Ceylon.

From the “Periplus” of Arrian still more accurate information is obtainable, and especially with regard to the Malabar coast he himself visited: from his report we learn that Cochin and Travancore then carried on a flourishing trade, and that Palæsimundum, the capital of Ceylon, was considered by him to contain upwards of two hundred thousand inhabitants, an estimate more likely to be true of the whole island than of the capital alone. Palæsimundum was on the northern side of the island, probably on or near the bay of Trincomalee, one of the finest harbours in India, although then, as now, the port and harbour of Galle on the south appears to have been the chief rendezvous for merchant vessels. A glance at the map will show that for this purpose Galle is eminently well placed.

Nor can the commercial reputation of Ceylon be said to have ever waned; for of this island alone it may be said that, during all the changes in the course of commerce, since the Phœnicians of Gerrha first, as we believe, explored the western shores of the Indian peninsula, Ceylon has maintained her natural position as the great maritime entrepôt between the East and the West. Here, doubtless, the voyagers from each distant land met, as it were, on neutral ground, none of them, perhaps, for many ages, extending their own commercial relations beyond it. We have also Pliny’s statement that the Singhalese ambassadors to Rome, in the reign of Claudius,[275] asserted that their countrymen had reached China by an overland route through India and across the Himalaya, before ships had attempted the voyage thither; while it is further certain that Ceylon also reaped the full share of the advantages maritime adventure derived from the discovery of the monsoons, and that, during the period when Rome carried on, by way of the Red Sea, an extensive commercial intercourse with the East, this island was, as it had been for so long, the chief emporium of the far East.

Internal commerce of India.

Passing on to the time when the transfer of the seat of empire was made from Rome to Constantinople, and when the Persians vied with the merchants of Egypt and the ship-owners of Arabia to divert the course of the Oriental trade from the Red Sea and Alexandria to the Euphrates and the Persian Gulf, Ceylon continued to be the great rendezvous alike for the traders of the West and the East.[276] Nor has it lost in any way its ancient fame as a place of call. At the harbour of Galle the steamships from Europe, by way of the Red Sea, destined for Calcutta and the ports of China, now exchange their passengers and specie with the lines of steamships which trade to the ports of Australia; while traders from Bombay to Bengal, and other ports of the East, still make it the centre to which, and from which, their respective routes converge or diverge. Again, India within itself has, from the earliest period of authentic history, carried on a large internal commerce both by land and sea. Rice and other necessaries of life must have been transported from the countries along the Ganges, where they grow abundantly, to the sandy shores of the peninsula; and cotton, though manufactured with the same activity on the coasts as in the interior, differed so much in each district, in its texture and mode of preparation, that a large interchange of its various kinds must naturally have occurred. Again, the mode of life, especially in such cities as Ayodhya (Oude) implies the existence of a multitude of wants, natural and artificial, which could only be supplied by a corresponding system of active commerce between the different parts of India.

It is clear, from Ptolemy, that along the shores of the Indian peninsula there were a number of ports known to the traders of his time by the name of “Emporia,” or places of rendezvous; but, as Dr. Robertson has pointed out, we have no means now of determining whether these, or most of these, were simply ports for native vessels, or for the larger ships that conveyed the merchandise of Alexandria and of the West. It seems, however, probable from his strange ignorance of the real size of Ceylon (in which ignorance he nearly equals Arrian), that even then direct communication with that island was not very common; add to which, that, beyond the Golden Chersonesus, Ptolemy has noticed but one emporium, a fact clearly showing that few, if any, reports had reached him of the trade beyond the present site of Singapore.

Manufactures of India.

But, however little we may know of the outline of the coasts of India, or of its harbours to the eastward of Cape Comorin, previous to the Christian era, there can be no doubt of the comparatively high state of civilization then prevalent among the Hindus generally, and of their skill in manufactures.