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

by W. S. Lindsay

So great was the variety of cloths manufactured by it even in the days of Arrian, who gives them in detail, that we can hardly suppose the number to have afterwards much increased. In the “Periplus”[277] we read of the finest Bengal muslins; of coarse, middle, and fine cloths; of coarse and fine calicoes; of coloured shawls and sashes; of coarse and fine purple goods, as well as of pieces of embroidery; of spun silk and of furs from Serica: and it is further recorded that the Greeks who visited India in the train of Alexander the Great, were struck with the whiteness and fineness of the texture of the cotton garments of the Hindus. Moreover, it is quite possible that the “coloured cloths and rich apparel,” noticed by Ezekiel as brought to Tyre and Babylon, were partly, at least, the production of India. Again, frequent mention is made of these coloured cloths and fine garments by the poet of the Râmâyana, and of “the rich woollen stuffs,” perhaps the shawls of Cashmir, still among the richest portions of female attire in Eastern countries. Herodotus, also, speaks of the bark of trees being used in India from very remote times, for the purpose of manufacturing a species of cloth, extensively worn by pious hermits and penitents. All these facts establish beyond any question the great antiquity of Indian civilization.

India, like Asia Minor and Arabia, had its caravans. In those of the south, elephants were chiefly employed; for the whole of the peninsula being traversed by rocky mountains, could scarcely, if at all, admit of the employment of camels. The Ganges and its tributary streams, however, afforded great facilities for the commercial intercourse of Northern India, though Arrian adds also, and truly, that many of the rivers of the south were equally available for trade, and that along the eastern and western coasts extensive use was made of country-built boats. Indeed, when we consider the high antiquity of the pearl fisheries of Ceylon, we cannot doubt that such a coasting trade was carried on for many hundred years before his time.

At particular periods of the year caravans proceeded to Benares and Juggernaut, sanctuaries to which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims resorted for purposes of commerce and devotion long before the Christian era; and, as markets and fairs were established, and depôts for goods erected, partly in the interior, but particularly on the coast, to meet the wants of the vast concourse of pilgrims and traders, there must, at such times, have been considerable employment for the native vessels, beyond what was required in the pearl fisheries and in the ordinary course of traffic.

A.D. 527-65.

A.D. 535.

A.D. 150.

A.D. 1271-95.

Though from the age of Ptolemy the trade between Western Europe and India was carried on by the way of Egypt, Rome and Constantinople being alike supplied by the agency of the merchants of Alexandria, we have not, till the reign of Justinian, any further information concerning the progress of the over-sea trade, or of any discoveries with reference to the more remote regions of the East. In the course, however, of his reign, Cosmas (commonly called, from the voyages he made, Indicopleustes, an Egyptian merchant), went on more than one occasion to India; and when, in after days, he renounced the pursuits of commerce, and became a monk, he composed in the solitude and leisure of his cell, several works, one of which (his “Christian Topography”) has been preserved.[278] It is not, indeed, a work of any special merit, consisting, as it does, chiefly of fanciful views about the shape of the globe. With a condemnation of the notions of Ptolemy, and of other “speculative” geographers, it contains, however, much curious and reliable information with reference to the countries he had himself visited, and especially, to the western coast of the Indian peninsula. Indeed, from the time of the merchant Arrian to that of Marco Polo, Cosmas, who traded on the coast of Malabar about the middle of the sixth century, is the only writer of note who gives any account of the maritime and commercial affairs of India, during a period of twelve centuries.

State of the trade of India, from the sixth to the ninth century.

From Cosmas we learn that, in his day, great numbers of vessels from all parts of India, Persia, and Æthiopia, were in the habit of trading with Ceylon; and that the island itself had “numerous fleets of ships belonging to its own merchants.” He reckons the tonnage of these vessels “as generally of about three thousand amphoræ”;[279] adding that “their mariners do not make astronomical observations, but carry birds to sea, and letting them go, from time to time, follow the course they take for the land.” Cosmas further remarks, that “they devote only four months in the year to the pursuits of navigation, and are particularly careful not to trust themselves on the sea during the next hundred days after the summer solstice, for within those seas it is, at that time, the middle of winter.” But the “numerous fleets of ships” he refers to were, probably, the property of Arabian merchants settled in the island, navigated by their own countrymen, and not by the natives of Ceylon. The Singhalese, indeed, in ancient and modern times alike, have shown an apathy in all matters connected with navigation, the more remarkable as, by its position and the character of its coasts, Ceylon is singularly well adapted to be the nursery of an able race of seamen. The boats now found there are all copies from models supplied by other nations; even their strange canoes, with out-riggers and a balance log, are but repetitions of the boats of the islanders of the Eastern Archipelago; while their ballams, canoes of a larger and more substantial description, are borrowed from the vessels of Malabar. It is curious that, to this day, the gunwales of their dhows are frequently topped by wicker-work, smeared with clay to protect the deck from the wash of the sea, much after the fashion of the bulwarks of the mythical craft of Ulysses.