Seafaring in Ancient India
Although the name India today identifies a single nation-state, before 1947 it referred to the entire subcontinent south of the Hindu Kush, Karakoram, and Himalaya Mountains and east of the Indus River from which it takes its name. It thus comprised not only India, but Bangladesh and part of Pakistan. Geographically the subcontinent can be divided into three primary regions: the Indo-Gangetic floodplains of the north, which form a broad arc from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal; the Deccan, a tableland between the Narmada and Krishna Rivers; and the Nigiri Hills at the southern end of the peninsula. The chief ethnic division is between the Aryan population of the north and the Dravidian speakers of the south, whose major languages correspond to the southernmost states of modern India: Kannada in Karnataka, Malayalam in Kerala, Tamil in Tamil Nadu, and Telugu in Andhra Pradesh. The west coast of India is divided between the marshes of the Rann of Kachchh (which spread south from the Indus delta), the Kathiawar Peninsula of Gujarat, the Konkan Coast of Maharashtra state, and the Malabar Coast (Goa, Karnataka, and Kerala). In the east, the Bay of Bengal washes the Coromandel Coast of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Kalinga (northern Andhra Pradesh and Orissa), and the mouths of the Ganga (Ganges) River. The southern end of the peninsula is bordered by two chains of mountains, the Western Ghats, separated from the Arabian Sea by a narrow coastal plain, and the lower Eastern Ghats. India has few major navigable rivers. Those of the west coast are the Indus and, in Gujarat, the Narmada and Tapti. In what is now Bengal, the Ganga delta merges with that of the Brahmaputra, while to the south the Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri Rivers also empty into the Bay of Bengal.
The millennium following the end of the Harappan civilization around 1700 BCE was characterized by the rise of relatively small chiefdoms and clans along the Indo-Gangetic plain. This is the period in which the Vedas, the foundation texts of Hinduism, were composed. The product of a people bound to the land, the Vedas seldom refer to maritime activities, but they and other sacred and secular South Asian writings contain enough incidental references to sea trade to demonstrate that even if long-distance contacts with the Persian Gulf were interrupted after the demise of the Indus Valley civilization, people continued to go to sea for their livelihoods. One of the oldest references, from the Rig Veda, recounts how the Asvins (gods of healing) came to the help of their friend’s son, Bhujyu, while he was on campaign against a neighboring island: “you brought him back in vessels of your own, floating over the ocean, and keeping out the waters.… This exploit you achieved, Asvins, in the ocean, where there is nothing to give support, nothing to rest upon, nothing to cling to.” The practice of deep-sea navigation is confirmed by an earlier passage that describes Varuna (the Vedic equivalent of Poseidon or Neptune) “who knows the path of the birds flying through the air; he, abiding in the ocean, knows the course of ships.” This image suggests the practice of Indian sailors finding their way at sea by following the flight paths of birds, as did their counterparts in Oceania, the Mediterranean, and elsewhere.
That merchants were expected to venture overseas is confirmed by two of the oldest and most comprehensive texts on the legal aspects of seafaring, the Arthasastra and the Laws of Manu, or Manusmrti. The Arthasastra is a detailed handbook of governance commonly thought to date from the reign of the first Mauryan king, Chandragupta, in the late fourth century BCE. After coming to the throne of the lower Ganga kingdom of Magadha, Chandragupta extended his authority across the Indo-Gangetic plain. In the northwest he pushed his borders west from the Punjab across Pakistan and into Afghanistan and fought the Hellenistic king Seleucus I. As part of the peace, Seleucus gave his daughter in marriage to Chandragupta’s son, Bindusara, and appointed Megasthenes as ambassador to the Mauryan court at Pataliputra (Patna) on the Ganga. In return, Chandragupta gave Seleucus five hundred war elephants, which the latter used to good effect in his wars with Ptolemaic Egypt, a move that would prove a catalyst for the Ptolemies’ development of Red Sea trade and the penetration of the Indian Ocean from the west. Chandragupta also expanded south to the Narmada River, the northern border of the Deccan, which Bindusara subsequently conquered along with Kerala and Karnataka to the southwest.
Chandragupta’s most important advisor was Kautilya, the putative author of the Arthasastra. In his detailed instructions for the role and conduct of the controller of shipping (navadhyaksa), a civil office whose functions are comparable to that of a modern coast guard and revenue marine, Kautilya noted that he “should look after activities concerning sea voyages and ferries at the mouths of rivers, as well as ferries over natural lakes, artificial lakes and rivers.” The controller collected taxes and duties payable by riverbank villages and towns, fishermen, traders, and divers for conch shell and pearls, as well as port dues from foreign ships and fines for people using river ferries at times or places not prescribed by law. He could confiscate goods being shipped without an official seal, and when fishermen or traders used boats owned by the state or king he collected the appropriate fees. The controller of shipping also had a humanitarian function: “He should rescue boats that have gone out of their course or are tossed about by a gale, like a father. He should make goods that have fallen in water either duty-free or pay half the duty.” This rescue work was likely carried out by the ferries he maintained, “big boats in [the] charge of a captain, a pilot, a manipulator of the cutter and ropes and a bailer of water, on big rivers that have to be ferried on [even] in winter and summer, [and] small ones on small rivers flowing [only] in the rainy season.”
The controller of shipping may have had an additional military function. According to Megasthenes, Chandragupta’s advisors included an admiral, who, like Kautilya’s controller of shipping, rented ships to sailors and merchants. Megasthenes observes that whereas artisans, tradesmen, and day-laborers “render services prescribed by the state” as tribute, “shipbuilders receive wages and provisions, at a published scale, for these work for him [the king] alone.” The controller of shipping was subordinate to the director of trade, who determined the rates for leasing vessels and encouraged foreign trade by granting exemptions from duties and fees. He was also responsible for deciding when to sail, provisioning ships for their voyages, the prices at which goods should be bought and sold, and the regulations in force at, and dangers peculiar to, various ports of call.
Perhaps revealing an ignorance of practical seafaring, Kautilya broke with prevailing opinion on the benefits of sea trade and how best to conduct it. Whereas most people viewed sea trade as more efficient—“involving little expenditure and exertion and yielding plenty of goods,” as Kautilya puts it—he maintained that land transport was safer and less subject to seasonal variation. He further argued that “as between a route along the shore and one on the high sea, the route along the coast is preferable because of the large number of ports, [as is] a river-route, because of perennial use and because the dangers in it can be withstood.” Yet rivers can be impassable in the dry season, and most marine casualties take place near coasts, not only because the highest concentration of vessels is there, but because shallow waters and lee shores pose more dangers to seagoing ships than does the open ocean.
It is often claimed that Hindu scripture forbids seafaring, yet the evidence is ambiguous at best. One ancient text cautions that one can lose caste for “making voyages by sea” and “trading with merchandise of any description,” while another takes voyages as a given and advises, sensibly enough, “Let him who teaches … avoid ships of doubtful solidity.” Although a Brahman of the highest caste, Kautilya expresses no reservations about seafaring or overseas trade, and it was not until the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that some observant Hindus began avoiding overseas travel for purely religious reasons. Even then it was not proscriptions on seafaring that proved prohibitive, but the complexity and cost of the ritual purification required after mingling with non-Hindus. Even if high-caste Hindus declined to go to sea, they had no qualms about investing in, and profiting fr
om, overseas trade.
The Laws of Manu offer a fuller exposition of Hindu attitudes toward seafaring than does Kautilya’s Arthasastra. Probably written around the start of the common era, but reflecting a much older tradition, the Laws codify the “social and religious duties tied to class and stage of life” that are an essential feature of Hinduism. They identify the four main castes of priests (Brahmans), rulers, commoners, and servants, and make trade and moneylending the responsibility of commoners. There are no injunctions against overseas commerce, and maritime merchants are given a free hand to conduct their trade as they think best. While the king sets prices for most goods, those carried in long-distance sea trade are subject to a more laissez-faire approach: “When men who are expert in ocean transportation, and can calculate the time, place, and goods, establish an interest rate, that is the rate for the payment of that particular transaction.” Moreover, the Laws of Manu show that the king owned vessels which traders could rent, and they specify how fees were to be calculated for leasing riverboats. At the same time, “there is no definite rule for (journeys) on the ocean.” With respect to accidents, the Laws distinguish between a crew’s negligence and acts of God: “If anything is broken in a boat through the fault of the boatmen, it should be paid for by the boatmen collectively, (each paying) his own share. This is the decision … when the boatmen are at fault on the water; there is no fine for (an accident that is) an act of the gods.” While acts of God are not unknown on rivers, this provision apparently applied to accidents at sea.
The Arthasastra and Laws of Manu presumably synthesize a body of customs and laws of navigation from various parts of Chandragupta’s realm, and they survived in some form the breakup of the Mauryan Empire in the 180s BCE. That they were compiled when they were reflects the growth of urban settlements and the expansion of trade in northern India, a process that began in the sixth century BCE. This period likewise saw the development of Jainism and Buddhism, religions derived but distinct from Hinduism and whose spread both encouraged and was encouraged by trade. Because of the extreme doctrine of ahimsa (noninjury to living things), Jains were restricted in their occupations: raising animals for slaughter was obviously forbidden, but so was farming because it required pest control. Jains turned increasingly to commerce for their livelihood, and Jainism became especially strong in Gujarat and the southern Indian kingdoms of Pandya, Chola, and Chera—all regions that have played a formative role in India’s long-distance sea trade. Reliant as they were on alms for funding their temples, Buddhists were sympathetic to merchants and moneylenders, but in addition they developed a pronounced missionary posture that carried them into Central Asia and China via the Hindu Kush and Karakoram Mountains and east along the silk road, or by ship across the Bay of Bengal to Southeast Asia and onward to China. Although it did not penetrate southern India as thoroughly as Jainism, Buddhism reached Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in 247 BCE, when the third Mauryan king, Ashoka, sent an embassy to the king. Sri Lanka subsequently became the preserve of Theravada Buddhism and a place of pilgrimage and study for priests from throughout Asia.
Ashoka is the best documented Mauryan king thanks to the numerous inscriptions found throughout his domains—pillar edicts clustered in the Gangetic plain, and rock edicts on the subcontinent as far south as Tamil Nadu, along the coasts, and as far west as Kandahar, Afghanistan. Despite, or perhaps because of, his extensive military campaigns, Ashoka is remembered as a model of the repentant, ethical ruler. This transformation came about after he embraced Buddhism in the wake of the horrors of his subjugation of Kalinga, when “A hundred fifty thousand people were deported, a hundred thousand were killed and many times that number perished. Afterwards, now that Kalinga was annexed, the Beloved of the Gods [Ashoka] very earnestly practiced Dhamma [ethical behavior], desired Dhamma and taught Dhamma.” The people of Kalinga were renowned for their seamanship; one text refers to the king of Kalinga as the “Lord of the Ocean,” while another speaks of the “islands of the Kalinga Sea”—the Bay of Bengal. Although the conquest of the kingdom and its port at Samapa (Ganjam) opened the eastern trading world to the Mauryans, their main port remained Tamralipti (Tamluk), north of Kalinga, which was connected to the capital at Pataliputra via the Ganga and a royal road, a western branch of which led to the Arabian Sea port of Bharuch in Gujarat.
Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism paid little attention to issues of caste and birthright, and merchants could achieve a higher position in society than they theoretically could in Hinduism, and many donated the profits of agriculture and trade to the construction and maintenance of Buddhist sanghas (monasteries). The earliest such religious institutions in India, these initially catered to itinerant missionaries, but they later became permanent monasteries and as such both repositories for trade goods and centers of learning and literacy. As it had been for the Egyptians, the Phoenicians, and the Greeks, literacy was a catalyst for the expansion of trade in India, facilitating the transmission of knowledge about everything from writing itself, which developed in India from about the fourth century BCE, to trade goods and their uses. The Buddhist healing arts, for example, relied in large part on imported spices and herbs, especially from Southeast Asia, and thus stimulated demand for these lucrative items of trade.
The earliest sustained narratives about Indian seafaring are found in the Jatakas, a collection of some 550 stories about the Buddha’s past lives as a Bodhisattva (enlightened being) first written down in the third century BCE. The stories’ antagonists come from various places around the subcontinent, but their overseas journeys invariably take them to Southeast Asia. The “Suparaga Jataka” describes the Bodhisattva as the renowned scion of a family of shipmasters from the west coast port of Bharuch who eventually settled elsewhere. Despite his age and infirmities (in one version of the story, he went blind from exposure to saltwater), a group of merchants beseeches him to sail with them on a voyage to Suvarnabhumi, “the land of gold,” in Southeast Asia. Describing the Bodhisattva’s qualifications as a mariner, the “Suparaga Jataka” notes that “he recognized all the tell tale signs around him … such clues as the fish, the color of the water, the type of [underwater?] terrain, the birds, and the rocks,” the same sort of skills one finds in descriptions of wayfinding in Oceania. In the course of their voyage, storms drive the ship well off course, and when the merchants and crew entreat him for their help, he brushes aside their concerns by saying “If you venture out into the middle of the ocean, you must not be surprised to face a cataclysmic storm.” The Bodhisattva’s virtue ensures their safety and after a succession of narrow escapes they return to Bharuch with a hold filled with jewels and gems. Although the “Suparaga Jataka” says that these were hauled up from the seabed, such mineral treasures are associated with Sri Lanka and the Malay Peninsula.
In the “Samkha Jataka” and “Mahajana Jataka,” the Bodhisattva is portrayed variously as a wealthy man esteemed for his generosity in endowing almshouses, and as the rightful heir to a throne usurped by an uncle. Concerned that he may run out of money to give away, Samkha decides to “go in a boat to the Land of Gold and bring wealth” from it. Mahajanaka’s intent is to raise funds to pay for his uncle’s ouster, also by going to the Land of Gold, against his mother’s wishes: “My child, a voyage does not always succeed, there are many obstacles, better not go.” Both Samkha’s and Mahajanaka’s ships sink, but they are rescued by the goddess of the sea, Manimekalai, who returns them home together with the riches they had sought in the first place.
Common to both Samkha’s and Mahajanaka’s stories are the nearly identical accounts of how the protagonists prepare to survive shipwreck. The “Samkha Jataka” relates that the prince “never wept nor lamented nor invoked any deities, but knowing that the vessel was doomed he rubbed some sugar and ghee, and, having eaten his belly full, he smeared his two clean garments with oil and put them tightly around him and stood leaning against the mast. When the vessel sank the mast stood upright. The crowd on board became food for the fishes and to
rtoises, and the water all around assumed the colour of blood.” Samkha is also said to have taken “precaution against the dangers caused by the fishes and tortoises,” though what these might have been is not revealed. These preparations against hypothermia by smearing oneself and one’s clothes with oil are realistic. So, too, is the account of what happens to the unprepared Mahajanaka, who “had his whole body burnt while remaining in sea water for seven days,” an accurate summary of the gruesome effects of dehydration and a week’s exposure to sun and saltwater. While the ventures described in the Jatakas are fundamentally successful, the focus on the perils of seafaring is in stark contrast to the emphasis on heroic exploits lavished on western heroes like Gilgamesh and Odysseus.
Persian Trade in the Indian Ocean from the Sixth Century BCE
While ancient Indian texts with maritime content describe voyages across the Bay of Bengal to Suvarnabhumi and Suvarnadvipa, “the island of gold,” in Southeast Asia, there was a lively western trade on the Arabian Sea. Greek and Latin texts mention Bharuch (also called Barygaza and Broach) as an important port of call. Located at the mouth of the Narmada River on the Gulf of Khambhat—near the ancient Harappan port of Lothal—Bharuch had ready access to the wealth of the Indo-Gangetic plain and the Deccan. The port’s founding in the mid-first millennium BCE followed the revival of sea trade between India and the Persian Gulf and the growth of the trans-Arabian caravan trade that carried Indian goods from the gulf to the Mediterranean ports of Phoenicia and Syria, where they were shipped to Egypt, Greece, and beyond. Whatever the causes for its renaissance, this seaborne trade was significant enough for Neo-Babylonian, Achaemenid, and Hellenistic rulers in turn to take an active interest in the Persian Gulf.
The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World Page 20
