INDIAN SHIPPING
living north of the author's home, the Dravidian districts. The forbidden practices mentioned in the same Sutra as customary among the Northerners, such as the traffic in wool and in animals with two rows of teeth (horses, mules, etc.), leave no doubt that the inhabitants of Western and North-Western India are meant. It follows as a matter of course that their trade was carried on with Western Asia. The same author,[1] Dh. S. i. 18. 14, and Gautama,[2] x. 33, fix also the duties payable by ship-owners to the king." The later Smṛitis also contain explicit references to sea-borne trade. Manu (iii. 158) declares a Brahman[3] who has gone to sea to be unworthy of entertainment at a Srāddha. In chapter viii. again of Manu's Code[4] there is an interesting sloka laying down the law that the rate
- ↑ "The duty on goods imported by sea is, after deducting a choice article, ten Panas in the hundred." (Bühler's translation in S.B.E.)
- ↑ "Hereby (the taxes payable by) those who support themselves by personal labour have been explained, and those payable by owners of ships and carts." (Ibid.)
- ↑
आगारदाही गरदः कुण्डाशी सोमविक्रयी।
समुद्रयायी वन्दी च तैलिकः कूटकारकः॥["An incendiary, a prisoner, he who eats the food given by the son of an adulteress, a seller of soma, he who undertakes voyages by sea, a bard, an oilman, a suborner to perjury."]
- ↑
समुद्रयानकुशला देशकालार्थदर्शिनः।
स्थापयन्ति तु यां वृद्धिं सा तत्राधिगमं प्रति॥["Whatever rate men fix, who are expert in sea voyages and able to calculate (the profit) according to the place, and the time, and the objects (carried), that (has legal force) in such cases with respect to the payment (to be made)."]
60
