HINDU PERIOD
ships built in the royal ship-yards were, however, as Strabo[1] informs us, let out on hire both to those who undertook voyages and to professional merchants.
A few more interesting details regarding the shipping and navigation of the period are given by Pliny[2] in his description of Taprobane (Ceylon): "The sea between the island of Ceylon and India is full of shallows not more than six paces in depth, but in some channels so deep that no anchors can find the bottom. For this reason ships are built with prows at each end, for turning about in channels of extreme narrowness. In making sea voyages the Taprobane mariners make no observations of the stars, and indeed the Greater Bear is not visible to them, but they take birds out to sea with them which they let loose from time to time and follow the direction of their flight as they make for land."[3] Pliny also indicates the tonnage of these ancient Indian vessels, which is said to be 3,000 amphorae, the
- ↑ Strabo, xv. 46.
- ↑ Pliny, vi. 22, quoted in McCrindle's Ancient India, p. 55.
- ↑ Pliny, vi. 22. The fact of mariners using birds for ascertaining the direction in which the land lay is also alluded to in the Digha Nikaya (I. 222) of Sutta-Pitaka, the famous Pali text. Mr. Rhys Davids places the date of the Digha in the 5th century b.c. and takes this reference to be "the earliest in Indian books to ocean-going ships out of sight of land." (See J.R.A.S., April, 1899, p. 432.)
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