HINDU PERIOD
sailed in search of plenty till the shores of Java arrested their progress and gave scope to their colonizing ambition.
The representations of ships and boats in the Ajantā paintings are therefore rightly interpreted by Griffiths as only a "vivid testimony to the ancient foreign trade of India." Of the two representations herein reproduced, the first shows "a sea-going vessel with high stem and stern, with three oblong sails attached to as many upright masts. Each mast is surmounted by a truck, and there is carried a lug-sail. The jib is well filled with wind. A sort of bowsprit, projecting from a kind of gallows on deck, is indicated with the out-flying jib, square in form," like that borne till recent times by European vessels. The ship appears to be decked and has ports. Steering-oars hang in sockets or rowlocks on the quarter, and eyes are painted on the bows. There is also an oar behind; and under the awning are a number of jars, while two small platforms project fore and aft.[1] The vessel is of the Agramandirā type as defined in the Yuktikalpataru, our Sanskrit treatise on ships.
The second representation is that of the emperor's pleasure-boat, which is "like the heraldic lymphad, with painted eyes at stem and stern, a pillared canopy amidships, and an umbrella forward,
- ↑ Griffiths, The Paintings in the Buddhist Cave-Temples of Ajanta, p. 17.
41
