INDIAN SHIPPING
The further remarks of Professor Ball in this connection are worth quoting in full:—
When it is remembered that about 80 per cent. of the gold raised throughout the world is from alluvial washings, and when this fact is considered in connection with the reflection that wide tracts in Australia and America, formerly richly productive, are now deserted, being covered with exhausted tailings, it can be conceived how these regions in India—and there are very many of them—which are known to be auriferous, may, in the lapse of time, after yielding large supplies of gold, have become too exhausted to be of much present consideration. More than this, however, recent explorations have confirmed the fact, often previously asserted, that in Southern India there are indications of extended mining operations having been carried on there.
Evidence exists of the most conclusive kind of large quantities of gold having been amassed by Indian monarchs, who accepted a revenue in gold-dust only from certain sections of their subjects, who were consequently compelled to spend several months of every year washing for it in the rivers.[1]
In Ctesias' Indica (400 B.C.), the earliest Greek treatise on India, is to be found, among other things, the existence of a really Dravidian word which Ctesias used for cinnamon.[2] The word used by Ctesias is karpion, which Dr. Caldwell derives from the Tamil-Malayalam word karuppa or karppu, to which is akin the Sanskrit word karpura "camphor."[3]
- ↑ I.A., August, 1884.
- ↑ Ctesias, translated by McCrindle, p. 29. His Indica embodies the information he had gathered about India, "partly from the reports of Persian officials who had visited that country on the King's service, and partly also perhaps from the reports of Indians themselves who in those days were occasionally to be seen at the Persian Court, whither they resorted either as merchants or as envoys bringing presents and tribute from the princes of Northern India, which was then subject to Persian rule." (McCrindle's Ctesias, Introduction, p. 3.)
- ↑ Dr. Caldwell in his Grammar of the Dravidian Languages, p. 105.
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