HINDU PERIOD
The trees and pillars appear probably to demarcate one scene from another in the sculpture.
Finally, in the Philadelphia Museum there is a most interesting exhibit of the model of one of these Hindu-Javanese ships, an "outrigger ship," with the following notes:—
Length 60 feet. Breadth 15 feet. ...
Method of construction.—A cage-work of timber above a great log answering for a keel, the hold of the vessel being formed by planking inside the timbers; and the whole being so top-heavy as to make the outrigger essential for safety.
Reproduced from the frieze of the great Buddhist temple at Borobudur, Java, which dates probably from the 7th century A.D. About 600 A.D. there was a great migration from Guzarat in ancient India near the mouths of the Indus to the island of Java, due perhaps to the devastation of Upper India by Scythian tribes and to the drying up of the country.[1]
Lastly, it may be mentioned that in the Great Temple at Madura, among the fresco paintings that cover the walls of the corridors round the Suvarṇapushkariṇī tank, there is a fine representation of the sea and of a ship in full sail on the main as large as those among the sculptures of Borobudur.
We shall now refer to the available numismatic evidence bearing on Indian shipping; for besides the representations of ships and boats in Indian
- ↑ The Javanese chronicles relate that about A.D. 603 a ruler of Gujarat, forewarned of the coming destruction of his kingdom, started his son with 5,000 followers, among whom were cultivators, artisans, warriors, physicians, and writers, in 6 large and 100 small vessels, for Java, where they laid the foundation of a civilization that has given to the world the Sculptures of Borobudur.
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