Indian maritime history

Indian maritime history begins during the 3rd millennium BCE when inhabitants of the Indus Valley initiated maritime trading contact with Mesopotamia.

B

 * The evidence for the Vedic Indians’ familiarity with sea and maritime navigation is so varied and so overwhelming that it is really impossible to dismiss it as a mere figment of imagination’
 * Bhargava, P.L., India in the Vedic Age°, p. 85.in    Danino, M. (2010). The lost river : on the trail of the Sarasvatī. Penguin Books India.

C

 * The Indian ships are much bigger than ours. Their bases are made of three boards .. [they] face formidable storms.
 * Niccolò de' Conti (c. 1395–1469), in R. H. Major, ed. (1857), "The travels of Niccolo Conti"

D

 * Commerce on the sea is monopolized by the British even more than transport on land. The Hindus are not permitted to organize a merchant marine of their own; all Indian goods must be carried in British bottoms, as an additional strain on the starving nation's purse; and the building of ships, which once gave employment to thousands of Hindus, is prohibited.
 * Will Durant, The Case For India


 * Akbar had an admiralty which supervised the building of ships and the regulation of ocean traffic; the ports of Bengal and Sindh were famous for shipbuilding, and did their work so well that the Sultan of Constantinople found it cheaper to have his vessels built there than in Alexandria; even the East India Company had many of its ships built in Bengal docks.
 * Will Durant Our Oriental Heritage.

M

 * The rich build ships in which they carry on commerce with foreign nations.
 * Mahuan, an interpreter attached to the Chinese envoy Chang Ho who visited Bengal in 1406
 * Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6

P

 * It should be remembered that the Indian Ocean, including the entire coast of Africa, had been explored centuries ago by Indian navigators. Indian ships frequented the East African ports and certainly knew Madagascar. Whether they had rounded the Cape and sailed up the west coast is not known with any certainty.
 * Panikkar, K. M. (1953). Asia and Western dominance, a survey of the Vasco da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498-1945, by K.M. Panikkar. London: G. Allen and Unwin.


 * The Indian Ocean had from time immemorial been the scene of intense commercial trade. Indian ships had from the beginning of history sailed across the Arabian Sea up to the Red Sea ports and maintained intimate cultural and commercial connections with Egypt, Israel and other countries of the Near East. Long before Hippalus disclosed the secret of the monsoon to the Romans, Indian navigators had made use of these winds and sailed to Bab‑el‑Mandeb. To the east, Indian mariners had gone as far as Borneo and flourishing Indian colonies had existed for over 1,200 years in Malaya, the islands of Indonesia, in Cambodia, Champa and other areas of the coast. Indian ships from Quilon made regular journeys to the South China coast. A long tradition of maritime life was part of the history of Peninsular India...
 * Panikkar, K. M. (1953). Asia and Western dominance, a survey of the Vasco da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498-1945, by K.M. Panikkar. London: G. Allen and Unwin.


 * The supremacy of India in the waters that washed her coast was unchallenged till the rise of Arab shipping under the early khalifs. But the Arabs and Hindus competed openly, and the idea of ‘sovereignty over the sea’ except in narrow straits was unknown to Asian conception. It is true that the Sri Vijaya Empire dominating the Straits of Malacca exercised control of shipping through that sea lane for two centuries, but there was no question at any time of any Asian power exercising or claiming the right to control traffic in open seas. It follows from this conception of the freedom of the seas that Indian rulers who maintained powerful navies like the Chola Emperors, or the Zamorins, used it only for the protection of the coast, for putting down piracy and, in case of war, for carrying and escorting troops across the seas.
 * Panikkar, K. M. (1953). Asia and Western dominance, a survey of the Vasco da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498-1945, by K.M. Panikkar. London: G. Allen and Unwin.


 * Some ships of the larger class have, besides (the cabins), to the number of thirteen bulkheads or divisions in the hold, formed of thick planks let into each other (incastrati, mortised or rabbeted). The object of these is to guard against accidents which may occasion the vessel to spring a leak, such as striking on a rock or receiving a stroke from a whale, a circumstance that not unfrequently occurs; for, when sailing at night, the motion through the waves causes a white foam that attracts the notice of the hungry animal. In expectation of meeting with food, it rushes violently to the spot, strikes the ship, and often forces in some part of the bottom. The water, running in at the place where the injury has been sustained, makes its way to the well which is always kept clear. The crew, upon discovering the situation of the leak, immediately remove the goods from the division affected by the water, which, in consequence of the boards being so well fitted, cannot pass from one division to another. They then repair the damage, and return the goods to the place in the hold from whence they had been taken. The ships are all double-planked; that is, they have a course of sheathing-boards laid over the planking in every part. These are caulked with oakum both withinside and without, and are fastened with iron nails. They are not coated with pitch, as the country does not produce that article, but the bottoms are smeared over with the following preparations: – The people take quick-lime and hemp, which latter they cut small, and with these, when pounded together, they mix oil procured from a certain tree, making of the whole a kind of unguent, which retains its viscous property more firmly, and is a better material than pitch.
 * The Travels of Marco Polo, the Venetian. Edited by Thomas Wright, Esq., M.A., F.S.A., etc., Corresponding Member of the Institute of France. London, 1854.


 * The maritime intercourse of India and China dates from a much earlier period, from about 680 B.C..... they arrived in vessels having prows shaped like the heads of birds or animals after the pattern specified in the Yukti Kalpataru (an ancient Sanskrit technological text) and exemplified in the ships and boats of old Indian arts.
 * Professor G. Phillips on page 585 in the 1965 edition of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. attributed at

R

 * The early Hindu astrologers are said to have used the magnet, in fixing the North and East, in laying foundations, and other religious ceremonies. The Hindu compass was an iron fish that floated in a vessel of oil and pointed to the North. The fact of this older Hindu compass seems placed beyond doubt by the Sanskrit word Maccha Yantra, or fish machine, which Molesworth gives as a name for the mariner's compass".
 * J.L. Reid, in the Bombay Gazetteer, vol. xiii., Part ii., Appendix A. attributed at


 * O Asvins, you saved Bhujyu (from drowning) in a deep sea where there was nothing to hold on, by lifting him up in a boat that had a hundred oars and sending him to his place. This was indeed a brave act of yours.
 * Rigveda, 1.116.5, translation quoted in B. B. Lal, "Can the Vedic people be identified archaeologically?–An approach", Indologica Taurinensia, 31 (2005), pp. 173-194

S

 * Ancient Tamil literature and the Greek and Roman authors prove that in the first two centuries of the Christian era the ports on the Coromandel or Cholamandal coast enjoyed the benefits of active commerce with both East and West. The Chola fleets.....uncrossed the Indian ocean to the islands of the Malaya Archipelago.
 * Early History of India - By Vincent Smith p. 415