A History of Indian Shipping and Maritime Activity from the Earliest Times c19.2

c19.2

WE have now set forth at some length the available evidences bearing on the history of the shipping, sea-borne trade, and maritime activity of India from the earliest times down to the period of the Musalman conquests in Northern India. We have considered the kind of maritime activity and commerce which India had in the long and ancient period before the Mauryan in the light of the evidences from both literary works and archaeological finds, and are quite prepared for the remarkable outburst of naval activity and growth of foreign intercourse which has been established beyond doubt or dispute to be the characteristic of the Mauryan period. We have next seen how the impetus given to the development of India's international life under the Mauryan Empire in the days of Chandra Gupta and Asoka survived that empire itself and continued to gain in force and volume amid the vicissitudes of her domestic politics. Dynasty after dynasty succeeded to the position of paramount power in the land, but the course of commerce ran smooth through all these changes. The opening centuries of the Christian era, which saw the political unity of India divided by the Kushans of the north and the Andhras of the south, with the Vindhyas as their mutual boundary, were also, as we have seen, the period of a remarkable growth of foreign commerce, especially with Rome, that was shared equally by the north and the south. This is shown, on the one hand, unmistakably by the books of Roman writers with their remarkably accurate details regarding Indian exports and imports, ports, and harbours, and, on the other hand, by the unimpeachable testimony of many finds of Roman coins both in Northern and Southern India.