A History of Indian Shipping and Maritime Activity from the Earliest Times c19.6

c19.6

Besides the Roman trade, and the trade with the West generally, there was also developed along with it a trade with the East. The West alone could not absorb the entire maritime activity of India, which found another vent in a regular traffic in the Eastern waters between Bengal and Ceylon, Kalinga, and Suvarṇabhūmi, and a complete navigation, in fact, of the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. This Eastern maritime enterprise reached its climax in the age of the Gupta emperors, when India once more, as in the days of Chandra Gupta and Asoka, asserted herself as a dominant factor in Asiatic politics, and even showed symptoms of a colonizing activity that culminated in the civilization of Java, Sumatra, and Cambodia, and laid the foundation of a Greater India. Towards the later days of the Gupta Empire, Indian maritime activity in the Eastern waters had a vastly extended field, embracing within its sphere not only Farther India and the islands of the Indian Archipelago, but also China, with which a regular and ceaseless traffic by way of the sea was established and long continued. Lastly, we find the sphere of this Eastern naval activity widening still further during the days of Harshavardhana and Pulakeshi, the Chalukyas and the Cholas, till Japan in the farthest East is brought within the range of Indian influence, and becomes the objective of Indian missionary and colonizing activity.