The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c23.s3.112

v4.c23.s3.112

The seizure of a ship was in accordance with Burmese customary law, which gave the king absolute rights over everything in his dominions. Seafaring men avoided Burmese ports. Although a shipmaster never pays his crew all the wages due to them before letting them go ashore in a foreign port, and naval regulations forbid it, the governor of Syriam would insist on crews being paid in full before landing, in order that he might encourage them to desert. If a sailor married a woman of the country, the governor would claim him as a Burmese subject, alleging that the husband takes the wife's nationality. If a ship was driven onto the coast by weather, the Burmese confiscated her and enslaved the crew, arguing that under their law anyone who saved another from drowning had the right to possess him as a slave. Nay, if a ship merely touched at a Burmese port for water, without being expressly consigned there, she was enslaved on the same reasoning.² But here, as in so much else, the harshness of the rulers was mitigated by the humanity of the monks: if the distressed mariner wandered into a monastery, he was safe, for the monks would tend his wounds, feed and clothe him, and send him as if in sanctuary with letters of commendation from monastery to monastery till he could reach Syriam, there to await the chance of some passing ship.³