The Colas c25.25.2

c25.25.2

Considering that the author of the *Periplus* distinguished three types of vessels several centuries earlier on the Coromandel coast and that the naval expedition of Rājēndra was a great achievement in itself, the existence of a well-ordered fleet comprising ships and boats of different grades must be admitted. The Arab merchant Sulaiman made several voyages between China and the Persian Gulf in the ninth century a.d., at a time when this long distance trade was being carried on very briskly. In his curious account of the Maldives, he says that the people of these islands 'built ships and houses and executed all other works with a consumate art.'⁵⁴ Sulaiman had no occasion to visit the Coromandel coast; and his voyages were made before the rise of the Cōḻas of the Vijayālaya line into prominence. Taking into account Sulaiman's testimony to the quality of the ships built in the Maldives, and the conquest of these islands effected by Rājarāja's fleet, we may form some idea of the efficiency of the Cōḻa navy in this period. Abu Zaid Hasan, in the notes which he added to Sulaiman's work about the beginning of the tenth century a.d., observes that the vessels of the Indian ocean, specially those made at Siraf, differed in construction from those of the Mediterranean. 'It is a fact that the type of ship built by pieces of wood sewn together is a speciality of the builders of Siraf;