Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c7.78

c7.78

It is a well-known fact that in early times the ships normally kept within sight of the shore and we know from the *Periplus of the Erythraean Sea*, that it was not until Hippalus's discovery of the monsoon winds, some time about 42 A.D., that there was any direct voyage from the western countries to the Indian coast. The same book, *Periplus*, does not clearly refer to any direct voyage between South India and the Malay Peninsula, but describes the coastal voyage from South India up to the Ganga, and then mentions the Malay Peninsula as near the mouth of this river. This hardly leaves any doubt that normally the voyage was all along the coast. This view is confirmed by Ptolemy who locates the *apheterium*, or the point of departure for ships bound for Malay Peninsula, immediately to the south of Paloura (near Gopalpur in Orissa). He evidently means that this is the point from where the vessels bound for Malay Peninsula “ceased to follow the littoral and entered the high seas.” If, therefore, the normal course of the voyage between India and South-east Asia lay along the entire eastern coast, we cannot presume, except on very strong grounds, that only the people of Malabar and Coromandel took advantage of this long and tedious journey, and the people of North India merely looked on as idle spectators while the South Indian vessels passed through Paloura and Tāmralipti (Tamluk in Bengal), two excellent ports of embarkation at their disposal, the reputation of which goes back to the time of the Buddhist canonical literature. As mentioned before, the Jātakas and other texts, both Buddhist and Jain, refer to persons from various parts of North India sailing from Tāmralipti to Malay Peninsula and other localities beyond the sea.