Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c5.t4.62

c5.t4.62

Similarly we hear, in the *Mahājanaka Jātaka*,⁷ of merchants who sailed from Campā bound for Suvaṇṇabhūmi, the great trading centre, to which traders even from Bharukaccha⁸ went, doubtless putting in at a Ceylon (Tambapaṇṇi) port : for Ceylon was another bourne of oversea commerce, and one associated with ports around which Odyssean legends had grown up.⁹ The now well-known *Baveru-Jātaka*¹⁰ undoubtedly points out to the existence of commercial intercourse between India and Babylon through the Persian Gulf. But the most important of all these is the *Suppāraka Jātaka*¹¹ which records, though in the usual mystic manner, the perilous adventures on the high seas undergone by a company of traders who sailed from the seaport town of Bharukaccha, in a vessel under the pilotage of a blind but accomplished mariner. The story gives the names of some of the sea-points through which the traders passed. They were in succession as follows :