Though the Indians have practically no hand now in the commerce of the
world, yet there was a time when they were the masters of the seaborne
trade of Europe, Asia and Africa. They built ships, navigated the sea,
and held in their hands all the threads of international commerce,
whether carried on overland or by sea.
As their immense wealth was in part the result of their extensive trade
with other countries, so were the matchless fertility of the Indian soil
and the numberless products of Hindu arts and industries the cause of
the enormous development of the commerce of ancient India.
As poet William Cowper (1731-1800) wrote: “And if a boundless plenty be
the robe,
Trade is a golden girdle of the globe.”
India, which, according to the writer in the Chamber’s Encyclopedia,
“has been celebrated during many ages for its valuable natural
productions, its beautiful manufactures and costly merchandise,” was,
says the Encyclopedia Britannica, “once the seat of commerce.”
Mrs. Charlotte S Manning says: “The indirect evidence afforded by the
presence of Indian products in other countries coincides with the direct
testimony of Sanskrit literature to establish the fact that the ancient
Hindus were a commercial people.” She concludes: “Enough has now been
said to show that the Hindus have ever been a commercial people.”
(source: Ancient and Medieval India – By Charlotte S Manning volume II
p. 354)
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran (1760-1842) says: “The Hindus in their most
ancient works of poetry are represented as a commercial people.”
In Sanskrit books, we constantly read of merchants, traders, and men
engrossed in commercial pursuits. Manu Smriti, one of the oldest books
in the world, lays down laws to govern all commercial disputes having
reference to seaborne traffic as well as the inland and overland
commerce. Traders and merchants are frequently introduced in the Hindu
drama. In Shakuntala we learn of the importance attached to commerce,
where it is stated “that a merchant named Dhanvriddhi, who had extensive
commerce had been lost at sea and had left a fortune of many millions.”
In Nala and Damyanti, too, we meet with similar incidents. Sir William
Jones is of the opinion that the Hindus “must have been navigators in
the age of Manu, because bottomry (marine insurance) is mentioned in
it.” In the Ramayana, the practice of bottomry is distinctly noticed.
Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone says: “The Hindus navigated the ocean as
early as the age of Manu’s code because we read in it of men well
acquainted with sea voyages.
According to Max Dunker, ship-building was known in ancient India about
2000 B.C. It is thus clear that the Hindus navigated the ocean from the
earliest times and that they carried on trade on an extensive scale with
all the important nations of the Old World.
(source: History of Antiquity – By Max Dunker volume IV).
With Phoenicia the Indians enjoyed trade from the earliest times. In the
tenth century B.C., Soloman of Israel and Hiram of Tyre sent ships to
India, whence they carried away ivory, sandalwood, apes, peacocks, gold,
silver, precious stones, etc., which they purchased from the tribe of
Ophir. Now Ptolemy says there was a country called Abhira at the mouth
of the River Indus. This shows that some people called Abhir must have
been living there in those days. We find a tribe called the “Abhir”
still living in Kathyawar, which must, therefore, be the Ophir tribe
mentioned above. Christian Lassen (1800-1876) author of Indische
Alterthumskunde vol I p. 354, thinks “Ophir” was a seaport on the south
west coast of India. Mrs. Manning says it was situated on the western
coast of India.
Among the things sent by the Hindus to Solomon and Hiram were peacocks.
Now, these birds were nowhere to be found in those days except in India,
where they have existed from the earliest times. “We frequently meet in
old Sanskrit poetry with sentences like these: ‘Peacocks unfolding in
glittering glory all their green and gold; ‘peacocks dancing in wild
glee at the approach of rain;’ peacocks around palaces glittering on the
garden walls.’ Ancient sculptures, too show the same delight in
peacocks, as may be seen, for instance, in graceful bas-reliefs on the
gates of Sanchi or in the panels of an ancient palace in Central India,
figured in Colonel Tod’s Rajastathan p. 405. “The word for peacock in
Hebrew is universally admitted to be foreign; and Gesenius, Sir Emerson
Tennent, and Max Muller appear to agree with Christian Lassen in holding
that this word as written in Kings and Chronicles is derived from the
Sanskrit language.
With regard to ivory, it was largely used in India, Assyria, Egypt,
Greece and Rome. Elephants are indigenous in India and Africa, and ivory
trade must be either of Indian origin or African. But the elephants were
scarcely known to the ancient Egyptians, and C Lassen decides that
elephants were neither used nor tamed in ancient Egypt. In ancient
India, they were largely used and tamed. All the kings processions and
battles have elephants mentioned in them. The elephant is the emblem of
royalty and a sign of rank and power. The god Indra, too has his ‘Airawat.’
The Sanskrit name for domestic elephant is ibha, and in the bazaars of
India ibha was the name by which the elephant’s tusks were sold. In
ancient Egypt, ivory was known by the name of ebu.
It would be interesting to many to learn that “it was in India that the
Greeks first became acquainted with sugar.” Sugar bears a name derived
from Sanskrit. With the article the name traveled into Arabia and
Persia, and thence became established in the languages of Europe.
Samuel Maunder (1785-1849) in his The Treasury of History wrote: “In the
reign of Seleucidas, too, there was an active trade between India and
Syria.” Indian iron and colored cloths and rich apparels were imported
in Babylon and Tyre in ships from India. There were also commercial
routes to Phoenicia, through, Persia. Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone says:
“The extent of the Indian trade under the first Ptolemies is a well
known fact in history.” Vincent Smith observes that in the Book of
Genesis, “a caravan of camels loaded with the spices of India and balm
and myrrh of Hadramaut.” John Forbes Royle in his book Ancient Hindu
Medicine p. 119, observes that myrrh is called bal by the Egyptians,
while its Sanskrit name is bola, bearing a resemblance which leaves no
doubt as to its Indian manufacture.
Of the products of the loom, silk was more largely imported from India
into ancient Rome than either in Egypt or Greece. “It was so alluring
the Roman ladies,” says a writer, “that it sold for its weight in gold.”
This is confirmed by the elder Pliny, who complained that vast sums of
money were annually absorbed by commerce with India. “We are assured on
undisputed authority that the Romans remitted annually to India, a sum
equivalent to 4,000,000 pounds to pay for their investments, and that in
the reign of Ptolemies 125 sails of Indian shipping were at one time
lying in the ports whence Egypt, Syria, and Rome itself were supplied
with the products of India.”
(source: Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan: or the Central and Western
Rajput States of India - By Colonel James Tod p. 221).
Agarthachides, who lived upwards of 300 years before the time of
Periplus, noticed the active commercial intercourse kept up between
Yemen and Pattala – a seaport town, in Sindh. Pattala in Sanskrit means
a “commercial town.” “which circumstance, if it is true, says Arnold
Hermann Ludwig Heeran “would prove the extreme antiquity of the
navigation carried on by the Indus.”
Max Dunker wrote: “Trade existed between the Indians and Sabaens on the
coast of south Arabia before the 10th century B.C. – the time according
to some when Manu lived. In the days of Alexander, when the Macedonian
general, Nearchus, was entering the Persian Gulf, Muscat was pointed out
to him as the principal mart for Indian products which were transmitted
thence to Assyria.
Egypt was not the only part of Africa with which the Hindus traded in
olden days. The eastern coast of Africa called Zanibar and the provinces
situated on the Red Sea carried on an extensive trade with ancient
India. Myos Hormos, was the chief emporium of Indian commerce on the Red
Sea. Of the trade with Zanzibar, Periplus gives us pretty full
information. He says: “Moreover, indigenous products such as corn, rice,
butter, oil of seasamum, coarse and fine cotton goods, and cane-honey
(sugar) are regularly exported from the interior of Ariaka (Konkan), and
from Barygaza (Baroucha/Broach) to the opposite coast.”
This trade is also noticed by Arrian, who adds that “this navigation was
regularly managed.”
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran (1760-1842) says, it is a well known fact
that the banians or Hindu merchants were in the habit of traversing the
oceans and settling in foreign countries. The Eastern countries with
which ancient India traded were chiefly China, Trangangetic Peninsula
and Australia. Professor Heeran says that “the second direction, which
the trade of India took was towards the East, that is, to the Ultra-Gangetic
Peninsula, comprising Ava Mallaca, etc. The Hindus themselves were in
the habit of constructing the vessels in which they navigated the coast
of Coromandel (Cholamandel), and also made voyages to the Ganges and the
peninsula beyond it. These ships bore different names according to their
sizes.
Land Trade
As regards the trade with central and northern Asia, we are told that
“the Indians make expeditions for commercial purposes into the golden
desert Ideste, desert of Cobi, in armed companies of a thousand or two
thousand men. But, according to a report, they do not return home for
three or four years.” The Takhti Suleman, or the stone tower mentioned
by Ptolemy and Ctesias, was the starting point for Hindu merchants who
went to China.
Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeran says: “By means of this building it is easy
to determine the particular route as well as the length of time employed
by the Hindu merchants in their journey to China. If we assume Cabul, or
rather Bactria, as their place of departure, the expedition would take a
north-easterly direction as far as the forty-first degree of the north
latitude. It would then have to ascend the mountains, and so arrive at
the stone tower through the defile of Hoshan, or Owsh. From thence the
route led by Cashgar, beyond the mountains to the borders of the great
desert of Cobi, which it traversed probably through Khotan and Aksu (the
Casia and Auxazia of Ptolemy). From these ancient towns the road lay
through Koshotei to Se-chow, on the frontiers of China, and thence to
Pekin, a place of great antiquity. The whole distance amounts to upwards
of 2,500 miles.”
Foreign trade of a nation presupposes development of its internal trade.
Specially is this true of a large country like India, with its varied
products, vast population and high civilization.
Christian Lassen (1800-1876) of Paris considers it remarkable that the
Hindus themselves discovered the rich, luxurious character of India’s
products; many of them are produced in other countries, but remained
unnoticed until sought for by foreigners, where as the most ancient
Hindus had a keen enjoyment in articles of taste and luxury. Rajas and
other rich people delighted in sagacious elephants, swift horses,
splendid peacocks, golden decorations, exquisite perfumes, pungent
peppers, ivory, pearls, gems, gold etc. and consequently caravans were
in continued requisition to carry down these and innumerable other
matters between the north and the south, and the west and the east of
their vast and varied country. These caravans, were met at border
stations and about ports by western caravans or ships bound to or from
Tyre and Egypt or to or from the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.”
Strabo, Plutarch, and Apollodoras agree in their statements that India
had considerable trade roads in all directions, with mile stones, and
was provided with inns for travelers. And these “roads” says Heeran,
“were planted with trees and flowers.”
Active internal commerce was carried on in northern India along the
course of the Ganges. Here was the royal highway extending from Taxila
on the Indus to Patliputra (in Bihar) and which was 10,000 stadia in
length, according to Strabo.
Periplus, too, after saying that “the Ganges and its tributary streams
were the grand commercial routes of northern India,” adds that the
“rivers of the Southern Peninsula also were navigated.”
According to Arrian, the commercial intercourse between the eastern and
western coasts were carried on in country built ships. Periplus again
says that “in Dachhanabades (Dakshina Patha in Sanskrit, or the Deccan)
there are two very distinguished and celebrated marts, named Tagara and
Pluthama, whence merchandise was bought down to Barygaza (Barauch).
Ozene (Ujjain) was one of the chief marts for internal traffic, and
supplied the neighboring country with all kinds of merchandise.
The Encyclopedia Britannica says: “It (India) exported its most valuable
produce, its diamonds, its aromatics, its silks, and its costly
manufactures. The country, which abounded in those expensive luxuries,
was naturally reputed to be the seat of immense riches, and every
romantic tale of its felicity and glory was readily believed. In the
Middle Ages, an extensive commerce with India was still maintained
through the ports of Egypt and the Red Sea; and its precious produce,
imported into Europe by the merchants of Venice, confirmed the popular
opinion of its high refinement and its vast wealth.”
(source: Hindu Superiority – By Har Bilas Sarda p 405-426). For more
refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor
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