Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/110

 story of the churning of the ocean, in the Mahābhārata, in the boldness of its conception is not without a significance. In the Droṇa Parva there is a passage alluding to shipwrecked sailors who "are safe if they get to an island." In the same Parva there is another passage in which there is a reference to a "tempest-tossed and damaged vessel in a wide ocean." In the Karṇa Parva we find the soldiers of the Kauravas bewildered like the merchants "whose ships have come to grief in the midst of the unfathomable deep." There is another sloka in the same Parva which describes how the sons of Draupadī rescued their maternal uncles by supplying them with chariots, "as the shipwrecked merchants are rescued by means of boats." In the Śānti Parva the salvation attained by means of Karma and true knowledge is compared to the gain which a merchant derives from sea-borne trade. But the most interesting passage in the Mahābhārata is that which refers to the escape of