Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/121

 out the most famous among Indians for pearl fishery, and they gave to the Gulf of Mannar the name of Salābham, "the sea of gain."

Thus Sanskrit literature in all its forms—such as the Vedas, the Sutras, the Purāṇas, poetry epic and dramatic, romance, etc.—is replete with references to the maritime trade of India, which prove that the ocean was freely used by the Indians in ancient times as the great highway of international commerce.

Further, the conclusions pointed to by these evidences from Sanskrit literature receive their confirmation again from the evidences furnished by the Buddhistic literature—the ancient historical works or the chronicles of Ceylon, the canonical books, and the Jātakas or Re-birth stories. The accounts of the Vijayan legends as set forth in the Mahāwańso and other works are full of references to the sea and sea-borne trade. According to the Rājavalliya, Prince Vijaya and his seven hundred followers were banished by the king Sińhaba (Sińhavāhu) of Bengal for the oppressions they practised upon his subjects, and they were put on board a ship and sent adrift, while their wives and children were placed in two other separate ships and sent away similarly. The ships started from a place near the city of Sińhapura, and on their way touched at the port of Supara, which, according to Dr. Burgess, lay near the modern Bassein on the western