Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/123

 viz. Ceylon, and the latter voyage, according to Turnour's Mahāwańso, occupied twelve days.

Next in importance to the Vijayan legends, so far as sea-borne trade is concerned, are the legends of Punna, a merchant of Supparaka, who carried on a large trade, in partnership with his younger brother Chula Punna, with the distant region of Northern Kosala. At Srāvasti he heard Buddha preach, and became his disciple, and afterwards induced his former mercantile associates of Supparaka to erect a Vihāra with a portion of the red-sanders timber which Chula Punna and his three hundred associate merchants brought home on one of their sea voyages. The ship in which they made their trading voyage was of so large a size that besides accommodating over three hundred merchants there was room left for the cargo of that timber which they brought home. The legends next requiring notice in this connection are those of the two Burmese merchant brothers Tapoosa and Palekat, who crossed the Bay of Bengal in a ship that conveyed full five hundred cartloads of their own goods, which they landed at Adzeitta, a port in Kalinga in the northern section of the eastern coast, on their way to Suvama in Magadha. Again, in the legend of the conveyance of the Tooth-relic, as