Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/133



Brahminical and Buddhistic texts are thus replete with references to the sea-borne trade of India that directly and indirectly demonstrate the existence and development of a national shipping and shipbuilding. It is now necessary to narrate the facts of that trade, and for this we shall have to draw upon all sorts of evidence, literary, inscriptional, and numismatic, and both Indian and foreign. For India alone has not the monopoly of these evidences; and if she really had commercial connection with the outside world it is natural, and in fact necessary, that they be also supplied by those countries with which she carried on her intercourse, thus confirming those conclusions that are reached by a study of the purely Indian evidences. And so do we find, as a matter of fact, in various foreign works abundant allusions to India's commerce, arts, and manufactures, indicating the glorious position she once occupied and for long maintained as the Queen of the Eastern Seas.