Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/138

 that this wood must have been sent by sea from some port on the Malabar coast, for it is only there that teak grew near enough to the sea to be exported with profit in those early times. Again, Dr. Sayce points to the use of the word sindhu for muslin in an old Babylonian list of clothes as the clearest proof "that there was trade between Babylonia and people who spoke an Aryan dialect and lived in the country watered by the Indus." This trade must have been sea-borne, and the muslin must have been brought by sea, for, as Mr. Hewitt points out, if Zend-speaking traders had brought it by land they would have called the country by the Zend name, Hindhu, altering the s into an h. These conclusions of Dr. Sayce and Mr. Hewitt regarding the extreme antiquity of the Indian maritime trade with Babylon are not, however, accepted by all scholars. Mr. J. Kennedy, for instance, in a learned article on the subject, says that he "can find no archaeological or literary evidence for a maritime trade between India and Babylon prior to the 7th century B.C. . . . but for the 6th century B.C. direct evidence is forthcoming." This direct evidence, which is so very interesting, may be thus presented after him:— (1) Mr. Rassam found a beam of Indian cedar in