Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/40

 finally the network of rivers which opens up the interior. In fact, in India there is to be found the conjunction or assemblage of most of those specific geographical conditions on which depends the commercial development of a country.

 

The sources and materials available for the construction of a history of Indian shipping and maritime activity naturally divide themselves into two classes, Indian and foreign. The Indian evidences are those derived from Indian literature and art, including sculpture and painting, besides the evidence of archaeology in its threefold branches, epigraphic, monumental, and numismatic. The evidences of Indian literature are based chiefly on Sanskrit, Pali, and Persian works, and in some cases on works in the Indian vernaculars, Tamil, Marathi, and Bengali. The foreign evidences consist of those writings of foreign travellers and historians which contain observations on Indian subjects, and also of archaeological remains such as those in Java. The former are embedded mostly in classical literature, in Chinese, Arabic, and Persian, to which we have access only through translations.

The way these various evidences, literary and monumental, Indian and foreign, will be arranged, and the order in which they will be presented,