Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/41

 require to be explained at the outset. Bearing in mind the well-known dictum that "the literature as well as the art of a people tells its life," I have thought that the case for India's maritime activity cannot be held to be sufficiently made out until in the first instance it is supported by the evidence supplied by her own native literature and art, great as they are. The first proofs of Indian maritime activity, and of the existence and growth of an Indian shipping by which that activity realized itself, must accordingly be sought in the domain of Indian literature and art, and the want or paucity of these can hardly be compensated for by the abundance of evidences culled from foreign works. The evidences that will therefore be first presented will be all Indian, being those supplied by Indian literature and art, and after them will follow the evidences derived from foreign sources. Again, as the dates of most of the Indian literary works to which reference will be made are unhappily not yet a matter of certainty, I could not make the evidences drawn from them the basis of any historical treatment of the subject or regard them as any help to a chronological arrangement of the facts regarding the shipping, sea-borne trade, and maritime activity of India. Accordingly, the evidence from Indian literature that will be first adduced will serve only as an introduction to the whole subject, preparing the ground and making out the case for it, so to