Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/64

 of absconding carpenters numbering a thousand who failed to deliver the goods (furniture, etc.) for which they had been paid in advance. The ship in which the Punna brothers, merchants of Supparaka, sailed to the region of the red-sanders was so big that besides accommodating three hundred merchants, there was room left for the large cargo of that timber which they carried home. The two Burmese merchant-brothers Tapoosa and Palekat crossed the Bay of Bengal in a ship that conveyed full five hundred cartloads of their own goods, besides whatever other cargo there may have been in it. The ship in which was rescued from a watery grave the philanthropic Brahman of the Sāṅkha-Jātaka was 800 cubicscubits [sic] in length, 600 cubits in width, and 20 fathoms in depth, and had three masts. The ship in which the prince of the Mahājanaka-Jātaka sailed with other traders from Chāmpā (modern Bhagalpur) for Suvarṇabhūmi (probably either Burma or the Golden Chersonese, or the whole Farther-Indian coast) had on board seven caravans with their beasts. Lastly, the Dāthā dhātu wanso, in relating the story of the conveyance of the Tooth-relic from Dantapura to Ceylon, gives an interesting description of a ship.