Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/253

 60. Ships of the country: Sangara.—The first were, no doubt, the craft made of hollowed logs with plank sides and outriggers, such as are still used in South India and Ceylon (pictured on p.212); the larger type, sangāra, were probably made of two such canoes joined together by a deck-platform admitting of a fair-sized deck-house. Dr. Taylor (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Jan., 1847, pp.1–78), says that the name jangār is still used on the Malabar coast for these double canoes. Caldwell gives the forms changādam in Malayālam; jangāla in Tulu; and samghādam in Sanscrit, "a raft." Benfey (art. on India in Ersch & Gruber's Encyklopädie, 307) derives it from the Sanscrit sangāra, meaning "trade;" Lassen, however, (II, 543), doubts the application of the word to shipping, and Herren (Ideen über die Politik, etc., I, iii, 361) ascribes the word to a Malay original. This is quite possible, as the type itself is Malay, and found throughout the archipelago.

Periplus 243 Double Canoe.png Modern double canoe with deck-structure, of the sangāra type; in general use in South India, Ceylon, and the Eastern Archipelago.

The comparatively large size of the shipping on the Coromandel coast is indicated also by the Andhra coinage, on which a frequent symbol is a ship with two masts, apparently of considerable tonnage.