UNRAVELING MARITIME MOVEMENTS IN ANCIENT INDIA - The Daily Guardian

Monidipa Dey — July 30, 2021, 7:28 am

The geographical features of a country play a pivotal role in determining the social and cultural traits of its people. It also helps in determining the trading nature of a community to some extent. From a look at the physical features of India, it is clear that no other country in the world is better marked out by nature as a region by itself than India. Protected by the high Himalayan ranges in the north and sea-girt in the south, it would seem that India would remain in its natural isolation, cut-off from the rest of the world. Yet various archaeological artefacts and the literary evidence point at thriving trade relationships with foreign countries that started from the proto-historic Harappan era. India has always been a trading nation offering to the world its much-treasured commodities such as spices, steel, jewels, medicinal drugs, perfumes, and fine cotton.

Stone anchors from the dock at Lothal. Source: S.R. Rao’s ‘Shipping and Maritime Trade of the Indus People’ (Expedition Magazine 7.3; 1965). Image for representational purposes only.

Disha Kaka Boat with Direction Finding Birds, model of Mohenjodaro seal, 3,000 BCE. National Museum, New DelhiModel of a Chola (200-848 CE) ship’s hull, built by the ASI, based on a wreck 19 miles off the coast of Poombuhar, displayed in a Museum in Tirunelveli. Wikimedia Commons