Indian Shipping/Book 1/Part 2/Chapter 6

There was also another people that played a very prominent part in the sea-borne trade and colonizing activity of India towards the East. The testimony that history bears to the military, religious, and maritime enterprise and achievements of the ancient Buddhistic Bengali in the earlier centuries of the Christian era now scarcely wins belief and acceptance. Yet it is an incontrovertible fact that Bengal of old gave birth to men who marched armies beyond the frontiers of modern India and ruled for a time as the paramount power in the land; who braved the perils of the deep in armed galleys, and carried home foreign itinerants in their ships. It is also equally noteworthy that from very early times she has been the home of many a religious movement whose influence penetrated to lands far beyond her limits. It is hardly sufficiently known that during the first few centuries of the Christian era an enthusiastic band of devoted Bengalis, burning with a proselytizing zeal, went as far as China, Corea, and Japan, carrying with them the torch of the ​Buddhistic faith, while her Buddhistic scholars and reformers, like Atīsha, Dīpaṅkara, and Śīlabhadra, achieved an Asiatic fame, and were known throughout the wider Buddhistic world. It is also a recent discovery that some of the scriptures of the Japanese priests preserved in the Horiuzi temple of Japan are written in Bengali characters of the 11th century,^[1] thus testifying to the extraordinary vitality of Bengali religious activity that made itself felt even in the Land of the Rising Sun. Artists and art-critics also see in the magnificent sculptures of the Burobudur temple in Java the hand of Bengali artists who worked side by side with the people of Kalinga and Gujarat in thus building up its early civilization. And the numerous representations of ships which we find in the vast panorama of the bas-reliefs of that colossal temple reveal the type of ships which the people of Lower Bengal built and used in sailing to Ceylon, Java, Sumatra, China, and Japan, in pursuit of their colonizing ambition, commercial interests, and artistic and religious missions. The Mahāwańsa and other Buddhistic works tell us how as early as about 550 B.C. Prince ​Vijaya of Bengal with his 700 followers achieved the conquest and colonization of Ceylon, and gave to the island the name of Sińhala after that of his dynasty—an event which is the starting-point of Sinhalese history. It is also said that in a still earlier period the Bengalis of Chāmpā, near Bhagalpur, founded a settlement in Cochin China, and named it after their famous native town.^[2] No less creditable also were the artistic achievements of Bengal;^[3] besides, as we have seen, influencing the art of Borobudur, Bengali art has influenced that of Nepal through the schools of painting, sculpture, and works in cast metal founded about the middle of the 9th century by Dhīman and his son Bitpāl, inhabitants of Barendra, and from Nepal the art of the Bengali masters spread to China and other parts of the Buddhistic world.

This tradition of Bengalis being once famous for their maritime enterprises and commercial activities has also been, as may be naturally expected, well preserved in their literature. No folk-lore is so popular in Bengal as those volumes of poetry evoked by devotion to the goddesses of ​Chaṇdī and Manasā, and in them are contained accounts of the maritime adventures of merchants like Dhanapati, Śrīmanta, and Chand Saodāgara, which, in spite of the miraculous details invented and imported into them by a pious imagination and warm religious feeling, contain a nucleus of truth, and unmistakably point to one of the ways through which the national genius of the country chose to express itself. In the same manner that Shakespeare's Antonio had "an argosy bound for Tripoly, another for the Indies, a third for Mexico, and a fourth for England," is our Indian Śrīmanta represented to possess merchantmen trading to the Coromandel coast, to Ceylon, to Malacca, Java, and China. The vast collection of poems known as the Padma Purāṇa or Manasāmaṅgala is formed by the contributions of more than fifty authors who have all described sea voyages. About eight or nine poems form the group of poems celebrating the glories of the goddess Chaṇdī, and in nearly all of them are also contained accounts of sea voyages. These works belong to so late a period as the 16th century, and their value lies in the fact that they thus carry down to comparatively late times the tradition of the Bengalis being once known for their commercial and maritime pursuits. The oldest record in Bengali literature is that of Nārāyaṇadeva, a poet who lived about the latter part of the 13th century, and who has given a graphic account of the sea voyage ​of Chand Saodāgara. Another account, free from exaggerations and fabulous details, and hence more reliable, is that given by Bańśī Dasa, who of course profusely borrows from Nārāyaṇadeva.

These poems together throw a great light on the then condition of commerce in Bengal. Sailors for sea-going vessels were then, as now, recruited from the people of East Bengal, who have been the object of genial banter in the writings of Kavikaṅkaṇa, Ketakadāsā, Kshemānanda, and others. Ships had more poetical names in those days than now. In Manasāmaṅgala poems we come across such names as Gaṅgāprasād (গঙ্গাপ্রসাদ), Sāgarafenā (সাগরফেনা), Hańsarava (হংসরব), Rājavallava (রাজবল্লভ), and the like. There is a very detailed account of the fleet of Dhanapati sailing towards Ceylon in Kavikaṅkaṇa Chaṇdī, which is well worth a notice.^[4] It ​is made up of seven vessels. The head ship is called Madhukara (মধুকর), generally meant for princes and big merchants: its cabin is made all of gold. The second ship is named Durgāvara, the third Gooarākhi, the fourth Saṅkshachūra, the fifth Sińhamukhī, shining like the sun, the sixth Chandrapāna, which is used for goods, and the seventh Chotamukhī, meant to carry provisions.^[5] The whole fleet sailed merrily, propelled by the lustily singing oarsmen. There were also trading fleets carrying merchandise and provisions for long voyages; and worthless things were often exchanged in distant countries for very valuable ones.^[6]

The great trading centres of Bengal in those ​days were Satgaon, called Tcharitrapoura in the time of the Chinese pilgrim's visit, and described by Ptolemy as a royal city of immense size, as well as Sonargaon, the great harbour of Eastern Bengal. Chāmpa or Bhagalpur was also one of the commercial centres from which merchants could sail for Subarṇabhūmi or the Burmese coast. But by far the most important emporium of ancient Bengal was Tamralipta, the great Buddhist harbour of the Bengal sea-board. It is referred to in the Mahāwańso (ch. xix.) as Tamalitta, and was probably meant by the author of Periplus when he spoke of "a great commercial city near the mouth of the Ganges, the trade of which consisted chiefly in cloths of the most delicate texture and extreme beauty." The place is of very great antiquity, and existed prior to the days of Asoka, for it figures even in the sacred writings of the Hindus. The Chinese pilgrim, Fa-Hien, when he visited India in A.D. 399-414, found it a maritime settlement of the Buddhists. "There are twenty-four Sangharamas in this country," he says; "all of them have resident priests." After his residence there for two years he shipped himself on board a great merchant vessel which he found in the harbour of Tamluk, and putting to sea, they proceeded in a south-westerly direction, and catching the first fair wind of the winter season (i.e. of the N.E. monsoon), they sailed for fourteen days and nights, and arrived ​at Ceylon. Two hundred and fifty years later, a yet more celebrated pilgrim from China speaks of Tamluk as still an important Buddhist harbour, with ten Buddhist monasteries, a thousand monks, and a pillar by Asoka 200 feet high. It was "situated on a bay, could be approached both by land and water, and contained stores of rare and precious merchandise and a wealthy population." And another Chinese traveller, I-Tsing, who followed Hiuen Tsang, thus wrote of the Bengal port: "Tamalipti is forty yojanas south from the eastern limit of India. There are five or six monasteries; the people are rich. … This is the place where we embarked when returning to China."^[7]