# Indian Shipping/Introduction/Evidences

II.—Evidences.
The sources and materials available for the construction of a history of Indian shipping and maritime activity naturally divide themselves into two classes, Indian and foreign. The Indian evidences are those derived from Indian literature and art, including sculpture and painting, besides the evidence of archaeology in its threefold branches, epigraphic, monumental, and numismatic. The evidences of Indian literature are based chiefly on Sanskrit, Pali, and Persian works, and in some cases on works in the Indian vernaculars, Tamil, Marathi, and Bengali. The foreign evidences consist of those writings of foreign travellers and historians which contain observations on Indian subjects, and also of archaeological remains such as those in Java. The former are embedded mostly in classical literature, in Chinese, Arabic, and Persian, to which we have access only through translations.
The way these various evidences, literary and monumental, Indian and foreign, will be arranged, and the order in which they will be presented, ​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 ​speak. The real historical narrative of the naval activity of India will be built up of materials supplied by such foreign and also Indian works as labour under no chronological difficulties.
The passages from ancient Indian works will be presented, as far as possible, in the order determined by tradition. In the opinion of the late Professor Bühler, the far-famed German orientalist, "there are passages in ancient Indian works which prove the early existence of a navigation of the Indian Ocean and the somewhat later occurrence of trading voyages undertaken by Hindu merchants to the shores of the Persian Gulf and its rivers." These proofs, however, will be found mostly to supply an indirect kind of evidence; they contain no direct information regarding the existence and development of a national shipping which is certainly implied in the existence, development, and continuance of that maritime trade to which they so conclusively refer. For it is a commonplace of history, and quite stands to reason, that no commerce can spring up, and much less thrive, especially in early times, unless it is fostered by a national shipping. Accordingly, the direct proofs that are available regarding Indian shipping and naval activity will have precedence over the indirect ones, and they will include illustrations of the typical ships and boats that are represented in old Indian art, in sculpture and painting, and on coins.