BHARAT's shipping:Maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

Indian traders in Zanzibar and trade with africans.

Adapted from Vriitrahan the author..

The following are some excerpts from Daṇḍin-s (7-8th century CE) work (daśakumaracarita) which contains some references to kāla-yavana and kāla-yavana-dvīpa, as in black-people and island of black people with names of Indian traders living there. Some historians like Motichandra identified this with the island of Zanzibar, an island off the coast of modern day Tanzania.


मुनिवर! कालयवननाम्नि द्वीपे कालगुप्तो नाम धनाढ्यो वैश्यवरः कश्चिदस्ति
तन्नन्दिनीं नयनानन्दकारिणीं सुवृत्तां नामैतस्माद् द्वीपादागतो मगधनाथमन्त्रिसंभवो रत्नोद्भवो नाम रमणीयगुणालयो भ्रान्तभूवलयो मनोहारी व्यवहार्युपयम्य सुवस्तुसंपदा श्वशुरेण संमानितो ऽभूत्
कालक्रमेण नताङ्गी गर्भिणी जाता (1.1.67)


“O Best of Sages, In an island by the name of kāla-yavana a [merchant] vaiśya by the name of kāla-gupta lived. That vaiśya had a daughter who gave him happiness, named suvṛttā. From this land* came Ratnodbhava, the son of a magadha minister of the king. This ratnodbhava was the shelter of qualities of charm and delightfulness. He was very well traveled and an astute businessman. He was wedded [to Suvritta]. He became bestowed with excellent property by his father in law. With the passing of time, the slender waisted suvṛtta became pregnant.


“सौम्य, मगधाधिनाथामात्यस्य पद्मोद्भवस्यात्मसंभवो रत्नोद्भवो नामाहम् /
वाणिज्यरूपेण कालयवनद्वीपमुपेत्य कामपि वणिक्कन्यकां परिणीय तया सह प्रत्यागच्छन्नम्बुधौ तीरस्यानतिदूर एव प्रवहणस्य भग्नतया सर्वेषु निमग्नेषु कथङ्कथमपि दैवानुकूल्येन तीरभूमिमभिगम्य (1.4.3)


“O Good Sir, I am the son of the minister to the King of Magadha. My name is Ratnodbhava. As a trader, I had set out for the kāla-yavana island and married some daughter of another merchant [there]. With her I was returning, in the ocean, not far from the bank indeed our ship was wrecked. Because of that, everyone drowned. Somehow, wandering, by the favor of the Gods, I came to the banks of this shore.”



पुत्र, कालयवनद्वीपे कालगुप्तनाम्नो वणिजः कस्यचिदेषा सुता सुवृत्ता नाम रत्नोद्भवेन निजकान्तेनागच्छन्ती जलधौ मग्ने प्रवहणे निजधात्र्या मया सह फलकमेकमवलम्ब्य दैवयोगेन (1.4.7)


“Son, In the kāla-yavana island there was a trader by the name of kāla-gupta. This woman by the name of Suvṛttā is the daughter [of that merchant]. She was coming with Ratnodbhava, her husband but their ship sank in the water. I am here nurse, with me with the favor of the Gods, we reached shore holding on to one log of wood…”


I won’t go into the details of the story.. (it is an interesting one though).. But we can see here how a merchant named Ratnodbhava went for trade to the island of the black-yavanas. Yavana being a generic epithet for foreigner. So essentially, an island of black people. Here, a merchant named Kāla-Gupta with vaishya epithet “Gupta” was already living here. He married his daughter.


Now, we also have more evidence from Jain merchant manuals which shows more mentions of kalayavanadvīpa and describe this land as having stripped horses (zebras) and a lot of gold. Motichandra talks about this and identifies this island as Zanzibar, off the coast of modern day Tanzania. Taking all this into account and considering the time period, it’s fair to say Indian merchants in classical India frequently traded with Africans in ivory, gold and even ended up settling there.

 

[asaffronladoftherisingsun]

BHARAT had a long trade and travel relation with Ptolemaic Egypt, a Greek kingdom in Egypt founded around 300 BCE. Inscriptions in temple ruins still carry Indian/Hindu names there. Image shows an estimate of Ptolemaic kingdom. The sea trade between Ancient BHARAT and Egypt is well documented.

This inscription is found in the temple of Seti I at Khanais that falls on the road between the cities of Edfu and Mersa Alam.

Rawlinson mentioned the Greek inscription in his book "Intercourse between India and the Western World" published in 1916. The inscription is mentioned in p. 99. See the Greek inscription and his initial estimate what it meant.

Once translated, that inscription says "To Pan, who gives easy passage and listens to prayer; Sophon the Indian, on his own behalf". German scholars Wilcken and Hultzsch translated the inscription.

Hultzsch estimates that the Hellenized name Sophon's original Hindu form may be the Sanskrit Subhanu. This interpretation is generally accepted. Pan was identified with Krishna, the god of flocks and herds, and played a rustic flute. He was an Egyptian trader of Indian origin.

Sophon/Subhanu was one of the earliest examples of NRI that is known in history. His inscription is a testament to the early Indian merchants and traders in ancient Egypt. Later even in 470 CE, Brahmans visited Alexandria and stayed with Consul Severus.

Assurbanipal (668-626 BC) cultivated Indian plants including the “wool-bearing trees” of India.
According to the Skandha Purana, Egypt (Africa) was known as Sancha-Dvipa continent mentioned in Sir Willliams Jones’ dissertation on Egypt. At Alexandria, in Egypt, Indian scholars were a common sight: they are mentioned both by Chrysostomus (100 A.D.) and by Clement (200 A.D.)

Peter Von Bohlen (1796-1840), German Indologist, compared India with ancient Egypt. He thought there was a cultural connection between the two in ancient times. There are elements of folk art, language, and rural culture of Bengal which have an affinity with their Egyptian counterparts.

There are similarities between place names in Bengal and Egypt and recently an Egyptian scholar, El Mansouri, has pointed out that in both Egypt and India the worship of cow, sun, snake, and river are common.

Recently, more definitive evidence suggesting contact between India and Egypt has become available. A terracotta mummy from Lothal vaguely resembles an Egyptian mummy and a similar terracotta mummy is found also at Mohenjo-daro of SINDHU SARASVATI BHARAT. In this context it is of interest to note that the Egyptian mummies are said to have been wrapped in Indian muslin. Characters similar to those on the Indus seals have also been found on tablets excavated from Easter Island.

Of all the Egyptian objects and motifs indicating some contact between India and Egypt during the Sindhu-Saraswati Valley period, the cord pattern occurring in a copper tablet in the Sindhu Valley and on three Egyptian seals is the most striking link between the two countries.

Gordon Childe confirms..

In his book, Empire of the Soul: Some Journeys in India, Paul William Roberts, states: «Recent research and scholarship make it increasingly possible to believe that the Vedic era was the lost civilization whose legacy the Egyptians and the Indians inherited. There must have been one. There are too many similarities between hieroglyphic texts and Vedic ones, these in turn echoed in somewhat diluted form and a confused fashion by the authors of Babylonian texts and the Old Testament».


It is believed that the South Indians went to Egypt and laid the foundation of its civilization there. The Egyptians themselves had the tradition that they originally came from a land called Punt, which an historian of the West, Dr. H.R. Hall, thought referred to some part of India.


The Sindhu Sarasvati Valley civilization is, according to Sir John Marshall who was in charge of the excavations, the oldest of all civilizations unearthed (c. 4000 BC) it is older than the Sumerian and it is believed by many that the latter was a branch of the former.

Klaus K. Klostermaier, in his book A Survey of Hinduism says:

Mueller had also observed that the mythology of Egyptians (and also that of the Greeks and Assyrians) is wholly founded on Vedic traditions. Eusebius, a Greek writer, has also recorded that the early Ethiopians emigrated from the river Sindhu and first settled in the vicinity of Egypt.


In an essay entitled On Egypt from the Ancient Book of the Hindus, British Lt. Colonel Wilford gave abundant evidence proving that ancient Indians colonized and settled in Egypt. The British explorer John Hanning Speke, who in 1862 discovered the source of the Nile in Lake Victoria, acknowledged that the Egyptians themselves didn’t have the slightest knowledge of where the Nile’s source was. However, Lt. Colonel Wilford’s description of the Hindus’ intimate acquaintance with ancient Egypt led Speke to Ripon Falls, at the edge of Lake Victoria.


Heinrich Karl Brugsch agrees with this view and writes in his History of Egypt that, «we have a right to more than suspect that India, eight thousand years ago, sent a colony of emigrants who carried their arts and high civilization into what is now known as Egypt.