Glimpses from Indian Naval History: Geography of Seafaring and Mythography of Prohibitions

Abstract

Many dharmaśāstra texts, starting from the most famous, the Manusmr+ti, declare sea voyage to be sinful and polluting for a Hindu. At the same time, from remote antiquity, Hindus from various castes, including Brahmans, had actively traversed the seas to the west, south and east of India for the purposes of trade, war, spiritual guidance, adventures and so on. This article seeks to review the geography of ancient and mediaeval Indian seafaring (in which Hindus played a significant role) and, more importantly, to discover why, in colonial India, the notion of sea travel being prohibited to Hindus became widely established, so that the descendants of the merchants who had operated from Aden to the Indonesian and Chinese ports would excommunicate their young caste fellows who desirous to study abroad.