Odam – the quintessential sewn boat of India

Abstract

The article opens with a preliminary introduction to the trade routes that existed in antiquity and the role of Indian trade as regards these routes. India could have played a passive role and allowed foreign merchants to handle her commerce. This did not happen as the sub-continent had the wherewithal to play an effective role. This article will concentrate on the ships that handled this trade. Mariners are more open to innovation than settled communities and there was a corpus of Indian Ocean maritime tradition built on mutual adaptation and absorption in which the Arabs and Chinese played a role. India’s achievements in astronomy and mathematics were reflected in some of the maritime devices that made seafaring a pragmatic enterprise with unacknowledged theoretical underpinnings. This is mirrored in the Lakshadweep odam, which undertook seafaring voyages until the 1970s. The odam was a sewn boat and its features will be delineated against a backdrop of the community that brought it into being.