Indian maritime history begins during the 3rd millennium BCE, when the Indus Valley Civilisation initiated maritime trading contact with Mesopotamia. India's long coastline, with the Deccan Peninsula projecting into the Indian Ocean, helped foster extensive maritime trade and cultural exchange. The Indian Ocean is named after India due to its prominent geographic position in the region.
As per Vedic records, Indian traders and merchants traded with the Far East and Arabia. During the Maurya Empire ( BCE), there was a definite "naval department" to supervise the ships and trade.At the end of 1st century BCE, Indian products reached the Romans during the rule of Augustus, and the Roman historian Strabo mentions an increase in Roman trade with India following the Roman annexation of Egypt.Young, 20 As trade between India and the Greco-Roman world increased, spices became the main import from India to the Western world,Ball, 131 bypassing silk and other commodities.Ball, 137 Indians were present in Alexandria, while Christian and Jewish settlers from Rome continued to live in India long after the fall of the Roman Empire, which resulted in Rome's loss of the Red Sea ports, previously used to secure trade with India by the Greco-Roman world since the Ptolemaic dynasty. The Indian commercial connection with Southeast Asia proved vital to the merchants of Arabia and Persia during the 7th–8th century. A study published in 2013 found that some 11 percent of Australian Aboriginal DNA is of Indian origin and suggests these immigrants arrived about 4,000 years ago, possibly at the same time dingoes first arrived in Australia.
On orders of Manuel I of Portugal, four vessels under the command of navigator Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope, continuing to the eastern coast of Africa to Malindi to sail across the Indian Ocean to Calicut by 1498. This discovery of the Cape Route meant that the wealth of the Indies was now open for the Europeans to explore. The Portuguese Empire was the first European empire to grow from spice trade. By 1869, the completion of the Suez Canal resulted in a faster maritime route between Europe and India, allowing the United Kingdom to more easily maintain control in India and the Indian Ocean.
National Maritime Day 5 April is celebrated as National Maritime Day in India. On this day in 1919, navigation history was created when SS Loyalty, the first ship of the Scindia Steam Navigation Company Ltd., journeyed to the United Kingdom, a crucial step for India's shipping history when sea routes were controlled by the British.
Prehistory
The region around the Indus River began to show visible increase in both the length and the frequency of maritime voyages by 3000 BCE.Gosch & Stearns, 7 Optimum conditions for viable long-distance voyages existed in this region by 2900 BCE.Gosch & Stearns, 9 Mesopotamian inscriptions indicate that Indian traders from the Indus Valley—carrying copper, hardwoods, ivory, pearls, carnelian, and gold—were active in Mesopotamia during the reign of Sargon of Akkad (c. 2300 BCE).Gosch & Stearns, 12 Gosch & Stearns write on the Indus Valley's pre-modern maritime travel:Gosch & Stearns, 12–13 Evidence exists that Harappans were bulk-shipping timber and special woods to Sumer on ships and luxury items such as lapis lazuli. The trade in lapis lazuli was carried out from northern Afghanistan over eastern Iran to Sumer but during the Mature Harappan period an Indus colony was established at Shortugai in Central Asia near the Badakshan mines and the lapis stones were brought overland to Lothal in Gujarat and shipped to Oman, Bahrain and Mesopotamia.
The world's first dock at Lothal (2400 BCE) was located away from the main current to avoid deposition of silt. Modern oceanographers have observed that the Harappans must have possessed great knowledge relating to tides in order to build such a dock on the ever-shifting course of the Sabarmati, as well as exemplary hydrography and maritime engineering. This was the earliest known dock found in the world, equipped to berth and service ships.Rao, 27–28 It is speculated that Lothal engineers studied tidal movements, and their effects on brick-built structures, since the walls are of kiln-burnt bricks. This knowledge also enabled them to select Lothal's location in the first place, as the Gulf of Khambhat has the highest tidal amplitude and ships can be sluiced through flow tides in the river estuary. The engineers built a trapezoidal structure, with north–south arms of average 21.8 metres (71.5 ft), and east–west arms of 37 metres (121 ft).Rao, 28–29
Excavations at Golbai Sasan in Odisha have shown a Neolithic culture dating to as early as ca. 2300 BC, followed by a Chalcolithic (copper age) culture and then an Iron Age culture starting around 900 BC. Tools found at this site indicate boat building, perhaps for coastal trade. Fish bones, fishing hooks, barbed spears and harpoons show that fishing was an important part of the economy. Some artefacts of the Chalcolithic period are similar to artefacts found in Vietnam, indicating possible contact with Indochina at a very early period.
Indians had already been trading with Egypt for a long time even before the conquest of Egypt by the Romans. At the end of 1st century BCE Indian products reached the Romans during the rule of Augustus, and the Roman historian Strabo mentions an increase in Roman trade with India following the Roman annexation of Egypt.Young, Gary Keith (2001), Rome's Eastern Trade: International Commerce and Imperial Policy, 31 BC-AD 305, Routledge, , page 20 Recent excavations at Berenike in Egypt have confirmed, there was a small community of Indian Buddhists at Alexandria, the greatest of all Roman ports.Manichaeism worshipped Jesus, Buddha. This Silk Road religion’s strength became its weakness, The Print, 14 dec 2023. A large number of significant finds have been made providing evidence of the cargo from the Malabar Coast and the presence of Tamil people from South India and Jaffna being at this last outpost of the Roman Empire.
Early kingdoms
Indian cartography locates the Pole star, and other constellations of use in navigational charts.Sircar, 330 These charts may have been in use by the beginning of the Common Era for purposes of navigation. Detailed maps of considerable length describing the locations of settlements, sea shores, rivers, and mountains were also made.Sircar, 327 The Periplus Maris Erythraei mentions a time when sea trade between India and Egypt did not involve direct sailings.Young, 19 The cargo under these situations was shipped to Aden:
Tamil Pandya embassies were received by Augustus Caesar and Roman historians mention a total of four embassies from the Tamil country. Pliny famously mentions the expenditure of one million sestertii every year on goods such as pepper, fine cloth and gems from the southern coasts of India. He also mentions 10,000 horses shipped to this region each year. Tamil inscriptions have been found in Luxor in Egypt. In turn Tamil literature from the Classical period mentions foreign ships arriving for trade and paying in gold for products.
The first clear mention of a navy occurs in the mythological epic Mahabharata.Chakravarti (1930) Historically, however, the first attested attempt to organise a navy in India, as described by Megasthenes (c. 350—290 BCE), is attributed to Chandragupta Maurya (reign 322—298 BCE). The Maurya Empire (322–185 BCE) navy continued till the times of emperor Ashoka (reign 273—232 BCE), who used it to send massive diplomatic missions to Greece, Syria, Egypt, Cyrene, Macedonia and Epirus. Following nomadic interference in Siberia—one of the sources for India's bullion—India diverted its attention to the Malay Peninsula, which became its new source for gold and was soon exposed to the world via a series of maritime trade routes. The period under the Mauryan Empire also witnessed various other regions of the world engage increasingly in the Indian Ocean maritime voyages.
According to the historian Strabo (II.5.12.) the Roman trade with India trade initiated by Eudoxus of Cyzicus in 130 BCE kept increasing."At any rate, when Gallus was prefect of Egypt, I accompanied him and ascended the Nile as far as Syene and the frontiers of Kingdom of Aksum (Ethiopia), and I learned that as many as one hundred and twenty vessels were sailing from Myos Hormos to India, whereas formerly, under the Ptolemies, only a very few ventured to undertake the voyage and to carry on traffic in Indian merchandise." — Indian ships sailed to Egypt as the thriving maritime routes of Southern Asia were not under the control of a single power.Lach, 13 In India, the ports of Barbaricum (modern Karachi), Barygaza, Muziris, Korkai, Kaveripattinam and Arikamedu on the southern tip of India were the main centres of this trade. The Periplus Maris Erythraei describes Greco—Roman merchants selling in Barbaricum "thin clothing, figured linens, topaz, coral, storax, frankincense, vessels of glass, silver and gold plate, and a little wine" in exchange for "costus, bdellium, lycium, nard, turquoise, lapis lazuli, Seric skins, cotton cloth, silk yarn, and indigo". In Barygaza, they would buy wheat, rice, sesame oil, cotton and cloth.
The Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum was involved in the Indian Ocean trade network and was influenced by Roman culture and Indian architecture. Traces of Indian influences are visible in Roman works of silver and ivory, or in Egyptian cotton and silk fabrics used for sale in Europe.Lach, 18 The Indian presence in Alexandria may have influenced the culture but little is known about the manner of this influence. Clement of Alexandria mentions the Buddha in his writings and other Indian religions find mentions in other texts of the period. The Indians were present in Alexandria and Christian and Jewish settlers from Rome continued to live in India long after the fall of the Roman Empire,Curtin, 100 which resulted in Rome's loss of the Red Sea ports,Holl, 9 previously used to secure trade with India by the Greco—Roman world since the time of the Ptolemaic dynasty.Lindsay, 101
Early Common Era—High Middle Ages
During this period, Hindu and Buddhist religious establishments of Southeast Asia came to be associated with economic activity and commerce as patrons entrusted large funds which would later be used to benefit local economy by estate management, craftsmanship and promotion of trading activities.Donkin, 67 Buddhism, in particular, travelled alongside the maritime trade, promoting coinage, art and literacy.Donkin, 69 This route caused the intermixing of many artistic and cultural influences, Hellenistic, Iranian, Indian and Chinese, Greco-Buddhist art represents one such vivid examples of this interaction.Xinru, Liu,The Silk Road in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 21. Buddha was first depicted as human in the Kushan period with intermixing of Greek and Indian elements, and the influence of this Greco-Buddhist art can be found in later Buddhist art in China and throughout countries on the Silk Road. Ashoka and after him his successors of Kalinga, Pallava and Chola empires along with their vassals Pandya and Chera dynasties, as well as Vijayanagara Empire all played a vital role in expanding Indianisation, extending Indian maritime trade and growth of Hinduism and Buddhism. Port of Kollam is an example of important trade port in Maritime Silk Route.