This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... BOOK I.--PART II. CHAPTER I. The Pre-mauryan Per1od. Both Brahminical and Buddhistic texts are thus replete with references to the sea-borne trade of India that directly and indirectly demonstrate the existence and development of a national shipping and shipbuilding. It is now necessary to narrate the facts of that trade, and for this we shall have to draw upon all sorts of evidence, literary, inscriptional, and numismatic, and both Indian and foreign. For India alone has not the monopoly of these evidences; and if she really had commercial connection with the outside world it is natural, and in fact necessary, that they be also supplied by those countries with which she carried on her intercourse, thus confirming those conclusions that are reached by-a study of the purely Indian evidences. And so do we find, as a matter of fact, in various foreign works abundant allusions to India's commerce, arts, and manufactures, indicating the glorious position she once occupied and for long maintained as the Queen of the Eastern Seas. Indeed, all the evidences available will clearly show that for full thirty centuries India stood out as the very heart of the commercial world, cultivating trade relations successively with the Phoenicians, Jews, Assyrians, Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans in ancient times, and Turks, Venetians, Portuguese, Dutch, and English in modern times. A genial climate and a fertile soil, coupled with the industry and frugality of the Indian people, rendered them virtually independent of foreign nations in respect of the necessaries of life, while their secondary wants were few. Of the latter, tin, lead, glass, amber, steel for arms, and perhaps coral and to a small extent medicinal drugs, were all that India had need to import...