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in the 1970s with traditional coastal people in Gujarat, and as the knowledge is passed on orally from master to pupil over generations she claims what she was told was authentic for centuries past. Sailors and navigators learnt by experience, by sailing with a master. The nakhuda was all important. Not only was he the captain and navigator, he also was the commercial agent for the owners of the cargo, assuming they were not on board. She was even told what food should be taken. The list included tea, dried fish, cereals, pulses, onions, potatoes, and dried vegetables and pickles, these chosen as foods which could last for a year on a long voyage,44 not that a vessel would ever be at sea for this long. It may be that the notion was that ritually pure food from home would be available throughout a long voyage, so that possibly dubious food did not have to be taken on board at foreign ports.

Finally, what do we know about the actual experience of people at sea at this early time? The only extended account we have comes from the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Fa Hsien. Here is his account of a long voyage, the first we have of an actual passage over the Indian Ocean. He set out from China overland for India in 399 and returned by sea in 413–14. In Sri Lanka:

he took passage on board a large merchant vessel, on which there were over two hundred souls, and astern of which there was a smaller vessel in tow in case of accidents at sea and destruction of the big vessel. Catching a fair wind, they sailed eastwards for two days; then they encountered a heavy gale, and the vessel sprang a leak. The merchants wished to get aboard the smaller vessel, but the men on the latter, fearing that they would be swamped by numbers, quickly cut the tow-rope in two. The merchants were terrified, for death was close at hand; and fearing that the vessel would fill, they promptly took what bulky goods there were and threw them into the sea. Fa-Hsien also took his pitcher and ewer, with whatever else he could spare, and threw them into the sea; but he was afraid that the merchants would throw over his books and his images, and accordingly fixed his whole thoughts on Kuan-Yin, the Hearer of Prayers, and put his life into the hands of the Catholic [that is, Buddhist] Church in China, saying 'I have journeyed far on behalf of the Faith. O that by your awful power you would grant me a safe return from my wanderings.' The gale blew on for thirteen days and nights, when they arrived alongside of an island [somewhere in the Andamans], and then, at ebb-tide, they saw the place where the vessel leaked and forthwith stopped it up, after which they again proceeded on their way. This sea is infested with pirates, to meet whom is death. The expanse of ocean is boundless, east and west are not distinguishable; only by observation of the sun, moon, and constellations is progress to be made. In cloudy and rainy weather our vessel drifted at the mercy of the wind, without keeping any definite course. In the darkness of night nothing was to be seen but the great waves beating upon one another and flashing forth light like fire, huge turtles, sea-lizards, and such-like monsters of the deep. Then the merchants lost heart, not knowing whither they were going, and the sea being deep, without bottom, they had no place where they could cast their stone-anchor and stop. When the sky had cleared, they were able to tell east from west and again to proceed on their proper course; but had they struck a hidden rock, there would have been no way of escape.

They finally reached Java, but the subsequent voyage, on a large ship which carried 200 men and had provisions for fifty days, was equally trying. They went northeast for a month, and then met a 'black wind'. Seventy days out from Java they knew they should have been near Guangzhou (Canton), so they went northwest and in twelve days got to Lau-shan, on the southeast of the Shantung Peninsula.45

Fa Hsien was a pilgrim, engaged in a Buddhist act of piety. His travels open for us the matter of non-economic exchanges across the