Journey
Ports transformed by rivers, sediment & coastlines
Almost no Indian port was killed by a rival. They were killed by silt, by a coastline that moved, by a river that changed course, or in one case by a flood that opened a new harbour overnight. This is the same commercial history read as physical geography instead of as politics.
Stops (14)
- Lothal · c. 2400 BCE
A trapezoidal brick basin usually read as a tidal dock, with a bead factory, a warehouse and Persian Gulf seals beside it. Whether the basin was a dock or a reservoir is still argued, but the Gulf of Khambhat's shoreline has moved several kilometres since it was built, which is why a Harappan port is now inland.
- Khambhat / Cambay · to the 16th century
Every medieval traveller calls Cambay western India's greatest market. The Gulf of Khambhat has the largest tidal range in India and a bore that runs up it, and the estuary silted steadily; the trade moved south to Surat, and Surat's own river then silted and sent it to Bombay. Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta and Barbosa all describe the market and none of them mentions the tides.
- Bharuch (Barygaza) · continuous
The Periplus already warns about the shoals at Barygaza and describes the royal pilots sent out in long boats to tow ships over the bar. Bharuch survived where Cambay did not because the Narmada has stayed in its valley, but it survived as a river town rather than as a seaport.
- Makli Necropolis, Thatta · to the 18th century
The Mughal port city of Sindh, with its own school of tilework and half a million graves on the ridge above. The Indus shifted away from it, the trade went to Karachi, and the necropolis is now considerably larger than the town it was built to serve. The English kept a factory here from 1635 and abandoned it when the water went.
- Barbarikon / Banbhore · 1st–8th century
Barbarikon of the Periplus and Debal of the Arab accounts, at the Indus mouth, where Muhammad bin Qasim landed in 711. It also holds one of the subcontinent's earliest mosques. The river left it, and the site is now some distance from navigable water. The same harbour therefore served the Roman trade, the Arab conquest and the early Indian Ocean Islamic world, and is now some distance from any navigable channel.
- Sopara · 3rd century BCE onward
Sopara was western India's great early port and the findspot of an Ashokan edict, so its importance predates the Roman trade by three centuries. The creek behind it silted and the shoreline prograded; what is left is a mound, a tank and a village north of Bombay. Its shippers are named as donors in the inscriptions at Kanheri, a few hours inland.
- Muziris / Pattanam · to the 14th century
The pepper port of the Periplus and Pliny. Pattanam on the Periyar is the leading candidate for its site. The Malabar coast's lagoon and barrier-bar system rearranges itself constantly, which is one reason the port cannot be located with certainty and the repository marks it contested. Roman amphorae, Mediterranean glass and a wharf have been excavated at Pattanam, and the argument continues.
- Mattancherry Palace, Kochi · after 1341
A flood of the Periyar in 1341 is traditionally said to have silted Muziris and opened the gap at Cochin, creating one of the finest natural harbours on the coast. The palace the Portuguese built for the Kochi rajas stands on the ground that flood made commercially valuable. Cochin's harbour is the one Indian port that a flood created rather than destroyed.
- Korkai · to the early historic period
The Pandya pearl port on the Tamraparni. The Gulf of Mannar coast has prograded seaward and the estuary has silted, so a harbour named by Ptolemy and the Periplus is now a village several kilometres from the sea, with Roman coin and rouletted ware in its levels. Pliny reckoned pearls the most valuable commodity on earth, and this is where they were fished.
- Kaveripattinam (Puhar) · to the 4th century CE
The Sangam-age Chola port of the Silappadikaram, which the poems describe street by street and which the sea has largely taken. Its remains are worked as coastal marine archaeology rather than by trench, which is the clearest case in India of a port that is now offshore. Divers rather than excavators now work it, which is unusual anywhere in India.
- Tamralipta / Tamluk · to the 8th century
The Bay of Bengal port at the Ganges mouth from which Faxian sailed, and by tradition Ashoka's mission to Lanka. The Rupnarayan and Hooghly channels silted and the delta's active front moved east, leaving Tamluk sixty kilometres inland from the sea it once opened onto. Faxian's own account of sailing from it is the earliest first-person description of an Indian port.
- Gaur (Lakhnauti) · to the 16th century
The Bengal sultanate's capital, a brick city spread over several square kilometres of what is now Malda farmland. When the Ganges' main flow moved east to the Padma the river left the city, the harbour silted and plague followed; the capital moved to Rajmahal and then Murshidabad. Hydrology rather than conquest emptied the largest city in eastern India.
- Balasore (Baleshwar) · 17th–18th century
The Odisha roadstead where European ships had to anchor miles out and lighter their cargo in over a bar. That is why the Bengal trade moved up the Hooghly to Calcutta as soon as the channel was surveyed, and why Balasore is a district headquarters rather than a port city.
- Sonargaon · to the 17th century
The old capital of eastern Bengal, on deltaic channels that carried its muslin to the Bay. Ibn Battuta sailed from here for Java in 1346. The channels shifted, the city was left off navigable water, and Panam Nagar's street of merchant houses stands in a field. Ibn Battuta's departure for Java in 1346 is the last time it appears as a working harbour.