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believe that this was perhaps a wharf or a jetty, a likely indicator of the port of Nani Rayan.
To visualize the entry of a boat you have to climb the steps of the temple of Dada Dhoramnath. This temple, quite unusual, is created on a 23 feet tall fort like structure. From the rampart of this fort you can see the entire course of river Rukmavati, Coming from northern direction, bending almost at right angle before it proceeds to meet the ocean at Mandvi. While doing this, the river touches two sides of the site. During high tide the water of the ocean flows upstream in the river which is dry for the entire year but for the time when it is raining heavily. The boats, loaded with merchandise, could come all the way down to Nani Rayan.
The temple has under gone reconstruction and or renovation many times in the past on the same platform. It is my personal belief that the platform must be very old and might have been used to watch the boats coming in or give them a direction, or as a lighthouse. Many a times I have felt like digging and exploring a small part of the base of the fort to see whether its base has the ancient brick structure or its remnants. But the absences of know how and official permission has prevented me from doing so. It is likely that the mother ship might be anchoring farther up in the ocean and the smaller boats could be transferring the goods from her to the village and vise versa. As the silt has reduced the depth of the sea even today large cargo vessels anchor 5 kms away from Mandvi port and cargo is transported thru Barges (flat bottomed cargo boats).
As far as their contacts with other parts of Kutch, Gujarat or other part of India, we have only few definite answers. We do find some Gujarat coins indicating trade relations. The marked similarities in Shape and style of potteries, toys, beads, shell bangles, coins and other antiquities found at different contemporary sites, both in Gujarat and India, prove cultural contacts. Whether people actually interacted with each other or this was born out of uniformity of human thinking is difficult to say. But in any case, it indicates cultural oneness of this vast country. 6. What was Imported and Exported?
We just saw that this site had trade contacts with Middle East and Rome. The quantum of export to west and the drain of specie from Rome to east was huge. Pliny condemned it saying "The subject is one well worthy of our notice, seeing in no one year dose India drain us of less than 550,000,000 sesterces (22,000,000 $) giving back her own wares, which are sold among us at fully 100 times their first cost." In a similar tone the emperor, in 22 AD, wrote to the senate of Rome "If reform in is in truth intended, where must it begin? And how am I to restore the simplicity of ancient times? How are we to deal with articles of feminine vanity, which drains the empire of its wealth and sends in exchange for baubles, the money of common wealth to foreign nations"?123
The list of the things exported and imported is long and is given at the end of this chapter as annexure. We have enough reasons to believe that pottery, semi precious stone beads, shell ornaments, clarified butter (ghee), textile especially cotton clothes, Timber, copper, iron, honey from the reed called sacchari (sugar), grain, must have been common export items from Nani Rayan.
The cattle breeding is an ancient vocation carried down the centuries till today, so milk and milk products must be abundantly available. The rich fields must have produced grains for export. The large number of shell bangles, indicate shell bangle industry and it goes true for extra fine pottery manufactured in abundance for export. Cotton clothes are the oldest export item, right from Indus
123 Periplus, page no 219
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