MANTAI: CITY BY THE SEA, JOHN CRASWELL ET.AL An Excavation Report

Mantai: City by the Sea
John Carswell, Siran Dera Niyalaga and Alan Graham
Aichwald: Linden Soft Verlag, 2013


Unlike the Atlantic Ocean or even the Mediterranean Sea, the Indian Ocean has remained a relatively unexplored from both the historical and archaeological perspectives. This is rather surprising as the Indian Ocean was the ocean that linked the three great civilizations of the early and medieval periods: the Chinese, Indian and the Islamic civilizations. The long shadow of colonialism and the emergence of the Nation State" meant that the countries of South east Asia in their desire for an "autonomous" history chose to disavow their long and enduring cultural and political links with India. The large number of Chinese settlers in Malaysia and other counties made China a visible cultural entity and the rise of China as a huge economic power house made the Chinese look up to China for inspiration, while India with perhaps a larger cultural footprint in the area had to see its role shrunk and truncated in the guise of revisionist historiography, Indianization as a concept for studying the early history of South east Asia was challenged on the ground that the symbols of Indian cultural presence attested to archaeologically in the form of inscriptions, votive objects, iconographical representations, place names, statuary, monumental architecture and the like are all of the elite sections of society and much of the rest of the society continued without the influence of "Indianization" until the advent of Islam in the thirteenth century. Fortunately such interpretations are now unravelling under the weight of evidence from archaeological sites all across the Indian Ocean region. Mantai in Norther Sri Lanka is one such example.

The sixth century Saiva Nayanmar, Sundarar refers to Mattodam by the Sea in one of his hymns and endows the site with a sacredness akin to Ramessvaram. The Cholas of medieval Tamil country built a Siva temple at Tirukketisvaram, close to the site of Mantai. Perhaps this temple was built as a padal perra stalam, the place that received a song in Saivite hagiography.. The medieval city of Mantai was a major entrepot and ships from both China and the Red Sea, Persian Gulf region visited the city. The excavation at this site which began in the 1920's when A M Hocart the celebrated author of Kings and Councillors began with a series of trenches close to the earthen walls. The excavations were disturbed for more than 20 years due to the LTTE insurgency and after the restoration of calm in the Island, the excavations were completed and the Report was published. John Carswell who is an international authority on Chinese trade ceramics of the Tang,, Sung and Ming periods has written the Report in a lucid and careful manner.The material found in Mantai includes (!) Chinese ceramics, (2) Arab/ Islamic Ware (3) Glass shards and a few pieces of European/ Mediterranean ware.

The material found in Mantai suggests that the ships carrying merchandise from the Red Sea reached the entrepot  of Mantai by sailing with the monsoon winds, a point strong suggested by Pliny's reference to Hippuros identified with Kudarimalai which lies south of Mantai.  From this port ships sailed to South East Asia and then further afield to China.

The Excavation report is divided into five sections' Background, The Excavations, Pottery and Artifacts, General Conclusions and lastly educational programme. The publishers have done a splendid job in bringing out this publication and historians will have to revise their understanding of trade in the region after reading this report.

THE INDIAN OCEAN IN ANTIQUITY

The Indian Ocean in Antiquity
ed Julian Reade
London: British Museum in association with Routledge, 2009.

The shift to the study of oceans and seas began with Fernand Braudel when he wrote his masterpiece, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II. Oceans too are now seen as important factors in history, facilitating commerce and cultural contacts and exchanges. On the one hand this approach to history seems to bring back the old discredited school of diffusion in the shaping of civilizations and cultures,the shift to oceanic contacts and exchanges has reinvigorated the study of neglected aspects of the past. The Indian Ocean whose history in the famous work of the Indian diplomat and historian, K M Panikar began with the discovery of the sea route to India from Portugal in 1498, has generally remained neglected area of historical research. Of course we have Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean by K N Choudhary, the Indian Ocean by Kenneth McPherson, The Indian Ocean ed. by Satish Chandra and more recent works by Sanjay Subrahrmanyam the early history of the area around the coasts of India and Arabia have been long neglected. Hence the volume under review is a welcome addition to the slender quantum of published materials available.

The book edited by Dr Julian Reade is a collection of papers presented in a Conference held several decades back in the British Museum and has been republished recently. The earlier study by Toussaint concentrated on the post da Gama Era while this volume deals with the early phase. There have been q few stdidies on the contacts between the Harappan Culture and the contemporary civilizations of West Asia but little work has been done on the archaeological and historical evidence pertaining to the navigation along the Arabian Sea whose antiquity as an important trading area is established by the Periplus whose translation by Lionell Casson has once again drawn attention to the early economic and cultural exchanges. The location of emporia all along the Persian Gulf and the coasts of India suggest that a trsding network had already been created anf the Greek navigator was only drawing attention to a pre existing fact. Unfortunately, the Periplus is read in the context of the so called Tamil poetical works which were put together as anthologies in the 7th or even the 8th centuries thereby distorting the historical contexts of both the early navigational endevours and of course, the Tamil past.

The article by Jutris Zarins dealing with the trasde in Obsidian is extremely interesting and needs to be followed by by studies in India and South east Asia. The study of Sasanian trade in the Indian Ocean and the traces of the Parthians known in India as the Sakas are both relevant to Indian historiography. The study of Glass which has been recovered in Arihamedu and Pattanm as well as Mantai needs to be follwed by detailed scientific examinations of the internal structure and properties so that the history of glass technology can be studies. Unfortunately lazy "archaeologists" from Tamil Nadu have taken to trumpetting Tamil claims which only goes to show that archaeology of Tamil Nadu is only a hand maiden of ethnic pride, Ian Glover's study of the archaeological evidence of "Indianization" is informative.

The short paper by John Carswell on the Mantai excavation is an important contribution. The Report on the excavation has recently been published but unfortunately not available to this historian.

This is a good book and all serious scholars and researchers on early Indian Ocean must read this book.