‘Ramayana Trail’ in focus again
Asian Tribune, 13 July 2010

The Royal Asiatic Society is inviting the public to participate in a symposium at the Mahaweli Centre, Colombo 07 on July 17 on the negative impact on Sri Lanka by promoting the Ramayana legend for tourism purposes.

Leading academics, scholars and intellectuals will be among the speakers. They include Professor Tissa Kariyawasam (Ramayana in Sinhalese literature), Prof, Oliver Abeynaike (Indian Tourist Authorities’ “Buddhist Circuit” but no Indian “Ramayana Circuit”), Dr. Hema Goonatilake (Marketing Thailand for a mythical Ramayana instead of historical Buddhist sites), Dr. Nihal Perera (The factual pre-history of Sri Lanka), Dr. Malini Dias (Distortions of archaeological evidence) former Ambassador Bandu de Silva (Foreign policy implications of the “Ramayana Trail”) and the Venerable Hegoda Vipassi (My travails in refuting the Ramayana Trail).

The ‘Other’ Silk Road: China Peers Into Maritime Past
NPR, 02 July 2010

In China, it is hard to imagine just how much history lies right under your feet. The country has long been a goldmine for archaeologists.

Until recently, they have been confined to digging on land. But in recent years, China has grown into a powerhouse of nautical archaeology, combing its vast coastline for undersea shipwrecks, treasure, and traces of a trade route known as the “Maritime Silk Road,” a less-known parallel to the fabled overland passage.

About 1,000 visitors a day flock to one of China’s newest museums, in Guangdong province’s Yangjiang city. It is called the Maritime Silk Road Museum, and it is on the beach, facing the South China Sea.

The museum houses one of the world’s oldest known merchant ships, dating from the Southern Song Dynasty in the 13th century. It’s been dubbed the South China Sea No. 1.

More pictures and videos after the jump!

The Jewel called to port about a week and a half ago, and the crew is enjoying a well-deserved rest after a harrowing run from Sri Lanka. Besides taking a well-deserved break, they’re also making some repairs to the ship before embarking for Singapore at the end of the week. Dr Tom Vosmer, a marine archaeologist and project director for the Jewel of Muscat project met me at the ship to give us an introduction to the ship:

The Jewel of Muscat at Tanjong Marina in Georgetown, Penang.

The stern of the Jewel of Muscat. This section of the ship was less reliably accurate because the original shipwreck was too encrusted with coral to be examined. Based on artwork of the period, they built a two-rudder system common for the time.

The Jewel was reconstructed using traditional methods, and the boat was literally sewn together with timber and hand-made rope.

The crew also used a tool called the Kamal, a block of wood on a string to keep track of the height of stars. But the ship also carried a full suite of modern tools, such as a radar, GPS, weather monitoring equipment and an on-board camera (pictured).

The Jewel of Muscat was surprisingly small – only 18 metres long – but I was surprised to hear that it had a cargo capacity of 25 tons, which in turn hints at the volume of trade that must have taken place during this period over such great distances. We also got to hear from Dr. Vosmer about life aboard the ship and gain an idea of how the crew lived and operated on a day-to-day basis.

The interior deck of the Jewel. The original Belitung shipwreck did not have a deck, and this feature was added for the ship.

The crew carved the prayer 'Allah Akbar' ('God is Great') along one of the mast's crossbeams.

The cargo hold underneath the deck in the video, that smells like rotten eggs.

Unfortunately, the hold also contains some of the sleeping quarters!

Ever wondered where the toilet was on board the ship? There are two basket compartments at the ship's stern, near the rudder where crew members can relieve themselves. No, I didn't try it. But now you know!

It was a real treat to step aboard a pretty accurate reconstruction of a 9th century trading vessel – I suspect once the ship becomes a museum piece in Singapore there won’t be any more opportunities to do so! After the ship lands in Singapore, the data collected about the ship’s behaviour will enhance our understanding of the trade between China and Arabia from a technical standpoint, but I also hope to hear from the sailors their insight about what it means to be trader sailing the seven seas and the kind of mettle required to undertake such a journey.

The Jewel of Muscat sets sail again on June 18 to Singapore, where it will reside as a gift from the Sultanate of Oman to the island republic. You can learn more about the Jewel and its progress in the official website, www.jewelofmuscat.tv

If you have access, more information about the Belitung shipwreck can be found in Michael Flecker’s A Ninth-Century AD Arab or Indian Shipwreck in Indonesia: First Evidence for Direct Trade with China in World Archaeology (2001), vol 32, no. 3.

Special thanks to Dr. Tom Vosmer, Kat of Oman Sail and Chan Jee Kei of Opal Asia for facilitating access to the Jewel of Muscat.

Marking 1600th anniversary of Fa-hsian’s visit
Asian Tribune, 24 May 2010

This year marks the 1600 the anniversary of the itinerant Chinese Buddhist monk Venerable Fa-hsian’s (also known as Faxian) visit to Sri Lanka.

The exact day and month of his arrival in the island is not known but the year, according to Chinese records, is 410 AD. – four years after Bhikku Dhammayana took the first Buddha statue from Sri Lanka to China.

The Sri Lanka-China Society jointly with the Chinese Embassy have organised special religious events this Vesak month at Anuradhapura in memory of Ven. Fa-hsian’s visit.

In a commemorative lecture on the event, Senior Lecturer, Sabaragamuwa University Dr. Hao Weimin said that the key aspects of the age-old ties between his country and Sri Lanka were the Silk Road and Buddhism. He was speaking in Sinhala on ‘China-Sri Lanka Historical relations: An Overview,’ at the Royal Asiatic Society auditorium at the Mahaweli Centre, Colombo. Dr. Weimin’s own parents were born close to Ven. Fa-hsian’s birth place in the Yellow River Valley in China’s Shanxi Province. Fa-hsian’s original name was Kung. Admitted to the Buddhist Order at the age of three he was given the religious name Fa-hsien which means Law Manifest.

Underwater archaeological investigation for ancient vessel in South Sea
Xinhua, 10 May 2010

The submarine archaeological probe on an ancient vessel sunk in the South China Sea near Shan’tou has been going on for about a month. Nearly 1,000 pieces of cultural relics have been retrieved.
Archaeologists say the vessel, known as “Nanao No.1″, contains some very rare and valuable porcelain wares. Most of them were made by two leading workshops in Zhangzhou and Jingdezhen, back to the Song and Ming dynasties. Among those already retrieved from the water, the biggest one is a “China Blue” plate. Its diameter is up to 30 centimeters.

The area where the ship sak is along a very important commercial route of the East Asia, better known as silkroad on the sea. It linked Japan and the Korean peninsula in the north, the Philippines i the east ahd Indonesia in the south.

Ancient ship gives up hoard of rare porcelain
Xinhua, via the Shanghai Daily, 03 May 2010

A TREASURE trove of priceless porcelain has been uncovered from a 400-year-old merchant shipwreck, evidence that Chinese merchants may have flouted bans on foreign trade.

More than 80 pieces of porcelain from Emperor Wanli’s reign (1573-1620) have been salvaged from the ancient ship off south China’s Guangdong Province, the provincial cultural relics bureau announced yesterday.

Archaeologists believe the ship, which sank in waters off Nan’ao County, Shantou City, may have been carrying 10,000 pieces of blue-and-white porcelain from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

Some of the larger porcelain bowls found in the vessel, dubbed “Nan’ao-1,” were probably made for foreign trade as they were not commonly used in Chinese daily life at that time, experts believe.

The find is particularly interesting as Wanli’s administration banned sea trade.

Relics to be salvaged from ancient ship
China Daily, 10 April 2010

The salvage of relics from a sunken ancient merchant vessel has resumed after six months of suspension in Shantou, a coastal city in South China’s Guangdong province.

Cui Yong, captain of the Guangdong marine archaeological group, said on Thursday that his group is ready to restart the salvage work of the Nan’ao No 1, a vessel that sank in the late Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in the South China Sea.

“Currently, the only permission we are waiting for is from the weather,” Cui said.

More than 10,000 pieces of antique porcelain are expected to be salvaged from the sunken vessel in three months, if everything goes smoothly.

The three month period, from April to June, is usually the best time to salvage sunken vessels, as typhoons and other tropical storms have yet to hit the Chinese coast, Cui said.

So begins a new chapter in a dispute that began with the birth of archaeology in Sri Lanka, under the British in the 19th century, and that grew into a civil war that lasted 26 years and killed 100,000 people.

When the British took control of the country in 1815, they were unsure of its ancient history but soon embraced the legend of the Mahavamsa — a text written by Buddhist monks in about AD500.

It suggests that the Sinhalese are descended from Prince Vijaya, an Aryan prince exiled from northern India in about 500BC, and that Tamils did not migrate from southern India until 200 years later.

That theory — still taught in schools — underpins the Sinhalese chauvinism that ultimately drove the Tigers to launch their armed struggle for an independent homeland in 1983.

In fact, archaeologists had discredited that after independence by excavating settlements in the north that dated from long before 500BC and showed similarities to sites in southern India — suggesting a much earlier migration.

photo credit: hathu-

Searching for Zheng: China’s Ming-Era Voyager
Time, 08 March 2010

The legacy of Zheng’s voyages — involving hundreds of ships, some exponentially larger than the three captained by Christopher Columbus decades later, in 1492 — is being invoked by the Chinese as historical proof of the difference between China’s and the West’s roles in the world. Though the unprecedented display of maritime power was meant to extend the Ming dynasty’s reach over a network of tributary states, Zheng rarely resorted to the type of violent, coercive measures taken for centuries by European colonizers, especially in Africa. “Zheng’s a nominal symbol of China’s peaceful engagement with the world,” says Geoffrey Wade, a historian at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore who has translated Ming records pertaining to the voyages. “With him, it’s like the Chinese have an ambassador of friendship — a sign that they aren’t going to hurt anybody.”

…

Moreover, though Beijing plays up the voyages as a triumphant Chinese adventure, the journeys had a distinctly Muslim character. Zheng practiced Islam, as did Ma Huan, the main chronicler aboard the ships. It’s likely they were guided to their many ports of call, such as Malacca, India’s Malabar coast and Malindi in Kenya, by Muslim pilots of Arab, Indian or African extraction. “They were essentially following maritime routes that had been in use by people in the Indian Ocean for ages,” says Wade. Many academics argue that the popular Arab-Persian tale of the Seven Voyages of Sinbad, littered also with snippets of Indian folklore, was derived from the real travels of Zheng He — making the mariner as much a pan-Asian protagonist as a Chinese one.

photo credit: Marc Veraart

New archaeological sites reveal life after ancient Toba eruption
The Star, 23 February 2010

Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago, according to Press Trust of India (PTI) on Tuesday.

The international and multidisciplinary research team, led by Oxford University in collaboration with Indian institutions, has uncovered what it calls ‘Pompeii-like excavations’ beneath the Toba ash.

The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time.

“This suggests that human populations were present in India prior to 74,000 years ago, or about 15,000 years earlier than expected based on some genetic clocks,” said project director Michael Petraglia, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford.

Full article here.