Tumbaga and Alchemy

Men marvel at the alchemy which converts copper into gold; regard the copper that every instant fashions alchemy!

-- Rumi

Although ancient alchemy involved attempts to change all types of base metals into gold, the transmutation of copper into gold stood out as the alchemist's ultimate goal.

Changing copper into gold was important in both metallurgical and spiritual alchemy. Democritus mentions such transmutations, but it was during the medieval age that the phrase "copper into gold" became closely equated with alchemy.

The Daoists of China, the Tantrics of both India and China, the Arabs, and the European alchemists during medieval times all used the copper to gold transmutation to stand for the highest accomplishment in their science. Even into modern times, many practitioners in yoga claim that their perfection of the art is proven by their ability to change the metals copper into gold -- apparently a sign of their spiritual transformation.

From the metallurgical standpoint, we know that such transmutation was impossible. Therefore many theories have been put forth as to what the alchemists were trying to achieve. The most frequent explanation is that "gold" had different meanings in early times and alchemists were simply attempting to make other metals appear like gold -- something known as "aurifaction."

However, I think the case of tumbaga needs to be examined quite closely in relation to alchemy and especially to the idea of changing copper into gold.


Tumbaga, gold-copper alloy

Tumbaga is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and copper, and also often of silver. What is unique about tumbaga is that goldsmiths in Insular Southeast Asia and across the Pacific in the Americas did perform a transmutation "trick" with tumbaga.

The process known as depletion gilding made it seem like non-gold was transmuted into solid gold. Basically tumbaga was an early form of gold plated object. The depletion gilding on both sides of the Pacific was accomplished using the acidic juices or saps of certain plants that dissolved the copper from the surface of the tumbaga. The coating was then burned away in the furnace leaving a pure or near pure gold surface.

Writing in 1577, then governor of the Philippines Francesco de Sande mentions that "there is a very base gold that has no name, with which they deceive." In fact, latter Spanish chroniclers mention the name as "tumbaga" or by related cognates. In "Relation of the Voyage to Luzon," (1569-1576) Juan de Salcedo mentions witnessing the local people had "given two hundred taels of impure gold, for they possess great skill in mixing it with other metals. They give it an outside appearance so natural and perfect, and so fine a ring, that unless it is melted they can deceive all men, even the best of silversmiths."

In his dictionary of the Kapampangan language, Bergano mentions this art:

Belatan -- Oro falso, alquimia, ó cosa mal dorada...(False gold, alchemy, or something of poor gold.)

Maŕcos de Lisboa's dictionary of the Bicol language of southern Luzon (1628) gives another related term:

Sombat -- hacer uno como oro de alquimia mezclando una parte de oro fino, otra de calongcaqui, y otra de tumbaga...(to make like the gold of alchemy mixing one part of pure gold with another of calongcaqui, and another of tumbaga.)

Sinombat -- este oro asi de alquimia...(this is the gold of alchemy.)

Whether tumbaga was made to actually deceive is unlikely. The fact that tumbaga was used to make barter rings as found on the island of Samar suggests the product was highly-valued.


Barter rings and coins used in the pre-Hispanic Philippines (Source: http://www.bsp.gov.ph/bspnotes/evolution/page2.asp)


In the Americas, the production of tumbaga was thought to awaken the camay, or living spirit of inanimate objects, which was seen in the form of the gold that appeared to rise to the surface. Tumbaga stood for the sacred and temporal power in both objects and people.

The fact that the word alquimia "alchemy" is used in the above definitions rather than the more ordinary definitions for metallurgy mentioning mixing or smelting of metals can be seen as indication that the process was considered magical or sacred in these regions. Unfortunately, there is little other information in this direction that I've been able to find so far.

In the Philippine context, two words may be related to the concept of transmutation -- mutya and tubo. Grace Odal-Devora in noting the different physical forms related to the word mutya states:

These forms of the mutya give birth to a concept of the mutya as an unusual natural occurrence. This concept seems to spring from a collective perception of something extraordinary emerging from nature, functioning as an offspring, a child, an outgrowth and an excrescence from nature. However, though it comes as basically a natural emergence from nature there is usually something unusual about its coming into being, something like a freakish appearance, a unique , rare and unusual phenomenon. It variously comes in the form of a round or spherical outgrowth, an excrescence, a seed, a kernel, a grain, a fruit, a child, a flower, a boil, a cyst, a bezoar stone, a fragment, piece, a pulverized or powder form of a whole stone, rock, plant, tree, animal, person or thing...the inherent powers and virtues of the various mutya objects can be the basis for conceptualizing on the nature of the self – that starts from discovering the innate powers and inherent virtues within and using them to transform oneself and one’s society – like the transformation of the pearl from slime, mud, sand or dirt into a gem of light , beauty, healing and purity.

While mutya refers to more unusual types of transformations, the words tubo or tubu as found in derived words like Pinatubo "causing to be born, grow," or tibuan "place of conception, birth, origin," speak toward the more natural concepts. Both mutya and tubo involve a form of vivification in which the life spirit arises.

Certainly, the apparent transmutation of tumbaga to gold, that would pass the test of a touchstone, could have been viewed in a manner similar to what was found in the Americas. Gold after all was among the most durable of metals -- resistant to corrosion and chemical reactions and dissolved mainly with mercury. Gold thus is a prime metal symbolic of longevity and immortality.


Tumbaga trail

Tumbaga has been found at pre-colonial sites in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. In the Americas, tumbaga seems to appear first with the Moche culture that lived along the coast of Peru. And the coastal bias of the distribution of tumbaga in the Americas has led some researchers to suggest a mainly maritime diffusion to other countries throughout South and Central America.

Wilhelm Solheim has proposed that the Nusantao seafaring network extended to the west coast of the Americas staring in 3000 BCE and that voyages across the Pacific occurred periodically for "hundreds of years." Whether this would take us to a date for the transmission of tumbaga is not clear, but in earlier works Solheim has discussed Heine-Geldern's theory that tumbaga, along with the mise en couleur technique (depletion gilding), cire-perdue casting, and granulation were carried across the Pacific by Dongson seafarers.

Actually the dates of tumbaga might be older in the Americas than in Southeast Asia, but the practice of gold granulation appears to originate from early pottery practices in the latter region. In both regions, small gold balls or spheres were used to create decorations or designs on a gold base plate. These gold balls may be the origin of the piloncitos, tiny gold coins that like the barter rings were used as a type of currency in the pre-Hispanic Philippines. As depletion gilding is not archaeologically attested for Dongson culture, and granulation was a characteristic of both the Sa-Huynh-Kalanay and the entire Philippine goldworking tradition, the Sa-Huynh-Kalanay culture would seem to be a better candidate as an agent for this cultural transmission.



Piloncitos, gold coins from pre-Hispanic Philippines. (Source: http://www.bsp.gov.ph/about/history/story2.asp)



Alchemy Isles

According to the Shiji, the Qin Emperor sent missions to Penglai in search of alchemists skilled in the "transmutation of cinnabar and other substances into gold." I have tried to show that Penglai was an island nation located to the southeast or south of South China. The Biblical and Muslim traditions place the origin of alchemy in Nod or Mount Budh to the east of Eden where it was brought by Adam.

I have suggested earlier that alchemy was originally linked with a "yin-yang" type of philosophy that sought to harness the creative or life-giving principle to extend longevity or to attain immortality. Seafarers and merchants in the Nusantao network came to connect these concepts on a cosmic scale with the volcanoes Pinatubo and Arayat, which I have suggested constitute the alchemical Mt. Penglai of Chinese texts.

The seeming transmutation of a metal like copper -- subject to corrosion and reactive to the acids of plants -- into gold, the durability and stability of which can be equated with long life and immortality, may have been seen as a fitting allegory for the process of vivification. The vivifying or revivifying concepts of mutya and tubo could have been viewed as symbolized by the transmutation of tumbaga.

At a latter date, this symbolism may have evolved into an idea that transmuted metals themselves conveyed immortality through a confusion with what I suggest was the Nusantao belief that volcanic ejecta from the sacred mountains was a form of life-giving cosmic placenta.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Far-Eastern Prehistory Association. Asian Perspectives v. 22, 1979. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1957, 179, 194.

Hosler, D., 1988, Ancient West Mexican Metallurgy: South and Central American Origins and West Mexican Transformations, American Anthropologist, 90(4), pp. 832–55.

The Philippine Islands 1493-1803: Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and their Peoples, their Hist. and Records of the Catholic Missions, as related in contemporaneous Books and Ms., showing the Political ... Conditions of those Islands ... ; Transl. from the originals : With maps, portr. and other ill. Cleveland, Ohio: A. H. Clark Co, 1903, vol. 3, 81.

Miksic, John N. Earthenware in Southeast Asia: Proceedings of the Singapore Symposium on Premodern Southeast Asian Earthenwares. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2003.

Shimada, Izumi. Pampa Grande and the Mochica Culture. Austin, Tex: Univ. of Texas Pr, 1994, 105.

Villegas, Ramon N. Hiyas: Philippine Jewellery Heritage. Pasay City, Metro Manila, Philippines: Guild of Philippine Jewellers, 1997.

__. Kayamanan: The Philippine Jewelry Tradition. Manila: Central Bank of the Philippines, 1983.

Alchemy (Glossary)

The alchemy referred to here is that centered around the use of sulfur and mercury, and their compound, cinnabar, or mercury sulfide, to transmute base metals into gold, and to extend human life.

Many believe this form of alchemy has its basis in earlier spiritual alchemy and cosmology. Some suggest that the concept of "signatures" and cinnabar's similarity in color to human blood, the fluid of life, drives the philosophy of alchemy.

Humans have used red colored materials like red ochre since prehistoric times. The presence of ochre in burials may have had some link with concepts of immortality. In ancient Egypt, the practice of painting men in red color, and women in yellow color, when in the presence of deities, may have some ancient relationship to the contrasts of red and yellow ochre.

In ancient China, cinnabar appears as a burial item at least by the late Neolithic and possibly as early as the Yangshao period. In latter times, cinnabar was used to preserve the body of the dead. In Southeast Asia, the use of red ochre to cover bodies during burial dates back to the Mesolithic Hoabinhian culture. Oppenheimer states:

The main areas with the story of man made from red earth are Southeast Asia, Oceania and some Mundaic tribes in India. All these areas, except eastern Polyneisa, have abundant red and laterite soils.

Oppenheimer also notes the distribution of myths attributing the redness of the clay to tempering with divine blood and its close approximation with red clay-first man myths, and suggests that the red clays here were used as a surrogate for blood. In China, both red ochre and cinnabar could be used as substitutes for blood in rituals.

Also, in Southeast Asia, red clay was eaten during pregnancy and for health purposes. This may relate to the practice that arose in China of consuming collodial cinnabar.

The Elixir

Needham has accumulated evidence suggesting that by the Zhou (Chou) dynasty, the concept of cinnabar and mercury as contributing to immortality had become established. Also it was in this period that mercury was distilled from cinnabar, a process releasing the sulfur as gaseous sulfur dioxide (SO2).

In the Shiji, the Qin Emperor is advised to make gold from cinnabar which can be used in turn to make drinking and eating vessels to prolong life:

Li Shaojun then advised the emperor, "If you sacrifice to the fireplace you can call the spirits to you, and if the spirits come you can transform cinnabar into gold. Using this gold, you may make driking and eating vessels, which will prolong the years of your life. With prolonged life you may visit the immortals who live on the island of Penglai in the middle of the sea. If you visit them and perform the Feng and Shan sacrifices, you will never die."

The "gold" here was interpreted by later alchemists as an amalgam of gold with cinnabar. However, "gold" in this instance might also be a metaphor for something like the Philosopher's Stone in European alchemy. It was used to create vessels that prolonged life.

The mention of Penglai is also important. In the older Daoist cosmologies, the central mountain of Penglai was viewed as rising out of the sea. The summit, or "navel," of this mountain is hollow, and extends to the deepest parts of the ocean, where lies the "Cinnabar Field," the source of all living beings. This scene is depicted on the famed Boshanlu censers.

On Penglai, also are the mushrooms of immortality, that grow over deposits of cinnabar and gold. The Chinese recognized that gold often lies above cinnabar deposits in mountains, and believed that gold was naturally transmuted from cinnabar.


Tang dynasty bonshanlu depicting Penglai. The mushroom at the top represented the mushroom of immortality, or the central mountain. Quite easily it might also stand for the "tree of life," the mushroom cloud of an erupting volcano. Source: http://www.21ceramics.com/taoci%20history/baiciimage.htm


Undated bronze boshanlu. Source: http://www.weisbrodltd.com/createpg.cgi?ctlgcode=14&pagenum=13


Boshanlu from Western Han dynasty. Notice depiction of waves lapping on shores of Penglai. Source: http://www.weisbrodltd.com/createpg.cgi?ctlgcode=14&pagenum=13

The divine mushroom was seen as a product of the sublimation of gold and cinnabar that grew over these mineral deposits. The mushroom even glowed in the dark allowing the immortals to find the sought-after lodes of minerals in addition to the fungi. Here also in Penglai were cinnabar caves inhabited by the Phoenix of the South, which the Shanhaijing describes as looking like a cinnabar-red rooster, and probably where would one would also find the auspicious giant bats of Penglai.

Later, possibly under Buddhist influence, these aspects were partly transferred to, or mirrored in, Mount Kun-lun to the west of China.

Volcanic images

Chinese texts describe the hollow summit of Mount Penglai as reaching down into the subterranean or submarine depths matching common imagery of the volcano in many cultures.

Sources of cinnabar, and its separate elements, sulfur and mercury, are nearly always located near volcanoes, hot springs or fumaroles.

Mention of the Cinnabar Field under the hollow mountain of Penglai appears to express this reality. In latter European alchemy, volcanoes were seen as natural laboratories that produced all the base metals from differing combinations of sulfur and mercury, to which they added from Arabian alchemical influence, the neutralizing element of salt.

The "Philosopher's Stone" was described as a red, glassy powder that could transmute base metals to gold, improve health and extend the life of the aged. In the sense that it could convert other metals it stood as a synthetic agent by which the natural processes of the volcano could be reproduced.

Li Shaojun's statement above indicates that in the time of the Qin Emperor certain food and drink vessels existed that were thought capable of extending life.

These vessels may have had some component of cinnabar and/or gold, or possibly the term "gold" here was a symbolic one as often used in the art of alchemy.

If such vessels were made of clay with some degree of cinnabar, it would have impressed the Chinese for at least a few reasons. Firstly, cinnabar as mentioned above, appears to have mostly taken the place of red ochre as a substitute for life-giving blood. They used it in burials, rituals and as a pigment in divination and other sacred writing.

Secondly, cinnabar contains mercury and is considered by many to be toxic, although others feel that it is not so harmful when bound in a stable fashion with other metals. Vessels containing cinnabar which did not have the normal toxic properties but instead had tonic and therapeutic qualities would have deeply impressed the Chinese who had high cultural regard for cinnabar. Also, as cinnabar contained the two base ingredients believed mutable into any other base metal, a vessel containing cinnabar without the normal harmful effects would appear as quite a coup.

Thus, alchemy may have started as an attempt to synthetically produce the material of the life-extending food and drink vessels using cinnabar as a key ingredient.

In Southeast Asia, cinnabar, mercury and sulfur only appear to became important in most areas at a late period. The Dian kingdom of Yunnan probably used an amalgam of gold and mercury in gilding burial good objects dated from 600 BCE to 300 BCE. However, generally Southeast Asians used red clay as a substitute and significator of blood.

Some of the red clays though did contain natural cinnabar. For example, red clay tested at a cave near the Tubuoy River in Pangasinan, Philippines during 1913 contained 1 percent mercury that was believed to be present in cinnabar native to the clay. The cinnabar may contribute to the red color along with iron, and this clay tends to darken with exposure to the Sun and through oxidation.

Theorectically, cinnabar present in vessels made at least partly of volcanic clay would leak little if any mercury present in the sulfide because of the strong binding properties of montmorillonite and similar minerals.

Yin and Yang, Sulfur and Mercury

The Daoists and Tantrics classified sulfur as female and mercury as male. The Arabs and Europeans reversed this classification. Paracelsus and others used the "sulfurous" and "mercurial" categories to classify all things in nature.

A key Tantric text of the Western Transmission likens the Muladhara Cakra, representing the earth and the acting as the seat of the Kundalini as the body's equivalent of the Vadavanala, the latter's description matching that of a submarine volcano.

The uterine blood of the Goddess in Tantric practice is equated to sulfur which resides in the lower parts of the body dominated by that element.

Around the middle of the 7th century CE, Chinese alchemists began moving more toward the idea of liquid elixir rather than the elixir-based vessels mentioned in the Shiji. Using the principle of "like produces like," the alchemists believed that consuming minerals like gold and cinnabar would create in the body properties similar to those in the metals.

Some of these "elixirs" proved deadly as they contained pure mercury, and other toxic minerals like lead and arsenic.

Even centuries later though, an enlightened alchemist like Isaac Newton, would still write of how he regularly consumed such potions that appear to have adversely effected his health, and traces of which have been revealed through modern testing.

In Southeast Asia, the practice of drinking toxic tonics also caught on eventually. Pigafetta states upon encountering the Prince of Luzon in Brunei: "Those Moros go naked as do the other peoples. They drink quick-silver -- the sick man drinks it to cleanse himself, and the well man to preserve his health."

While the use of toxic metals eventually fell out of fashion in most places, spiritual alchemy, which evolved in parallel with the chemical variety, continues in many forms strongly to the present with practices like Kundalini Yoga and Daoist meditation.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Mahdihassan, S. "History of Cinnabar as Drug, the Natural Substance and the Synthetic Product," Indian Journal of History of Sciences 22(1): 63-70. 1987.

Schipper, Kristofer. The Taoist Body, University of California Press, 1994.

Luzon Jars (Glossary)

The Luzon pottery or Rusun-yaki, was renowned for its value in Japan, during the 16th century.

Jars have a long history of sacred and medicinal use in the region of the Philippines and Borneo.

Since Late Neolithic times at least, huge jars or urns were used in this region for primary or secondary burial. The presence of ceramic sherds at many of these burials, apparently from pots smashed during funerary rites, further highlights the spiritual importance of pottery.

Starting in the early to middle medieval period, imported Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese porcelain, sometimes of very high quality, are found along with native earthernwares in excavated burials.

To the present-day, heirloom jars, some massive in size, continue to have spiritual and prestige value among indigenous peoples in the region.

High-priced pots

Just how much they valued the sacred jars can be seen in the amount they were willing to spend on these items, or by their refusal to part with them at any price.

The sacred jar owned by the Datu of Tamparuli in Borneo, was originally sold to a merchant by a Malau chief for two tons of brass cannons, the equivalent in the mid-1800s to 230 pounds sterling. The merchant sold it to the datu for the equivalent in rice of 700 pounds sterling.

When the Sultan of Brunei was offered the equivalent of $100,000 to part with his sacred jar, he said that no offer would be sufficient. Water from the jar was believed to have special magical properties and visiting farmers from as far as the Bisayas in the Philippines were said to have come to obtain a little magic water for their fields.

For the Japanese, the Luzon jar was important because it was the only vessel capable of storing high-quality tea to their liking. From various reports, the jars also appeared to have been viewed as having medicinal and spiritual properties.

The most sensational report of one of these containers comes from Carletti, who reported that the best of the tea-canisters were valued at up to 30,000 pounds sterling, or about US $4 million in 2006 dollars. And these jars were actually used to store tea or tea leaf!

Europeans were astonished at the high amounts paid for these jars, all of which were old, the older the better, and of uncomely appearance. A similar situation was found in Borneo.

Rusun ("Luzon") Sukezaemon's story is well-known in Japan. The Sakai merchant brought back 50 Luzon jars and sold them to agents of the Shogun. He became fabulously rich and built a mansion that put the local castles to shame.

Types of jars

That the Luzon jars were made in Luzon is quite clear from the Tokiko, a work on the Namban, or Southern, ceramics trade.

The Luzon jars are marked as Rusun-tsukuru "made in Luzon" and all the jars from the south are manufactured with "Namban clay." Shogun Hideyoshi had a tsubo or pot purposely manufactured in Luzon during his reign.

Luzon pots, according to the Tokiko, were marked with symbols that relate to the native scripts of the Philippines, and jars with these markings have been found in archaeological works.

Pots (tsubo) were differentiated from the more-valued tea-canisters (cha-ire).

The Japanese were exceptional at distinguishing these pots for quality and in weeding out fakes. A similar situation was noted in Borneo where attempts in China were made, without success, to imitate the ancient wares and sell them on the local market.

The Luzon tea-canisters were of the best quality. However, European witnesses unanimously described the most valued of these vessels as earthenware. The Tokiko says of the Rusun-koroku, or Luzon ware, that it "is soft because it is not thoroughly baked."

Three types of clay were used for glazed wares: white clay which was of the best quality, yellow clay mixed with white clay and sand in the middle, and purplish-black clay was of lowest quality. All Luzon wares were marked with the wheel-mark or rokoru, a clockwise spiral.

The different types of Luzon tea-canisters described in the Tokiko are:

* Stamped with plum-blossoms with thin yellow-green glaze.
* Black-gold glaze.
* Gold glaze.
* Black glaze.
* "Tea-colored glaze and "ears."
* Green-yellow glaze.
* Yellow glaze.
* Rice kettle shape.
* Four knobs.
* Projecting bottom.
* Cleaned of extra clay with a thread (Usu-ito-giri).
* Cord marks? (Hi-tasuki)
* Candy-brown glaze.
* Monrin type.
* With ears.
* Utsumi type.
* "Eggplant" type.
* Divided lids.
* Bizen-shaped.
* Iga-shaped.
* Other types.

According to Antonio de Morga, the most valued jars sought by the Japanese were dark brown in color. Baron Alexander von Siebold confirms this and gives a more detailed description:

The best of them which I have seen were far from beautiful, simply being old, weather -worn, black or dark-brown jars, with pretty broad necks, for storing the tea in...Similar old vessels are preserved amongst the treasures of the Mikado, and the Tycoon, as well as in some of the temples, with all the care due to the most costly jewels, together with documents relating to their history.

Frank Brinkley, in the early 20th century, describes the tea ritual performed by the On-mono-chashi, the Shoguns' tea deputies who wore samurai uniforms, and fetched the "exceedingly homely jars of Luzon pottery to which the Japanese tea-clubs attached extraordinary value."

Every year the Shogun's tea-jars were carried to Uji to be filled. This proceeding was attended with extraordinary ceremonial [sic]. There were nine choice jars in the Shogun's palace, all genuine specimens of Luzon pottery, and three of these were sent each year in turn, two to be filled by the two "deputy families;" the third by the remaining nine families of On-mono-chashi. The jars were carried in solemn procession headed by a master of the tea-cult (cha-no-yu) and a "priest of tea," and accompanied by a large party of guards and attendants. In each fief through which the procession passed it received an ostentatious welcome and was sumptuously feasted. On arrival at Uji the jar, which always left Yedo fifty days before midsummer, stood for a week in a specially prepared store until every vestige of moisture had been expelled, and then, having been filled, were carried to Kyoto and there deposited for a space of one hundred days.

It's quite apparent that these are not celadons as postulated by some. The Japanese were aware of the celadons in Luzon (Rusun no seiji) which they described as shuko seiji "pearl-gray celadon," but these were different than the most valued dark-colored tea-canisters.

Europeans of the 16th century praised and imported both porcelain and celadon from the East. The communion cup of Archbiship Warham, the Lord Chancellor of England from 1504 to 1532, for example, was an imported celadon.

However, European observers of that time and afterward universally disparaged the Luzon tea-canisters. They also refer to these vessels repeatedly as earthenware.

According to the Tokiko, tea leaf kept its quality in these canisters if it touched the bottom or sides of the jar. Thus, it appears that contact with the clay was required to preserve the tea.

In Borneo and the Philippines, the sacred jars are often dated back to the first creation, and the clay is said to come from the gods.

The common division of sacred jars in Borneo mentioned by observers rates the Gusi type, a medium-sized, olive-green-colored jar with "medicinal properties" as having the highest value, followed by the Naga or "dragon jar." The latter is larger than the Gusi and is decorated with Chinese dragon figures. Last comes the Russa jar which is decorated with a representation of a type of deer.

Jars called "Gusi" also appear in the Philippines and Malaysia. They are mostly small to medium-sized but can be of many different colors. Some are stoneware, but most appear as glazed earthenware containers. A type of dark-brown Gusi known as Bergiau was found among the Sea Dayaks and was of higher value than the greenish Gusi.

Although of obvious Chinese influence, geochemical testing and other evidence suggests that dragon jars or Naga were made throughout the Southeast Asian region.

The dragon jars in the Philippines have a unique geochemical signature, but evidence shows that they also imported many dragon jars from elsewhere including the Martabans of Myanmar (Burma).

The sacred origin of the jars is a widespread motif in the region. In Ceram, pottery is one of the divine excretions of the earth goddess Hainuwele.

In Borneo, the sacred jars are made from the clay left over from the creation of the Sun and Moon by Mahatala, or his subject spirits. The Ngaju considered the vessels gifts of the gods, the fruit of the Tree of Life.

Among the Tinguian of the Philippines, the jars are also gifts, from the Sun or Sky-god Kabunian.

Jars similiar to those found in Solheim's "Bau-Malay" culture and to the Geometric Pottery of South China are still manufactured by the Kalinga of northern Luzon, to store water and wine, for fermentation, cooking and other purposes.

Possible explanations

The most prized of the Luzon wares were the locally-made tea canisters made of earthenware and dark brown or black in color marked with a spiral and native script symbols. Contact with the clay from the inside of the jar helped preserve tea. In the Philippines and Borneo, the jars had medicinal and magical properties, and could even speak to the owners and predict the future according to legend.

If we were to speculate on scientific explanations for the medicinal and preservative properties attributed to the Luzon jars, we would first suggest that the finest tea-canisters were unglazed. They belonged to the Rusun-koroku that was "not thoroughly baked" and/or to the Suyakimono or "unglazed wares," both mentioned in the Tokiko.

One of the types of Suyakimono was the Hi-tasuki, possibly marked with a cord or with a corded pattern brought out in relief, that is mentioned above as one of the Luzon tea-canister types.

Fedor Jagor tells of an artifact that he believed matched the descriptions of Luzon tea-canisters given by Antonio de Morga, the governor of the Philippines:

Morga's description suits neither the vessel of Libmanan nor the jar of the British Museum, but rather a vessel brought from Japan a short time ago to our Ethnographical Museum. This is of brown clay, small but of graceful shape, and composed of many pieces cemented together; the joints being gilt and forming a kind of network on the dark ground.

Like most other descriptions of the jars, no mention of any glaze is offered. The earthenware jars were gilded and decorated with brocade making up somewhat for their unsightly appearance.

However, the lack of glaze would explain why contact with the interior of the jar was important in preserving tea leaves. A volcanic clay with minerals like montmorillonite could have possessed the required properties, but the Rusun clay was even more unique than ordinary volcanic types.

Pinatubo volcanic deposits are very high in sulfur, an element with strong preservative properties. Sulfur is also one of the two base elements used by both Eastern and Western alchemists to divide all things into categories similar to Yin and Yang of Chinese cosmology.

Indian alchemy described the kundalini, the volcanic snake-like energy residing near the base of the spine as surrounded by a mass of sulfur.

The other element in this categorization is mercury. Sulfur and mercury are closely associated with volcanoes, fumaroles and hot springs.

Mercury mixed with other metals and then treated with sulfur produces the sulfides, among the most common types of preservatives used today. In ancient times, these sulfides were created by alchemists seeking to reproduce the Philosopher's Stone and similar products.

The Pinatubo eruptive materials are known to be particularly sulfide-rich.

Lastly, we should note that concerning the Suyakimono canisters possibly having "vermillion" cord-like relief or other types of decorations, that the Kalinga potters used carved paddles to create low relief decorations on their local manufacture jars.

Relief decoration on Kalinga pots
Source: Kalinga Ceramics


Bau-Malay-like low relief patterns.








Bau-Malay-like globular shape.


Kalinga storage jar wrapped in twisted rattan. Source: http://curieuxunivers.umontreal.ca/php/fiche.php?No=45MOA&langue=en

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Brinkley, Frank. Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature, J.B. Millet Company, 1910.

Descantes, Christophe. Hector Neff, and Michael D. Glascock, "Yapese prestige goods: The INAA evidence for an Asian Dragon Jar," pp. 229-256, IN: Geochemical evidence for long-distance exchange, edited by Michael D. Glascock, Westport, Conn. : Bergin and Garvey, 2002.

Jagor, Fedor and William Gifford Palgrave> The Philippines and the Filipinos of Yesterday ..., Oriental commercial company, 1934.

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