Interesting article about the discovery of banana phytoliths dating to
the fourth millennium BCE in Munsa, Uganda.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
http://sambali.blogspot.com/
---
Abstract
The recent discovery of banana phytoliths dating to the first
millennium BC in Cameroon has ignited debate about the timing of the
introduction of this important food crop to Africa. This paper
presents new phytolith evidence obtained from one of three sediment
cores from a swamp at Munsa, Uganda, that appears to indicate the
presence of bananas (Musa) at this site during the fourth millennium
BC. This discovery is evaluated in the light of existing knowledge of
phytolith taphonomy, the history of Musa, ancient Indian Ocean trade
and African prehistory.
http://www.naturalscience.tcd.ie/Interactions_papers/Africas%20earliest%20bananas_pub_ver.pdf
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Phoenix or Feng (Glossary)
The Phoenix of China is known as Feng 鳳, or, starting in Zhou times, Feng-huang 鳳凰. It is also known as the August Rooster 鶤雞 and Daoist texts describe the legendary bird as resembling a cock, especially one of cinnabar-red color.
Bird totems are found in Neolithic China although they don't necessarily resemble latter depictions of the Phoenix. Around the middle of the first millennium BCE, the bird is shown together with the taotie symbol in Chinese artwork.
The Phoenix was said to live somewhere in the South, and starting in Han dynasty times the Feng-huang became a symbol for the southern direction.
Fu Hsi's surname was Feng, possibly representing his totemic clan, and he faced his throne toward the South, a tradition that persisted throughout Chinese history. Feng-shui masters also claim that the orientation of the emperor's throne and palace was toward the Phoenix of the South.
The Feng-huang was said to live in the mountain of Cinnabar Caves (Tan-hsüeh shan) which Chuang Tzu located somewhere south of the Yueh kingdom (modern Zhejiang and Fujian).
The Phoenix was said also to reside in the "South Sea" and to fly at times to the "North Sea."
The Cinnabar Caves may be related to the Cinnabar Field far beneath Penglai's central mountain. When Xu Fu was sent by the Qin Emperor to find Penglai, he claimed to have met a "great spirit" in the ocean who led him toward the southeast to the legendary island.
Some of the Boshanlu censers, which when in use relay an image of a smoking mountain, display Penglai island supported on the beak of a Phoenix standing on a turtle, the latter possibly representing the center of the earth.
The oracle bone character for feng "wind" is a bird pictograph that has been identified with the Phoenix (feng 鳳).
Sarah Allan has suggested that the bird-wind-Phoenix link may connect with Jun "East Wind" mentioned in the Shang texts as one of the great ancestors of the Shang dynasty so closely associated with bird totems.
According to the Shanhaijing, Jun (Di Jun) married Xihe in the "Southeastern-Sea amidst the Sweet Waters, and Xihe gives birth to the "Ten Suns" which bathe in the boiling water pools near Fu-Sang, the mulberry tree under which rises the Underground World River.
Thus, this Di Jun may also have some Feng clan associations that locate geographically in the "Southeastern-Sea" where the Fu-Sang tree is located.
Fu-Sang is central to the myth of the multiple suns that are said to rest in its branches. It is associated with the East and apparently with the equatorial regions where the Sun rises above the horizon between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
Xihe, Jun's wife, is said to rinse and purify each Sun after its journey and place it back on the branches of the Fu-Sang tree.
Variations of Shang dynasty origin myths from Allan, he Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China, p. 35.
If the huang in the name "Feng-huang" is an epithet, as claimed by some, then it might indicate the movement of the Phoenix myth from the South towards the North, as languages in the southern region commonly placed epithets after substantives.
By Han times, the Feng-huang became two birds, one male and the other female, and later five different phoenixes arose. The modern Phoenix, like the Dragon, is a composite creation.
Feng-huang is portrayed often either cinnabar-red, or with five colors representing the five cardinal virtues. The Phoenix stands for, among other things, the Empress, conjugal union and the Yin principle.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Allan, Sarah. The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China, SUNY Press, 1991.
Bird totems are found in Neolithic China although they don't necessarily resemble latter depictions of the Phoenix. Around the middle of the first millennium BCE, the bird is shown together with the taotie symbol in Chinese artwork.
The Phoenix was said to live somewhere in the South, and starting in Han dynasty times the Feng-huang became a symbol for the southern direction.
Fu Hsi's surname was Feng, possibly representing his totemic clan, and he faced his throne toward the South, a tradition that persisted throughout Chinese history. Feng-shui masters also claim that the orientation of the emperor's throne and palace was toward the Phoenix of the South.
The Feng-huang was said to live in the mountain of Cinnabar Caves (Tan-hsüeh shan) which Chuang Tzu located somewhere south of the Yueh kingdom (modern Zhejiang and Fujian).
The Phoenix was said also to reside in the "South Sea" and to fly at times to the "North Sea."
The Cinnabar Caves may be related to the Cinnabar Field far beneath Penglai's central mountain. When Xu Fu was sent by the Qin Emperor to find Penglai, he claimed to have met a "great spirit" in the ocean who led him toward the southeast to the legendary island.
Some of the Boshanlu censers, which when in use relay an image of a smoking mountain, display Penglai island supported on the beak of a Phoenix standing on a turtle, the latter possibly representing the center of the earth.
The oracle bone character for feng "wind" is a bird pictograph that has been identified with the Phoenix (feng 鳳).
Sarah Allan has suggested that the bird-wind-Phoenix link may connect with Jun "East Wind" mentioned in the Shang texts as one of the great ancestors of the Shang dynasty so closely associated with bird totems.
According to the Shanhaijing, Jun (Di Jun) married Xihe in the "Southeastern-Sea amidst the Sweet Waters, and Xihe gives birth to the "Ten Suns" which bathe in the boiling water pools near Fu-Sang, the mulberry tree under which rises the Underground World River.
Thus, this Di Jun may also have some Feng clan associations that locate geographically in the "Southeastern-Sea" where the Fu-Sang tree is located.
Fu-Sang is central to the myth of the multiple suns that are said to rest in its branches. It is associated with the East and apparently with the equatorial regions where the Sun rises above the horizon between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
Xihe, Jun's wife, is said to rinse and purify each Sun after its journey and place it back on the branches of the Fu-Sang tree.
Variations of Shang dynasty origin myths from Allan, he Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China, p. 35.
If the huang in the name "Feng-huang" is an epithet, as claimed by some, then it might indicate the movement of the Phoenix myth from the South towards the North, as languages in the southern region commonly placed epithets after substantives.
By Han times, the Feng-huang became two birds, one male and the other female, and later five different phoenixes arose. The modern Phoenix, like the Dragon, is a composite creation.
Feng-huang is portrayed often either cinnabar-red, or with five colors representing the five cardinal virtues. The Phoenix stands for, among other things, the Empress, conjugal union and the Yin principle.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Allan, Sarah. The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China, SUNY Press, 1991.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
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:
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:
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.
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 (SO
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.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
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:
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."
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:
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.
McKibben, Michael A., C. Stewart Eldridge, and Agnes G. Reyes. Sulfur Isotopic Systematics of the June 1991 Mount Pinatubo Eruptions: A SHRIMP Ion Microprobe Study, http://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/mckibben/index.html, 1999.
St. John, Spenser Buckingham. Life in the forests of the Far East, 1862, pp. 27-28, 300-302.
White, David Gordon. The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India, University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 234-235.
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.
McKibben, Michael A., C. Stewart Eldridge, and Agnes G. Reyes. Sulfur Isotopic Systematics of the June 1991 Mount Pinatubo Eruptions: A SHRIMP Ion Microprobe Study, http://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/mckibben/index.html, 1999.
St. John, Spenser Buckingham. Life in the forests of the Far East, 1862, pp. 27-28, 300-302.
White, David Gordon. The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India, University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 234-235.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Clay, Myths and uses of (Glossary)
Clay -- composed of fine, hydrated minerals that are cohesive in nature -- plays an important role in myths and traditional healing systems around the world.
Often the first humans are said to have been formed with clay. The Sumerians had such myths, as did the Aztecs, the Dyaks of Borneo and many other peoples. The clay most often used is red or reddish-brown, the color of which in many myths is attributed to tempering with divine blood (see Oppenheimer, 366-7).
Interestingly, modern science suggests that life, not just humans, may have formed in early volcanic clay. Researchers found that methanol — naturally produced when volcanic carbon dioxide combines with volcanic hydrogen gas — is protected from volcanic heat between layers of certain common clays.
Shielded by the clay, methanol reacts with a clay mineral called montmorillonite to create far more complex organic molecules with up to 20 carbons. For more info, see:
Secrets of Life Found in Volcanic Clay?
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20051031/clay_geo.html
The living powers of clay may link also with its use in traditional forms of medicine.
Geophagy
Geophagy refers to the consumption of clay or soil for healing purposes, which was very widespread, and in some cases to the use of clay as a condiment or emergency food as in the Philippines, New Guinea, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Amazon and Orinoco basins of South America.
An amazingly widespread practice was for pregnant women to consume clay during various terms or through the entire pregnancy. Clays like kaolin and montmorillonite have properties that can help with morning sickness. Kaolin, for example, is used in the popular preparation Kaopectate.
It may also be that there is some ancient link between the myths of creation of humans from clay and the use of the substance during pregnancy, the formation of humans in the womb. In an old Bisayan myth, Saman and a daughter of Sicalac were forced to eat yellow clay after traveling to the East, which results in their descendents having a yellow color.
The perceived healing powers of clay found in many cultures is not without scientific merit.
Clay is used today widely as an alternative medicine, and also by orthodox medicine in some cases. Clays like montmorillonite (bentonite) and hydrated sodium calcium aluminosilicate (smectite) are utilized, for example, to detoxify mycotoxins from animal feed.
Naturopathic practictioners also use clay in humans to protect against mycotoxins, heavy metal poisoning and to generally cleanse the body through their absorbent properties. Volcanic clays are particurlarly important because of their wide spectrum of mineral content.
Volcanic clay has a residual negative charge that binds to positive ions, which are toxic to humans.
Mycotoxins are produced by fungi and are heat-stable, thus resistant to practices like cooking. These toxins generally build up in grains and grain-based animal feeds. Mycotoxins from feed will pass into the meat, milk, eggs, etc. of animals that consume the contaminated foodstuffs.
As mycotoxins are very potent carcinogens have have toxic effect particularly on the liver, kidneys and immume system, many researchers now believe they are one of the most important health risks found in the present-day food system.
The European Union has approved clays like Clinoptilolite as binding agents for animal feeds. Although such use of clay binders is not approved by the U.S. FDA, the practice is still becoming increasingly popular in the United States.
Clay jars and the "water of life"
We have explored in this blog, the use of simple, earthenware jars as water, tea or wine pots. In some cases, these rather uncomely jars became exceptionally valuable, sought after by kings and merchants.
The porous earthenware jar allows water to evaporate on its surface. If water is left in such jars for some time container will eventually empty -- the source of "drinking jar" tales.
Evaporation allows the jar to dissipate heat, and thus these vessels are widely known for their "breathing" qualities and their ability to cool drinking water.
Many clays used for such pots contain organic matter and microrganisms, and eventually these water pots become infested with lichens and microrganism colonies, which generally are non-pathogenic, and even beneficial to humans. The jar becomes a living entity to the ancient mind.
If made with certain quantities of volcanic clays (other than kaolinite), the jar becomes badly deformed over time because these clays expand as they absorb moisture.
Such volcanic clays would help purify the water of toxins, and might also mineralize the water through dissolution.
Through these various processes, the water kept in these pots could be easily be recognized as having superior qualities, and indeed that is the case in many cultures.
Living clay from the Magnetic Mountains
Volcanoes tend to abound in natural magnets generated and scattered by an eruption. People living near the mountains could recognize this link and the concept of the magnetic mountain is born.
The magnetic force can be seen as a form of animistic life energy by the pre-modern mind, and thus also anything associated with the volcano including the native clays.
In Borneo, the clays of the Sun and Moon were used to create some of the local sacred jars. The reference here is, I believe, to the original ancient mountains of the Sun and Moon, respectively Arayat and Pinatubo.
Water jar monument from Calamba, Philippines
In legend, these two mountains battle with each other hurling stones through the sky. Science shows that there may be something to these myths. The great Holocene eruptions of Pinatubo show signs of a "mixing" of basaltic stones from the Arayat formation and dacites from Pinatubo. This mixing actually takes place in underground chambers between the two mountains and results in a hybrid ash and pumice. Thus, the eruption of Pinatubo also involves, in a way, Arayat.
This hybrid ash eventually weathers into the volcanic clays around the mountain, a mixture of the elements from the solar and lunar mountains.
Water kept in jars made with this clay, which can be seen as related to the clay used to form the first humans according to mythology, is infused with the same essence as the primordial clay becoming the "water of life."
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Callahan GN. Eating dirt. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online] 2003 Aug [date cited]. Available from: URL: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol9no8/03-0033.htm
Galvano F, Piva A, Ritieni A and Galvano G. "Dietary strategies to counteract the effects of mycotoxins: a review," Food Prot. 2001 Jan;64(1):120-31.
Phillips TD. "Dietary clay in the chemoprevention of aflatoxin-induced disease," Toxicol Sci. 1999 Dec;52(2 Suppl):118-26.
Phillips TD, Sarr AB and Grant PG. "Selective chemisorption and detoxification of aflatoxins by phyllosilicate clay," Nat Toxins. 1995;3(4):204-13.
Often the first humans are said to have been formed with clay. The Sumerians had such myths, as did the Aztecs, the Dyaks of Borneo and many other peoples. The clay most often used is red or reddish-brown, the color of which in many myths is attributed to tempering with divine blood (see Oppenheimer, 366-7).
Interestingly, modern science suggests that life, not just humans, may have formed in early volcanic clay. Researchers found that methanol — naturally produced when volcanic carbon dioxide combines with volcanic hydrogen gas — is protected from volcanic heat between layers of certain common clays.
Shielded by the clay, methanol reacts with a clay mineral called montmorillonite to create far more complex organic molecules with up to 20 carbons. For more info, see:
Secrets of Life Found in Volcanic Clay?
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20051031/clay_geo.html
The living powers of clay may link also with its use in traditional forms of medicine.
Geophagy
Geophagy refers to the consumption of clay or soil for healing purposes, which was very widespread, and in some cases to the use of clay as a condiment or emergency food as in the Philippines, New Guinea, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Amazon and Orinoco basins of South America.
An amazingly widespread practice was for pregnant women to consume clay during various terms or through the entire pregnancy. Clays like kaolin and montmorillonite have properties that can help with morning sickness. Kaolin, for example, is used in the popular preparation Kaopectate.
It may also be that there is some ancient link between the myths of creation of humans from clay and the use of the substance during pregnancy, the formation of humans in the womb. In an old Bisayan myth, Saman and a daughter of Sicalac were forced to eat yellow clay after traveling to the East, which results in their descendents having a yellow color.
The perceived healing powers of clay found in many cultures is not without scientific merit.
Clay is used today widely as an alternative medicine, and also by orthodox medicine in some cases. Clays like montmorillonite (bentonite) and hydrated sodium calcium aluminosilicate (smectite) are utilized, for example, to detoxify mycotoxins from animal feed.
Naturopathic practictioners also use clay in humans to protect against mycotoxins, heavy metal poisoning and to generally cleanse the body through their absorbent properties. Volcanic clays are particurlarly important because of their wide spectrum of mineral content.
Volcanic clay has a residual negative charge that binds to positive ions, which are toxic to humans.
Mycotoxins are produced by fungi and are heat-stable, thus resistant to practices like cooking. These toxins generally build up in grains and grain-based animal feeds. Mycotoxins from feed will pass into the meat, milk, eggs, etc. of animals that consume the contaminated foodstuffs.
As mycotoxins are very potent carcinogens have have toxic effect particularly on the liver, kidneys and immume system, many researchers now believe they are one of the most important health risks found in the present-day food system.
The European Union has approved clays like Clinoptilolite as binding agents for animal feeds. Although such use of clay binders is not approved by the U.S. FDA, the practice is still becoming increasingly popular in the United States.
Clay jars and the "water of life"
We have explored in this blog, the use of simple, earthenware jars as water, tea or wine pots. In some cases, these rather uncomely jars became exceptionally valuable, sought after by kings and merchants.
The porous earthenware jar allows water to evaporate on its surface. If water is left in such jars for some time container will eventually empty -- the source of "drinking jar" tales.
Evaporation allows the jar to dissipate heat, and thus these vessels are widely known for their "breathing" qualities and their ability to cool drinking water.
Many clays used for such pots contain organic matter and microrganisms, and eventually these water pots become infested with lichens and microrganism colonies, which generally are non-pathogenic, and even beneficial to humans. The jar becomes a living entity to the ancient mind.
If made with certain quantities of volcanic clays (other than kaolinite), the jar becomes badly deformed over time because these clays expand as they absorb moisture.
Such volcanic clays would help purify the water of toxins, and might also mineralize the water through dissolution.
Through these various processes, the water kept in these pots could be easily be recognized as having superior qualities, and indeed that is the case in many cultures.
Living clay from the Magnetic Mountains
Volcanoes tend to abound in natural magnets generated and scattered by an eruption. People living near the mountains could recognize this link and the concept of the magnetic mountain is born.
The magnetic force can be seen as a form of animistic life energy by the pre-modern mind, and thus also anything associated with the volcano including the native clays.
In Borneo, the clays of the Sun and Moon were used to create some of the local sacred jars. The reference here is, I believe, to the original ancient mountains of the Sun and Moon, respectively Arayat and Pinatubo.
Water jar monument from Calamba, Philippines
In legend, these two mountains battle with each other hurling stones through the sky. Science shows that there may be something to these myths. The great Holocene eruptions of Pinatubo show signs of a "mixing" of basaltic stones from the Arayat formation and dacites from Pinatubo. This mixing actually takes place in underground chambers between the two mountains and results in a hybrid ash and pumice. Thus, the eruption of Pinatubo also involves, in a way, Arayat.
This hybrid ash eventually weathers into the volcanic clays around the mountain, a mixture of the elements from the solar and lunar mountains.
Water kept in jars made with this clay, which can be seen as related to the clay used to form the first humans according to mythology, is infused with the same essence as the primordial clay becoming the "water of life."
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Callahan GN. Eating dirt. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online] 2003 Aug [date cited]. Available from: URL: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol9no8/03-0033.htm
Galvano F, Piva A, Ritieni A and Galvano G. "Dietary strategies to counteract the effects of mycotoxins: a review," Food Prot. 2001 Jan;64(1):120-31.
Phillips TD. "Dietary clay in the chemoprevention of aflatoxin-induced disease," Toxicol Sci. 1999 Dec;52(2 Suppl):118-26.
Phillips TD, Sarr AB and Grant PG. "Selective chemisorption and detoxification of aflatoxins by phyllosilicate clay," Nat Toxins. 1995;3(4):204-13.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Entheogen (Glossary)
An entheogen generally refers to a mind or mood-altering substance, often hallucinogenic, that supposedly generates profound spiritual experience.
Common entheogens include "psychedelic" mushrooms, cannabis, peyote, morning glory seeds, and other natural drugs that are often illegal today.
Many researchers believe that elixir substances like Amrita, Soma, the Apples of Eden and the like were entheogenic in nature. An opposing view is that the elixir primarily promoted good health and longevity.
In this blog, we have suggested that the elixir, which indeed was linked throughout many cultures, is strongly connected with a specific sacred location -- the cosmic mountain.
In this location, all consumables -- entheogens, herbs, fruits, water, etc. -- were considered sacred and as possessing magical properties or "mana."
Soma/Haoma of the Sea
The tradition of Soma or Haoma coming from the sea is an interesting and puzzling one. Most entheogens involve land-based plants.
According to the Mahabharata, after the ash and debris from the flaming Mount Mandara poured down the rivers into the sea turning the waters white, the Amrita or Soma arose like butter from the churned ocean.
In the Indo-Pacific region, there are numerous seaweeds that contain indole alkaloids similar to those found in other entheogens.
It's difficult to say when seaweed consumption began in this region although it appears very old. Seaweeds were widely consumed in the Pacific when the Europeans arrived. There is even some archaeological evidence of its consumption despite the fragility of the algae from the Latte Period in Guam, which started in the 9th century CE.
The Hawaiians favored seaweed when eating poi, and in the Philippines traditional fresh salads were made with gelatinous seaweeds, while terrestrial vegetables were usually cooked.
Pigafetta found "the sea to be full of grass although the depth of the sea was very great" as he approached the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines.
P. Blanco in his late 1700s book on Philippine flora mentions gulaman a general term for seaweeds used especially to make the gelatinous substance known as agar-agar (Malay jelly). Bergano, from around the same period, mentions cancung as the name of "grass" grown in the water without specifying sea grasses. However he also says that some types of cancung were collected for use in salads ("ensalada"), which suggests that cancung included seaweed, which has been eaten raw in salads for centuries at least.
The Philippines is currently a major producer and cultivator of seaweed including the peculiar Caulerpa species known generally as lato.
"Peppery" seaweed
Caulerpa species are known to contain psychoactive substances such as caulerpin, caulerpicin and caulerpenyne.
Some of these are mild and caulerpin even has root growth stimulant properties.
Sea grapes, Caulerpa racemosa, Hawai`i, source:
hbs.bishopmuseum.org/good-bad/list.html
Lukay-lukay, Caulerpa taxifola, an hallucinogenic algae, source: http://www-csgc.ucsd.edu/STORIES/Caulerpa.html
In the local tradition, food with these substances are said to have a "peppery" taste. Mild seaweeds of this type cause a slight numbness to the tongue and mouth.
Strong peppery seaweeds sting the mouth and are avoided by most people. However, some are predisposed to the stronger seaweeds including the Caulerpa taxifolia species, which can be strongly hallucinogenic in nature.
Psychoactive fish
Certain herbivorous fish consume Caulerpa and similar hallucinogenic algae and concentrate the active substances in their flesh or other body parts.
For example, the blue seachub (Khyphosus cinerascens) is known worldwide as one of the most frequently implicated species in hallucinogenic fish poisoning.
In the Philippines one of the names for the blue seachub is dapog "open fire," which probably suggests the strong "peppery" qualities of this fish when eaten.
Recently, Caulerpa taxifolia invaded the Mediterranean, where it is not native, and was apparently was consumed by a local herbivorous fish known as the Sarpa salpa. Two people reported having hallucinations and nightmares after consuming the fish.
In the Pacific, such hallucinogenic fish species are called "dream fish."
Algae blooms can also cause many common edible species to become toxic and sometimes hallucinogenic.
Blue seachub, Khyphosus cinerascens, known in some parts of the Philippines as dapog is a powerfully-hallucinogenic fish well-known for cases of fish poisoning, source: Robert A. Patzner.
The "red tide" bloom effects shellfish and among some people a substance known as domoic acid found in cases of Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning (ASP) causes hallucinations. A similar effect occurs with edible fish species during ciguatera blooms.
Indeed even spoiled shellfish can contain the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin, which is believed to be the active substance in the famous Haitian zombie powder used by voodoo practitioners.
It's interesting that many species classifed as hallucinogenic and poisonous elsewhwere are easily available in Philippine markets including Caulerpa taxifolia, Blue seachub, damselfish (ulan-ulan) and goatfishes (saramollete).
While a fresh seaweed salad is considered today a healthy and delicious addition to a meal through much of the Nusantao and Austronesian region, I know of no indication that psychoactive seaweeds, fish or shellfish were used in ritual fashion of any kind.
Betel nut and kava were more commonly used as mild intoxicants with some link to spiritual rituals.
However, the general effect of these "peppery" seafoods is certainly known, and no doubt some people consume them for this specific reason.
In this regard, the tale of bird's nest soup is of interest.
Made from the nests of certain species of Southeast Asian swifts, the bird's nests are considered an elixir of youth in Chinese and Vietnamese traditional medicine. Even today bird's nests are still sold as an expensive health tonic.
The swift birds in the Philippines and the bird's nest itself are known as salangana.
The nest is constructed mostly of regurgitated seaweed eaten by the swift. In ancient tradition, the bird digested the sea foam itself infusing the sea's nutrients into the nest. Most commonly it was the local Ngoso type of seaweed that was involved, but also not rarely the Lato or Caulerpa seaweeds and even the powerfully psychoactive Caulerpa taxifolia was used by the little swift!
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
California Sea Grant, Caulerpa Weed Story, http://www-csgc.ucsd.edu/STORIES/Caulerpa.html.
Capuli, Estelita Emily and Kathleen Kesner-Reyes. "Khyphosus cinerascens in Philippines," Country Species Summary, Link.
Meinesz, Alexandre. Killer Algae, University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Simoons, Frederick J. Food in China, CRC Press, 1990, pgs. 428-9.
Velasquez, Gregorio. "History on the Local Uses of Seaweed," Science Review Vol. 8, no. 3 (March 1967), Philippines: National Science and Development Board.
Common entheogens include "psychedelic" mushrooms, cannabis, peyote, morning glory seeds, and other natural drugs that are often illegal today.
Many researchers believe that elixir substances like Amrita, Soma, the Apples of Eden and the like were entheogenic in nature. An opposing view is that the elixir primarily promoted good health and longevity.
In this blog, we have suggested that the elixir, which indeed was linked throughout many cultures, is strongly connected with a specific sacred location -- the cosmic mountain.
In this location, all consumables -- entheogens, herbs, fruits, water, etc. -- were considered sacred and as possessing magical properties or "mana."
Soma/Haoma of the Sea
The tradition of Soma or Haoma coming from the sea is an interesting and puzzling one. Most entheogens involve land-based plants.
According to the Mahabharata, after the ash and debris from the flaming Mount Mandara poured down the rivers into the sea turning the waters white, the Amrita or Soma arose like butter from the churned ocean.
In the Indo-Pacific region, there are numerous seaweeds that contain indole alkaloids similar to those found in other entheogens.
It's difficult to say when seaweed consumption began in this region although it appears very old. Seaweeds were widely consumed in the Pacific when the Europeans arrived. There is even some archaeological evidence of its consumption despite the fragility of the algae from the Latte Period in Guam, which started in the 9th century CE.
The Hawaiians favored seaweed when eating poi, and in the Philippines traditional fresh salads were made with gelatinous seaweeds, while terrestrial vegetables were usually cooked.
Pigafetta found "the sea to be full of grass although the depth of the sea was very great" as he approached the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines.
P. Blanco in his late 1700s book on Philippine flora mentions gulaman a general term for seaweeds used especially to make the gelatinous substance known as agar-agar (Malay jelly). Bergano, from around the same period, mentions cancung as the name of "grass" grown in the water without specifying sea grasses. However he also says that some types of cancung were collected for use in salads ("ensalada"), which suggests that cancung included seaweed, which has been eaten raw in salads for centuries at least.
The Philippines is currently a major producer and cultivator of seaweed including the peculiar Caulerpa species known generally as lato.
"Peppery" seaweed
Caulerpa species are known to contain psychoactive substances such as caulerpin, caulerpicin and caulerpenyne.
Some of these are mild and caulerpin even has root growth stimulant properties.
Sea grapes, Caulerpa racemosa, Hawai`i, source:
hbs.bishopmuseum.org/good-bad/list.html
Lukay-lukay, Caulerpa taxifola, an hallucinogenic algae, source: http://www-csgc.ucsd.edu/STORIES/Caulerpa.html
In the local tradition, food with these substances are said to have a "peppery" taste. Mild seaweeds of this type cause a slight numbness to the tongue and mouth.
Strong peppery seaweeds sting the mouth and are avoided by most people. However, some are predisposed to the stronger seaweeds including the Caulerpa taxifolia species, which can be strongly hallucinogenic in nature.
Psychoactive fish
Certain herbivorous fish consume Caulerpa and similar hallucinogenic algae and concentrate the active substances in their flesh or other body parts.
For example, the blue seachub (Khyphosus cinerascens) is known worldwide as one of the most frequently implicated species in hallucinogenic fish poisoning.
In the Philippines one of the names for the blue seachub is dapog "open fire," which probably suggests the strong "peppery" qualities of this fish when eaten.
Recently, Caulerpa taxifolia invaded the Mediterranean, where it is not native, and was apparently was consumed by a local herbivorous fish known as the Sarpa salpa. Two people reported having hallucinations and nightmares after consuming the fish.
In the Pacific, such hallucinogenic fish species are called "dream fish."
Algae blooms can also cause many common edible species to become toxic and sometimes hallucinogenic.
Blue seachub, Khyphosus cinerascens, known in some parts of the Philippines as dapog is a powerfully-hallucinogenic fish well-known for cases of fish poisoning, source: Robert A. Patzner.
The "red tide" bloom effects shellfish and among some people a substance known as domoic acid found in cases of Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning (ASP) causes hallucinations. A similar effect occurs with edible fish species during ciguatera blooms.
Indeed even spoiled shellfish can contain the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin, which is believed to be the active substance in the famous Haitian zombie powder used by voodoo practitioners.
It's interesting that many species classifed as hallucinogenic and poisonous elsewhwere are easily available in Philippine markets including Caulerpa taxifolia, Blue seachub, damselfish (ulan-ulan) and goatfishes (saramollete).
While a fresh seaweed salad is considered today a healthy and delicious addition to a meal through much of the Nusantao and Austronesian region, I know of no indication that psychoactive seaweeds, fish or shellfish were used in ritual fashion of any kind.
Betel nut and kava were more commonly used as mild intoxicants with some link to spiritual rituals.
However, the general effect of these "peppery" seafoods is certainly known, and no doubt some people consume them for this specific reason.
In this regard, the tale of bird's nest soup is of interest.
Made from the nests of certain species of Southeast Asian swifts, the bird's nests are considered an elixir of youth in Chinese and Vietnamese traditional medicine. Even today bird's nests are still sold as an expensive health tonic.
The swift birds in the Philippines and the bird's nest itself are known as salangana.
The nest is constructed mostly of regurgitated seaweed eaten by the swift. In ancient tradition, the bird digested the sea foam itself infusing the sea's nutrients into the nest. Most commonly it was the local Ngoso type of seaweed that was involved, but also not rarely the Lato or Caulerpa seaweeds and even the powerfully psychoactive Caulerpa taxifolia was used by the little swift!
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
California Sea Grant, Caulerpa Weed Story, http://www-csgc.ucsd.edu/STORIES/Caulerpa.html.
Capuli, Estelita Emily and Kathleen Kesner-Reyes. "Khyphosus cinerascens in Philippines," Country Species Summary, Link.
Meinesz, Alexandre. Killer Algae, University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Simoons, Frederick J. Food in China, CRC Press, 1990, pgs. 428-9.
Velasquez, Gregorio. "History on the Local Uses of Seaweed," Science Review Vol. 8, no. 3 (March 1967), Philippines: National Science and Development Board.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Record-keeping and Mnemonics, Early (Glossary)
In the traditional society of Easter Island, string figures or kaikai and string games known as pata'uta'u were used to memorize esoteric formula/spells, chants, histories and stories.
R. Campbell found that some kaikai chants were in fact identical to songs written in the native script known as rongorongo. Experts believe it may be possible to also match up the texts of pata'uta'u string games with the rongorongo of the Easter Island tablets.
Indeed, a number of rongorongo signs closely resemble Easter Island string figures, and bird symbolism was important in both practices.
Rongorongo inscription, Small Santiago Tablet, source: http://www.rongorongo.org
In a similar manner, Chinese tradition tells us that Fu Hsi used knot records that became one of the prototypes for the future Chinese script.
Some extant texts exist showing the depiction of numbers using black and white knots. The black knots represent even numbers, night, cold, water and Earth. The white knows stand for odd numbers, day, warmth and Sun. These knots represented also the principles of yin and yang, and served as models for the trigrams, which were likewise credited to Fu Hsi.
The Hetu or "River Map" of Fu Hsi, and the Luoshu or "Luo River Writing" of Yu the Great, are portrayed as cosmic maps that depict the universe with sets of connected black and white dots representing respectively even and odd numbers.
The top row shows two extant Chinese tablets with even numbers represented by strings of black dots, and odd numbers by strings of white dots. On the second row, the Luo River Writing (L), which Yu the Great found on the back of a turtle emerging from the Luo Shui River. The Hetu, or River Map (R), found by Fu Hsi written on a "dragon-horse" that arose from the Yellow River. In both cases, the black dots stand for yin and even numbers, and the white dots represent yang and odd numbers.
Possible evolution of trigrams from binary knot system using counting stick images. On the top row is a cord of strings with dark knots representing even numbers and yin characteristics, and white knots: odd numbers and yang characteristics. The center row shows the numbers 1-8 using Chinese counting sticks. The image of the counting sticks is used to form the trigrams with the solid lines standing for the white knots and the broken lines for the yin knots.
Interestingly, the numerals used for the numbers 1 to 3 in many ancient scripts appear related to tally sticks or pebbles, shells, beads, etc. used for counting.
The similarity to tally sticks breaks off with the number four in half the scripts involved suggesting that maybe, if there is some relationship between these symbols, that it involves a base-four counting system.
Numerals from 1 to 3 in various ancient scripts
Base-four numeration is scattered here and there all over the world.
The practice of counting items like yams, coconuts, bananas, taro, fish, etc. by fours is rather commonly found in the Pacific both among Papuan and Austronesian peoples.
In Hawai`i, counting by fours is known as kauna and is still used in some fish markets especially for counting the opelu fish. According to tradition, a fisherman could hold four fish by there tails, two in each hand, or four taros in the same way. The kauna method supplements the ancient Proto-Austronesian decimal system.
J. Przyluski in studying the ganda guti system of numeration among the Mundas believed the origin to stem back to Austro-Asiatic and even to Proto-Austric.
The gandaka system of counting by fours in other Indian languages is thought by many to have been modeled after the ganda guti numeration.
That the above system used cowries as a form of currency is seen as evidence of its origin among a maritime people.
In the Philippines, counting by fours is found in systems like the measure based on the ganta still used mainly for measuring rice.
There are other four-based systems like that used in Pampanga for measuring spun cotton: 4 cauing = 1 cabid; 10 cabid = 1 tul (40 cauing).
Counting by fours probably originally involved using the four fingers with the thumb used only as a placeholder. Eventually, this involved into a base eight numeration by using both hands.
The Bagua or octogonal arrangement of the trigrams, instituted by Fu Hsi, can indicate the use of base four systems, one with each hand to form a base eight numeration. Thus, the first trigram in this arrangement (seen above) is the polar opposite of the eighth trigram. The second trigram is the opposite of the seventh trigram, and so on.
Knot records
In the 1700s, George Keate wrote of the encounter of Captain Wilson and the king of Palau, Abba Thulle and his son Lee Boo. The king gave Captain Wilson permission to take Lee Boo with him to England and promptly constructed a knot calendar by which he would track the voyage of his son.
Lee Boo also used a series of string records to memorize the name of every ship and country they encountered along the way to England.
Unfortunately as with most early notices of knot records, little information is given on to the precise methods used. However, little bits of information are available here and there from the many cultures that used this type of record-keeping.
In the Ryukyus, a string of knots sent to woodcutters indicated the type of trees to be cut by a leaf inserted in the knot. Knots at certain locations on the string indicated the quantity and dimensions of the timber required. Pawnbrokers on the Ryukyus used knots to record the amount of debts with fractions indicated on subsidiary strings. Different types of knots represented the various months in the payment schedule.
The Santals of India used different colored knots in their census to record the population -- black for adult men, red for adult women, white for boys and yellow for girls.
One of the most detailed accounts was that of a massive tax-recorders cord, nearly a half-mile in length, found by Tyerman and Bennet in Hawai`i in 1822:
On the Marquesas islands in French Polynesia, priests were able to read off their ancestors that were indicated by knots on a string going back to the first man and woman. Referring to a specific knot genealogy discovered by von den Steinen, Cyrus L. Day says:
The Marquesan to'o knot records were multi-purpose with one cord pontentially containing genealogies, religious chants, songs and other information.
Symbolic records on totem poles/menhirs, textiles, rafters, tattoos, etc.
The use of symbols to indicate genealogy, heroic accomplishments and the like on ancestral objects like totem poles or the rafters of ancestral houses is found repeatedly throughout the Austronesian and Nusantao region.
As with knot records, interpretation of such symbols was largely a private matter of the recorder or artist and those who were instructed as to their meaning. However, there are also cases of more or less "standardized" symbols that were used for public communication.
The location of the symbols as, for example, the position of tattoo marks on the face of a Maori warrior, often was essential for correct interpretation. In the same sense, the position of drawings on the ridgepole and rafters of the Maori meeting-house, and the position of carved images on the veranda, walls and on support posts, are integral to their meaning. The same symbol in different locations could have different meanings. In this sense, the system was graphic in nature similar to a genealogical tree or a geographical map.
Certainly there could be a relationship between these symbolic systems and the mapping techiques found in the wave piloting stick charts of the Marshall Islands, and the star chart rafters of the Kiribati maneaba.
Symbols and divination
The oracle bone and tortoise shell inscriptions of the Neolithic period to Shang dynasty Dongyi people of Shandong and neighboring provinces used symbols that had no obvious graphic realism.
Some of the glyphs could plausibly relate to figures made of string, stick, rings, etc. hanging from cords as mnemonic devices used in early record and story-keeping.
Oracle bone and tortoise shell glyphs from http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Culture/language-oracle-bone.html with the top row showing simple glyphs, the middle row more advanced composite glyphs, and the bottom, complex composite glyphs. The top row glyphs have some resemblance to present-day Chinese knot wall hangings, and may have represented string figures hanging from larger recording cords.
Knots, symbols and similar devices served the same purposes as scripts later on, to include record-keeping, story-telling, aiding instruction and even use for personal communication.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Cajori, Florian. A History of Mathematical Notations/Two Volumes Bound As One/Notations in Elementary Mathematics,..., Courier Dover Publications, 1993.
Day, Cyrus L. The Role of the Knot in Primitive Ancient Cultures, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1967.
Kanahele, George Hu'eu. Ku Kanaka Stand Tall: A Search for Hawaiian Values University of Hawaii Press, 1993, p. 285.
Manansala, Paul. "Sungka Mathematics of the Philippines," Indian Journal of History of Science 30(1), New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy, 1995.
Przyluski, Jean. Pre-Aryan and Pre-Dravidian in India, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1929.
R. Campbell found that some kaikai chants were in fact identical to songs written in the native script known as rongorongo. Experts believe it may be possible to also match up the texts of pata'uta'u string games with the rongorongo of the Easter Island tablets.
Indeed, a number of rongorongo signs closely resemble Easter Island string figures, and bird symbolism was important in both practices.
Rongorongo inscription, Small Santiago Tablet, source: http://www.rongorongo.org
In a similar manner, Chinese tradition tells us that Fu Hsi used knot records that became one of the prototypes for the future Chinese script.
Some extant texts exist showing the depiction of numbers using black and white knots. The black knots represent even numbers, night, cold, water and Earth. The white knows stand for odd numbers, day, warmth and Sun. These knots represented also the principles of yin and yang, and served as models for the trigrams, which were likewise credited to Fu Hsi.
The Hetu or "River Map" of Fu Hsi, and the Luoshu or "Luo River Writing" of Yu the Great, are portrayed as cosmic maps that depict the universe with sets of connected black and white dots representing respectively even and odd numbers.
The top row shows two extant Chinese tablets with even numbers represented by strings of black dots, and odd numbers by strings of white dots. On the second row, the Luo River Writing (L), which Yu the Great found on the back of a turtle emerging from the Luo Shui River. The Hetu, or River Map (R), found by Fu Hsi written on a "dragon-horse" that arose from the Yellow River. In both cases, the black dots stand for yin and even numbers, and the white dots represent yang and odd numbers.
Possible evolution of trigrams from binary knot system using counting stick images. On the top row is a cord of strings with dark knots representing even numbers and yin characteristics, and white knots: odd numbers and yang characteristics. The center row shows the numbers 1-8 using Chinese counting sticks. The image of the counting sticks is used to form the trigrams with the solid lines standing for the white knots and the broken lines for the yin knots.
Interestingly, the numerals used for the numbers 1 to 3 in many ancient scripts appear related to tally sticks or pebbles, shells, beads, etc. used for counting.
The similarity to tally sticks breaks off with the number four in half the scripts involved suggesting that maybe, if there is some relationship between these symbols, that it involves a base-four counting system.
Numerals from 1 to 3 in various ancient scripts
Base-four numeration is scattered here and there all over the world.
The practice of counting items like yams, coconuts, bananas, taro, fish, etc. by fours is rather commonly found in the Pacific both among Papuan and Austronesian peoples.
In Hawai`i, counting by fours is known as kauna and is still used in some fish markets especially for counting the opelu fish. According to tradition, a fisherman could hold four fish by there tails, two in each hand, or four taros in the same way. The kauna method supplements the ancient Proto-Austronesian decimal system.
kauna -- 4
ka'au -- 40
lau -- 400
mano -- 4,000
kini -- 40,000
lehu -- 400,000
J. Przyluski in studying the ganda guti system of numeration among the Mundas believed the origin to stem back to Austro-Asiatic and even to Proto-Austric.
The gandaka system of counting by fours in other Indian languages is thought by many to have been modeled after the ganda guti numeration.
Ganda monetary system
4 kauri (cowries) = 1 ganda
20 ganda = 1 pan (80 kauri)
4 pan = 1 ana
4 ana = 1 kahan
4 kahan = 1 rupee
That the above system used cowries as a form of currency is seen as evidence of its origin among a maritime people.
In the Philippines, counting by fours is found in systems like the measure based on the ganta still used mainly for measuring rice.
Apatan (divided by four)
4 apatan = 1 gahinan (chupa)
4 gahinan = 1 cagitnaan
4 gatang = 1 ganta (8 gahinan/chupas)
There are other four-based systems like that used in Pampanga for measuring spun cotton: 4 cauing = 1 cabid; 10 cabid = 1 tul (40 cauing).
Counting by fours probably originally involved using the four fingers with the thumb used only as a placeholder. Eventually, this involved into a base eight numeration by using both hands.
The Bagua or octogonal arrangement of the trigrams, instituted by Fu Hsi, can indicate the use of base four systems, one with each hand to form a base eight numeration. Thus, the first trigram in this arrangement (seen above) is the polar opposite of the eighth trigram. The second trigram is the opposite of the seventh trigram, and so on.
Knot records
In the 1700s, George Keate wrote of the encounter of Captain Wilson and the king of Palau, Abba Thulle and his son Lee Boo. The king gave Captain Wilson permission to take Lee Boo with him to England and promptly constructed a knot calendar by which he would track the voyage of his son.
Lee Boo also used a series of string records to memorize the name of every ship and country they encountered along the way to England.
Unfortunately as with most early notices of knot records, little information is given on to the precise methods used. However, little bits of information are available here and there from the many cultures that used this type of record-keeping.
In the Ryukyus, a string of knots sent to woodcutters indicated the type of trees to be cut by a leaf inserted in the knot. Knots at certain locations on the string indicated the quantity and dimensions of the timber required. Pawnbrokers on the Ryukyus used knots to record the amount of debts with fractions indicated on subsidiary strings. Different types of knots represented the various months in the payment schedule.
The Santals of India used different colored knots in their census to record the population -- black for adult men, red for adult women, white for boys and yellow for girls.
One of the most detailed accounts was that of a massive tax-recorders cord, nearly a half-mile in length, found by Tyerman and Bennet in Hawai`i in 1822:
The tax-gatherers, though they can neither read nor write, keep very exact accounts of all the articles, of all kinds, collected from the inhabitants throughout the island. This is done principally by one man, and the register is nothing more than a line of cordage from four to five hundred fathoms in length. Distinct portions of this are allotted to the various districts, which are known one from another by knots, loops, and tufts, of different shapes, sizes and colors. Each taxpayer in the district has his part in this string, and the number of dollars, hogs, dogs, pieces of sandal-wood, quantity of taro &c, at which he is rated, is well defined by means of marks, of the above kinds, most ingeniously diversified. It is probable that the famous quippos, or system of knots, whereby the records of the ancient Peruvian empire are said to have been kept, were a similar, and perhaps not much more comprehensive, mode of reckoning dates and associating names with historical events.
On the Marquesas islands in French Polynesia, priests were able to read off their ancestors that were indicated by knots on a string going back to the first man and woman. Referring to a specific knot genealogy discovered by von den Steinen, Cyrus L. Day says:
"...Karl von den Steinen saw a Marquesan knot-genealogy that went back 159 generations or (counting thirty years to a generation) to about 2870 B.C. The Mikado of Japan, he remarks, is a mere parvenu compared with some of the unlettered princelings of the Pacific islands; for the family trees of the Marquesans go back to the earliest colonization of the archipelago, to the gods of Hawaiki (the legendary homeland of the race), and even to the myths of the creation of the universe."
The Marquesan to'o knot records were multi-purpose with one cord pontentially containing genealogies, religious chants, songs and other information.
Symbolic records on totem poles/menhirs, textiles, rafters, tattoos, etc.
The use of symbols to indicate genealogy, heroic accomplishments and the like on ancestral objects like totem poles or the rafters of ancestral houses is found repeatedly throughout the Austronesian and Nusantao region.
As with knot records, interpretation of such symbols was largely a private matter of the recorder or artist and those who were instructed as to their meaning. However, there are also cases of more or less "standardized" symbols that were used for public communication.
The location of the symbols as, for example, the position of tattoo marks on the face of a Maori warrior, often was essential for correct interpretation. In the same sense, the position of drawings on the ridgepole and rafters of the Maori meeting-house, and the position of carved images on the veranda, walls and on support posts, are integral to their meaning. The same symbol in different locations could have different meanings. In this sense, the system was graphic in nature similar to a genealogical tree or a geographical map.
Certainly there could be a relationship between these symbolic systems and the mapping techiques found in the wave piloting stick charts of the Marshall Islands, and the star chart rafters of the Kiribati maneaba.
Symbols and divination
The oracle bone and tortoise shell inscriptions of the Neolithic period to Shang dynasty Dongyi people of Shandong and neighboring provinces used symbols that had no obvious graphic realism.
Some of the glyphs could plausibly relate to figures made of string, stick, rings, etc. hanging from cords as mnemonic devices used in early record and story-keeping.
Oracle bone and tortoise shell glyphs from http://www.paulnoll.com/China/Culture/language-oracle-bone.html with the top row showing simple glyphs, the middle row more advanced composite glyphs, and the bottom, complex composite glyphs. The top row glyphs have some resemblance to present-day Chinese knot wall hangings, and may have represented string figures hanging from larger recording cords.
Knots, symbols and similar devices served the same purposes as scripts later on, to include record-keeping, story-telling, aiding instruction and even use for personal communication.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Cajori, Florian. A History of Mathematical Notations/Two Volumes Bound As One/Notations in Elementary Mathematics,..., Courier Dover Publications, 1993.
Day, Cyrus L. The Role of the Knot in Primitive Ancient Cultures, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1967.
Kanahele, George Hu'eu. Ku Kanaka Stand Tall: A Search for Hawaiian Values University of Hawaii Press, 1993, p. 285.
Manansala, Paul. "Sungka Mathematics of the Philippines," Indian Journal of History of Science 30(1), New Delhi: Indian National Science Academy, 1995.
Przyluski, Jean. Pre-Aryan and Pre-Dravidian in India, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1929.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Kangdêz (Glossary)
Kangdêz appears in the medieval astronomy of Abu Mashar of Balkh as the astronomical prime meridian. Muslim writers equate it with the Yamakoti of Hindu astronomy, which they say was the prime meridian of the Yavanas.
The name also appears in the literature as Gangdêz, Gangdiz, Gangdizh, Kangdiz, Kangdizh, Kangdezh, etc.
Among the interpretations of the name are "fortress of youth" from kang "youth" and dêz "fortress, palace." Others relate "kang" or "gang" to the Chinese name for Sogdiana.
Kang/gang has also been suggested as Ganga and thus "Fortress of Ganga," or Gangdizh = Ganga Desha "Land of the Ganges."
According to late Zoroastrian texts, Kangdêz was located beyond Khotan and China, a year's voyage (seven months for Kai Khusrau) to the East by sea from the Baluchi port of Makran.
Persian geography
In the Zend Avesta, the Vourukasha Sea lies in the extreme East from which all waters come with the wind and clouds. It is described as the "deep sea of salt waters." Reference is made to tides, of the "waters rising up and going down" and of a southern sea into which the Vourukasha empties and from which it refills causing the tidal ebb and flow.
In the Vourukasha Sea is Erânvêj, where the peak Hukairya is located. On Hukairya is the world spring and world river known as Ardvi Sura Anahita, the source of water for all the world's rivers, reminiscent of the Abzu and Okeanos. Also on this peak grows the sacred White Haoma.
In latter literature, Siyavush is said to have built Kangdêz on the "frontier" of Erânvêj. In the Vourukasha (Varkash) Sea is also mentioned the giant ox Sarsoak from whose back was taken the three sacred fires including the priestly Farnbag fire which was transported to Khvarizem.
As noted, Muslim geographers identified the Yamakoti of Hindu astronomy, dating to at least the beginning of the 5th century, with Kangdêz as the prime meridian. There may also be a connection with the Avestan idea of the celestial bodies "revolving" over the peak Hukairya i.e. as a prime meridian rather than as a polar mountain as sometimes interpreted.
While the al-Balkhi school used Kangdêz as the prime meridian, others located the fabled location according to Ptolemaic or Indian Ujjain system.
Al-Kashi, for example, in the 15th century places Kangdêz at the extreme East or 180 degrees East longitude, and at the equator (0 degrees latitude). He distinguishes it from Yamakoti (Jamkut) which is located at 176 East, 5 North.
To compare these coordinates with other locations in al-Kashi, Zaiton, the city made famous in Europe by Marco Polo, was placed at 154 East, 18 North. Quanzhou, from which voyages to the medieval kingdom of Sanfotsi embarked, is located at 162 East, 13 North.
Here we can see that al-Kashi's latitudes this far east are depressed south of the correct position.
The quote above indicates that Kangdêz (Gang-dizh) was also thought by some to be under the Pleiades constellation. Whether this refers to the time of the Shahnama or some earlier generation would make a great difference in calculating what latitude the Pleiades was stationed over at the time.
Legends of Kangdêz appear to have influenced the Shi'ite belief in the Green Island where the 12th "Hidden Imam" waits in eternal youth for the last days. The Green Island is described as located in the midst of a Sea of Whiteness that brings to mind the Indian Milky Ocean and the Vourukasha Sea, that appeared like 'quicksilver.'
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Blochmann, M.A. and H. S. Jarrett. The Ain i Akbari by Abul Fazl Allami, Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873-1907.
Kennedy, E. S. and M. H. Kenneyd. Al-Kashis Geographical Table, DIANE Publishing, 1987.H.
Muller, Max . The Zend Avesta, Kessinger Publishing, 2004.
Warner, Arthur George and Edmond Warner. The Shahnama Of Firdausi, Routledge (UK), 2001.
The name also appears in the literature as Gangdêz, Gangdiz, Gangdizh, Kangdiz, Kangdizh, Kangdezh, etc.
Among the interpretations of the name are "fortress of youth" from kang "youth" and dêz "fortress, palace." Others relate "kang" or "gang" to the Chinese name for Sogdiana.
Kang/gang has also been suggested as Ganga and thus "Fortress of Ganga," or Gangdizh = Ganga Desha "Land of the Ganges."
According to late Zoroastrian texts, Kangdêz was located beyond Khotan and China, a year's voyage (seven months for Kai Khusrau) to the East by sea from the Baluchi port of Makran.
Persian geography
In the Zend Avesta, the Vourukasha Sea lies in the extreme East from which all waters come with the wind and clouds. It is described as the "deep sea of salt waters." Reference is made to tides, of the "waters rising up and going down" and of a southern sea into which the Vourukasha empties and from which it refills causing the tidal ebb and flow.
In the Vourukasha Sea is Erânvêj, where the peak Hukairya is located. On Hukairya is the world spring and world river known as Ardvi Sura Anahita, the source of water for all the world's rivers, reminiscent of the Abzu and Okeanos. Also on this peak grows the sacred White Haoma.
In latter literature, Siyavush is said to have built Kangdêz on the "frontier" of Erânvêj. In the Vourukasha (Varkash) Sea is also mentioned the giant ox Sarsoak from whose back was taken the three sacred fires including the priestly Farnbag fire which was transported to Khvarizem.
As noted, Muslim geographers identified the Yamakoti of Hindu astronomy, dating to at least the beginning of the 5th century, with Kangdêz as the prime meridian. There may also be a connection with the Avestan idea of the celestial bodies "revolving" over the peak Hukairya i.e. as a prime meridian rather than as a polar mountain as sometimes interpreted.
While the al-Balkhi school used Kangdêz as the prime meridian, others located the fabled location according to Ptolemaic or Indian Ujjain system.
Al-Kashi, for example, in the 15th century places Kangdêz at the extreme East or 180 degrees East longitude, and at the equator (0 degrees latitude). He distinguishes it from Yamakoti (Jamkut) which is located at 176 East, 5 North.
To compare these coordinates with other locations in al-Kashi, Zaiton, the city made famous in Europe by Marco Polo, was placed at 154 East, 18 North. Quanzhou, from which voyages to the medieval kingdom of Sanfotsi embarked, is located at 162 East, 13 North.
Here we can see that al-Kashi's latitudes this far east are depressed south of the correct position.
The fairest spot in this world is Gang-dizh
Where by the Grace of Him Who giveth good
My wisdom and my fortune have not slept,
And I have raised the summit to the Pleiads
--- Shahnama of Firdausi (translated by Arthur George)
The quote above indicates that Kangdêz (Gang-dizh) was also thought by some to be under the Pleiades constellation. Whether this refers to the time of the Shahnama or some earlier generation would make a great difference in calculating what latitude the Pleiades was stationed over at the time.
Legends of Kangdêz appear to have influenced the Shi'ite belief in the Green Island where the 12th "Hidden Imam" waits in eternal youth for the last days. The Green Island is described as located in the midst of a Sea of Whiteness that brings to mind the Indian Milky Ocean and the Vourukasha Sea, that appeared like 'quicksilver.'
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Blochmann, M.A. and H. S. Jarrett. The Ain i Akbari by Abul Fazl Allami, Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1873-1907.
Kennedy, E. S. and M. H. Kenneyd. Al-Kashis Geographical Table, DIANE Publishing, 1987.H.
Muller, Max . The Zend Avesta, Kessinger Publishing, 2004.
Warner, Arthur George and Edmond Warner. The Shahnama Of Firdausi, Routledge (UK), 2001.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Chryse (Glossary)
Chryse, the "Golden One," is the name given by ancient Greek writers to an island rich in gold to the east of India.
Pomponius Mela, Marinos of Tyre and the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mention Chryse in the first century CE. It is basically the equivalent of the Indian Suvarnadvipa the "Island of Gold." Josephus calls it in Latin Aurea, and equates the island with biblical Ophir, from where the ships of Tyre and Solomon brought back gold and other trade items.
Chryse is often coupled with another island Argyre the "Island of Silver" and placed beyond the Ganges. Ptolemy locates both islands east of the Khruses Kersonenson the "Golden Peninsula" i.e. the Malaya Peninsula. North of Chryse in the Periplus was Thin, which some consider the first European reference to China.
In addition to gold, Chryse was also famed for having the finest tortoise shell in the world according to the Periplus. Large ships brought trade goods back and forth between Chryse and the markets at the mouth of the Ganges.
Chin-lin
In ancient Chinese literature, a mysterious region beyond their southern border in Annam was known as Chin-lin "Golden Neighbor" and the Southeast Asian border was also called the "Golden Frontier."
When China invaded Annam (northern Vietnam) in the first century BCE, the kingdom of Champa fortified villages along the old caravan trail. This path became Route Colonial 9 during the French colonial period, and it was used by the Americans to build the McNamara Line of fortified bases during the Vietnam War.
With this fortified line, the rugged Central Highlands and a policy of constant piracy, the Champa kingdom held the Chinese at bay for a thousand years. After the fall of the Chin dynasty in the 5th century, Cham raids on Tongking became so frequent that the governor appealed to the emperor for assistance. A war of attrition between China and Champa began that lasted until the rise of the T'ang dynasty.
During this time though, China was well aware of the golden lands far to the south. The Buddhist pilgrim I-Tsing mentions Chin-Chou "Isle of Gold" in the archipelago south of China on his way back from India.
Zabag and Wakwak
In this blog, I have suggested that the kingdoms of Zabag and Wakwak, famed among the medieval Muslims as rich in gold, referred to the eastern islands of the Malay archipelago i.e. the Philippines and Eastern Indonesia.
Zabag was based in what would later become the kingdom of Lusung.
In this sense, the Philippines fits the bill as a gold-rich realm.
The country has consistently ranked second in the world behind only South Africa in gold deposits per land area. The Philippines has historically been the largest producer of gold in Asia despite its relatively small size and the fact that until 1980 most gold was obtained only through small alluvial deposits.
Although some ancient gold artifacts have been found in this region, they don't match the age suggested by linguistic reconstruction. Gold may have been mostly handed down from generation to generation rather than being used as a burial good item.
In about the second century CE, there arose a practice of using gold eye covers, and then, gold facial orifice covers to adorn the dead resulting in an increase of ancient gold finds. More than a millennium later, the popularity of dental gold to decorate the teeth significantly increased the amount of gold found at archaeological sites.
When the Spanish came they discovered an abundance of gold used among the people of the Philippine islands. Here are some relevant quotes:
The Portugese explorer Pedro Fidalgo in 1545 found gold so abundant on Luzon the inhabitants were willing to trade two pezoes of gold for one pezo of silver.
When the Portuguese first arrived, most of the gold traded into Brunei came from Luzon. That island was known as Lusung Dao or "Golden Luzon" to the Chinese who also traded for gold in this region.
A golden Garuda dagger handle from Surigao, Philippines.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Legeza, Laszlo. "Tantric Elements in pre-Hispanic Philippines Gold Art," Arts of Asia, July-Aug. 1988, pp.129-136. (Mentions gold jewelry of Philippine origin in first century CE Egypt)
Peralta, J.T. "Prehistoric gold ornaments from the Central Bank of the Philippines," Arts of Asia 1981, no.4, p.54.
Villegas, Ramon N. Ginto: History Wrought in Gold, Manila: Bangko Central ng Pilipinas, 2004.
Pomponius Mela, Marinos of Tyre and the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea mention Chryse in the first century CE. It is basically the equivalent of the Indian Suvarnadvipa the "Island of Gold." Josephus calls it in Latin Aurea, and equates the island with biblical Ophir, from where the ships of Tyre and Solomon brought back gold and other trade items.
Chryse is often coupled with another island Argyre the "Island of Silver" and placed beyond the Ganges. Ptolemy locates both islands east of the Khruses Kersonenson the "Golden Peninsula" i.e. the Malaya Peninsula. North of Chryse in the Periplus was Thin, which some consider the first European reference to China.
In addition to gold, Chryse was also famed for having the finest tortoise shell in the world according to the Periplus. Large ships brought trade goods back and forth between Chryse and the markets at the mouth of the Ganges.
Chin-lin
In ancient Chinese literature, a mysterious region beyond their southern border in Annam was known as Chin-lin "Golden Neighbor" and the Southeast Asian border was also called the "Golden Frontier."
When China invaded Annam (northern Vietnam) in the first century BCE, the kingdom of Champa fortified villages along the old caravan trail. This path became Route Colonial 9 during the French colonial period, and it was used by the Americans to build the McNamara Line of fortified bases during the Vietnam War.
With this fortified line, the rugged Central Highlands and a policy of constant piracy, the Champa kingdom held the Chinese at bay for a thousand years. After the fall of the Chin dynasty in the 5th century, Cham raids on Tongking became so frequent that the governor appealed to the emperor for assistance. A war of attrition between China and Champa began that lasted until the rise of the T'ang dynasty.
During this time though, China was well aware of the golden lands far to the south. The Buddhist pilgrim I-Tsing mentions Chin-Chou "Isle of Gold" in the archipelago south of China on his way back from India.
Zabag and Wakwak
In this blog, I have suggested that the kingdoms of Zabag and Wakwak, famed among the medieval Muslims as rich in gold, referred to the eastern islands of the Malay archipelago i.e. the Philippines and Eastern Indonesia.
Zabag was based in what would later become the kingdom of Lusung.
In this sense, the Philippines fits the bill as a gold-rich realm.
The country has consistently ranked second in the world behind only South Africa in gold deposits per land area. The Philippines has historically been the largest producer of gold in Asia despite its relatively small size and the fact that until 1980 most gold was obtained only through small alluvial deposits.
Although some ancient gold artifacts have been found in this region, they don't match the age suggested by linguistic reconstruction. Gold may have been mostly handed down from generation to generation rather than being used as a burial good item.
In about the second century CE, there arose a practice of using gold eye covers, and then, gold facial orifice covers to adorn the dead resulting in an increase of ancient gold finds. More than a millennium later, the popularity of dental gold to decorate the teeth significantly increased the amount of gold found at archaeological sites.
When the Spanish came they discovered an abundance of gold used among the people of the Philippine islands. Here are some relevant quotes:
Pieces of gold, the size of walnuts and eggs are found by sifting the earth in the island of that king who came to our ships. All the dishes of that king are of gold and also some portion of his house as we were told by that king himself...He had a covering of silk on his head, and wore two large golden earrings fastened in his ears...At his side hung a dagger, the haft of which was somewhat long and all of gold, and its scabbard of carved wood. He had three spots of gold on every tooth, and his teeth appeared as if bound with gold.
--- Pigafetta on Raja Siaui of Butuan during Magellan's voyage
For brass, iron and other weighty articles, they gave us gold in exchange...For 14 pounds of iron we received 10 pieces of gold, of the value of a ducat and a half. The Captain General forbade too great an anxiety for receiving gold, without which order every sailor would have parted with all he had to obtain this metal, which would have ruined our commerce forever.
--- Pigafetta on gold trade in Cebu
Sailing in this manner, for some time, in 16° of north latitude, they were obliged by continual contrary winds, to bear up again for the Philippine islands, and in their way back, had sight of six or seven additional islands, but did not anchor at any of them. They found also an archipelago, or numerous cluster of islands, in 15 or 16 degrees of north latitude, well inhabited by a white people, with beautiful well-proportioned women, and much better clothed than in any other of the islands of these parts; and they had many golden ornaments, which was a sure sign that there was some of that metal in their country.
--- Antonio Galvão in 1555 describing the journey of Bartholomew de la Torre in 1548
"...the ore is so rich that I will not write any more about it, as I might possibly come under a suspicion of exaggerating; but I swear by Christ that there is more gold on this island than there is iron in all Biscay."
--- Hernando Riquel et al., 1574
In this island, there are many gold mines, some of which have been inspected by the Spaniards, who say that the natives work them as is done in Nueva Espana with the mines of silver; and, as in these mines, the vein of ore here is continouus. Assays have been made, yielding so great wealth that I shall not endeavor to describe them, lest I be suspected of lying. Time will prove the truth.
--- Hernando Riquel et al. on island of Luzon, 1574
There are some chiefs in this island who have on their persons ten or twelve thousand ducats' worth of gold in jewels--to say nothing of the lands, slaves, and mines that they own. There are so many of these chiefs that they are innumerable. Likewise the individual subjects of these chiefs have a great quantity of the said jewels of gold, which they wear on their persons--bracelets, chains, and earrings of solid gold, daggers of gold, and other very rich trinkets. These are generally seen among them, and not only the chiefs and freemen have plenty of these jewels, but even slaves possess and wear golden trinkets upon their persons, openly and freely.
--- Guido de Lavezaris at al., 1574
About their necks they wear gold necklaces, wrought like spun wax, and with links in our fashion, some larger than others. On their arms they wear armlets of wrought gold, which they call calombigas, and which are very large and made in different patterns. Some wear strings of precious stones--cornelians and agates; and other blue and white stones, which they esteem highly. They wear around the legs some strings of these stones, and certain cords, covered with black pitch in many foldings, as garters.
-- Antonio de Morga, 1609
"... the natives proceed more slowly in this ,and content themselves with what they already possess in jewels and gold ingots handed down from antiquity and inherited from their ancestors. This is considerable, for he must be poor and wrethced who has no gold chains, calombigas, and earrings."
-- Antonio de Morga, 1609
The Portugese explorer Pedro Fidalgo in 1545 found gold so abundant on Luzon the inhabitants were willing to trade two pezoes of gold for one pezo of silver.
When the Portuguese first arrived, most of the gold traded into Brunei came from Luzon. That island was known as Lusung Dao or "Golden Luzon" to the Chinese who also traded for gold in this region.
A golden Garuda dagger handle from Surigao, Philippines.
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Legeza, Laszlo. "Tantric Elements in pre-Hispanic Philippines Gold Art," Arts of Asia, July-Aug. 1988, pp.129-136. (Mentions gold jewelry of Philippine origin in first century CE Egypt)
Peralta, J.T. "Prehistoric gold ornaments from the Central Bank of the Philippines," Arts of Asia 1981, no.4, p.54.
Villegas, Ramon N. Ginto: History Wrought in Gold, Manila: Bangko Central ng Pilipinas, 2004.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Svetadvipa (Glossary)
Svetadvipa's spiritual importance in Hinduism and especially among the Vaisnava sect is found in its description as the home of Narayana.
Narayana is the manifestation of the god Visnu linked with the avataras, or worldly descents of Visnu. Narayana is said to live on Svetadvipa, and to sleep floating on the Milky Ocean that surrounds the island.
Because of Narayana's location here, Svetadvipa was considered a place of pilgrimage by the sages and epic heroes. Rama comes to the island to make offerings to the ancestors, and the sage Narada came to visit Narayana.
Location
Svetadvipa is always located by Hindu texts in the Milky Ocean.
The Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagavatapurana, Laghubhagavatamrta and Brhat Samhita all mention the location of the Milky Ocean and place it in the general direction of the East.
When the Vanara allies of Rama in the Ramayana set out to search the four regions of the world -- East, South, West and North -- for Sita, they visited the Milky Ocean while in the eastern region.
The latter Hindu astronomers like Bhaskara and Lalla also place the Milky Ocean in the southern latitudes. According to the Laghubhagavatamrta, it was placed south of the Salt Sea that surrounded Jambudvipa (Indian subcontinent):
The southern orientation in relation to the Salt Sea might refer either to the Sunda Strait or the Strait of Malacca, both of which are rather southward in latitude when compared to India.
So the Milky Ocean would then be the South China Sea.
According to the Mahabharata, this sea became colored like milk after a great eruption-like event connected with the churning episode and Mount Mandara.
The name could also refer to the phenomenon of bioluminescence as often occurs in the tropical oceans caused usually by marine mollusks and crustaceans like the salpa and pyrosoma, and also sometimes by the accumulation of dead animal tissue in the sea. This occurrence is called a "milk sea" to this day.
George Bennett while traveling through Southeast Asia in the 19th century describes the phenomenon:
However, bioluminscence is rather common in all tropical seas, and the Mahabharata links the sea's color with the deposits of ash and debris flowing down rivers from the flaming Mandara into the ocean.
The ash turns not only the sea white, but the surrounding region the same color, and hence the name Svetadvipa, the "White Island." Similar descriptions of whiteness, are given for the isle of the immortals, Penglai, in Chinese literature.
Svetadvipa is also specifically set in the East by the Mahabharata, Bhagavatapurana and Laghubhagavatamrta. It is said to be located in the northern portion of the Milky Ocean.
In Iranian literature, the Varkash Sea, where the White Haoma grows, appears to equate to the Milky Ocean.
Muslim geographers placed the regions around the Varkash Sea like Kangdez, the fortress of the immortals, in the furthest East Indies. Al-kashi, in the 15th century even gives coordinates for the locations.
According to tradition, King Indrakyumna found a vata tree log (Ficus bengalensis linn, Ficus indicus) from Svetadvipa from which the first image of Jagannatha was made at the famous temple in Puri.
The idea of the log god Jagannatha floating over the sea from Svetadvipa reminds us the story mentioned above of Narayana (Visnu) sleeping on a bed of snakes in the Milky Ocean during the four months of the rainy season.
It is during the summer monsoons that winds from the southeast bring storms to East India and then across India in a northwesternly direction.
Jagannatha images like this one are now made with trees like the Nimba. The original image is said by tradition to have come from a log that floated across the sea from Svetadvipa to Orissa in Eastern India. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaurangapada/sets/72057594050803121/
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Bennett, George. Wanderings in New South Wales, Batavia, Pedir Coast, Sumatra, and China., 1834.
Narayana is the manifestation of the god Visnu linked with the avataras, or worldly descents of Visnu. Narayana is said to live on Svetadvipa, and to sleep floating on the Milky Ocean that surrounds the island.
Because of Narayana's location here, Svetadvipa was considered a place of pilgrimage by the sages and epic heroes. Rama comes to the island to make offerings to the ancestors, and the sage Narada came to visit Narayana.
Location
Svetadvipa is always located by Hindu texts in the Milky Ocean.
The Ramayana, Mahabharata, Bhagavatapurana, Laghubhagavatamrta and Brhat Samhita all mention the location of the Milky Ocean and place it in the general direction of the East.
When the Vanara allies of Rama in the Ramayana set out to search the four regions of the world -- East, South, West and North -- for Sita, they visited the Milky Ocean while in the eastern region.
The latter Hindu astronomers like Bhaskara and Lalla also place the Milky Ocean in the southern latitudes. According to the Laghubhagavatamrta, it was placed south of the Salt Sea that surrounded Jambudvipa (Indian subcontinent):
"East of Sumeru (Mt. Meru) is the ocean of milk, in which there is a white city on a white island where the Lord can be seen sitting with his consort, Laksmiji on a throne of Sesa. That feature of Visnu also enjoys sleeping during the four months of the rainy season. The Svetadvipa in the milk ocean is situated south of the ocean of salt."
The southern orientation in relation to the Salt Sea might refer either to the Sunda Strait or the Strait of Malacca, both of which are rather southward in latitude when compared to India.
So the Milky Ocean would then be the South China Sea.
According to the Mahabharata, this sea became colored like milk after a great eruption-like event connected with the churning episode and Mount Mandara.
The name could also refer to the phenomenon of bioluminescence as often occurs in the tropical oceans caused usually by marine mollusks and crustaceans like the salpa and pyrosoma, and also sometimes by the accumulation of dead animal tissue in the sea. This occurrence is called a "milk sea" to this day.
George Bennett while traveling through Southeast Asia in the 19th century describes the phenomenon:
Perhaps the beauty of this luminous effect is seen to the greatest advantage, when, the ship lying in a bay or harbour, in tropical climates, the water around has the appearance of a sea of milk. An opportunity was afforded me when at Carite, near Manilla, in 1830, of witnessing for the first time this beautiful scene. As far as the eye could reach on the extensive bay of Manilla, the surface of the tranquil water was one sheet of this dull, pale phosphorescence, and brilliant flashes were emitted instantly on any heavy body being cast into the water, or when fish sprang from it, or swam about. The ship seemed, on looking over its side, to be anchored in a sea of liquid phosphorus; whilst in the distance the resemblance was that of an ocean of milk.
However, bioluminscence is rather common in all tropical seas, and the Mahabharata links the sea's color with the deposits of ash and debris flowing down rivers from the flaming Mandara into the ocean.
The ash turns not only the sea white, but the surrounding region the same color, and hence the name Svetadvipa, the "White Island." Similar descriptions of whiteness, are given for the isle of the immortals, Penglai, in Chinese literature.
Svetadvipa is also specifically set in the East by the Mahabharata, Bhagavatapurana and Laghubhagavatamrta. It is said to be located in the northern portion of the Milky Ocean.
In Iranian literature, the Varkash Sea, where the White Haoma grows, appears to equate to the Milky Ocean.
Muslim geographers placed the regions around the Varkash Sea like Kangdez, the fortress of the immortals, in the furthest East Indies. Al-kashi, in the 15th century even gives coordinates for the locations.
According to tradition, King Indrakyumna found a vata tree log (Ficus bengalensis linn, Ficus indicus) from Svetadvipa from which the first image of Jagannatha was made at the famous temple in Puri.
The idea of the log god Jagannatha floating over the sea from Svetadvipa reminds us the story mentioned above of Narayana (Visnu) sleeping on a bed of snakes in the Milky Ocean during the four months of the rainy season.
It is during the summer monsoons that winds from the southeast bring storms to East India and then across India in a northwesternly direction.
Jagannatha images like this one are now made with trees like the Nimba. The original image is said by tradition to have come from a log that floated across the sea from Svetadvipa to Orissa in Eastern India. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaurangapada/sets/72057594050803121/
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Bennett, George. Wanderings in New South Wales, Batavia, Pedir Coast, Sumatra, and China., 1834.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Marco Polo (Glossary)
Marco Polo is important for the purpose of this work because his voyages may have resulted in the transfer of mariner's charts and/or related information that helped give rise to the portolan from the East to Europe. At the least, he mentions the use of mariner's charts by navigators in the Indian Ocean during his voyages.
In describing the island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon/Seilan), Polo says:
Again in relating the number of islands in the Indian Ocean, he states:
When Polo describes the eastern portion of the East Indies apparently including the Philippines, the Moluccas, etc. he says about the name of the China Sea:
Probably Polo got his Chin from Tsina or Tchina in the 'language of those Isles," opposite Manzi, or South China, from which we derive the current name "China."
The history of this name has ancient roots. Ancient Sanskrit literature including the Mahabharata mentions Cina and Maha-Cina. The Nestorian synod of 410 tells of a "Metropolitan of the Islands, Seas and the Interior of Dabag, Chin and Machin."
Dabag is the same as the latter "Zabag," while Chin and Machin are certainly copies of the Indian Cina and Mahacina. Among the Nestorians, Chin or Sin means "China" while Machin/Masin refers to Southeast Asia.
Cina is China among the Indians, while Mahachina appears to refer mostly to the areas of Assam, Northeast India, eastern Tibet/Himalayas and Burma where Tantric forms of Mother Goddess worship became very popular.
That Polo refers to a word used in the 'language of those Isles' by the 'experienced pilots and mariners of those parts' is important.
Like the latter Portuguese explorers, Polo uses placenames for Southeast Asia that are mostly of local origin. He rarely uses Chinese or Muslim names, and this may indicate the nature of his informants, the pilots and mariners of those seas.
Insular Southeast Asian placenames
For example, Polo uses the form Ziamba (Ramusio) for Champa. This appears to come from the local Insular Southeast Asian Tsiampa, or related words like Ciampa (Javanese Cempa). The Arabic name for Champa was Sanf, while the Chinese called it Lin-yi.
The world Seilan for Sri Lanka might be derived from Javanese sela "jewel, which would match the Hindu Ratnadvipa "Isle of Gems" and the Muslim Jazirat al Yakut "Isle of Rubies."
In Poggio's account of the testimony of Nicolo de Conti, he also gives local names, rather than Chinese or Arabic ones, including the island of Bandam, the source of cloves, the first reference by native name to one of the Spice Islands (Banda).
Polo does use some Chinese names, for example, Mien for the Burmese kingdom rather than the Indian/Malay Barma. He seems to have learned about this kingdom through stories of Kublai Khan's conquest of Burma. The term Lequios used by the Portuguese comes from Chinese Liu-Kiu (Ryukyu).
When Portuguese and other explorers came into this region, they picked up many more regional names that appear to come from Insular Southeast Asian sources, many of which have survived in modified form until the present day:
Informants
When Francisco Rodrigues arrived in Southeast Asia with the Portuguese in the early 16th century he collected information and charts from Javanese and other local pilots. Ludovico di Varthema did the same.
Later when the British began mapping the area, Alexander Dalrymple on many of his charts left notes specifying the sources of indigenous information often by name.
For example, on a chart of Borneo, Dalrymple notes that parts of the southern coast had not been "confirmed by any exact observation but is laid down from a Sketch of Dato Saraphodin and from a Chart of Noquedah Koplo who came up the Coast in 1761." On other parts of the chart he mentions features that were based on "Sketches I received from the Sooloos [Sulu], but chiefly from the information of Bahatol an old intelligent [Sulu] pilot."
The various informants supplied the placenames borrowed by early European explorers and cartographers resulting in many modern geographic names.
In a similar manner, Polo mentions receiving information from the mariners and pilots of the China Sea and Indian Ocean.
If we look at Polo's names for the Andamans, the Nicobars and Madagascar we may get some clues as to the provenance of his informants.
Instead of the Arab Lankabalus for the Andamans and Nicobars, Polo mentions Angaman and Necuveran, which along with Seilan remind one of the common use of the -an suffix for placenames in Insular Southeast Asia.
A short list of the numerous examples are: Dapitan, Palawan, Lingayan, Dagupan, Nunukan, Tarakan, Bataan and Bulacan. Thus, Seilan may be from sela-an, "place of jewels."
The name Madagascar may be confused with Makdashau (Mogadishu), but others would have it as a corruption of Malagasy.
The Arabic word for the island was al-Qumr, or sometimes Wak or similar terms, the latter probably stemming from the belief that the island was populated by the Wakwak from further east.
The mention of mariner's charts by Polo is also very informative. It was after Polo's return to Europe that the first extant nautical portolans appear. Although the Carta Pisana is sometimes dated to "circa 1296" or a year after Polo's return to Venice, and some believe it is even earlier, the first solid date for an extant portolan is the Genoese map made by Petrus Vesconte dated to 1311.
There is a vague reference to use of a sea chart by Raymond Lull in 1270 but it doesn't appear related to the explosion in the use of the portolan some 30 or more years later.
Lull's mention of sea charts and also the magnetic compass, like earlier references by Guyot de Provins and Jacques de Vitry in the early 13th century were probably based on tales from the Indian Ocean. Muslim writers mention fish-shaped floating compasses used by mariners in the Indian Ocean in 1242. These were almost certainly derived from similar compasses described by Shen Kua writing in the early 12th century but mentioning their use as early as 1086.
A south-pointing "fish" or "tadpole" is mentioned in the 4th and 10th centuries, and by the mid-11th century a specifically "floating" fish compass is mentioned in Chinese works.
De Vitry got much information from Arabic-speaking knights in his attempts to learn of the Mongol campaign, while Lull who grew up in Majorca and is said to have written in Arabic better than Latin. Both of these men may have received information from Muslim informants as they had great interest in the Muslim world.
None of the surviving confidently-dated 13th century European maps show signs of nautical application.
Gilbert the author of De Magnete says Marco Polo brought the compass to Europe from China, although Polo never mentions such a device himself. It could be that Polo brought the mariner's compass along with the mariner's chart, or quite specific but confidential information about both items.
Earlier loadstones may have been known in Europe since the 12th century, with stories of their application for navigation coming in the early 13th century from Muslim sources.
But is seems after Polo's time that we see the first hard evidence of the use of both mariner's compass and chart.
Unfortunately, little additional information exists of the Indian Ocean and China Sea charts until the Portuguese arrive in the early 16th century. It was at this time that Rodrigues reproduced Javanese maps covered with rhumb lines, one of which so deeply inpressed Albuquerque that he said, "it strikes me as the finest piece of work I ever saw."
Some years later, the Turkish admiral Piri Reis produced an extraordinary portolan of the world that was much different in its portrayal of the "New World" than other contemporary maps. Piri Reis claimed to use many charts as sources including those of Columbus, and also some Portuguese maps drawn using the "geometrical methods" of China and the Indies (Hind).
The Chinese "methods" probably refer to the rectangular grids that characterized Chinese maps, but what of those of the Indies? Was Reis referring to Portuguese sources like the now-lost Rodrigues chart with rhumb lines showing the navigation of the Indies?
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Ozdemir, Kemal, Ottoman Nautical Charts and the Atlas of 'Ali Macar Reis, Istanbul, 1992.
Polo, Marco, Henry Yule and Henri Cordier. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian: Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, Scribner, 1903.
In describing the island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon/Seilan), Polo says:
It has a circumference of some 2400 miles. And I assure you that it used to be bigger than this. For it was once as much as 3500 miles, as appears in the mariners' charts of this sea.
Again in relating the number of islands in the Indian Ocean, he states:
It is a fact that in this Sea of India there are 12,700 Islands inhabited and uninhabited, according to the charts and documents of experienced mariners who navigate the Indian Sea.
When Polo describes the eastern portion of the East Indies apparently including the Philippines, the Moluccas, etc. he says about the name of the China Sea:
You must know the Sea in which lie the Islands of those parts is called the Sea of Chin, which is as much as to say "The Sea over against Manzi." For, in the language of those Isles, when they say Chin, 'tis Manzi they mean. And I tell you with regard to that Eastern Sea of Chin, according to what is said by the experienced pilots and mariners of those parts, there be 7459 Islands in the waters frequented by the said mariners; and that is how they know the fact, for their whole life is spent in navigating that sea.
Probably Polo got his Chin from Tsina or Tchina in the 'language of those Isles," opposite Manzi, or South China, from which we derive the current name "China."
The history of this name has ancient roots. Ancient Sanskrit literature including the Mahabharata mentions Cina and Maha-Cina. The Nestorian synod of 410 tells of a "Metropolitan of the Islands, Seas and the Interior of Dabag, Chin and Machin."
Dabag is the same as the latter "Zabag," while Chin and Machin are certainly copies of the Indian Cina and Mahacina. Among the Nestorians, Chin or Sin means "China" while Machin/Masin refers to Southeast Asia.
Cina is China among the Indians, while Mahachina appears to refer mostly to the areas of Assam, Northeast India, eastern Tibet/Himalayas and Burma where Tantric forms of Mother Goddess worship became very popular.
That Polo refers to a word used in the 'language of those Isles' by the 'experienced pilots and mariners of those parts' is important.
Like the latter Portuguese explorers, Polo uses placenames for Southeast Asia that are mostly of local origin. He rarely uses Chinese or Muslim names, and this may indicate the nature of his informants, the pilots and mariners of those seas.
Insular Southeast Asian placenames
For example, Polo uses the form Ziamba (Ramusio) for Champa. This appears to come from the local Insular Southeast Asian Tsiampa, or related words like Ciampa (Javanese Cempa). The Arabic name for Champa was Sanf, while the Chinese called it Lin-yi.
The world Seilan for Sri Lanka might be derived from Javanese sela "jewel, which would match the Hindu Ratnadvipa "Isle of Gems" and the Muslim Jazirat al Yakut "Isle of Rubies."
In Poggio's account of the testimony of Nicolo de Conti, he also gives local names, rather than Chinese or Arabic ones, including the island of Bandam, the source of cloves, the first reference by native name to one of the Spice Islands (Banda).
Polo does use some Chinese names, for example, Mien for the Burmese kingdom rather than the Indian/Malay Barma. He seems to have learned about this kingdom through stories of Kublai Khan's conquest of Burma. The term Lequios used by the Portuguese comes from Chinese Liu-Kiu (Ryukyu).
When Portuguese and other explorers came into this region, they picked up many more regional names that appear to come from Insular Southeast Asian sources, many of which have survived in modified form until the present day:
Siam -- from forms like Cebuano Ciama or Malay Siyam.
Japan -- Japun, Japang, etc. ultimately from Chinese Jih-pen kuo.
Burma -- Barma, the Malay, Javanese and Indian forms.
Pegu -- Malay Paigu from Burmese Bago
Cochin-China -- Kuchi, Kochi possibly from Chinese Kiau-chih.
China -- Tsina, Tchina, from Qin (Ch'in) empire or Jin (Tsin) dynasty?
Champa -- Tsiampa, Ciampa, Cempa originally borrowed by Europeans as Ziamba, Ciamba, etc.
Moluccas -- Maluka a place on the island of Ceram.
Borneo/Burnei -- Brunei.
Luzon -- Lusung, Lusong recorded first by Tome Pires who calls the inhabitants Luções.
Banda -- first noted by de Conti as Bandam.
Informants
When Francisco Rodrigues arrived in Southeast Asia with the Portuguese in the early 16th century he collected information and charts from Javanese and other local pilots. Ludovico di Varthema did the same.
Later when the British began mapping the area, Alexander Dalrymple on many of his charts left notes specifying the sources of indigenous information often by name.
For example, on a chart of Borneo, Dalrymple notes that parts of the southern coast had not been "confirmed by any exact observation but is laid down from a Sketch of Dato Saraphodin and from a Chart of Noquedah Koplo who came up the Coast in 1761." On other parts of the chart he mentions features that were based on "Sketches I received from the Sooloos [Sulu], but chiefly from the information of Bahatol an old intelligent [Sulu] pilot."
The various informants supplied the placenames borrowed by early European explorers and cartographers resulting in many modern geographic names.
In a similar manner, Polo mentions receiving information from the mariners and pilots of the China Sea and Indian Ocean.
If we look at Polo's names for the Andamans, the Nicobars and Madagascar we may get some clues as to the provenance of his informants.
Instead of the Arab Lankabalus for the Andamans and Nicobars, Polo mentions Angaman and Necuveran, which along with Seilan remind one of the common use of the -an suffix for placenames in Insular Southeast Asia.
A short list of the numerous examples are: Dapitan, Palawan, Lingayan, Dagupan, Nunukan, Tarakan, Bataan and Bulacan. Thus, Seilan may be from sela-an, "place of jewels."
The name Madagascar may be confused with Makdashau (Mogadishu), but others would have it as a corruption of Malagasy.
The Arabic word for the island was al-Qumr, or sometimes Wak or similar terms, the latter probably stemming from the belief that the island was populated by the Wakwak from further east.
The mention of mariner's charts by Polo is also very informative. It was after Polo's return to Europe that the first extant nautical portolans appear. Although the Carta Pisana is sometimes dated to "circa 1296" or a year after Polo's return to Venice, and some believe it is even earlier, the first solid date for an extant portolan is the Genoese map made by Petrus Vesconte dated to 1311.
There is a vague reference to use of a sea chart by Raymond Lull in 1270 but it doesn't appear related to the explosion in the use of the portolan some 30 or more years later.
Lull's mention of sea charts and also the magnetic compass, like earlier references by Guyot de Provins and Jacques de Vitry in the early 13th century were probably based on tales from the Indian Ocean. Muslim writers mention fish-shaped floating compasses used by mariners in the Indian Ocean in 1242. These were almost certainly derived from similar compasses described by Shen Kua writing in the early 12th century but mentioning their use as early as 1086.
A south-pointing "fish" or "tadpole" is mentioned in the 4th and 10th centuries, and by the mid-11th century a specifically "floating" fish compass is mentioned in Chinese works.
De Vitry got much information from Arabic-speaking knights in his attempts to learn of the Mongol campaign, while Lull who grew up in Majorca and is said to have written in Arabic better than Latin. Both of these men may have received information from Muslim informants as they had great interest in the Muslim world.
None of the surviving confidently-dated 13th century European maps show signs of nautical application.
Gilbert the author of De Magnete says Marco Polo brought the compass to Europe from China, although Polo never mentions such a device himself. It could be that Polo brought the mariner's compass along with the mariner's chart, or quite specific but confidential information about both items.
Earlier loadstones may have been known in Europe since the 12th century, with stories of their application for navigation coming in the early 13th century from Muslim sources.
But is seems after Polo's time that we see the first hard evidence of the use of both mariner's compass and chart.
Unfortunately, little additional information exists of the Indian Ocean and China Sea charts until the Portuguese arrive in the early 16th century. It was at this time that Rodrigues reproduced Javanese maps covered with rhumb lines, one of which so deeply inpressed Albuquerque that he said, "it strikes me as the finest piece of work I ever saw."
Some years later, the Turkish admiral Piri Reis produced an extraordinary portolan of the world that was much different in its portrayal of the "New World" than other contemporary maps. Piri Reis claimed to use many charts as sources including those of Columbus, and also some Portuguese maps drawn using the "geometrical methods" of China and the Indies (Hind).
The Chinese "methods" probably refer to the rectangular grids that characterized Chinese maps, but what of those of the Indies? Was Reis referring to Portuguese sources like the now-lost Rodrigues chart with rhumb lines showing the navigation of the Indies?
Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
References
Ozdemir, Kemal, Ottoman Nautical Charts and the Atlas of 'Ali Macar Reis, Istanbul, 1992.
Polo, Marco, Henry Yule and Henri Cordier. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian: Concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, Scribner, 1903.
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