China's ceramic trade with ancient
Rajarata
By Prof. W. I. Siriweera,
Vice Chancellor,
Rajarata University
SRI LANKA has had close contacts
with China during the period of the ancient Rajarata Civilization. The
contacts between the two countries were mainly motivated to enhance
direct and indirect commercial relations. This essay focuses primarily
on the Chinese Ceramics trade.
The recorded evidence of Chinese
trade relations with Sri Lanka dates back to the first century A. D..
From this period onwards, sporadic textual references are found to
missions exchanged between the two countries.
The earliest mission originated from
China during the reign of Emperor P'ing (1-6 A.D.) of the Han Dynasty
who sent a delegation of Chinese officials to several South Asian
countries including Ssu-Cheng-Pu which can be identified as Sinhadipa,
one of the ancient names of Sri Lanka. The object of the mission was
to "spread the power and virtue" of the Han Emperor and
search for precious objects. Later on, around 131 A.D., 414 A.D., 428
A.D., 435 A.D., 455 A.D., 527 A.D., 670 A.D., 712 A.D., 742 A.D., 746
A.D., 750 A.D., 762 A.D., and 989 A.D., thirteen missions were sent to
China by kings of Anuradhapura. Some of these missions were of a
purely religious nature but undoubtedly their objective was to
establish cordial political relations presumably aimed at securing
greater trade contacts. The fact that Anuradhapura kings took the
initiative in sending all these missions suggests that Sri Lanka was a
major beneficiary of trade between China and South Asia as well as
China and the kingdoms of West Asia.
This trade was conducted at the time
either through long-haul merchant voyages or zonal segmented merchant
voyages with merchants of each region navigating and trading mainly
within its sailing zone. Later on, the Chinese also initiated missions
to Sri Lanka. The Mongols who assumed the dynastic name Yu'an,
despatched four missions to Sri Lanka, all of them during the reign of
Kublai Khan (1260-1294 A.D.), in the years 1273 A.D., 1284 A.D.,
1291A.D., and 1293 A.D.
The outward-looking foreign policy
of Kublai Khan and the greater Chinese interest in foreign trade were
perhaps the key factors in the change of attitudes in initiating these
missions. The only Sri Lankan mission to the Yu'an court was sent in
1293 A.D., i.e. during the reign of Sri Lankan King Parakramabahu III.
Subsequently, under the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.) Sri Lanka became
one of the focal points of attention during the well-known maritime
expeditions of Cheng-Ho.
One of Cheng-Ho's Sri Lankan visits
in 1411-12 A.D. was unpleasant as he encountered hostilities with the
nobility at Kotte, but another visit resulted in the enthronement of a
king who had a friendly disposition towards the Chinese Emperor. Later
on, there was an exchange of missions between the kings of Kotte and
the Chinese emperors in 1416 A.D., 1421A.D., 1430 A.D., 1432 A.D.,
1433 A.D., 1436 A.D. and 1459 A.D..
At least some of these missions
exchanged between China and Sri Lanka would have had trade as the
primary objective. For the ruling elite in both countries trade,
besides being a source of revenue -was an important means of acquiring
prestige goods. However, only by blending together the textual
references with the archaeological data can a holistic picture of
trading patterns between Sri Lanka and China be achieved.
All the missions mentioned above
followed the sea route between the two countries. Several references
to ships that plied between Sri Lanka and China are found in Sri
Lankan and Chinese as well as other foreign sources. In the fifth
century. A.D., the Chinese monk Fa-Hien who studied at Anuradhapura,
on his return journey to China from Sri Lanka went in a large merchant
vessel which could carry up to 200 men. The Persian writer, Cosmas
Indicopleustes, wrote in the sixth country that Sri Lanka was visited
by many ships from various parts of the world including China.
According to R.A.L.H. Gunawardena and Sakurai Li Chao, the mandarin
who wrote Tang Kou Shih pu reported two centuries later, that many
foreign ships arrived at An-nang and Kuang-Chou each year and among
them the ships from the "Lion Kingdom" (Sri Lanka) were the
largest. Further, Li Chao refers to Sri Lankan vessels which reached
Vietnam and China every year.
Several of the Chinese pilgrims
whose voyages were recorded by I-tsing in the seventh century came to
Sri Lanka before proceeding to the Western, South western and Southern
parts of India perhaps because the facilities available made it easier
to land from China and South-East Asia to Sri Lanka than to sail
direct to India.
The patterns of shipping and
navigation appear to have generally worked in favour of Sri Lankan
ports and helped to enhance their importance in trade between South
and South - East Asia, but after about the tenth century when the
pattern of oceanic currents was known and with the improvements of
nautical technology and direct sailing, the importance of Sri Lankan
ports as transit centres diminished. Yet, direct trade between Sri
Lanka and South East Asia continued. Chinese vessels touched at the
Sri Lankan ports as testified to by Chau-Ju-Kua while some Chinese
vessels which did not reach Sri Lanka proceeded to Indian ports. In
the latter case, Sri Lankan and Chinese products were exchanged by
merchants in the Indian ports such as Jurfattan. Only when Chinese
official intervention prohibited China trading beyond Malacca in 1433
did direct Sino-Sri Lankan trade relations come to a standstill.
Several sea routes, some of which
were interlinked regional routes, were followed by navigators between
Sri Lanka and China and vice versa. Of these, one of the popular
routes from Sri Lanka was along the Coromandel Coast, Bay of Bengal,
Burma Coast, Malacca Straits (Kalah Bar) and Hanoi in Indo-China to
Canton (Khanfu). Depending on the monsoon winds, ships sailing to
Canton from Sri Lanka avoided the Coromandel Coast, Bay of Bengal and
the Burma Coast and sailed direct to the northern end of the Malacca
Straits and passed through South Asian Kingdoms such as Ho-ling,
Dvaravati, Fu-nan and sailed to Canton. The two wind systems helped
navigation and trade along these routes. These were the South-West
monsoon from April to September at the onset of which easterly
direction navigation from South Asia started and the North-East
monsoon from October to March at the onset of which navigation in a
westerly direction from China commenced.
Chinese private trading groups, the
office of Huang-men which was part of the Shao-fu or the Chinese
Imperial treasury, Sri Lankan traders and traders from other countries
who were engaged in intermediary trade were the four main groups
involved in this Sino-Sri Lanka trade. The role of each group varied
from time to time and according to circumstances and political
conditions both in South Asia and China.
Of the items exported from Sri Lanka
to China special reference may be made to precious stones, pearls,
chanks, turtle shells, muslin and spices. Of the trade commodities
sent from China to Sri Lanka both for the Sri Lankan market and for
transhipment, Chinese silks and ceramics took pride of place.
There is no archaeological material
confirming earlier mentioned textual references to Sri Lankan contacts
in the first few centuries of the Christian era. But from the sixth
century onwards contacts are represented archaeologically by several
kinds of Chinese ceramics as well as Chinese coins belonging to almost
every emperor from 976 A.D. to 1265 A.D..
The earliest of the ceramics are
storage jars or jar fragments of the period of the Tang Dynasty.
Thick, grey-brown coloured stoneware with pale olive-green glaze
exterior and interior are the usual types of earliest Chinese ceramics
found at the largest port in ancient Rajarata, Mahatittha-the great
port. The most common form of these is a large, flat-based storage jar
with a short vertical neck and six horizontal strap handles around the
shoulder. These jars, found only in port sites indicate that they were
used as storage vessels that would have served as shipping containers
for valuable products than as objects traded for their intrinsic
value.
Besides grey-brown coloured
stoneware with glazed interior and exterior, black striated stoneware
and dark brown glazed stoneware jars or jar fragments have been
unearthed at Mahatittha. Black striated stoneware are restricted to
flat-based storage jars while dark brown stoneware jars have dark
brown glazed interior surfaces and contain vertical handles.
The fact that these large storage
jars have been found in the busiest Sri Lankan port at the time,
clearly indicates that they were not meant as religious gifts or gifts
to the rulers but were brought into the island as shipping containes
for valuables and fragile or easily damaged products. A high
proportion of these storage jars found at the port of Mahatittha also
indicates active Sino-Sri Lankan trade relations during the T'ang
period.
Fragments of different varieties of
Chinese bowls datable to the T'ang and Five Dynasties-approximately
from the seventh to the tenth century A.D. have been found at the port
of Mahatittha, the Abhayagiri monastic complex at Anuradhapura and at
Mihintale. If they were found only at the monastic complexes they
could not have been considered as definite evidence of trade contacts
as the possibility of these items being given as religious gifts from
China cannot be overlooked. But the fact that they have been found
both at the port of Mahatittha and monastic complexes indicates that
there was a brisk ceramic trade between Sri Lanka and China.
It should be noted that the eleventh
century, besides Chinese ceramics, ceramics from West Asia
particularly from Persia were also imported to Sri Lanka. However,
during the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, the Sri Lankan sites
contain almost no contemporary West Asian ceramics. The former balance
between Chinese and West Asian ceramic goods has now tilted sharply
towards the Chinese. High quality Sung Celadons and white porcelains
became the import ceramics of choice. Pieces of these have been
unearthed in the excavations of the later capitals such as Polonnaruwa
and Yapahuwa along with hoards of Chinese coins. In addition, chance
finds of ceramic cargoes at Allaipiddi in the northern part of Sri
Lanka, Nilaveli in the north-eastern coast and of individual pieces at
Galle harbour show that new ports were also used in Sino-Sri Lankan
trade during the period eleventh to thirteenth centuries.
Despite the continuation in the
Chinese ceramic trade with Sri Lanka, there seems to have been some
change in its contents. The largescale usage of big storage jars
either as shipping containers or as trade objects that was evident
prior to the tenth century, has declined. The sites with luxury Sung
ceramics no longer have so many pieces of the contemporary large
stoneware jars.
A substantial number of Sung
ceramics have been unearthed at Allaipiddi on the northern coast of
Sri Lanka. Most of these are either bowls, bowl fragments, jars and
jar fragments, but one is a large tub or a basin. The large tub which
can be dated to the eleventh to early twelfth century A.D. is of grey-brown
colour and is made of hard-fired clay. It is decorated with a medium
brown glaze covering the interior and exterior surfaces but not the
slightly incurring base. It has flaring sides and a rolled rim above
its almost flat base.
So far there has been no
archaeological evidence of the fourteenth and fifteenth century
Chinese ceramic, in Sri Lankan sites. But literary accounts refer to
six Chinese exploratory trading expeditions as far as the
Mediterranean under Cheng-Ho, who visited Sri Lanka twice in 1411/1412
on these expeditions.
The Galle trilingual Slab
inscription written in Chinese, Persian and Tamil set up by Cheng-Ho
during his second voyage points to close trade contacts between the
island and China in the fifteenth century.
The fifteenth century Chinese
author, Ma Huan states that musk, coloured taffetas, blue and white
porcelain ware, copper coins and camphor were imported from China to
Sri Lanka and exchanged for pearls and precious stones.
Most of the Chinese ceramics found
in Sri Lankan sites have come from the kilns is Zhejiang, Fujian,
Huanan, Jianx and Guandong provinces which were the major areas of the
manufacture of Chinese porcelain. The Alahana Parivena site at
Polonnaruawa has led to the discovery of several samples of ceramics
from the famous kiln at Jingezhen in the Jianxi Province.
It is likely that many of the
Chinese ceramics found in Sri Lankan sites were imported as trade
commodities for the use of royalty, the elite and the Buddhist
priesthood. Some may have reached Sri Lanka as gifts from the Chinese
emperors, nobles and merchants as well as through Chinese pilgrims and
travellers. Some of the items found in the ports and coastal sites may
also have been items meant for transit trade. In any event, both
archaeological and textual evidence prove beyond any doubt that there
were very considerable Chinese ceramic imports to Sri Lanka
particularly between the beginning of the sixth century A.D. and the
end of the thirteenth century A.D. However, a great deal of further
research has to be conducted to understand the mechanics of this trade
e.g. collection and export from China, storage in ships, entrepot
trade, unloading in Sri Lankan ports, the nature of exchange and
payments, transport to cities such as Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa in
the interior, distribution within cities and donations to the monastic
establishments.
