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Vol. XXV No. 15, November 16-30, 2015

The Tamil Bell remarks

by Simeon Mascarenhas

The headline confidently asserts that “Tamilians Discovered New Zealand”. The video on Youtube
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVXmBkEfq2A), posted by one Rameswaram Rafi, consists of slides of an intriguing object that was found in the Maori village of Vengeri (no, Rafi, definitely NOT a Tamil name!) sometime between 1836 and 1840 by an early missionary called William Colenso. What gives the bell its so-called Tamil origin is the inscription.

It is said to be in a form of Tamil current between 1400 and 1500 and runs round the bell. The language is not totally strange to the modern reader and the text claims that the object is “mukkaiyathin vakkusu udhaya-kapal udhaya-mani”. This has been expressed in English as “Mohideen Baksh’s ship’s bell” or, more elegantly, the “bell of the ship of Mohideen Baksh”. Well now, what further proof do we need that Tamilians discovered New Zealand? Plenty, of the academically appropriate kind, because no hard evidence has yet been found to link New Zealand with the Tamils. The appearance in the roots of a coastal tree of a bell with Tamil lettering is no indication at all that Tamilians went anywhere near NZ until recent migration trends took them to that country on some international airline. Further, the story of its location when found in NZ is not proven.

tamil-bell1
The Tamil Bell showing the Tamil inscription on the waist.
tamil-bell2
John Turnbull Thomson (1871) Ethnographical
Considerations on the Whence of the Maori, National
Library of New Zealand.

Colenso claims that when he came across the bell, it was being used by the locals to boil potatoes. They must have been exceedingly tiny potatoes since the bell is only 13 cm tall and 9 cm in diameter. The very shape of the bell precludes it from being used for anything culinary. Colenso probably made up a whimsical story about potatoes to make it sound interesting. The bell remained in his family until his death, after which it was bequeathed to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The Vengeri villagers told Colenso that it was found in the exposed roots of a big tree near the shore – and thereby hangs a tale with somewhat more credibility than the attractive notion that Tamilians ‘discovered’ New Zealand. The most reliable current evidence is that the first humans in NZ were the Maori who arrived from Polynesia between 1200 and 1300 CE, at the end of the mediaeval warm period.

 

tamil-bell3
From Journal of Polynesian Society: Volume 39 1930 >
Volume 39, No. 154 > Notes and queries, p 198-199

But Rafi of Rameswaram is not the only person to be excited about the possibility of a Tamil discovery. V.R. Ramchandra Dikshitar (1896-1953) was a Tamil historian who held the post of Professor of History and Archaeology at the University of Madras from 1947 to 1953. In his publication Origin and Spread of the Tamils in 1947, he displays views similar to those of Rafi of Rameswaram. Dikshitar had read a report of this bell and drawn his own conclusions. But let us first examine this interesting object, which I think is of the sort used in religious rituals.

The bronze Tamil Bell is incomplete, the sound ridge or ‘skirt’ having been sheared off through damage, or even cut away deliberately. I have not been able to find any mention of a clapper. The crown is not of a type common to European or Hindu designs: it is, in my opinion, more consistent with Chinese/Buddhist design. Neither is it of the functional type required for use on a sailing vessel. The very rounded overall shape is reminiscent of the wide stupas found at Borobudur. The Tamil alphabet used is generally considered to be from between 1400 and 1500 CE and appears to be superimposed, not cast into the body. It was almost certainly added significantly later than the date of manufacture and the edges bear file marks. Whilst there is no doubt at all that Hinduism was once a major religion in most of what is today Indonesia, and of the trade links between these islands and South India, it is highly unlikely that Indian traders ventured as far as New Zealand. Commodities were what traders wanted, not land, and there was ample trade with the Spice Islands.

ramachandradikshitar
V.R. Ramachandra Dikshitar

One possibility is that the bell was a souvenir or a trophy of some skirmish and then remained on the souvenir-hunter’s ship that perhaps went adrift and was wrecked off the coast of NZ. But no wreckage has been reported where the bell was found. Some writers contend that the bell came from a Portuguese ship that was secretly mapping the east coast of Australia between roughly 1520 and 1525. Historians reject this claim on the lack of evidence. There is no record of a shipwreck near the place where the bell was discovered, nor any mention of rocks, so the cause of the damage to it remains a mystery. Then there is the theory that South Indian ships under the command of Tamil Muslim traders ventured far into southern seas. A family in South India even claims to be the descendants of the Mohideen Baksh cited in the inscription.

Ultimately, in the absence of the documented evidence that historical research requires, no one can be certain of how the so-called Tamil Bell reached NZ. All theories of the origin of the Tamil Bell remain speculation or guesswork, and none is seriously admissible. The printed word does not confer authenticity on the content of an article. Anybody can create a Wikipedia page and a YouTube account but a little knowledge, together with the slightest whiff of nationalism, can be very misleading. Useful as internet sites can be, it is so very easy for a Google search to become what I call a goodhal lurch. The Tamil Bell may remain an entertaining puzzle, but modern Tamil slang is both entertaining and accurate, and certainly appropriate in this case.

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