THE UNTOLD STORY OF ODISHA’S SEA TRADERS AND HOW THEY SHAPED EMPIRES THROUGHOUT HISTORY
Author: Prasanta Patnaik, Senior Media Personality
Odishabarta
In Cuttack, Odisha, there is an annual festival known as Bali Yatra. It is observed around Kartik Purnima, when the monsoon winds turn southeast (late October to early November). During this period, traders and mariners from Bengal and Odisha would set out on their nearly six-month journey to far-off places, most frequently Bali, Java, Sumatra, Cambodia, and Vietnam. To say goodbye and to pray for their safety as they travelled to distant lands and the high seas, their families would assemble at the shore.
To remember and celebrate Odisha’s rich maritime history, people now congregate on the banks of the Mahanadi river, float paper boats, and sing songs. Sky lanterns are also lit as a sign of good wishes for the sailors. Tapoi is also connected to this festival.
The story of Tapoi is based on a well-known folk ballad. According to the legend, a family of seven sailors brothers had a beloved youngest sister.
They eventually got married. She longed for them to return home because the wives would treat their sister badly while they were away. The wives, however, were disowned by the brothers after being caught red-handed. Thus, Tapoi acknowledges the suffering experienced by the family members whose loved ones travelled abroad.
More than a thousand years of rich maritime history have been honoured by this festival, which honours daring seafarers who ventured to exotic locations, ostensibly for trade but more often for the thrill of the high seas and the opportunity to encounter people from other cultures. Back home, these sailors were revered figures, and countless literary and folkloric works have been written about them and their many exploits and misadventures.
Ballads and Valour
Folklore is one of the most ignored historical sources for a number of reasons, the main one being that it is subjective. History was typically passed down orally in a place like India through ballads, dances, folk theatre, bard stories, and shlokas. Over thousands of years of continuous and chaotic history, kings, sages, merchants, and courtesans were extolled and mythologized to the point where it is challenging to distinguish fact from fiction. However, they are still significant when researching our ancestors.
Folklore can offer a variety of hints and insights that official records cannot, making it a crucial signpost in the winding and perplexing pathways of history.
In texts as old as the Ramayana, the Kalinga empire is mentioned as being strong and influential. The power of Kalinga over ocean trade was well known; in his epochal play Raghuvamsa, Kalidas refers to the ruler of Kalinga as Mohodadhipati (king of the Ocean). In fact, Yosawant Das’s Tika Govind Chandra and Sarala Das’s Odia Mahabharat are just a couple of the texts where he is referred to as the king of the seas.
The ancient trade routes are brought to life with anecdotes, stories, and useful advice in the travel writings, which were compiled by both poetic souls and practical merchants. Travel narratives abound in Odia literature; the renowned epics Lavanyavati and Vaidehi Vilasa (Upendra Bhanja) both discuss journeys.
Shipwrecks caused by sea storms are described in Rasakallola by Dinakrushna Das, and Kalinga’s trade with Sri Lanka is mentioned in Kavya Parimala by Narasimha Sinha. Shipbuilding is mentioned in the Mahabharata’s Odia translation as well. Of course, the ballad of Tapoi is perhaps the story with the most poignant connection to Odisha’s extensive mercantile history.
This ballad is a rich source of knowledge about the culture, traditions, trade practises, and general exposure of that era in addition to being a tender tale of filial love and the pain of separation.
Why did Odisha have such a strong maritime presence?
The coastline of Odisha is especially well-suited for sea trade due to its geography. There are numerous natural harbours and deltas that were beneficial for the construction of ports. Many rivers, including the Ganges, Mahanadi, and Godavari, made it much simpler to transport goods from inland than by land.
Additionally abundant in precious and semi-precious stones that were valuable exportable goods were the mountains of western Odisha.
Tamralipti and Chandraketugarh, in modern-day West Bengal; Nanigaina, in modern-day Puri; Katikadarma, in modern-day Cuttack; Kannagara, in modern-day Konark; and Salihundam, in modern-day Andhra Pradesh, were some of the busiest ports in India.
Some of these ports experienced cyclical ups and downs, while others persisted for a very long time. While some of them travelled along the Indian coastline for internal trade, others were used for transnational trade.
Since the strength and direction of the monsoon winds were a major factor in travel, merchants left when the winds turned southeast, which was signalled by the Bali Yatra.
Periplus of the Erythrean Sea and the accounts of Chinese monks who travelled to India to study Buddhist texts provide detailed descriptions of the routes they took. Ships sailing from Orissa to Southeast Asia would stop in Sri Lanka or the Andaman-Nicobar islands to resupply, rest, and/or trade.
I-Tsing claims that it took about a month to travel from Tamralipti to the Nicobar islands. From there, they sailed across open water to Sumatra while riding the southern monsoon winds.
They could trade along the coast, sail down the Sumatran coast to Java and Bali, or cross the narrow Malacca Strait to either go north to China, Japan, Cambodia, or Vietnam, or south to Borneo, which was renowned for its spices and a closely-guarded Indian trade secret.
A few Odia-Bengali traders went as far as Rome and the eastern coast of Africa, but the Tamils and Gujaratis dominated the west Indian ocean trade. It was a perilous journey, full of calamities like shipwrecks and storms. However, Indian traders established friendly ties with the populace and frequently married into it. Many of them gained the kings’ goodwill and rose to the position of advisors or established their own royal dynasties by union with noble families. The dharmic culture that Indians imported blended in well with the local culture to create a rich tapestry that still shapes the identity of contemporary Southeast Asian nations.
The Connecting Threads
There is ample evidence of trade between India and Southeast Asia, which Indian sailors referred to as the “land of gold” (Suvarnabhumi). Suvarnabhumi had fertile land and a thriving culture.
The primary goods traded between Kalinga and Suvarnabhumi were spices, ceramics, and cloth, particularly Kalingam, a unique brand of very high-quality blue cotton cloth. Many products were also made specifically to meet the requirements of customers abroad, demonstrating that some craftsmen produced goods only for export and had a thorough understanding of their target markets’ cultures. For instance, bronze bowls with a knob at the bottom are similar to those discovered in coastal Odisha and are frequently used in burial rituals in Thailand.
For instance, rouletted ware is a unique kind of ceramic that has been discovered all along the Indian Ocean rim and in Southeast Asia, from Vietnam to India’s coasts, the Middle East, and even Rome. It was fairly common in ancient times. These products were shipped from Kalinga’s ports to Java, Vietnam, and Bali. Arikemadu in Andhra Pradesh appears to be a significant manufacturing location for these goods.
Additionally, there was a thriving market for semi-precious stones and beads, which were primarily used in Asian jewellery and decorations.
Large quantities of beads were exported throughout the Indian Ocean, as with any products popular with women. similar-quality terracotta, glass, camel, agate, and camel Semi-precious stone and bead trade was also quite active; these items were primarily used in jewellery and decorations throughout Asia. Beads were exported in large quantities throughout the Indian Ocean, just like any other goods that are popular with women. Similar-looking beads made of glass, camel hair, agate, and terracotta have been discovered in Odisha, Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. The majority of chameleon beads are most likely from India, which at the time had a plentiful supply of the animal.
All along the coasts of Bengal and Odisha, coins bearing depictions of ships have been discovered. Roman coins from various eras of rule, including Constantine and Tiberius, have been discovered all along India’s east coast. In ancient commercial centres, Chinese coins with hanzi characters and a hole in the middle have also been discovered, indicating a thriving trade with the Far East.
Indians travelled abroad in the past
Indians frequently emigrated to countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Malaysia. There was even an Indian community in Guangzhou, a significant Chinese port.
The merchants who relocated to Suvarnabhumi successfully assimilated their culture into that of the inhabitants, which quickly attracted the interest of kings. They rose to positions of authority in the government and helped spread the Hindu and Buddhist religions.
The Suvarnabhumi ministers and scholars quickly embraced Sanskrit. I should point out that none of these cultural exchanges were forced upon the people; instead, they freely adopted the religions, languages, and customs of others, creating something special and lovely that has persisted to the present day.
Kharosthi writing on pottery and seals discovered in Chandraketugarh indicates they are from Gandhara (present-day Afghanistan). They appear to depict the ships that leave from the ports in the east of the subcontinent and have carvings of ships and shells on them. Trade expeditions from Kalinga to the East are also mentioned in Ashoka’s edicts.
Epigraphic evidence from Indonesia and Malaysia mentions a group of people known as the Kling. There is general agreement that they were referring to the Kalinga people. The king of Kling sent 20,000 people here, according to the tablets. They established themselves and did well. The Indonesian Telaga Batu inscriptions also mention the prowess and valour of Indian sailors, including the Sthapaka, Vaniyaga, and Puhawang (ship captains) (sculptors). The term “Banigrama” was also used to describe the offshore divisions of Indian merchant guilds that were present in every significant Southeast Asian commercial hub.
The Cambodian Odia King
It is also believed that Kalinga is where the first Hindu-Buddhist empire in Southeast Asia was founded.
One of the first major South-East Asian empires, the Funan empire in Cambodia had close ties to India in terms of trade, culture, and governance. The Naga princess Queen Soma (Neang Neak) and her husband Kaundinya I founded it (Preah Thong).
Kaundinya was a Brahmin merchant ship captain who perished off the coast of Cambodia, according to Chinese records.
Queen Soma went to repel the crew because she believed they were intruders, but she ended up falling in love with Kaundinya and making a marriage proposal. In the House of Kaundinya, succession was matrilineal.
The majority of Hindu-Buddhist dynasties can be traced back to Kaundinya. Shaivism served as the Funan Empire’s official religion because Kaundinya was a Shaivite. In the region that was once the Funan empire, there have been found to be a number of Shiva temples with Sanskrit inscriptions.
The dynasty had 18 kings, the most well-known of whom was Jayavarman, the 17th.
The empire’s last king was Rudravarman. Indian records regarding King Kaundinya of Cambodia do not exist. Sanjeev Sanyal, a renowned economist and historian, has hypothesised that the term “Kaundinya” actually refers more to Kaundinya I’s gotra (lineage).
The Kaundinya lineage had made significant inroads into Bengal and Odisha at the time. Odisha had strong business ties with both Vietnam and Cambodia. Kaundinya was most likely an Odisha native, so.
Secret History.
Unfortunately, the main historical narrative in India (or at least in Indian schools) is obviously biassed in favour of events in Central India, particularly those centred around the current capital Delhi.
The supposed and largely untrue “Aryan Invasion,” the Mauryan Empire, the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, the British, and then Independence, might give the false impression that India’s history is fairly linear and uncomplicated. In the story of King Ashoka’s internal transformation, Kalinga is merely a footnote.
India’s history is, to put it bluntly, a disorganised mess, but that only makes it more fascinating, glorious, and attractive.
First and foremost, it is crucial that we emphasise the history of India’s coasts, the brave sailors who braved choppy seas with no guarantee of survival, and India’s subtle but significant cultural influence over Asia and the Roman empire for more than a thousand years.
It is crucial to stress that no one was ever forced to adopt or shape Indian culture in a particular way by Indian settlers; rather, people in various Asian countries willingly did so. The ability of the ancients to embrace the entire world as a family was what made India’s influence and power so enduring, according to Vasudheiva Kutumbakam (the world is one family).
