Quests of the Dragon and Bird Clan

Dugong bone mounds found on Persian Gulf coast

2009-11-13T14:31:00.000-08:00

A news story at gulfnews.com covers an archaeological find on an inlet off the Umm Al Quwain coast in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Akab site is Neolithic and associated with shell mounds, and pottery fragments from the Ubaid culture, often described as "Proto-Sumerian," have been found at Akab.

The interesting part about the excavation from our view is the discovery of mounds made of dugong bones. The researchers suggest the arrangement of the bones may be symbolic and linked with ritual.

"Traditionally, the dugong has special status in the Indo-Pacific area. The preparation for hunting dugongs is as much the object of propitiatory rites as the transport of their carcasses to shore, their butchering and their consumption," said Dr Sophie Méry of the French Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and director of the French archaeological mission in the UAE.

Méry mentions similarity of the site with sacred totemic dugong mounds on the Australian coast of the Torres Strait across from Papua New Guinea. The researchers also make a connection with finds from around the same period in Oman but which involved the green turtle rather than the dugong:

Méry and Charpentier believe the dugong at Akab held the role attributed in the same period to the green turtle in Ra's Al Hamra in Oman, the subject of impressive deposits between 3700 and 3300 BC, where skulls were placed near the face of the dead, while the body was covered with elements of turtle carapace or pebbles in a formation imitating that of turtle eggs.

Interestingly, the same people along the Torres Strait who practice dugong hunting rituals also have a breeding ritual involving the green turtle.

Another area not mentioned in the article is Palawan in the Philippines. The Neolithic site at Duyong Cave is associated with the bones of at least 5,000 dugong, and the sea mammal is thought to have had ritual significance there. At the cave there is also a jar burial site associated with funerary offerings. Dugong bones have also been found at the 9th to 12th century site at Butuan. In the Philippines, the teeth and bones of the dugong are still thought to have magical qualities bringing good luck and fertility and driving away evil and sickness.

Nearby Duyong Cave at Tabon Cave, an ivory carved turtle has been found, and earthenware turtles were discovered at Taal in Luzon, and in Iloilo in the Bisayan region. At Sinalakan Cave, also on Palawan, a terracotta turtle vessel from the Metal Age was found that apparently was both an inkstand and a burial object.

The present-day Tagbanua of Palawan have a rice wine ritual known as Pagdiwata in which wooden turtles are floated in the mouth of rice wine jars. The ritual takes place before planting and the turtle is considered a divine vehicle.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
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Excavation uncovers ritual site

Archaeologists find dugong bones that prove local tribesmen held fishing rites Aeons ago

By Emmanuelle Landais, Staff Reporter
Published: 00:00 November 6, 2009

The bones of dugongs, a large marine mammal, were found symbolically arranged on a mound which experts say was used for ceremonial purposes.
Image Credit: Supplied

An archaeological excavation held on an islet off the coast of Umm Al Quwain, close to the earlier fishing village of Akab, recently revealed that ancient fishing rites were conducted by tribesmen.

The bones of dugongs, a large marine mammal resembling a sea cow, were found symbolically arranged on a mound which experts believe was used for ceremonial purposes.

Read rest of the article...

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References

Fox, Robert B. The Tabon Caves; Archaeological Explorations and Excavations on Palawan Island, Philippines. Manila: [National Museum], 1970, 176.

Paz, Victor, and Wilhelm G. Solheim. Southeast Asian Archaeology: Wilhelm G. Solheim II Festschrift. Diliman, Quezon City: Univ. of the Philippines Press, 2004, 276-288.

Philippine mtDNA, the Polynesian Motif, and Austronesian expansion

2009-11-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

A new study (see below) examines mtDNA in the Philippines, Sulawesi and Taiwan.

The researchers study all the haplotypes tested but focus on the frequent mtDNA haplotypes B4a1a, E1a1a and M7c3c, which they claim support the "Out of Taiwan" model of migration.

Analysis of Hypervariable Segment I sequence variation within individual mtDNA haplogroups indicates a general decrease in the diversity of the most frequent types (B4a1a, E1a1a, M7c3c) from the Taiwanese aborigines to the Philippines and Sulawesi, although calculated standard error measures overlap for these populations.

However, as noted above with each finding the standard error for the comparisons overlapped, so the conclusions are not really meaningful.

What is interesting is the findings on the B4a1a haplotype and particularly those concerning its daughter haplotype B4a1a1, known commonly as the "Polynesian motif."

B4a1a1 is closely associated with Austronesian expansions, in my view specifically with Malayo-Polynesian expansion. While the parent haplotype B4a1a is frequent in Taiwan, the Philippines and Sulawesi, neither its predecessor B4a or the Polynesian motif B4a1a1 were found in the sample of 640 women from Taiwan.

The authors suggests that the Polynesian motif may have originated in the Philippines where it is present in small quantities in Mindanao. However they also conclude that because of the higher diversity of B4a1a in Taiwan that the haplotype must have migrated from there to the Philippines where it is found at the lower diversity. However, the estimated ages of 9,500 BP �4,600 for the haplotype in Taiwan and 7,900 BP �2,400 for the Philippines show an extensive overlap in the standard error calculation.

What seems more important is the presence of the parent B4a, which is present in small quantities in the Philippines but absent from Taiwan.

The estimated ages for the frequent haplogroups that the study focuses on i.e., 7300 BP for B4a1a, 7900 BP for E1a1a, and 11,400 BP for M7c3c, all seem to early to0 correspond to the commonly given dates for an Out of Taiwan expansion of Proto-Austronesian, which is generally place more in the range of 5000 BP.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
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Mol Biol Evol. 2009 Sep 15. [Epub ahead of print]

Philippine mitochondrial DNA diversity: a populated viaduct between Taiwan and Indonesia?

Tabbada KA, Trejaut J, Loo JH, Chen YM, Lin M, Miraz�n-Lahr M, Kivisild T, De Ungria MC.

DNA Analysis Laboratory, Natural Sciences Research Institute, Miranda Hall, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines.

Relatively little is known about the genetic diversity of the Philippine population, and this is an important gap in our understanding of Southeast Asian and Oceanic prehistory. Here we describe mtDNA variation in 423 Philippine samples and analyze them in the context of the genetic diversity of other Southeast Asian populations. The majority of Philippine mtDNA types are shared with Taiwanese aboriginal groups and belong to haplogroups of post-glacial and pre-Neolithic origin which have previously been identified in East Asian and Island Southeast Asian populations. Analysis of Hypervariable Segment I sequence variation within individual mtDNA haplogroups indicates a general decrease in the diversity of the most frequent types (B4a1a, E1a1a, M7c3c) from the Taiwanese aborigines to the Philippines and Sulawesi, although calculated standard error measures overlap for these populations. This finding, together with the geographical distribution of ancestral and derived haplotypes of the B4a1a sub-clade including the Polynesian Motif, is consistent with southward dispersal of these lineages "Out of Taiwan" via the Philippines to Near Oceania and Polynesia. In addition to the mtDNA components shared with Taiwanese aborigines, complete sequence analyses revealed a minority of lineages in the Philippines which share their origins - possibly dating back to the Paleolithic - with haplogroups from Indonesia and New Guinea. Other rare lineages in the Philippines have no closely related types yet identified elsewhere.

Evidence of tumbaga from the Sipan royal tombs, Peru

2009-11-04T16:19:00.000-08:00

Earlier in this blog I mentioned that word tumbaga is used both in the Philippines and across the Pacific in the Americas to refer to a gold-copper alloy.

At one time it was thought that both the word and technology had crossed the seas from the Philippines to the Americas during Spanish times with the trade galleons. Tumbaga involves depletion gilding or electrochemical replacement to make the alloy appear as pure gold on the surface -- on both sides of the Pacific

However, the archaeological evidence clearly shows that tumbaga technology was known in the Americas long before Columbus sailed to America.

An abstract of a recent study (below) of the royal tombs of Sipan in Peru shows that there was evidence of tumbaga among the Moche between between 50 and 700 CE.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

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Appl Radiat Isot. 2009 Sep 12. [Epub ahead of print]

Pre-Columbian alloys from the royal tombs of Sipán; energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence analysis with a portable equipment.

Cesareo R, Calza C, Dos Anjos M, Lopes RT, Bustamante A, Fabian S J, Alva W, Chero Z L.

Dip. di Matematica e Fisica, Università di Sassari, via Vienna 2, 07100, Sassari, Italy.

On the north coast of present-day Peru flourished approximately between 50 and 700 AD, the Moche civilization. It was an advanced culture and the Moche were sophisticated metalsmiths, so that they are considered as the finest producers of jewels and artefacts of the region. The Moche metalworking ability was impressively demonstrated by the objects discovered by Walter Alva and coworkers in 1987, in the excavations of the "Tumbas Reales de Sipán". About 50 metal objects from these excavations, now at the namesake Museum, in Lambayeque, north of Peru, were analyzed with a portable equipment using energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence. This portable equipment is mainly composed of a small size X-ray tube and a thermoelectrically cooled X-ray detector. Standard samples of gold and silver alloys were employed for quantitative analysis. It was determined that the analyzed artefacts from the "Tumbas Reales de Sipán" are mainly composed of gold, silver and copper alloys, of gilded copper and of tumbaga, the last being a poor gold alloy enriched at the surface by depletion gilding, i.e. removing copper from the surface.

Sinawali comes to America

2009-10-23T17:26:00.001-07:00

Here in California it is officially Filipino American History Month. The celebration is also observed by Filipino organizations throughout the United States.

One important contribution of Filipino Americans to American culture is in the area of martial arts. And there is an interesting link here that we can tie in with the subject of this blog specifically to the towns of Macabebe and Masantol in Pampanga. Both these towns were previously one town known as Macabebe.

The old chronicles of Zhao Rugua (Chao Ju-Kua) mention cotton and silk material that was imported into Sanfotsi, but does not tell us how these fabrics were used. In Ma Tuan-lin's geographical encyclopedia of the Sung Dynasty, he mentions several instances of fabrics sent to the Chinese emperor as gifts from Sanfotsi.

In 962, the king Li-si-lin-nan-ni-ji-lai sent "beautiful fabrics" along with his envoys to the emperor. In 975, hats, belts and silk garments were sent as gifts, and in 1082, the Sanfotsi king's daughter sent textile gifts to the maritime prefect who refused to receive them until he had permission from the imperial palace.

Zhao Rugua mentions mats coming from Sanfotsi, Sansu and Tanjungwulo. The mats from Sanfotsi were considered the best in quality. These mats were said to be made from a plant resembling the rattan palm.

Macabebe was a famous center for the silk and cotton weaving and for the production of mats and sugar sacks (bayones). The town held a monopoly on the production of rayadillo military uniform. The Philippines in general has long been famous for mats, and Macabebe was considered a prime source of high quality mats that were made of the fiber of the wild banana, known as abaca, of sasa palm leaves, and other materials. The sasa palm may be the rattan-like plant mentioned by Zhao Rugua. Abaca was also spun into thread for clothing and such cloth was called sinamay and was very popular with the natives but too coarse for most foreigners. Weaving in Macabebe was done with a native loom made of wood and cord.

A rattan palm (Source: Hort Log, http://hortlog.blogspot.com/2009/04/thorny.html)

Sasa palms (Source: Mongabay.com, http://travel.mongabay.com/indonesia/images/kali8915.html)

According to Hugo H. Miller in the late 20th century, the Macabebe cloth traders, mentioned by Leo Giron in the video above, were often small landowners whose families 'tended the farm' while they were gone. Only a minority had any investments in their own business and most borrowed money at high interest rates from a few wealthy Macabebe families. Some also took loans, often unsecured, of goods from Chinese merchants.

When my father was young in Masantol, the children would help make mats from sasa leaves that my grandmother would sell to supplement the income of my grandfather, who was a Philippine Scout. So, this activity was still thriving up until World War II.

The fabrics, mats and other products were traded all over the Philippines from northern Luzon, where Giron hailed from, to Mindanao in the South. The merchants usually sold the materials to families with whom they had developed special relationships who in turn sold them to others in the area.

Giron and Filipino martial arts in America

Giron created his own style of Filipino martial arts that incorporated the two-handed Estilo Macabebe and Sinawali forms of fighting. The rods used for this martial art form in the Philippines were often made from fan palm trees. The first graduate of Giron's style was Dan Inosanto.

Inosanto was one of the few students of the fighting style of famed martial arts star Bruce Lee, which is known as Jeet Kune Do. He was the only student granted the right to teach the highest third level of Jeet Kune Do. But Inosanto is also famed as the man who taught Lee "how to wield the chuks," i.e., the Okinawan weapon known as the nunchaku. Inosanto used the nunchaku in a two-handed style known as double nunchaku.

Inosanto uses double nunchaku starting at 0:27 in the video.

Inosanto had many noteworthy students including his daughter Diane Lee Inosanto, who is also a martial arts star; the late Brandon Lee, son of Bruce Lee; Paul Vunak; and even Denzel Washington trained with Inosanto for the movie "The Book of Eli." The stick fighting organization known as The Dog Brothers was formed at the Inosanto Academy in Marina Del Rey.

Often when one sees any type of double weapon fighting in Hollywood movies there is an influence from the double sinawali or "weaving" style of Macabebe. For example, Filipino martial arts were used as models for the Star Wars franchise through the influence of Roel Robles and Jonathan Soriben. The use of two blades in Star Wars is known in the story as Jar'Kai.

Anakin Skywalker uses double light sabers briefly against Count Dooku (starting at 1:40) in Star Wars Episode II.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Hamm, Margherita Arlina. Manila and the Philippines. London: F.T. Neely, 1898, 59-60.

Mendel, Bob. "The Nunchaku," Black Belt Aug. 1994, 19.

Ma, Duanlin, and Léon Hervey de Saint-Denys. Ethnographie des peuples étrangers à la Chine: ouvrage composé au XIIIe siècle de notre ère. Atsume gusa, 4. Genève: H. Georg, 1876, 559-564.

Maclennan, Marshall S. The Central Luzon plain. 1980, 78.

Miller, Hugo Herman. Economic Conditions in the Philippines. Boston: Ginn and Co, 1920, 423.

Philippines, Ignacio Villamor, and Felipe Buencamino. Census of the Philippine Islands Taken Under the Direction of the Philippine Legislature in the Year 1918. Manila: Bureau of printing, 1920, 236.

Pinatubo and Arayat (3 of 3)

2009-10-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

Rituals and Practices

The peoples in the regions around Arayat and Pinatubo considered these mountains sacred and they had various ritual and practices concerning the mountains that are known to an extent.

Animism -- certain trees, stones, caves, streams, etc., were thought to harbor special spirits called Anito. Aduarte in 1640, for example, mentions a sacred speaking stone among the Sambals. Certain black rocks were considered to be remnants of Sinukuan's great bridge before it was demolished.
Every valley, river, rock, outcrop, or tree in Pinatubo had a significance in Aeta lore. (Elder and Wong 1996:280)
Careri states that fruit and other products of Arayat should only be eaten while on the mountain. It was taboo to carry them to the lowlands. According to Serrano, one should first ask permission before taking any fruit of the mountain:
Apo dinan mo ku pu, ke pung mangan darening tanaman mo "Lord, please grant this to me which I would like to eat from your fruit trees."
One should not commit acts of greed on the mountain like excessive logging (Dominador G. David, Pampangan Folklore Stories, 1917) or gold mining (Manuel Carreon, Pampangan Legends, 1917). One should not even have greed in one's heart in case you should come upon Sinukuan or his daughters, who often test people in this regard.
The bathing pool of Sinukuan on Arayat was considered a place of healing where the sick could come and bathe to free themselves of illness.
Both Pinatubo and Arayat, or their deities are believed to control the weather, especially when angry. Prayers are made to these mountains/deities for help during inclement weather. Hiromu Shimizu relates an incident in which Pan Bangay, a Pinatubo Ayta, made an offering to appease Apo Pinatubo. The pair had come close to the mountain and it suddenly became dark and started raining. Pan Bangay lit a straw from Shimizu's hat and uttered the following appeal:
Pakida-ep mo Apo Pinatubo, agmo kay kik oranan
Apo Pinatubo, kapapa-ingalo ya kik nabaha
ang! (Grandfather Pinatubo, please smell the
smoke. Don't expose us to the rain, have pity
for we will get wet!)
When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, the Ayta held a manganito seance in which they said that they were informed that Apo Namalyari was angry due to modern commercial encroachment on Pinatubo. They conducted the talbeng ritual to appease Pinatubo and to ask Apo Namalyari to bring back the forest.
Be kind to animals, insects, plants, etc., on Arayat and do not even point at them unnecessarily for fear of angering Sinukuan. (Eugenio 1993:180)

Batung Maputi, the White Rock of Arayat. Legendary location of Sinukuan's palace.

Source: Ronnie Muring, http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3274534

Recurring themes

One way of reconstructing the original motifs and themes of the local legends is to ascertain which ones are found independently from at least a few sources. In practice though, it is often easy to discern when outside myths and legends are mixed into those of local origin.

Here are some of the recurring themes and motifs involving Pinatubo and Arayat:

Power of mountains/deities to control weather, earthquakes
Deities of mountains involved in creation of land formations
Excessive logging, mining angers mountain deities
Deities live inside their respective mountains. Sinukuan has a underground palace of gold or bronze.
Sinukuan's daughters, usually three in number, like to interact with humans trading gold for pig's feed (darac "rice husks")
Sinukuan was very rich with gold and generous giving away gold and magical items.
Malyari is associated with Moon and Sinukuan with Sun. Many of their children are also associated with the heavenly bodies or locations in the sky where the Sun sets, crosses the zenith, etc.
Sinukuan and Malyari are associated with a bridge to each other's mountain or to some other mountain or area.
Marital and courtship relations existed between the gods of Pinatubo and Arayat. However, they also engage in land-altering battles.
Both mountains have many taboos and restrictions against desecration. The sacred mountains are meant to remain in a natural and unspoiled state as much as possible.
Anything that originates on the mountains is sacred.
The White Rock (Batung Maputi) is the location of the entrace to Sinukuan's palace.
A future eruption from Pinatubo was expected.
There is the myth recorded by Beyer, and also a warning before the last eruption that Ayta elders gave their children that Apo Pinatubo Namalyari would awake and throw stones if they did not behave. (Rodolfo 1995:88)

Rainforest in southern Zambales

Source: http://keishastech.blogspot.com/2008/01/exploring-rainforest-in-subic.html

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Elder, John, and Hertha Dawn Wong. Family of Earth and Sky: Indigenous Tales of Nature from Around the World. The Concord library. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

Rodolfo, K. Pinatubo and politics of lahar. Eruption and Aftermath, 1991, University of the Philippines Press, 1995.

Shimizu, Hiromu. Pinatubo Aytas: Continuity and Change. Quezon City, Metro Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1989, 50.

Pinatubo and Arayat (2 of 3)

2009-10-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

Between Heaven and Earth

The axis mundi is where sky, earth and underworld meet. That this term applied to both Pinatubo and Arayat is evident by the deities that inhabited these mountains. Malyari, the Moon on Pinatubo, and Sinukuan, the Sun on Arayat.

Sinukuan had among his children Munag Sumalâ, the Dawn, and Ugtu, the Noontime. Among Malyari's children is Sisilim, the Setting of the Sun. In one version (Eugenio 1983, 180), the daughters of Sinukuan are known as the Three Marias (Tres Marias), which is a name given to the three stars of Orion's Belt. Furthermore, Tala, the planet Venus and the Morning Star, is said to descend either from Sinukuan (Apolaqui) and the Moon (Mayari), or from the marriage of Munag Sumalâ and Manalastas, the Rooster, the son of Malyari.

Not only do these deities live on the two sacred mountains, but they are expressly said in multiple accounts to live within the mountains, i.e., in the Underworld. The golden palace of Sinukuan within Arayat, for example, is featured in many of the legends of this region. Sinukuan's palace, according to the accounts, could generally only be accessed by mortals through magical intervention.

In a myth found among the fisherfolk in Masantol, the creator deity Mangatia or Mangetchay, whose name means "net weaver," created the sky as a great net with the stars as the holes or "eyes." After finishing this cosmic net, Mangatia dropped the sewing needle to the Earth and the former became either Mt. Arayat, or Batung Maputi (White Rock). The latter is a massive white rock formation near the peak of Arayat, where many legends say the magical entrance to Sinukuan's subterranean palace is located.

I mentioned earlier in this blog, that the Kapampangans apparently had two geographical centers -- one in the North in Upper Pampanga, and one in the South in Lower Pampanga, where the trading seaports were located. The northern center was located between Pinatubo and Arayat with the latter mountain indicating the direction of the East, and the mouth of the Pampanga River, the direction of the South. From the cosmic perspective, this area between the two great luminaries -- Sun and Moon -- was the center of the world.

Battle between the Sun and Moon

The fighting between Malyari and Sinukuan is also a conflict between the Sun and Moon. The most common form of this myth takes the form of a widespread theme that extends beyond the Philippines. R. Rahmann in his work "Quarrels and Enmity between the Sun and the Moon: A Contribution to the Mythologies of the Philippines, India, and the Malay Peninsula," traces this theme from Southeast Asia to India.

The quarrel between the two orbs is usually started due to the intense heat of the Sun, often together with his progeny. After the battle, the Moon, which was once as bright or brighter than Sun, takes on a subordinate position. In many cases, this theme is combined together with the motif of a cataclysm of fire-rain or fire-water on the earth. There is also, especially in the Philippines, an accompanying land-forming theme with new formations caused by the huge boulders hurled by the combatants.

The motifs of great heat, fire, water, flying stones, and the new land formations in connection with the mountains is easy to interpret as volcanic activity -- an indication of the geographical origin of these myths.

Many of the accounts of the battle between Malyari and Sinukuan do not actually mention Pinatubo by name. Often "Mount Zambales" or the Zambales mountains is mentioned instead. H. Otley Beyer recorded many of these in his unpublished Philippine Folklore, Social Customs and Beliefs Vol. IX (Pampanga), a collection of papers written by his students during the early 20th century. In many cases, the accounts are clearly mixed with other folk material. For example, the tale of Sinukuan's friends including Carguin Cargon and Supla Supling are taken from the Spanish legend of Lucifer's Ear.

Here are some of the stories of the battle between Sinukuan and his opponent from Zambales.

Sinukuan battles with the young prince, the son of Storm God of the Sambal mountains after the latter comes courting Maya, the youngest and favorite daughter of Sinukuan. (Parker 1929)
According to Alfredo Nicdao in 1916, Mt. Zambales was a great single mountain in former times inhabited by a friend of Suku (Sinukuan) who came one day to ask for the hand of one of Suku's daughter's in marriage. This angered Suku and the two engaged in a stone throwing battle that broke Zambales into a mountain range and flattened the top of Arayat. (Beyer, undated)
Dominador G. David in 1917 tells of a giant in Zambales mountain who challenged and defeated the king of Arayat. The latter was killed and his son Sinukuan took his place, and later he eventually married the daughter of the lord of Zambales. (Beyer, undated)

In 1915, Beyer recorded a myth of the Ayta living in Zambales that sounds very much like a volcanic eruption of Pinatubo, but mentions neither Malyari or Sinukuan. Instead, the battle is between Algao, which may be northern name for the Sun (related to Aldo), and Bacobaco, a great sea turtle. This Bacobaco may be related to the legend of the Baconaua, usually described as a sea serpent or whale. However, Baconaua has a sister that is a great sea turtle according to most accounts. Baconaua was not the Moon but the great serpent that was said to swallow the Moon during an eclipse.

Now, in the Ayta account Algao and Bacobaco have a great battle in which the latter eventually bores into the top of Pinatubo creating a great crater and emitting great flames, huge rocks, mud, ashes, smoke and deafening noise in the process. According to the legend, Bacobaco continued to dwell in the mountain and when he comes out "woe be to us."

Ayta from the Zambales region.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/josearmando/1804253902/

The body of myths surrounding Malyari and Sinukuan clearly show their dual opposition to one another. Generally speaking, Sinukuan is depicted as male although a few accounts portray him as female. Malyari seems to be portrayed more as female, at least if all the myths of the region are taken into account, but sometimes also has a male identity. Despite their periodic enmity, Sinukuan is often said to be married to Malyari's daughter, or vice a versa, and their children also court and marry one another.

Here is a general breakdown of the dual aspects of these deities and their respective mountains.

Pinatubo/Malyari
The western direction, south, female, mother, wife, daughter, hidden, gregarious, wide, sea, creation, beginning, birth, water, storm, bird

Arayat/Sinukuan
The eastern direction, north, male, father, husband, son, prominent, solitary, tall, land, destruction, ending, death, fire, earthquake, serpent/dragon

The belief in a future eruption of Mt. Pinatubo is mentioned above in the account of Algao and Bacobaco, and also in an earlier post on the myth of the battle of Aldau and Bulan. Damiana Eugenio, in her 1993 work (p. 179), relates traditions of a future return of Sinukuan:

Many barrio folks still say that some time in the future Sinukuan may come out again. Mt. Arayat used to be the home of the Colorums who waited for Sinukuan to come out of his cave and to find a new paradise on earth for them.

A colorum is a messianic group -- the name coming from a local corruption of Latin et saecula saeculorum "world without end."

(to be continued)

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Beyer, H. Otley. Philippine Folklore, Social Customs and Beliefs Vol. IX (Pampanga), unpublished and undated. Part of the Philippine Ethnographic Series that was destroyed during World War II. Carbon copies were preserved by the National Library of Australia, which subsequently copied the works on microfiche.

__ (compiler). Ethnography of the Negrito-Aeta Peoples, Manila, 1915.

Rahmann, Rudolf . “Quarrels and Enmity between the Sun and the Moon. A Contribution to the Mythologies of the Philippines, India, and the Malay Peninsula,” Folklore Studies, Vol. 14, 1955 (1955), pp. 202-214.

Myths and Legends of Pinatubo and Arayat

2009-10-10T10:46:00.000-07:00

The oral traditions involving the mountains Pinatubo and Arayat are quite vast, and I want to give an outline of some of these along with a bit of analysis. However, given that many of the works that might discuss these mountains and their traditions are buried in extensive archives that are not well-indexed, this will be an on-going process.

The earliest explicit mention of name "Arayat" and its main deity "Sinukuan" that I have been able to uncover is the travel diary of Gemelli Careri in 1696:

In Pampanga, and right on the mountain called Bondo [Bondoc], or Kalaya [Alaya], being a league and a half high (which was previously under the rule of Sinoquan and Mingan) are plantains, betels, and other fruits. They say they may eat these fruits on the spot, but if anyone carries them down they either fall down dead, or become lame. Perhaps the Devil (by God's permission) causes such strange accidents, to keep those people in paganism; but the Indians themselves also play their part for they are famous sorcerers and are said often to convert themselves into crocodiles, wild boars, and other forms.

The Bondo and Kalaya come from "Bondok Alaya" or "Mount Alaya," the original name of Arayat. Sinoquan is obviously Apung Sinukuan, who is portrayed here as a ruler of Arayat along with Mingan, a name that in most traditions is that of Sinukuan's wife, but occasionally occurs also as the name of one of his daughters.

As for Sinukuan's opposite -- Apo na Malyari (Apung Mallari) and Mt. Pinatubo -- the earliest reference I have found so far comes from a manuscript titled "Relation of the Zambals" by Domingo Perez in 1680. Malyari is mentioned primarily in reference to the sacrifices made by the Bayoc, the Sambal high priest, and Pinatubo ("Pinatuba") is noted for its rock slides during the rainy season (Blair and Robertson 1903).

These accounts are rather brief and do not provide detailed information. For example, no connection is made between the god Malyari and Pinatubo.

Modern ethnography

We begin to learn more about the myths and legends of these mountains when a renaissance in learning about indigenous culture occurred among the leaders of the Propaganda Movement and the Philippine Revolution starting around the 1880s. These studies intensified after American colonization among both American and Filipino scholars.

During this time, we learn that Sinukuan was also known by other names: Aldo "Sun," and Apolaqui "Lord Male," or possibly "Lord Grandfather." The myths suggest that knowledge of Sinukuan was more widely spread than the areas of Pampanga and nearby Zambales.

For example, Apolaqui was also known throughout most of Luzon where he is variously called Apolaki, Apolake, etc., often in myths that resemble that of the battle of the Sun and Moon, or Aldo and Bulan, that is associated with Arayat and Pinatubo.

Diego Aduarte in 1640 mentions Apolaqui as a war god in Pangasinan.
The Bolinao Manuscript mentions the Sambal priestess Bolindauan in 1684 who has Apolaqui as her Anito (personal deity).
Dean Fansler in 1921 writes of a legend told to him by Leopoldo Layug of Guagua that tells of the battle between the brother Apolaqui, the Sun, and his sister, Mayari (Malyari), the Moon.
F. Landa Jocano, much later in 1969 relates a similar tale to that mentioned by Fansler among the Tagalogs involving Apolake and Mayari, who again are the personifications of the Sun and Moon.
In 1918, A. L. Kroeber records that Apolaki is considered a mountain monster in Bikol, the southernmost part of Luzon, and that the term is also used as a name for God among Christians in Pangasinan and Ilocos, the northern areas of Luzon.

From these examples, we can see that the myths of Apolaqui and Mayari were linked with the spirits of the Sun and Moon. A similar legend from Pampanga tells of the supreme deity Mangetchay (Mangatai) who is said to live in the Sun while his wife dwells in the Moon, and his daughter lived on Venus, the Morning Star (Eugenio 1993, 64).

Where these myths of the Sun and Moon are not explicitly linked with Arayat and Pinatubo respectively, we can still surmise the connection. For example, the goddess Malyari, the personification of the Moon, has a name that relates to the local Pinatubo Ayta and Sambal people. "Malyari" is also a native Kapampangan word that Bergano derives from the word yari "cosa acabada, perfeccionada ['something finished, perfected']" and gives three alternate forms: malyari, milyari and malalyari.

That Malyari is the deity of Pinatubo is agreed upon by the Ayta, Sambal and Kapampangans. The Pinatubo Ayta call this deity Apo Namalyari (Apo na Malyari) or Apo Pinatubo (Schebesta 1959).

Naturally, the Sun would be located to the east of Pinatubo in Bondoc Alaya, which literally means "Mountain of the East."

The crater lake of Pinatubo with Arayat rising up above the clouds about 26 miles to the east.
Source: http://tonetcarlo.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/mount-pinatubo-zambales/

Geological connection of Pinatubo and Arayat

Mythology gives Arayat and the Zambales mountain range a common origin as noted by Cornélis De Witt Willcox writing in 1912:

According to the native legend, this mountain [Arayat] used to form part of the Zambales range. It became, however, by reason of its quarrelsome disposition, so objectionable to its neighbors of this range, that they finally resolved no longer to endure its cantankerousness and accordingly banished it to its present position in the plain of Central Luzon, where it would have no neighbors to annoy, and where it has stood ever since, rising solitary from the surrounding plain.

The idea of Arayat belonging at one time, before separating, to another (unnamed) mountain range is also mentioned in the story that Don Pedro Serrano heard from an octogenarian informant in 1889. It was from these and similar legends that the likely latter ideas of Arayat separating from Candaba or Tapang, Nueva Ecija. That the Zambales origin tale was the original one is too obvious from the actual geology of Arayat.

According to the leading theory, Arayat is a back arc of the same mountain range that includes the Zambales Mountains. And this fact would be fairly obvious to keen observers as a note by Richard von Drasche in 1876 demonstrates:

If one were to draw a line from Monte Pinatubo to the isolated mountain of Arayat in the plain, one would notice that all the rivers north of this line flow in a northeasterly direction, while all those south of it flow in a southeasterly direction toward Rio Grande de la Pampanga. This circumstance may be observed particularly plainly from the top of the Arayat, where I first noticed this slope of the plain in both directions, increasing toward Monte Pinatubo. East of Monte Arayat this circumstance disappears entirely.

The connection between the two mountains was alluded to in the idea of a cloud bridge mentioned in Luther Parker's Sinukuan tales published in 1929. This cloud bridge was likely the origin of other bridges that are said to have been built from Arayat to Dayat, Candaba, Makiling and elsewhere. These bridges likely arose from the perception of a ridge, alluded to above, existing between Pinatubo and Arayat -- a formation that probably also gave birth to the latter legends of a tunnel connection between Arayat, Makiling and Banahaw mountains.

(to be continued)

Sincerely,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Blair, Emma Helen, James Alexander Robertson, and Edward Gaylord Bourne. The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803: Explorations by Early Navigators, Descriptions of the Islands and Their Peoples, Their History and Records of the Catholic Missions, As Related in Contemporaneous Books and Manuscripts, Showing the Political, Economic, Commercial and Religious Conditions of Those Islands from Their Earliest Relations with European Nations to the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century. Cleveland, Ohio: A.H. Clark Co, 1903, 296, 302-4.

Drasche, Richard von. "The volcanic region around Manila," Proceedings of the Royal Geological Service, 1876.

Eugenio, Damiana L. Philippine Folk Literature: The Myths, University of the Philippines Press, 1993.

Careri, Gemelli Giovanni Francesco. Giro del mondo del dottor D. Gio: Francesco Gemelli Careri. T[omo] qu[a]r[t]a contenente le c[ose] più regguardevoli vedute nella Cina. In Napoli: Nella stamperia di Giuseppe Roselli, 1708, 137-8.

Parker, Luther . “Daughters of Sinukuan,” Philippine Magazine 1929, Vol. 26, no. 1, 535, 694, 750.

Schebesta, Paul. Die Negrito Asiens. Wien-Mödling: St.-Gabriel-Verlag, 1952.

Serrano, Don Pedro and Edilberto V. Santos (translator). "El Fabuloso Suku," Singsing vol. 5, no. 1, 23.

Willcox, Cornélis De Witt. The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon. Kansas City, [Mo.]: Franklin Hudson Publishing Co, 1912.

Conf. Paper: The Great Scorching (3 of 3)

2009-10-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

Another set of myths related to the raising of the sky and the end of the great heat is found among the highland peoples of Mindanao and Luzon in the Philippines. In many mythologies of the Philippines and surrounding regions, the pre-diluvian and/or pre-scorching period was either a golden age or at least a period of normalcy[i]. This supports the idea that the low height of the sky is a post-creation event. There was still a memory of times when the seas were not rising and temperatures were not so warm.

In one Ifugao version in northern Luzon, the golden age is followed by drought that spurs people to dig for springs of water. They finally reach a great underwater fountain, apparently a form of the great navel of the Earth found in other regional myths. Waters gushing from the spring cause the Great Deluge[ii].

Manobo and Bagobo myths tell also of the Great Scorching that endangers all life. People cannot plant, or do not know planting yet, and cannot even reproduce properly to populate the land. After Tuglibong or Mona raises the sky by striking it with her pestle, a golden age ensues, people begin to multiply and crops are planted. Either Tuglibong or her daughter Mebuyan creates a great hole into the Underworld when her spinning rice mortar drills into the Earth. The mortar is placed at the center of the Earth when the rice is pounded, and one version places it on a mound. This imagery could suggest the cosmic mountain, in this case a volcano whose crater is seen reaching into the bowels of the Earth[iii].

The Earth opening created by the mortar, the world spring created by the Ifugao and the widespread motif of the “navel of the sea” found in the Philippines and throughout much of Insular Southeast Asia all appear related[iv]. They are generally linked in some way either with the flood or with control of the flood, or with the ebbing and flowing of the tide.

The navel of the sea drains the waters of the ocean keeping the seas from rising too high. It is also widely seen as responsible for the changing tides. The opening created by Tuglibong or Mebuyan leads to the Black River of the Underworld, which can be seen as related to the underground oceanic waters originating from the cosmic drain. In Pampanga, myths of the battle between the gods of Arayat, on the one hand, and Pinatubo or Sambal gods on the other, are often seen in the light of a great deluge or storm[v]. The battle between the two mountain gods could allegorically represent a volcanic eruption as the two deities hurl rocks at each other.

We also find in this region the common theme of the battle between the Sun and the Moon[vi], something that I submit can be seen as a reference to the cataclysm of fire, and water or steam, that occurs during an eruption. This set of motifs not only occurs widely in the Philippines but also can be found in many parts of Southeast Asia and reaches all the way to India. In many cases, the quarrel starts because of the intense heat caused by the Sun and his progeny. After the battle, we again see the start of a new age when things are more or less stable, and in which the Moon, once the superior or equal to the Sun, takes a subordinate position.

In Eden in the East, Dr. Oppenheimer mentions a legend of the deluge combined with a fiery cataclysm in classical Hindu texts. The theme appears to link with mythologies of various Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burmese, Daic and other peoples in India and Southeast Asia often together with the motif of the Sun-Moon battle. In these myths, we often find a catastrophe of fire-rain or fire-water upon the Earth[vii], along with the motif of excessive heat from the Sun and his children.

We have then three different causes for the Great Scorching: 1) The low height of the sky and thus the Sun, 2) the multiplicity of Suns, or 3) the excess heat of the Sun usually combined together with that of his progeny. In each case, the intense heat threatens the world and is usually solved by violent action such as striking the sky to raise it higher, shooting down the superfluous Suns, or a battle between the Moon and the Sun.

When the problems related to the Sun’s heat are resolved, the other plagues of rising seas, floods, drought and fire-rain finally subside as well although the resolution is in itself usually cataclysmic. Moreover, the final event is often easily interpreted as indicating a volcanic eruption with falling ashes, embers and rocks; even the descriptions of the falling Suns can be seen as large spewed fireballs or fiery ash clouds descending to the Earth. If we study the distribution of these motifs, we find a strong circum-Pacific association.

Therefore, the ancient peoples around Sundaland, I would suggest, sought to explain global climate changes, as they experienced them regionally, through myth. Memories of a previous stable climate were preserved in ideas of an ancient golden age that preceded the great flood or great heat.

These latter events, due to rising temperatures and rising sea levels, were explained in various ways, most commonly through the idea of a low sky and Sun. It may be that Asian brown clouds, the result of more frequent and intense forest fires linked to global warming, helped in the development of the belief of the low height of the sky.

A volcanic eruption centralized along the Nusantao trade routes was, in turn, connected through both coincidental and causative events with positive changes in climate and sea levels. The fireballs of the eruption were visualized as superfluous Suns, and back-linked with the Great Scorching. These Suns, shot down and submerged in the sea, consumed the excess water flows thus controlling sea levels. In other myths, the eruption opened up or cleared the ocean’s great cosmic drain.

These explanations were created by the ancients to both explain and record events of a truly cataclysmic nature that had changed their societies.

Now, having offered my hypothesis on the nature and origin of these myths, I would like to turn to something that Prof. Odal-Devora requested of me when she invited me to this prestigious event. That is to explore the ancient flood myths in relation to the modern situation of global warming and rising sea levels.

Myth often contains moral lessons and warnings in the form of prophecy. The recording of natural calamities may have been meant as a warning for future generations. What happened before could, and probably will, happen again. You might be surprised to find out that even some modern geologists have even created a new field of research known as geomythology[viii].

Geomythologists study ancient legends for clues that might indicate potential for natural disaster that has not yet been revealed by scientific research.

Patrick Nunn from Fiji, for example, was contracted by the French government to study Pacific myths for warning clues of natural disasters. Nunn became a believer in the power of geomythology in 2002 when road construction revealed signs of a recent volcanic eruption on the island of Kadavu supporting local legend. Previously he had dismissed such traditional lore because scientific studies showed the last volcanic activity was tens of thousands of years old[ix].

Probably the best recent example of how ancient legends can instruct future generations came during the recent devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The Moken, nomadic sea gypsies living in Thailand, preserve myths that warn of sudden and dramatic receding tides creating ‘man-eating waves, that people should escape by heading for high ground[x].

During the 2004 tsunami, which killed 300,000 people, the Moken heeded this ancient knowledge and survived the terrible disaster.

Moken traditions may serve as one example of how ancient myths can serve a very practical purpose for future generations. We know that in the present many indigenous peoples have a deep reverence for nature.

The Agta people of Cagayan in northern Luzon know that fire could be put to great advantage when used wisely[xi]. Fire could clear land for agriculture, but if the fire were allowed to get out of control, the land would produce no food. Agta use fire to attract animals during hunting, and the smoke from fire aids them on their expeditions for honey and red ant larvae and eggs. They also use smoke to repel insects and snakes, and the ashes from fire to repel parasites. Like the Hanunoo of Mindoro, the Agta realize that fire must not endanger the regeneration of fallow land. The Hanunoo watched over the trees on fallow land to make sure they were not cut down prematurely and they placed firebreaks around all swidden land to protect the fallow[xii].

When used wisely fire could help reduce the forest load actually helping to prevent forest fires. However, the slash-and-burn methods of modern commercial farmers have rejected the old ideas of natural balance.

Lowland slash-and-burn farmers quickly exhaust the land and promote topsoil loss, landslides and flooding[xiii]. The excessive fire and smoke soon disturbs the ecological balance in the region resulting often in loss of both forest and agricultural land.

In the present-day, we have seen how the loss of knowledge of the natural balance may cost humanity and the rest of the world dearly through unnatural processes of global warming. Not that global warming is itself unnatural. The flooding of Sundaland was not the fault of our ancestors.

However, modern humans are causing climate change to occur before its natural cycle. We are bringing on misery at a global scale before its natural time. Like slash-and-burn farmers, modern industry is unwisely dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an ever-increasing rate, changing global weather patterns.

Moreover, we are beginning to feel nature’s wrath. Although we may not be able to avoid all the consequences of our past actions, we can still come to an accord again with nature, with our parents, the Earth and Sky, and in the process realize the wisdom of our ancestors.

[i] Damiana L. Eugenio. Philippine Folk Literature: The Myths, University of the Philippines Press, 1993, 103-113.

[ii] Otley Beyer. “Origin myths among the mountain peoples of the Philippines,” The Philippine journal of science April 1913. [Vol. 8, no. D], 112.

[iii] Raats, 6, 14, 20-25, 33, 34.

[iv] Manansala, Sailing the Black Current, 5-33; Beyer, 89;

[v] Luther Parker. “Daughters of Sinukuan,” Philippine Magazine 1929, Vol. 26, no. 1, 535, 694, 750.

[vi] Rudolf Rahmann. “Quarrels and Enmity between the Sun and the Moon. A Contribution to the Mythologies of the Philippines, India, and the Malay Peninsula,” Folklore Studies, Vol. 14, 1955 (1955), pp. 202-214.

[vii] Oppenheimer, 268-9.

[viii] Robin McKie. “Ancient legends give an early warning of modern disasters,” The Observer Dec. 4 2005, <>.

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Ibid.

[xi] R. F. Ellen, PeterParkes and Alan Bicker. Indigenous Environmental Knowledge and Its Transformations, Routledge, 2000, 183ff.

[xii] Harold C. Conklin. Hanunoo agriculture, University Microfilms, 1972.

[xiii] Cheryl Ann Palm. Slash-and-burn Agriculture: The Search For Alternatives, Columbia University Press, 2005, 3-8.

Conf. Paper: The Great Scorching (2 of 3)

2009-10-10T10:03:00.000-07:00

Tales of the ancient deluge are often combined together with the myth of the “great heat” and/or the “world fire” in many parts of the globe[i]. If we take the position that many stories of sea flooding are based in reality, then indeed, global warming would be the cause.

At its peak, this warming pattern is sometimes called the Warm Maritime Phase[ii] when much of the area of the Northern Sea and the Northwest Passage, now impassable, was free of ice. Sea levels were about five meters higher than they are today. Some time roughly between 5500 and 4500 years ago, the Earth’s climate began to cool and eventually stabilize resulting in the sea settling at present-day levels[iii].

In addition to increasing temperatures, global warming in Southeast Asia also causes a decline in rainfall because of weakening winds that circulate moisture across the Pacific[iv]. Dry conditions are also exacerbated on Mainland Southeast Asia by the eventual melting of glaciers in the Himalayas[v].

Recent theories suggest that major forest fires, like those in the western United States during 2007, may be due in part to climate change[vi]. Warmer temperatures and drier conditions in Southeast Asia might also increase the frequency and severity of regional forest fires.

During the Warm Maritime Phase, the increase of Southeast Asian fires would have resulted in haze of greater intensity than the Asian brown clouds of modern times. Ancient humans, I would suggest, may have viewed this haze as evidence of the sky moving lower. The Sun seen through the haze might also appear lower than usual. The low-hanging clouds of smoke together with the increasingly warm weather and drastic change in climate could have appeared linked. With the low sky seen by ancient observers as also bringing the Sun closer to the Earth and causing the seasons to become warmer.

The increase in forest fires might also account for the tales of the great conflagration and the World Fire that often accompany myths of the Great Flood.

If the ancients perceived the low hanging sky as responsible for the great scorching period, often described in catastrophic terms, then the raising of the sky[vii] would bring relief to humanity. Sky-raising signals also the end of the Great Flood in various mythologies. Now, we come to the question as to how the ancient storytellers perceived the sky as moving up to its present height?

My suggestion is that a major volcanic eruption occurred simultaneously with the beginning of the cooling period that began bringing down and stabilizing sea levels, and cooling global temperatures. The timing of the eruption with the cooling trend was coincidental, but the eruption itself could have contributed to global cooling just as Mt. Pinatubo caused the world to cool for a few years after it exploded in 1991[viii].

Sometime probably between 4000 BCE and 3000 BCE, when global sea levels drop and then stabilize, a major volcanic eruption[ix] occurred along the routes of the Nusantao Trade and Communication Network[x]. The vast fiery cloud of the eruption would be visible at great distances during the night. Vast portions of the sea in the region became filled with ash and lahar.

News of the eruption spread throughout the Nusantao maritime network. This is something I discuss in detail in my books Quests of the Dragon and Bird Clan[xi] and Sailing the Black Current[xii].

This belief in a new epoch could be linked quite intimately with the changing climate, the cooling weather and the subsiding sea levels. The imagery of the sky being pushed up would be supplied by the expanding mushroom cloud and the explosions of an erupting volcano.

Think of the volcano’s ash cloud as the pestle of Tuglibong[xiii], who in Manobo myth, strikes the center of the sky with her pestle while pounding rice causing it to move upward to its present height. The eruption likely deposited large amounts of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, which works to deplete the ozone layer resulting in cooling global temperatures[xiv].

From the volcano, large fireballs may have been perceived as similar to the solar orb, giving rise to the myths of the superfluous suns. In many legends of the region, the multiple suns rise up and then are shot down often falling into the ocean where their flames control sea levels by consuming excess water.

You may see here mythological attempts to explain natural changes in climate based on observations of a series of events. These events may be coincidental as with the timing of the general global cooling trend with that of the volcanic eruption, or actually linked as in the case of the volcano-induced cooling due to atmospheric aerosol deposits.

Falling temperatures would help reduce problems with forest fires, and large volcanic eruptions often help spur El Nino events as some believe happened during last Pinatubo eruption[xv]. This would mean increased rainfall, further reducing the problems with fires and brown clouds and possibly creating the perception of a raised sky in the eyes of ancient observers. Although the immediate effects of the volcano would be harsh, in the long term the changes in weather, combined with general global trends not related to the volcano, would have brought relief from the previous situation of rising temperatures and rising sea levels.

Nusantao seafarers would have updated communities in their communication network rapidly. The short-term catastrophic effects of the volcanic eruption could have spurred even more extensive Nusantao migration, thus further spreading the reach of the myths that evolved from the natural changes. For example, the theme of sky raising relieving the world of great heat can be found in “New World” cultures like those of the Cherokee and Navajo[xvi]. Indeed, there is a rather large body of common myths between Asia and the Americas, and I have discussed possibilities for these connections in my books The Naga Race[xvii] and Quests of the Dragon and Bird Clan Dr. Oppenheimer has also discussed these possible links, which could be direct and/or indirect in nature.

Now, we can examine a few sets of myths to see how the motifs agree with the natural events that I have outlined.

First, let us start with the ancient Chinese tale of Nu Gua (Nuwa) as found in the Han Dynasty classic Huainanzi[xviii]. Nu Gua appears here as the primordial female or goddess who mends the earth apparently after a cataclysmic battle of fire and water between the characters Kung Kung (Gonggong), associated with water and floods, and Chuan Hsu (Zhuanxu).

In a time long ago, the four poles were decayed and the nine states, rent asunder. The sky did not cover everywhere and the earth was not filled in all around. Fire raged and flamed without dying out; water swelled and rose without dying down. . Fierce beasts ate the vigorous and vultures snatched the old and weak. Then, Nu Gua smelted stones of five colors and patched up the azure sky and cut off the legs of a sea-turtle to stand up the four poles.

Huainanzi, 6/6b (2^nd century BCE)

In other versions of the myth involving Gonggong, the floods come after the shooting down of the Nine Suns, saving the world from destruction by great heat[xix]. The Nine Suns in certain traditions are said to fall into the ocean or unto a rock in the ocean and to consume the waters that flow into the sea[xx].

If we look at the elements of these myths, we find a series of motifs that potentially link up with sea level-stabilizing climate change in the fourth millennium BCE.

Ravages of fire and water can be seen symbolically as representing the competing forces of warm vs. cool climate. They can also relate to the firestorm created by a volcanic eruption, something also hinted at by a mountain’s collapse during the battle between Gonggong and Chuan Hsu. The raising of the sky by Nu Gua and the submergence of the Nine Suns can be seen as signs of global cooling. The submerged Suns also can be viewed as a cosmic explanation for the controlled sea levels with the Suns no longer threatening the world with heat, but instead consuming at stable levels the waters that flow from rivers into the ocean. In the new age that ensues, the floods and heat that plagued humanity are now under control allowing the growth of civilization.

In Hindu myth, we also find the theme of a great fiery underwater chasm known as the Mare’s Head (Vadavamukha). The Mare’s Head is in this case not the Sun but the flaming wife of the Sun transformed into a mare’s head that continuously consumes the ocean’s waters. As such, a balance arises, with rainwater flowing into the ocean from the world’s rivers controlled by the evaporating fires of the Mare’s Head[xxi].

[i] Oppenheimer, 241, 268-9.

[ii] James Hornell. Water Transport: Origins & Early Evolution, The University Press, 1946, 212.

[iii] William James. Climate Change in Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

[iv] University Of Arizona (2003, January 27). Climate Records Show Global Warming Could Influence Asian Monsoon. ScienceDaily.

[v] Tim Johnson. “Warming Triggers ‘Alarming’ Retreat of Himalayan Glaciers,” McClatchy Newspapers, .

[vi] Steven W. Running. “Is Global Warming Causing More, Larger Wildfires?” Science 18 August 2006: Vol. 313. no. 5789, pp. 927 – 928.

[vii] See Map A for distribution of sky raising theme.

[viii] Joan Martí and Gerald Ernst. Volcanoes and the Environment, Cambridge University Press, 2005, 162.

[ix] Siebert L, Simkin T (2002-). Volcanoes of the World: an Illustrated Catalog of Holocene Volcanoes and their Eruptions. Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program Digital Information Series, GVP-3, (http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm).

[x] Wilhelm G. Solheim II. “Origins of the Filipinos and their Languages," 9^thPhilippine Linguistics Congress, University of the Philippines, 2006.

[xi] Paul Kekai Manansala. Quests of the Dragon and Bird Clan, Lulu Press, 2006.

[xii] Paul Kekai Manansala. Sailing the Black Current: Secret History of Ancient Philippine Argonauts in Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Beyond, BookSurge Publishing, 2006.

[xiii] Pieter Jan Raats. A Structural Study of Bagobo Myths, Cebu: University of San Carlos, 1969.

[xiv] A. Robock. “Volcanoes and climate,” Reviews of Geophysics, 1999 38(2), 191-219.

[xv] Lisa M. Pinsker. “Mount Pinatubo: A Natural Climate Experiment,” Geotimes March 2002, <>.

[xvi] Thomas Bryan Underwood and Moselle Stack. Cherokee Legends and the Trail of Tears, Kessinger Publishing, 2006, 5. Franciscan Fathers. An Ethnological Dictionary of the Navajo Language, Arizona: St. Michaels, 1910, 354.

[xvii] Paul Kekai Manansala. The Naga Race, Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1994.

[xviii] John S. Major. Heaven and earth in Early Han thought: chapters three, four, and five of the Huainanzi, SUNY Press, 1993.

[xix] Yves Bonnefoy. Asian Mythologies, University of Chicago Press, 1993, 236.

[xx] Anne Birrell. Chinese Mythology: An Introduction, JHU Press, 1999, 144.

[xxi] Tudeng Nima, Gyurme Dorje, Tadeusz Skorupski, Mi rigs dpeskrun khaṅ. An Encyclopaedic Tibetan-English Dictionary, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2001, 698.

Part III

Conf. Paper: The Great Scorching: Possible linkages to ancient and modern global warming

2009-10-10T09:54:00.000-07:00

I'm posting my paper for the Alamat Conference, which was held at Manila in 2008, in three parts. The subject of the paper is the widespread myths of the "great scorching" and its relevance to ancient and modern global warming and rising sea levels.

Part one is found below.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento
---

The Great Scorching: Possible linkages to ancient and modern global warming

Messages from the past...do they have anything to tells us about our present, or our future?

Have myths preserved memories of rising seas, driven by global warming, submerging lands in ancient times?

We face today what has been called the greatest crisis in the known history of modern humans – the crisis of global warming and climate change. And it is a problem, according to the vast majority of experts, of our own making.

However, in the past, after the last glacial period or “mini-ice age,” the world witnessed extensive sea flooding caused by warming temperatures melting global ice packs.

During this illustrious conference, we have heard many participants speak of global flood myths.

The purpose of my paper is to examine myths here in the Philippines and the surrounding region that tell of a time when people viewed the sky as lower than it is today, or as containing multiple Suns. Because the sky was lower, the Sun was also lower and there was great heat -- a period of great scorching. And about this same time in some of these same mythologies we hear that the great sea flood also occurred.

I want to examine whether these myths of the great scorching and the great flood are actually remembrances of a time at the start of the present inter-glacial period, known as the Holocene, when warming temperatures actually caused seas to rise dramatically.

However, before I proceed, let me first examine one of the questions addressed by this conference. That is, whether or not myth and oral tradition convey historical events and facts.

My experience studying the voluminous material on myth suggests that most researchers believe myth preserves at least some history when the right conditions exist. This is the case whether they see mythology as originating from the unconscious mind as suggested by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, or as derived from ritual and the need to explain nature as espoused by James Frazer[i].

Of course, we should distinguish the ordinary folk tale or story that is told simply for amusement from the memorized, structured traditions of full-time priests and other ritualists. The folk storyteller usually recollects the tales heard to the best of his or her ability.

A full-time chanter, bard or priest learns line by line, and sometimes syllable by syllable in serious instruction that lasts for many years. They often memorize traditions that can fill whole books using cadence, rhythm, meter, rhyme, assonance and other memorization techniques[ii]. Prior to their exposure to the modern world, the material these specialists learned was often considered of grave importance to the community.

Of course, many oral traditions fall somewhere in between the simple folk tale or folk remedy and the serious epic or ritual chant.

The mythologist Lord Raglan once proposed that myths and folklore do not preserve history for periods longer than 150 years. However, Raglan’s beliefs were based on anecdotal experience from his own family where he found that information was lost after three generations of 50 years[iii]. He came from a literate culture that depended on writing and were sophisticated oral preservation methods were not used.

In cultures were writing was absent, or were oral transmission was preferred for various reasons; the situation is quite different from what Raglan found among his own family.

Indeed, one of Lord Raglan’s critics, William Bascom offered an exception to Raglan’s claims in the case of the Gwambe people of Mozambique. They had preserved legends -- ordinary folktales -- that described early migration and the Gwambe’s experience with early Europeans[iv]. These oral traditions were verified using the records of Portuguese explorers from four centuries earlier.

In another example, historians once believed that Biblical accounts of the city of Ur, and Homer’s tales of Troy were purely fictional, possibly derived from folklore, until archaeologists discovered remnants of these ancient cities[v].

One archaeological study released just last year verified indigenous Hawaiian chants of voyages from Hawaii to Tahiti and back. Stone tools, some of them 2,000 years old were found in Tahiti made of basalt traced to the Hawaiian Islands. Previously, many researchers had believed that the Hawaiians had reached these islands accidentally, driven by storms, and lacked the navigational ability to make the return journey to Tahiti[vi].

Another archaeological example comes from the Pacific region of Vanuatu, where well-preserved oral chants and genealogies tell of Chief Roimata who lived according to tradition around the year 1265. Archaeologists were able to locate the chief’s gravesite and used various techniques to confirm many of the legendary details. For example, according to legend, Chief Roimata was accompanied on his voyage to the land of the dead by family and clan members[vii].

At the burial site, it was found that about 50 people including possibly the chief’s youngest wife were buried together with him probably in acts of self-sacrifice. Above the chief, on a dancing ground surface were eleven embracing couples buried together. According to the oral records, the men were drugged with kava extract before internment but not the women, and in fact, the men do appear in the burials as more sedated than the women.

In Pakistan, the Kalash and Burusho peoples have legends that trace the descent of their people or leaders back to Alexander the Great and his invasions. A genetic study released last year showed both the Kalash and Burusho indeed carry a haplotype, unique in the region that originates in Greece and Macedonia[viii].

A number of researchers including DeLaguna, Vansina, Miller and Krech have recorded many examples showing that oral tradition does preserve valid history sometimes with surprising clarity[ix].

One difference between written and oral traditions before modern times is the very limited number of people who could record written history. In most societies, it was only the elite scribes that could write. These scribes were often subject to the political environment of the time and could hardly express themselves freely.

History is replete with kings who claimed vast conquests that on later inspection prove to be exaggerations. Ramses II of Egypt, for example, claimed victories that went beyond the existing evidence. The same Pharaoh was known also to have appropriated the statues of previous kings removing their identifying inscriptions and replacing them with his own signatures[x].

In comparison to scribal societies, oral records can be created by any family or clan. Among the Polynesians, for whom the keeping of family genealogies was a sacred duty, some traditions record dozens of generations, both fathers and mothers. In some areas, a genealogy of more than 100 generations could be found, and these records usually included stories and details linked with noted ancestors[xi].

Having many different versions of the same event or person is often advantageous as compared to only one or a limited number of versions. Journalists and criminal investigators know that even for events that have occurred very recently, witnesses will give accounts that can sometimes vary wildly in details[xii]. The more witnesses available, however, the greater the ability of the investigator to sort through details and arrive at the version closest to the truth.

Turning again specifically to the link between mythology and history, we know that historical events are often mythologized, or that historical events are embellished with mythological or supernatural themes.

For example, a stone inscription found in East Java known as the Calcutta Inscription and dated to 1041 CE, tells of a volcanic eruption that occurred on the island in 1006 CE[xiii]. The inscription describes a time of great dissolution known in Sanskrit as pralaya in which Java is described as resembling a “sea of milk.”

This concept of a “sea of milk” comes from Ancient Indian mythology – the story of the churning of the sea of milk as found rendered in art at the great temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Geologists have discovered that during this very time Mount Merapi in Java had erupted mightily covering much of the island with a layer of light-colored ash or tephra that could explain the period of great dissolution mentioned in the inscription, and the ashy color would account for the “sea of milk” description[xiv].

Javanese scribes had apparently recorded an historical eruption of Mount Merapi with motifs known from Hindu-Buddhist mythology.

In a similar sense, when Mongol fleets attempting to invade Japan were destroyed by typhoons, historical records attribute the victory to the Divine Wind known in Shintoism as Kamikazi.

Even in modern times, we still witness the practice of mythologizing real events. One example comes from the late well-known tele-evangelist Jerry Falwell in the United States. Falwell had stated publicly that the 9-11 attacks in New York City were allowed by God because of America’s sinfulness[xv].

Falwell’s followers may well have seen some truth in these statements, and potentially they could transmit these beliefs as folklore traditions. One could view in the same way the claims made by U.S. President George W. Bush that God had spoken to him and advised him to invade Iraq[xvi].

Regardless of the truthfulness of the mythological or supernatural claims, these elements are fused together with real historical events, the 9-11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq respectively. I suspect that most mythology in a similar fashion transmits both historical and non-historical information.

Oral history and mythology is subject to accretion, interpolation, mutation, errors in transmission and the like. We find the same thing, though, occurring in writing systems. In certain cases, transmission was more difficult with written texts[xvii]. Copying manuscripts, for example, was a painstaking process that led to many errors from simple misspelling to skipping entire stanzas or paragraphs.

For the researcher, whether the tradition is oral or written, the task still lies in identifying archaic language and style, analyzing content, and other methods in reconstructing the text in chronological layers[xviii].

Now, turning to the question at hand our colleague Stephen Oppenheimer, in his book Eden in the East[xix] makes a powerful argument that many of the widespread flood myths can be traced to actual rising sea levels during the Holocene period. He traces these myths especially to the submerging of Sundaland under the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. In this body of myths, rainfall usually plays little or no part; the sea engulfs the land often causing permanent loss of previously inhabited territory.

[i] Otto Rank and Alan Dundes. In Quest of the Hero, Princeton University Press, 1990, vii-xxxi.

[ii] David C. Rubin. Memory in Oral Traditions: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-out Rhymes, Oxford University Press, 1995.

[iii] FitzRoy Richard Somerset Raglan. The Hero: A study in tradition, myth and drama. Methuen, 1936, 12.

[iv] William Bascom. “The Myth-Ritual Theory,” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 70, No. 276 (Apr. - Jun., 1957) 103-114.

[v] S.H. Allen. Finding the Walls of Troy: Frank Calvert and Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik, University of California Press, 1998.

[vi] KD Collerson and MI Weisler. “Stone adze compositions and the extent of ancient Polynesian voyaging and trade,” Science 2007 Sep 28;317(5846):1907-1.

[vii] José Garanger. Archéologie des Nouvelles-Hébrides: contribution à la connaissance

des îles du centre. Publications de la Société des Océanistes, No. 30. Paris: ORSTOM.

[viii] S. Firasat, Khaliq S, Mohyuddin A, Papaioannou M, Tyler-Smith C, Underhill PA and Ayub Q. “Y-chromosomal evidence for a limited Greek contribution to the Pathan population of Pakistan,” Eur J Hum Genet. 2007 Jan;15(1):121-6.

[ix] Fredrica DeLaguna. “The Story of a Tlingit Community,” Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 172. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1960. Jan Vansina. Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology, Chicago: Aldine Press, 1965. Joseph C. Miller ed. The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History. Folkestone: W Dawson, 1980. Shepard Krech III. "The State of Anthropology." Annual Reviews of Anthropology 1991 20:345- 375.

[x] Ian Shaw. The Oxford History of Egypt, Oxford University Press, 2003, 288-9.

[xi] William Ellis. Polynesian Researches, During a residence of nearly eight years..., J & J Harper, 1833, 78. Karl Von den Steinen, Die Marquesaner und Ihre Kunst, II (1928), 64. Von Den Steinen mentions a knot genealogy in the Marquesas that contained 159 generations.

[xii] Anthony Heaton-Armstrong, Eric Shepherd and David Wolchover. Analysing Witness Testimony, Oxford University Press, 1999.

[xiii] George Coedes. Les états hindouisés d'Indochine et d'Indonésie, E. de Broccard, 1948, 245.

[xiv] Supriyati D. Andreastuti and Brent V. Alloway. Stratigraphy, age and correlation of a tephra marker bed in Central East Java, Indonesia, 2005, http://conferences.eas.ualberta.ca/tephrarush2005/abstracts/Andreastuti_and_Alloway.pdf.

[xv] Robert E. Denton. Language, Symbols, and the Media, Transaction Publishers, 2004, 23.

[xvi] John Bice. A 21^st Rationalist in Medieval America, Chelydra Bay Press, 2007, 202.

[xvii] Kathleen Davis and Robert Boenig. Manuscript, Narrative, Lexicon, Bucknell University Press, 2000.

[xviii] Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht. The Powers of Philology, University of Illinois Press, 2003.

[xix] Stephen Oppenheimer. Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, Phoenix, 1999.

Part II
Part III

Canoe evolution suggests Maori came from Hawai'i

2009-10-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

New research on the evolution of canoe designs suggests that New Zealand may have been at least partly settled from Hawai'i.

The study in the November Proceedings of the Royal Society B by Stanford University researchers Marcus Feldman and Paul Ehrlich and biologist Deborah Rogers compared canoe designs compiled by A. C. Haddon and James Hornell.

They specifically analyzed morphological, decorative and construction characteristics of canoes throughout Polynesia.

Source: PNAS

"Evolution is a logical way of looking at change over time," said Ms Rogers.

The study used software programming to run though 10 million possible permutations of canoe evolution and reached the conclusion that New Zealand canoes came directly from Hawai'i.

A Hawaiian migration was once considered one of the leading hypotheses for Maori origins but lost favor among archaeologists who thought the archaeological record suggested that the Maori came from more southern parts of eastern Polynesia. A genetic study might help in providing any verification of this latest suggestion.

Sincerely,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Deborah S. Rogers, Marcus W. Feldman, and Paul R. Ehrlich. “Inferring population histories using cultural data,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Vol. 276 No. 1674, November 7, 2009.

Single origin for domesticated dog in Southeast Asia and South China

2009-09-12T13:42:00.000-07:00

At the end of this article is the abstract of a new study suggesting a single origin for dogs in Asia south of the Yangtze River. The entire article is available for free viewing and downloading online by following the Open Access link below.

The study uses the principle of "greatest diversity" in determining the origin of the domesticated dog. The idea again is that dogs migrating away from the place of origin carry some but not all of the genetic types found within the species. Therefore, nearly all the dogs outside of "ASY," which stands for "Asia south of the Yangtze," i.,e. South China and Southeast Asia, originated from a subset of the total haplogroups found in ASY. And there were many unique haplotypes found only in ASY. Only in this region were all 10 major haplogroups found and this number decreases as one moves further away through Eurasia with the lowest total of four haplogroups found in Europe.

Interestingly of all the geographic areas tested, the Southeast Asian sample had the highest genetic diversity at 0.9526 followed by South China at 0.9486. The exact samples from these regions are:

South China:
Guangdong (n=14), Guangxi (n=35), Hunan (n=54), Guizhou (n=57), Jiangxi (n=46), Yunnan (n=75)

Southeast Asia
Thailand (n=41), Vietnam (n=11), Cambodia (n=7)

What is apparent is that with the exception of northern Yunnan, the wolf is not present in any of these areas in modern times. At one time, it was assumed that the wolf must have extended over all this region and further because of the existence of the dingo in Australia.

The dingo was considered a wild dog, but modern research led by one of the supporting authors of the current study -- P. Savolainen -- suggests that the dingo is actually a descendant of the domesticated dog.

However, the dingo's behavior is very much like a wild dog suggesting that possibly it represents a mixture of wild and domesticated dogs. Multi-generational feral dogs generally depend on human settlement where they scavenge garbage heaps, beg for scraps, and, in some cases, prey on livestock. Most dingos, though, lived totally independent of human populations when they were first studied by Europeans.

Now the existence of similar "wild" dingos in Thailand and Sulawesi, and dingo-like feral dogs throughout much of Southeast Asia, is suggestive. If the original domesticated dog was often feral, as is the case in modern Southeast Asia, then interbreeding with wild wolves could have been commonplace.

Although wolf packs will attack dogs and other wolves that are strangers to the pack, when individuals break off from a pack to mate, they are much friendlier. It is known that wolves, for example, in the Americas will even sometimes mate with different species like the coyote.

So during the early domestication period, large packs of feral or semi-domesticated dogs may have bred with the wild dog, or wolf population. Eventually these mixed types would have developed into the wild-ranging dingo, or the wild populations wold merge with feral dog stocks. This could explain why the pure wolf is no longer found in Southeast Asia or most of South China.

Now when the domesticated dog moved out of ASY, it would have encountered different situations especially among pastoral peoples. These groups raise herds of free-ranging livestock, which are very vulnerable to predation by feral dogs. Thus, humans in these cultures would have taken greater measures to cull feral dog populations. Also, they probably trained dogs at an early age to guard herds and flocks against wolves, which would have helped prevent interbreeding between wolf and dog. Across many of the geographical areas bordering ASY, feral dog populations cannot survive to the same extent as in ASY. In these areas, dogs become more dependent on humans and the number of feral dogs decreases.

The authors suggest that the domesticated dog spread with agriculture, however, I think the archaeological record clearly contradicts this assertion. Dogs were diffused during the Mesolithic period, possibly when humans were first engaging in pastoralism, if we accept that the latter practice arose among hunter-gatherers. I wonder if there is any influence on the idea of dogs diffusing together with agriculture, that comes from the Chinese tradition of Panhu, the Dog-Man-God, which is sometimes interpreted as referring to the spread of the domesticated dog. I give my explanation of this myth and its relation to the spread of rice agriculture here and here.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Mol Biol Evol. 2009 Sep 1. [Epub ahead of print]

Links

mtDNA Data Indicates a Single Origin for Dogs South of Yangtze River, less than 16,300 Years Ago, from Numerous Wolves.

Pang JF, Kluetsch C, Zou XJ, Zhang AB, Luo LY, Angleby H, Ardalan A, Ekström C, Sköllermo A, Lundeberg J, Matsumura S, Leitner T, Zhang YP, Savolainen P.

State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650223, China.

There is no generally accepted picture of where, when, and how the domestic dog originated. Previous studies of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) have failed to establish the time and precise place of origin because of lack of phylogenetic resolution in the so far studied control region (CR), and inadequate sampling. We therefore analysed entire mitochondrial genomes for 169 dogs to obtain maximal phylogenetic resolution, and the CR for 1,543 dogs across the Old World for a comprehensive picture of geographical diversity. Hereby, a detailed picture of the origins of the dog can for the first time be suggested. We obtained evidence that the dog has a single origin in time and space, and an estimation of the time of origin, number of founders and approximate region, which also gives potential clues about the human culture involved. The analyses showed that dogs universally share a common homogenous gene pool containing 10 major haplogroups. However, the full range of genetic diversity, all 10 haplogroups, was found only in south-eastern Asia south of Yangtze River, and diversity decreased following a gradient across Eurasia, through 7 haplogroups in Central China, and 5 in North China and Southwest Asia, down to only 4 haplogroups in Europe. The mean sequence distance to ancestral haplotypes indicates an origin 5,400-16,300 years ago from at least 51 female wolf founders. These results indicate that the domestic dog originated in southern China less than 16,300 years ago, from several hundred wolves. The place and time coincide approximately with the origin of rice agriculture, suggesting that the dogs may have originated among sedentary hunter-gatherers or early farmers, and the numerous founders indicate that wolf taming was an important culture trait.

---

References

Fleming, Peter; Laurie Corbett, Robert Harden, Peter Thomson (2001). Managing the Impacts of Dingoes and Other Wild Dogs. Commonwealth of Australia: Bureau of Rural Sciences.

Dingos (photo from Wikipedia)

Coconut evidence supports Pre-Columbian journeys across the Pacific

2009-09-11T21:39:00.000-07:00

Somehow I missed the following article when if first came out despite my subscription to the Coconut Study mailing list!

Baudouin, L & Lebrun, L (2008) Coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) DNA studies support the hypothesis of an ancient Austronesian migration from Southeast Asia to America. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 56 (2), 257-262.

Abstract The centre of origin of coconut extends from Southwest Asia to Melanesia. Nevertheless, its pre-Columbian existence on the Pacific coast of America is attested. This raises questions about how, when and from where coconut reached America. Our molecular marker study relates the pre-Columbian coconuts to coconuts from the Philippines rather than to those of any other Pacific region, especially Polynesia. Such an origin rules out the possibility of natural dissemination by the sea currents. Our findings corroborate the interpretation of a complex of artefacts found in the Bahía de Caraquez (Ecuador) as related to South-East Asian cultures. Coconut thus appears to have been brought by Austronesian seafarers from the Philippines to Ecuador about 2,250 years BP. We discuss the implications of molecular evidence for assessing the possible contribution of early trans-pacific travels to and from America to the dissemination of domesticated plants and animals.

Again this appears to be a landmark find that was completely ignored by the mainstream Western press.

The article was published along with a number of relevant studies that came out around the same time on Pre-Columbian chickens in the Americas, along with Pre-Columbian Datura metel and custard apple in South Asia.

The coconut study is based on examination of DNA microsatellite markers and the distribution of varieties that are resistant to the Lethal Yellowing diseases, which are transmitted by insects. For some discussion on the Ecuadorian cultures mentioned in the abstract, see my posts on fish hooks, fish poisons, Solheim's theory on Pre-Columbian contacts, migrations along the Kuroshio Current, and plants across the Pacific.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

New evidence of Cinnamon Route from Mtwapa, Kenya

2009-09-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

An important story is circulating around in African popular publications, but unfortunately, maybe predictably, it has not been picked up yet by the Western popular media.

One version of the story of Dr. Chapurukha (Chap) Kusimba's research can be found at The East African website:

Digging for history in the sands of time
by Rupi Mangat

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/magazine/-/434746/653420/-/item/0/-/mqc8qw/-/index.html

Here are two key paragraphs from the article on discoveries made by Dr. Kusimba, an archaeologist with the Field Museum in Chicago, at the Mtwapa ruins along the coast of southern Kenya:

“This era [the Holocene] sees the bi-directional flow of cultural objects and foods through trade over wide regions of the world. l’m particularly interested in how domestic rice, coconuts, chickens and the Indian cow (Bos indicus) reached Africa from Asia and how African domestic foods like sorghum and millet reached Asia and became staples in countries there.”
This list of trade items shows that many of these exchanges of crops between Africa and South East Asia through trade happened as early as 4,000 years ago.

Now obviously these discoveries are greatly supportive of the theories of J. I. Miller, myself and others about the ancient age of the Cinnamon Route.

In an email correspondence with Dr. Kusimba, I was able to find out that it was specifically the sorghum and millet from the Africa to Asia; and citrus fruit, bananas and Indica rice from Southeast Asia to Africa, that date back to about 4000 years ago (1732 BCE).

Chickens, probably from Insular Southeast Asia, date back at Mtwapa to about 1000 BCE, and the coconut finds have not been datable so far.

Previously I have discussed how banana phytoliths dating back to 500 BCE have been found in Nigeria, and dating to about 2500 BCE were discovered in Munsa, Uganda. Banana cultivation is complicated and labor-intensive so there is no doubt that these domesticated plants were carried to Africa by humans.

Dr. Kusimba mentions that East Africa was known to the ancient Romans as the "Cinnamon coast," and I have suggested earlier, following Miller, that the ancient port known as Rhapta in Greek texts was probably the Punt of the ancient Egyptians. Rhapta was located in the same area as the bustling medieval island ports of Pemba and Zanzibar in modern-day Tanzania. Evidence of chickens in Tanzania dates back to 2800 BCE. These islands are actually quite close to the Mtwapa ruins, which are just north of Mombasa. Possibly we can say that Mtwapa was in the same economic zone as Rhapta, and we cannot rule out that Mtwapa may have been the actual site of that ancient port.

There is evidence of cinnamon or cassia that has been found in animal mummies dating back to the XXIII Egyptian dynasty (818-715 BCE) by Dr. Stephen Buckley. He also found traces of cinnamon or cassia that he states probably came from Southeast Asia in the canopic jar of Djediufankh, which is dated to about 664 - 525 BCE. Cinnamon has also been found at a Hera temple on the island of Samos in Greece that dates back to the 7th century BCE. This evidence puts to rest the idea that that the cinnamon of the ancients that traveled up the eastern African coast was not the cinnamon of Asia that we know today.

It is also worth mentioning again the discovery of clove flower buds at Terqa, Syria, at roughly the same time as the earliest dates for Mtwapa. These cloves may have followed a different coastal route, which I have called the Clove Route, as opposed to the probably trans-oceanic Cinnamon Route that bypassed most of the Asian coast.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Tidal Farming and Fishing System

2009-09-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

Earlier in this blog, I described the water control system in Pampanga, Philippines. This type of tidal farming practice extends along the coastal borders of old Pampanga, which included the coasts of modern Bulacan, Tondo, and the bay shore side of much of the Bataan peninsula. A much smaller version of this system can also be found in and near Lingayen in Pangasinan to the north. Still smaller remnants are seen rarely here and there in the Philippines mostly on the island of Luzon.

I also have suggested that related systems were used by the Sayabiga in Iraq and the Moors, possibly also through a Sayabiga sub-population, in the Spanish autonomous communities of Valencia and Murcia. There is also something that looks quite the same found in the Halong Bay area of Vietnam. Whether this region is actually directly related to the others is unsure. One would think there is at least some idea stimulus involved. I have wondered if there might be a link with the Chinese notices of Fo-lo-an on the Western Ship Route during the Sung Dynasty. However, historically the Halong Bay area should have been squarely under the control of the Dai Viet empire at that time. So I'll have to leave any possible connections for further research.

View Larger Map
Tidal rice farming on Cat Ba island in Halong Bay, Vietnam.

This system of farming and fishing found in Pampanga and other parts of Luzon, and also in Iraq and southern Spain can be described as a Tidal Farming and Fishing System (TFFS).

As the name suggests, the area of agriculture and fishing is located in a tidal zone, and there is dependence on tidal action. The area will extend all the way to the mouth of rivers at the ocean, and upstream so far as there is still sufficient tidal flow. Here is an outline of some of the important features of this specific TFFS:

The TFFS utilizes reclaimed land, i.e., marshes, swamps, lakes, etc., so very extensive earth works are involved.
The intertidal zone is also used and dikes, channels, canals, etc., help to extend the system through irrigation beyond the intertidal zone.
Tides play an important role in irrigation. The flood tide pushes water into the fields and ponds, and sluice gates keep a certain quantity of the water from flowing back to sea during the ebb tide.
The tides are also important for local fishing practices.
In some areas, rains help flush saltwater toward the sea allowing seasonal farming in areas where the water is too salty for farming during the dry season.
The principle crop is short-grain, wet paddy rice (Oryza sativa var. japonica). Probably the type of Japonica rice grown in these regions has a higher salinity tolerance than more typical rice grown elsewhere.

The fishing techniques in the TFFS often revolve around fish and other aquatic/sea creatures that follow the tides in and out of the irrigation system. One trick is to place traps in narrow canals, for example. Fish caught in tidal pools and ditches could be stunned with fish poison, speared, or simply scooped up by hand. Fish poisons used in the Philippines, known as tuba, were usually either of the Derris or Tephrosia species. In Iraq, Digitalis and Datura species were used, while in southern Spain they used Verbascum species.

Much attention is focused on catching migratory fish and crustaceans. In the Philippines, the main catch was the bangus, which migrated from the sea into brackish water to spawn. Eventually, possibly after observing bangus spawn in their rice field ponds, an aquaculture system was developed that was mainly centered around the bangus. In Iraq, whitefish species -- khatan and shabut -- along with pomfret, shad and shrimp are caught during migration periods. In the Albufera in Valencia, they concentrated on migratory eels, which actually live in inland waters and migrate out to sea to spawn.

The water buffalo is associated with the TFFS in the Philippines and Iraq, and possibly also in southern Spain during Moorish times. However, there are some differences between the use of the buffalo in the two former regions. In the Philippines, the buffalo is a draft animal, but in Iraq it is used mainly for milk as in India. The marsh arabs do not train their buffalo as work animals. However, the Iraqi buffalo has many types of characteristics that resemble both the Southeast Asian swamp buffalo as well as the Indian river buffalo.

The older water buffalo shown in this region during Sumerian times looked exactly like a swamp buffalo. The modern Marsh Arab buffalo, which was probably reintroduced during medieval times, looks more like a cross between a swamp and river buffalo. However, its habits are mainly that of the swamp buffalo in that they tend to wallow in the marshes.

Water buffalo along the Euphrates near Najaf (AP Photo/Alaa al-Marjani)

Buffaloes swimming in Iraqi marshes
http://www.toreigeland.com/iraq_marsh-arabs/images/W8688-Iraq-Marshes.jpg

Curious culinary link

One interesting correspondence between the TFFS in Pampanga and that found about a third of the way around the globe in Valencia is the popularity of local rice casserole dishes -- Paella or Arroz Valenciana in Spain, and Bringhe in Pampanga.

Many believe that as Pampanga was colonized by Spain, Bringhe must have been adopted from Paella. However, Corazon S. Alvina and Felice Santa María note there are indications that Bringhe is at least partly indigenous.

Bringhe resembles a native dish found among the Muslims of Mindanao known as Koning, which is usually served during special occasions. Bringhe is also primarily a food served during festivals. Koning consists of the sticky form of glutinous rice (Oryza sativa var. glutinosa) cooked with coconut milk and colored yellow either with turmeric or a type of yellow ginger known as galingale.

Now, Bringhe also is made with glutinous rice, known locally as malagkit, that is always cooked with coconut milk and is tinted in modern times also with turmeric. Previously, a spice known as cachumba or safflower as it is known in the West, was probably used. Cachumba, for example, is mentioned as a condiment by Antonio de Morga in the early 17th century.

However, what about all the other ingredients that are mixed together in both Bringhe and Paella, such as meat, vegetables, legumes, etc.?

Well, in the case of Bringhe, another local type of dish may have been combined with Koning to produce Bringhe. According to Bergano's 18th century Kapampangan dictionary, local people would cook rice together with vegetables to make Quisa. Today, legumes, vegetables, sweet potato, etc., are added to rice while cooking to "extend" the rice especially among the poor. However, a dish that more closely matches Bringhe is known as Binulu.

Binulu is an ancient type of cooking still popular among the Aita of Pinatubo. It is also featured yearly at the Binulu Festival in Porac, Pampanga. However, as Bergano lists this type of cooking in his dictionary, it probably was more popular among Kapampangans of those days. Binulu consists of rice and viands stuffed and cooked together in a thin, hollow, green bamboo known as bulu (Schizostachyum lumampao). The variations of Binulu are just as great as those found among Paella and Bringhe dishes and can include meat, vegetables, beans, legumes, fish/shellfish, fruits, etc.

Quite possibly, Bringhe evolved originally out of a fusion of Koning with Binulu for festive occassions, which was instead cooked in clay pots, or possibly in coconut leaf baskets known as patupat. In modern times, Bringhe is usually prepared in a vessel lined with banana leaves. The modern dish can include the addition of completely foreign elements, but the stable ingredients are glutinous rice, coconut milk, and a tinting condiment, usually turmeric.

Bringhe

Arroz Valenciana
(both images from http://www.nestle.com.ph)

Spain's TFFS and the Grail Myths

I have discussed previously how the Sayabiga could have been the mysterious "Indians" mentioned in the Grail literature, and how they might also be connected with the medieval diplomatic contacts of "Prester John" in Europe.

In Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the author states that his ultimate source for his story was a mystic known as "Flegatanis" who lived in Spain (Toledo). The envoys from India in Parzival -- Cundrie and Malcreatiure -- apparently come directly to Anjou from Spain. Cundrie, for example, recites the names of stars in Hispano-Arabic.

Albrecht von Scharfenberg, about a half century after Wolfram, places the Grail family in northern Spain, probably Galicia, an area that they migrate to after helping with the conquest of Jerusalem.

Valencia, during this time, was an important center of Eastern medicine and alchemy. A number of important medical/alchemical works were translated from Arabic into European languages, especially by the alchemist Arnaldus de Villanova (Arnau de Vilanova) in the 13th century. Another important alchemist during this period was Ramon Llull (Raymond Lull) who hailed from island of Mallorca to the east off the coast of Valencia. The majority of the population of Valencia during Moorish times spoke Arabic as their primary language. Many elements of the Grail legends show "Eastern" and even Tantric influences that may have filtered in from the Persian Gulf traveling along with the Sayabiga and the TFFS.

Flat-bottomed punt-type boats known variously as barquet, barquetot, pastera, etc. in the Albufera rice-growing area in Valencia. (http://www.panoramio.com/photo/14171706)

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Alvina, Corazón, and Felice Sta. María. Halupi: Essays on Philippine Culture. Quezon City: Capital Pub. House, 1989.

Maria Kannon and the Philippines

2009-08-27T14:52:00.000-07:00

A few posts ago, I wrote about Kuanyin in relation to the sandalwood trade. In Japan, the goddess Kuanyin is known as Kannon.

When Christian missionaries brought their religion to Japan, the early Japanese Christians fused Mary, the mother of Jesus, with the goddess Kannon creating what became known as "Maria Kannon" マリア観音.

This Maria Kannon eventually was used to covertly continue Christian worship after the government began persecuting the religion. Crucifixes were said to have been hidden in the Maria Kannon images, and Christian prayers were offered to the icons. The Maria Kannon images were particularly frequent in areas like Nagasaki. These statues were generally indistinguishable from ordinary Buddhist Kannon statues with the exception of the hidden Christian symbols.

Maria (Maruya), though, became associated with Luzon (Roson) among Japanese Christians rather than the Christian Holy Land in the Middle East. She was said to have been a native Luzon, and ends up marrying the resurrected King of Luzon. I have discussed how this might have come about in some earlier postings.

Interestingly after World War II, the Japanese have funded a number of Kannon or Maria Kannon memorials in the Philippines including some on the island of Luzon, which have mostly been funded by Japanese veterans or other private groups.

Here are some examples:

Ten-foot tall Kannon statue of the Japanese Garden Of Peace at Corregidor, the site of a major battle during World War II.

http://corregidorisland.com/part2.html

From the Maria Kannon Garden/Philippine-Japan Peace Commemorative Park in Tacloban, Leyte, called the "Madonna of Japan."

http://trifter.com/asia-pacific/japan/madonna-of-japan-a-symbol-of-peace-and-friendship/

Koyasan Shingon Buddhist Shrine with 15-ft. Kannon statue at Clark Field, Pampanga, Philippines in honor of dead Kamikaze pilots.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Heiwa_Kannon.JPG

The Kannon statue is a special symbol of peace between Japan and the Philippines, and the Hito Kannon in Aichi, Japan is dedicated to Japanese who died in the Philippines during World War II. There is another Kannon war memorial for all the Japanese who fell in the war at Ryozen.

One has to wonder whether the choice of the Kannon and Maria Kannon statue memorials in the Philippines is not linked with modern historical knowledge of Maria's connection, among Japan's hidden Christians (Kakure Kirishitan 隠れキリシタン), with the ancient kingdom of Roson.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Video: Gold of the Ancestors, the Surigao Treasure

2009-08-11T21:03:00.000-07:00

This video shows part of a broadcast program featuring the story behind the Surigao Treasure discovered in northern part of the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. The Surigao Treasure is the most impressive collection of gold artifacts found in the country and dates back to the 10th - 13th century. The collection includes extraordinary gold belts and one items known as the "Sacred Thread" that may be the single most impressive solid gold personal ornament in the world. The Surigao Treasure is located at the Ayala Museum in Makati, a business district in Metro Manila, and also at the Central Bank of the Philippines.

The Sandalwood Trade

2009-07-29T13:06:00.000-07:00

Sandalwood was a trade item of considerable value in antiquity. Chau Ju-Kua (Zhao Rugua) stated concerning yellow (or "white") sandalwood (Santalum album) in the 12th century that "in burning it surpasses all other incenses."

In China and India, and generally among Buddhists and Hindus, sandalwood was prized as an aromatic, for carving, and as a medicine. The wood has been an important material for sacred sculpture among Buddhists and continues to be an important component of incense throughout East and South Asia.

Yellow Sandalwood

Santalum album was the primary sandalwood used in the ancient and medieval trade and was known as yellow or white sandalwood. The species is native from eastern Java to eastern Indonesia and was particularly abundant, in former times, in the islands of Timor and Sumba.

Timor appears to have been the main source of sandalwood prior to European colonization. Pigafetta exaggerated when he said "nowhere else is white sandalwood found" speaking about the island of Timor. De Orta stated that yellow sandalwood grew in Timor "where it is in greatest quantity and called chandam and is known by that name in all the lands around Malacca."

There is some confusion over whether Santalum album is native to South India. Early in the 20th century, C.E.C. Fisher, after studying the distribution and historical diffusion of the species, suggested that sandalwood was introduced into India during the pre-Christian era, and that it had to be reintroduced periodically. Fisher noted that yellow sandalwood in South India grew almost exclusively around villages or abandoned village sites. In other words, the sandalwood trees did not appear to grow in the wild.

Early Europeans like Duarte Barbosa, Cesar Fedrici, Ralph Fitch and Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, writing from the early to late 16th century, all agreed that Santalum album while in great demand in India, was generally shipped in from Timor. Barbosa, Fedrici and Rheede's Hortus Indicus Malabaricus all expressly suggest that yellow sandalwood did not grow in India.

Although yellow/white sandalwood is mentioned in both India and China in ancient times, the mention of Timor occurs only during the Sung Dynasty when it was called Ti-wu. Later in Ming times, Timor is known mostly as Ti-wen. This has brought up the question as to whether the ancient yellow sandalwood actually referred to some other wood like fragrant red sandalwood (Pterocarpus santalinus). However, the general lack of any literary evidence suggesting a medieval replacement of the ancient product; the description of yellow sandalwood and its unique properties, and the hoary differentiation of different types of sandalwood support the common view that Santalum album was traded in antiquity.

Medieval trade routes

As mentioned previously, including in the last blog post, Sanfotsi (Sanfoqi) had established something of a monopoly in sandalwood during at least some period of the Sung Dynasty.

However, a number of countries are listed in Sung sources as entrepots, possibly secondary to Sanfotsi, including Fo-lo-an and Tan-tan, both apparently located somewhere on mainland Southeast Asia.

Timor itself according to Sung sources was a dependency of Toupo, so Sanfotsi seems to have mainly acted as an entrepot for countries beyond this region. In Yuan times, both Sanfotsi and Toupo apparently disappear. At that time, Mindanao may have taken over the trade as successor to Toupo if we accept such an identification for the Yuan Dynasty country known as Min-to-lang.

Mindanao, possibly the Maranao and Cotabato nations, Butuan and Sulu were perfectly positioned to trade with areas like Maluku for cloves, nutmeg and mace; and with Timor for sandalwood. In latter times, they appear to have been middlemen for these southern areas in the trade with the northern entrepot of Luzon. From Luzon, these products reached the rest of Asia. This also seems to be the case during the Sung Dynasty with Toupo transferring the southern aromatics to the Sanfotsi entrepot.

During Spanish times, Luzon continued to act as an important sandalwood trading post, but with Santalum album going extinct in Timor, Pacific sandalwood species, particularly from Fiji, came into play in the Manila marketplace.

Sandalwood, princesses and goddesses

Sandalwood has an interesting connection with two goddesses -- Kuan-yin and Tara -- the two deities thought by many scholars to have a common origin.

Both Kuan-yin and Tara are viewed as emanations, forms, or as the female aspects of the god (Bodhisattva) Avalokitesvara by Buddhists. Both goddesses are seen as protectors of seafarers against harm from the ocean. Both have strong Tantric links, and both are specifically connected with stories of their origin in Southeast Asia.

Tara, and to a lesser extent, Kuan-yin are often placed in the island of Potala in the "Southern Ocean." On this island is said to be a famed sandalwood forest. In Tibetan tradition, the goddess is particularly associated with this forest in the form "Tara of the Sandalwood Forest."

There was also a Sandalwood Forest located in or south of Shambhala in Tibetan Buddhist texts, so there may be some conflation or confusion between the locations of Potala and Shambhala.

In the medieval Sadhanamala and the 6th-7th century Astanga Samgraha, a Tantric adept known as Nagarjuna, possibly referring to the great Mahayana philosopher of the same name, is said to have brought Tara and the alchemical mineral mercury from across the sea into India. This Tara, or rather worship of Tara, is known as Mahacina-tara, "Tara from Mahacina."

While the location of Mahacina may have been confused and used differently at times, I have noted earlier in this blog that the evidence points to its primary and most common usage was to describe and area extending through and including Tibet and mainland Southeast Asia. One Tara myth found in Hindu Tantrism claims that the goddess arises from the Milky Ocean -- when that sea was churned by the Gods and Demons. This Milky Ocean was also viewed geographically as far to the east of India. In the Ramayana, when the Varanas search for Sita in the eastern regions they travel through the Milky Ocean and related areas like the Golden Isle.

Likewise, Kuan-yin in her early form is known as Kuan-yin-Nan-hai or "Kuan-yin of the South Seas," a reference to the region of Southeast Asia.

There is even a story that Kuan-yin originated from an actual Buddhist princess that lived in a kingdom south of China called Hsing Lin. The text containing this story dates to the mid-12th century and is derived from materials about 150 years older. The story, however, is said in the text to take place during the time of the 7th century BCE monk Tao-hsüan.

The southern kingdom, according to this account, was said to stretch from India in the West to Fo-ts'i (佛齊)in the East. It was at Fo-ts'i that the princess known as Miao Shan, and also as "South Seas Kuan-yin" and "Kuan-yin with the Horse Head" was born.

The land known as Fo-ts'i 佛齊 may be a shortened reference to what later is known as San-fo-ts'i or 三佛齊.

Sanfotsi, as noted, was an important country in the sandalwood trade. One of the empire's dependencies known as Fo-lo-an was also described as a sandalwood entrepot. Now the Miao Shan story states that the princess became a staunch Buddhist, but had a falling out with her father, the king. She was said to have taken refuge at a Buddhist monastery, which in the Chinese story is located in China.

However, there is some evidence that this location may have been in Fo-lo-an, thus explaining the connection with the Southern Seas (Nan-hai).

According to Chau Ju-Kua, the Sanfotsi princes made a journey to offer incense to a "Holy Buddha" in Fo-lo-an during the Full Moon of the 6th month. The Ming encyclopedia known as the San-tsai Tu-hui describes this "Buddha" instead as two copper goddesses whose birthday was celebrated again on the 15th day of the 6th moon. This same day of the 6th month was said by Chau Ju-kua to be a good day for return voyages to China from places like Fo-lo-an and Poni, i.e., the summer monsoonal winds blew ships toward the north. The goddesses are mentioned as protecting Fo-lo-an from threats, i.e., pirates, that come from the sea.

Now in some locations of China, Kuan-yin's festival was held on the 19th day of the 6th month, so quite close to the date mentioned by Chau Ju-kua and the San-tsai Tu-hui. Also, in some locations of Tibet, like Kham, during the summer retreat known as Yarney that begins on the 15th day of the 6th month, people worship and thank Tara by making the Four Mandala Offering. According to Nagarjuna, "in the sixth month one consorts with the divine women of the gods."

Tara images

The text of the San-tsai Tu-hui also contains two engravings that are said to resemble the form of "Kuan-yin with the Horse's Head." The images have three heads with the horse head placed on a triple crown. De Groot also noted that the goddess figures matched that of Mat-tsu-po, a form of Miao Shan.

Chau Ju-Kua mentions two Buddhas that came flying in to Fo-lo-an, one with four arms and one with six arms. The form of Kuan-yin addressed here is known in two principal forms, four-armed and six-armed, so we can say with some certainity that these goddesses of Fo-lo-an were representations of Kuan-yin/Tara.

Fo-lo-an is mentioned as belonging to the Western Ship Route along with Annam and Cambodia. This would seem to indicate the Upper Coast of Indochina, a noted source of cinnabar and mercury, but other notices may suggest a location further down the coast possibly in modern day Malaysia or Thailand.

If we take the story of the princess as historical, then it would appear that a Fo-ts'i, i.e., Sanfotsi princess went to Fo-lo-an to practice Buddhism in a monastery. The latter country was a sandalwood trading partner with Fo-ts'i. Latter on after the death of the princess, Sanfotsi princes continued to come to Fo-lo-an during the summer (6th moon) to offer incense to icons of the ancient, probably related princess.

Tibetans also have a story of a princess known as Yeshe Dawa who embraces Buddhism and later becomes the goddess Tara. In connection with the sandalwood trade, according to a Buddhist story that explains Tara's role as sea goddess, a ship from the Isle of Jewels, loaded with a cargo of jewels, and one from the Isle of White Sandalwood, loaded with white sandalwood, were saved by Tara after a Buddhist layperson on board one of the ships prayed to the goddess. Note that the goddesses of Fo-lo-an also had a protective function against sea threats.

Thus, it can be suggested that at one time during the sandalwood trade when San-fo-ts'i and Fo-lo-an enjoyed a close relationship, a princess estranged from her father, the king, left to practice Buddhism on Fo-lo-an, somewhere on mainland Southeast Asia. In the story, she reconciles with her father later on, thus, explaining possibly the pilgrimage of the Sanfotsi princes to Fo-lo-an to offer incense to the images of the goddess. From Fo-lo-an, i.e., Mahacina, the goddess travels East and West as Tara and Kuan-yin. Nagarjuna is said to be the one that carries this form of worship to India. This goddess becomes closely associated with the Sandalwood Forest, an allusion to the ancient sandalwood trade.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Beyer, Stephan. The cult of Tārā: magic and ritual in Tibet. Berkeley [u.a.]: Univ. of California Pr, 1978.

Cordier, Henri, Gustaaf Schlegel, Edouard Chavannes, Paul Pelliot, J. J. L. Duyvendak, and Paul Demiéville. Tʻung pao. Tʻoung pao. International journal of Chinese studies. Leiden: E.J. Brill [etc.], 1890, 402-6.

Donkin, R. A. Between East and West : the Moluccas and the Traffic in Spices Up to the Arrival of Europeans. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, 248. Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society, 2003, 13-18, 160-2.

__. Dragon's Brain Perfume: An Historical Geography of Camphor. Brill's Indological library, v. 14. Leiden: Brill, 1999.

White, David Gordon. The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996, 65-6.

Willson, Martin. In praise of Tārā: songs to the saviouress ; source texts from India and Tibet on Buddhism's great goddess. Women's studies. Boston, Mass: Wisdom Publ, 1996, 181-2.

Zhao, Rukuo, Friedrich Hirth, and William Woodville Rockhill. Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-Fanchï. New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp, 1966.

More on the Clove Route

2009-07-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

Cloves (Eugenia Caryophyllata) are mentioned in Chinese texts by the early Han Dynasty (3rd century BCE), which recommended chewing clove buds to freshen the breath before an audience with the emperor.

However, it was not until the 3rd century CE, that we hear from K'ang T'ai of some vague information as to the source countries of cloves. They are stated to come from the islands of Ma-wu somewhere to the east of Fu-nan, a name generally associated with the ancient kingdom of Cambodia. The Liang-shu states that Ma-wu was to the east of Toupo (She-po, Chu-po). This latter state has been mentioned in this blog as a main rival of Sanfotsi.

The 7th century monk I Ching (Yijing) states that cloves came from Kun-lun, which during this time was synonymous with the Sanskrit toponym Dvipantara, meaning broadly the insular Southeast Asian region. I Ching though seems to be referring to the area south of the Philippines.

From about this same time, we also hear from the Arabic letters of the Mihraj, the king of Zabag (Sanfotsi), who mentions the two rivers of his kingdom that irrigate aloes, nutmeg and camphor. This seems to be mainly an allegorical representation since nutmeg is found only in eastern Indonesia and the southern Philippines, while aloes are found only in the islands further north and on the mainland.

Al-Mas'udi and other Muslim writers seem to indicate that the Mihraj controlled the trade in spices like cloves and nutmeg, which came from the same general region. Europeans thought that exotic eastern spices like cinnamon and aloeswood came from the Garden of Eden. Jean de Joinville in the 13th century includes cloves among these spices that were traded into Europe from Egypt but coming originally, so he thought, from the Terrestrial Paradise. The latter location during this time was considered part of the domains belonging to Prester John.

We have to wait until the Sung Dynasty sources to find much more detailed information about the clove trade and the routes taken by cloves, related spices like nutmeg and mace, and another related trade item, sandalwood.

Clove trade during the Sung Dynasty

Chau Ju-kua (Zhau Rugua) states that cloves and nutmeg were produced in two kingdoms that belonged to the southeastern empire of Toupo, which I have described previously as centered in the Cotabato region of Mindanao (southern Philippines).

Trading ships from Toupo headed to China, according to Sung Dynasty sources, used the following course:

Starting from Toupo, two weeks heading northwest before reaching Poni
A week northwest arriving at Mai (Mindoro)
A few days northwest to Sanfotsi (Central Luzon)
From Sanfotsi, ships could head due north for Quanzhou or northwest for Canton.

Click on image for larger view of area between the Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands in the central South China Sea. This area was dangerous for medieval shipping and was avoided due to the many shoals, reefs, rocks and low-lying islands. Ships from Quanzhou (top of map) during the Sung Dynasty sailed the Western Ship Route to reach Chiao-chih (Tonkin), Chan-ch'eng (Annam, northern Vietnam), Chen-la (Khmer empire, South Vietnam and Cambodia) and destinations further south and west. The Eastern Ship Route sailed due south from Quanzhou to Sanfotsi (Luzon), Mai (Mindoro), Toupo (Mindanao) and to the clove and sandalwood sources in Maluku and Timor further to the south.

Of course, this is the shortest route from the sources of cloves and nutmeg to the ports of South China.

During the Spanish Galleon trade, Central Luzon, i.e., Manila was the main entrepot for the clove trade to all of Asia. Portuguese and Asian traders carried cloves and related spices from Manila to ports extending from India to Japan. And there is indication that this was the case before the Spaniards came as well. Pigafetta reported Luzon trading ships as far south as Timor trading in sandalwood, and noted that a boat on the island of Samar was loaded with "cloves, cinnamon, pepper, nutmegs, mace, gold, and other things."

During the Sung Dynasty, cloves were offered as official gifts by Sanfotsi, Toupo, Butuan, Champa and the Chola empire. Whether these periodic "tribute" missions, generally undertaken at the ascension of a new monarch, can really indicate the totality of the spice trade is questionable. There are indications of a more regular yearly "unofficial" trade going on that was not clearly documented.

The large number of cloves offered as gifts to China by Champa is quite interesting.

Cloves as Official Gifts during Sung Dynasty

Country Year Quantity Envoy
Champa 977 50 jin Li Pai
Champa 986 50 jin Li Chao-xian
Sanfotsi 988 50 jin Pu Yao-tuo-li
Toupo 992 10 jin Pu Ya-li
Champa 1007
Bu-lu-die-di-jia
Butuan 1007

Champa 1011 30 jin Pu sa-duo-po
Sanfotsi 1017 30 jin Pu Mou-xi
Champa 1018 80 jin Luo-pi-di-jia
Champa 1072

Chola 1077

Sanfotsi 1156 30 jin

Notice that all envoys except two have the titles Pu (Apu) or Li (Ari). Possibly Bu-lu-die-di-jia has an error for "Pu" in the first syllable.

In the blog post, "On the Titles Ari and Apu," I mentioned the large number of Champa envoys that used what I suggested was the Sanfotsi royal title Ari, which was found in Chinese texts in the form "Li" 李.

I speculated that there may have been intermarriages between Champa and Sanfotsi royals that could account for the apparent use of the title in Champa. Now, I have come across some more information that could help explain the contacts between the two countries.

In the Song hui-yao ji-gao (宋會藥輯稿), the Champa envoy Bu-lu-die-di-jia (布祿爹地加) is said to have stated that Champa had "fled" to Fo-shi country -- apparently referring to the flight of the country's rulers. Later in the work it is stated, and alluded to also in the Sung-shi, that the Champa king Yang-tuo-pai (楊陀排) whose reign began in 990 CE, was born in Fo-shi country.

There has been much scholarly discussion over what name "Fo-shi" was meant to transcribe. Paul Pelliot had suggested that Fo-shi was the Chinese rendering of Sanskrit Bhoga, while Georges Coedès thought it should instead by Vijaya.

In interpreting the aforementioned linkages between Champa and Fo-shi in the Song hui-yao, it is generally suggested that incidents refer to the temporary relocation of the Cham capital from Indrapura to the city of Vijaya after the invasion of the Vietnamese emperor Lê Hoàn.

However, there is a possibility that Fo-shi is actually an island kingdom located to the southeast of Canton mentioned by I Ching, which has been discussed previously in this blog. The Song hui-yao uses the term Fo-shi-guo (佛逝國) with the word "guo" possibly indicating another country (other than Champa). The text also mentions Sanfotsi, so it could be that Fo-shi refers to the original old country within the new Sanfotsi empire. In any case, the name "Fo-shi" is not used by other Chinese texts for the city of Vijaya in Champa.

We could propose that these events, as interpreted here, led to intermarriage between the royal familes in the two regions faciliating the trade in cloves, and also the use of the title Ari by many Champa envoys.

Sandalwood trade

Pigafetta mentions Luzon ships loading sandalwood from Timor during Magellan's circumnavigation voyage.

His note is important not only because it indicates how far the Luzon kingdom was trading to the South, but also due to the close link between the sandalwood trade and that of spices like cloves and nutmeg.

According to the Canton Stories (Pingzhou Ketan) of Zhu Yu (1118-9 CE), Sanfotsi had established a monopoly on the sandalwood trade:

In recent times Sanfotsi established a sandalwood monopoly and the ruler orders merchants to sell to him. The product's market value increases several times. The subjects of that country do not dare sell privately. This is an effective system. The country is right in the center of the Southern Sea. Ta-Shih [Perso-Muslim] countries are far to the West. Chinese bound for Ta-Shih reach Sanfotsi and repair their ships and exchange goods. Distant merchants congregate here and therefore it is considered the most prosperous place.

According to Chau Ju-Kua, the main source of sandalwood was Ti-wu, the Chinese name for Timor (also Ti-wen). Official sandalwood gifts to the Chinese emperor throughout history are thought to have almost exclusively originated in Timor. As with cloves, Chau Ju-kua states that Sanfotsi acted as an entrepot of sandalwood. He further states that sandalwood together with cloves were shipped from Sanfotsi to Nan-p'i (Malabar). Muslim texts generally agree with the Chinese sources as they list sandalwood as one of the products traded in Zabag.

During the Yuan Dynasty, sandalwood was said to come from a location known as Min-to-lang situated in the "East Ocean" mentioned together with well-known kingdoms like Butuan and Sulu. Some have speculated that this name could refer to Mindanao or Mindoro, but it is far from certain.

During the Ming Dynasty though, it is clear that Luzon was involved in the sandalwood trade. Pigafetta states: "All the sandal wood and wax that is traded by the inhabitants of Java and Malaca is traded for in that region [Timor]. We found a junk from Lozon there, which had come thither to trade in sandal wood."

According to a Brunei navigator who spoke with Legaspi during the Spanish invasion of the Philippines, the Luzon and Brunei trading ships dealing between the Manila Bay and points southward were considered "Chinese junks" because they acted as middlemen selling Chinese goods.

During Spanish times, Manila also acted as an entrepot of sandalwood, although unlike the situation with cloves where it had acted as the main trading source for Asia, it competed in the sandalwood trade with Batavia due to Dutch influence in Timor.

The route of cloves and sandalwood from their source lands to ports in South China was a natural one, the shortest route, and the one described in medieval texts using the Eastern Ship Route to avoid the treacherous shoals, reefs, rocks and islands of the central South China Sea.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Junker, Laura Lee. Raiding, Trading, and Feasting: The Political Economy of Philippine Chiefdoms, Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000, 192-8.

Lach, Donald F., and Edwin J. Van Kley. Asia in the Making of Europe: Volume III, the Century of Advance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, 37.

Ptak, Roderich. China's Seaborne Trade with South and Southeast Asia, 1200-1750. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.

Wade, Geoff. "Champa in the Song hui-yao" ARI Working Paper, No. 53, 2005, www.nus.ari.edu.sg/pub/wps.htm.

Ancient boat found in Java

2009-07-11T15:47:00.000-07:00

A seafaring ship dating back to the 6th or 7th century has been discovered in Central Java. The boat appears to use the classic lashed-lug construction commonly found in this region. This may have been a fishing boat and lead net connectors/sinkers were found along with the remains. The artifact will be left were it is guarded by a bamboo fence and a model made for museum display.
---

Ancient boat reveals shipbuilding skills of Java’s seafarers

Suherdjoko , The Jakarta Post , Rembang, Central Java | Fri, 07/10/2009 11:49 AM | Java Brew

Historians have long wondered just how Indonesians in the 6th and 7th centuries built their boats. A recent archaeological discovery sheds some light on the mystery.

In July last year, an ancient boat, measuring 15.6 meters long and 4 meters wide was discovered in Punjulharjo village, Rembang district, in Rembang regency.

A team from the Yogyakarta Archaeology Center made a detailed study of the site, about 200 meters inland from the Java Sea coastline, from June 17 to 26 this year.

Ancient mariner: A member of the Yogyakarta Archaeology Team works on the site of a 1,200-year-old boat uncovered in Rembang, Central Java. (JP/Suherdjoko)

The boat, approximately 1,200 years old, was found buried near the Central Java northern coastline, with its bow lying to the west and its stern in the east. Head of Punjulharjo village Nursalim said eight local residents had stumbled across the ancient relic while making a pond.

“The land was originally planted with coconuts, followed by secondary crops,” he told The Jakarta Post. “But as the soil was not fertile enough, they decided to make a pond. That’s when they noticed the buried boat, its main part still in its whole form, as they dug deeper.”

According to the chairman of the Yogyakarta archaeology team, Novida Abbas, the ancient boat is the most complete ever found in Indonesia. “So far we have only got wooden planks and other separate pieces. The discovery in Rembang is 50 percent intact,” Novida said. “We can see the actual shape of the boat and its construction technology...

Read the whole article.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Gavin Menzies' "1434: The Year a Magnificent..."

2009-06-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

I'd like to touch on a few things from Gavin Menzies latest book, 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance published in June, 2008. This is not meant to be a review of the book but mainly to focus on the "Eastern ambassador" and his connection with the voyages of Columbus and Magellan, something I have discussed previously.

While I have some fundamental disagreements with Menzies, again, he has done a service by bringing out things that rankle the herds of Eurocentric scholarship, who use double standards when playing the game of cultural-technological diffusion.

The origins of the Renaissance are complex, and I probably should steer away from this part of his book, but I can't resist making a few comments that will come later on.

On the important point of the Eastern ambassador, on which Menzies whole thesis lies, it is difficult to understand why he does not mention what should be considered the "official" account of this envoy. That is, the account of Poggio Bracciolini, the papal secretary at the time of the visit to Florence.

Now, Menzies claims that this ambassador came from China and was brought by a squadron from Zheng He's great treasure fleet.

Menzies source is a letter from Paolo Toscanelli to Christopher Columbus, a document whose authenticity has been disputed by some scholars. Having read all the arguments, I believe that Toscanelli's letter is authentic, but that still does not excuse Menzies from at least discussing Poggio's account.

The two documents differ in that Poggio describes the envoy as coming from a Nestorian Christian kingdom in "Upper India" located a few weeks journey from "Cathay," the old name for northern China. Toscanelli seems to think that this kingdom is linked with the 'Great Khan,' i.e. the old Mongol ruler of China.

At the time, the Mongols had already been replaced by the Ming Dynasty in China, and Toscanelli's confusion seems to center on the mention of Nestorian Christians. There existed old accounts, related to Prester John, that the Great Khan had become a Nestorian Christian. It seems that upon hearing about a far eastern Nestorian kingdom, Toscanelli connected the envoy's account with these old legends that equated the Great Khan with Prester John.

Now earlier I have mentioned that "Upper India" during this period generally meant Southeast Asia, although it was also used at times for South China. The mention of a Nestorian kingdom this far east is nothing but code for the old Prester John of the Indies.

In an earlier post, I discussed the letter of Ferdinand and Isabella given to Columbus with the space for the addressee left blank. This letter was meant for any Eastern potentate including Prester John and the Great Khan, that Columbus happened to encounter. The letter mentions the Spanish monarchs having heard reports from the East about a desire to learn about the Christian kingdoms of Europe.

Ferdinand and Isabella are certainly referring to the Eastern ambassador in Florence, who was the last envoy mentioned coming from the areas that Columbus was heading toward on his fateful journey. According to Menzies, this ambassador arrived in 1434, although it can also be argued that he came in 1441.

Rather than arriving with a Chinese squadron though it seems that the ambassador arrived with Nicolo di Conti along with the rest of the entourage of papal envoy Alberto de Sarteano.

One could hardly imagine that the Quatracento writers would have missed something as spectacular as the visit of a Chinese naval force composed of ships unlike anything seen in Europe of the time. Yet, the history of the period is silent about any such maritime event.

Prester John's envoy

According to Pero Tafur, Nicolo di Conti stayed under the protection of Prester John of the Indies during most of his time in the East. Di Conti himself mentions Nestorians near Cathay when interviewed by Poggio Bracciolini.

Tafur's account states that Prester John was interested in learning more about Europe -- mirroring the desire of the foreign potentates mentioned in Ferdinand and Isabella's letter. Furthermore, di Conti claimed, according to Tafur, that Prester John had sent envoys to the West, apparently on unsuccessful missions.

Therefore, when di Conti returned to Europe it would make sense that Prester John would send along an envoy with him i.e. Menzies' Eastern ambassador. This would tie in the Nestorians mentioned by di Conti to Poggio, and the Nestorian kingdom that the latter assigns to the Eastern ambassador. That Nestorian kingdom, of course, is the kingdom of Prester John!

Indeed, Pope Eugenius IV actually addresses a letter to this eastern king addressing him though as "Emperor Thomas of the Indians," since the Portuguese had earlier convinced the Vatican to address the Ethiopian emperor as "Emperor Prester John of Ethiopia."

Apparently the Eastern ambassador made enough of a friendly impression that when Columbus set sail on his epochal voyage, he headed directly toward the location he thought the kingdom was located, i.e., the East Indies. That Columbus was headed for the Indies is proven by his ultimate destination during his multiple voyages and by the name by which the new land became to be known.

The Spanish considered the Americas as part of the "Indias," from which the indigenous peoples became known as "Indios" (Indians).

"India" here meant the East Indies, the source of the spices like nutmeg and cloves and also, Columbus thought, the gold of biblical Ophir.

The admiral was heading, thus, to "Upper India," to the friendly Nestorian Christian kingdom of the Eastern ambassador, or so he thought. Magellan also was apparently seeking the same friendly contact for both men navigated toward the same latitudes that would have brought them to the "East Indies" i.e., modern insular Southeast Asia. For it was here apparently that the ambassador, and possibly also di Conti, had located the fabled kingdom in their accounts to Poggio (and the ambassador's account to Toscanelli).

Dawn of the Renaissance

Menzies claims that the Eastern ambassador brought with him "distinguished men of great learning,"and some important Chinese documents including the Nung Shu, an agricultural manual; a Chinese astronomical calendar and Chinese world maps. He asserts that the founders of the Renaissance copied directly from these works sparking a great awakening in art and learning.

Indeed, the explosion of humanism, art and invention that typically is associated with the Renaissance began at about the middle of the 15th century. There were, of course, some 'proto-Renaissance' developments earlier, but nothing that stood out so much from what was happening elsewhere.

So Menzies timing is not off. There may have been many factors that led to the Renaissance including the wealth and slave labor afforded by the Venetian and Genoan maritime trade networks. These factors allowed the elite of northern Italy more leisure time for intellectual and artistic pursuits - something that was supported also by the patronage of the House of Medici.

However, one could still ask why Tuscany and its center of Florence, the birth place of the Renaissance, rather than say Venice or Genoa? And why at that specific period in the mid-15th century?

Menzies suggests the Chinese works, but how likely is it that the Florentines had actual treatises like the Nung Shu? If they did, such a document would be a great artifact for study not only of its technical content, but of the Chinese language itself. We would expect that such documents would be mentioned, and illustrated, in Renaissance works.

One can admit that many new inventions spring up suddenly during this period and some of these are very similar, but usually not exactly similar to earlier Chinese inventions. But not all are related to Chinese technology. For example, one of Menzies' sources, Lynne White, suggests that the concept of the windmill actually derives from the Tibetan prayer wheel.

Both White and Menzies mention the many "Tartar" slaves, mostly young women, that were brought into northern Italy at the time by Genoan and Venetian merchants. One invention that Menzies mentions -- the piston and/or chain pump -- is specifically called a "Tartar" pump by writers of that time. Some scholars suggest that these Tartars came from the region between Tibet and China, and thus would have been exposed to technologies like the Tibetan prayer wheel.

So it appears that there were many streams of information flowing into Florence during the mid-15th century, but that much of these idea were probably flowing through word-of-mouth rather than via exchange of documents.

Could it be that the great foreign host brought to the Council of Florence by Sarteano, including probably di Conti and the Eastern ambassador, contributed in no small way to this influx of ideas?

If the Eastern ambassador was accompanied by "distinguished men of great learning" as suggested by the letter of Toscanelli, it appears that the information was transmitted orally, thus accounting for the inexactness in the relationship of the technologies in the widely-separated areas involved.

While many of these inventions could certainly have been developed in China, where there is much documentation, the ideas did not necessarily have to be transmitted by any particular ethnic group.

Interestingly, many of the new ideas mentioned by Menzies relate quite directly to the problem of maritime navigation. I have argued that the Eastern king, known in the West as "Prester John," had attempted for some time to encourage Europe to become involved in the maritime spice trade in order to counterbalance Muslim expansion. This included the possible transfer of sea charts like the ones mentioned by Marco Polo, who links them with the navigators of the "Sea of Chin" and the "Isles of India." These navigators told Polo of golden Cipango and the 7,000+ islands that existed in that eastern sea.

In a nutshell, I enjoyed Menzies book even if I disagreed with some key points. Great reading to get a new perspective on all the factors that contributed to the European Renaissance. However, one should follow up on any of the more controversial proposals made by the author.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Menzies, Gavin. 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance. New York: William Morrow, 2008.

White, Lynn, Jr. " Tibet, India, and Malaya as Sources of Mediaeval Technology," American Historical Review, 54, 1960.

__. Medieval Technology and Social Change. Oxford. 1962

The Muslim Letters of Prester John

2009-05-31T15:41:00.000-07:00

We have examined how Prester John sent letters to the Papacy and the Christian kingdoms of the West.

Equating Prester John with the historical king of Zabag known as the Mihraj, we have also seen how the latter king reached out to the kingdoms of Tibet, India and China, by sending gifts and supporting building projects abroad. Prester John, likewise, had proposed building projects in his message to Pope Alexander III.

The Mihraj was also in the habit of sending letters to the emperor of China, and the Sung Dynasty annals state that his kingdom used Chinese characters when sending such official correspondence. Two such letters are mentioned explicitely in the annals -- one in 1017 to the emperor and cast in "golden characters," and the other in 1080 from the king's daughter, in Chinese characters, addressed to the superintendent of trade. The latter however would not receive the letter but instead forwarded it to the emperor.

As discussed previously, in this author's opinion these overtures were part of the king's attraction policy that took on a special emphasis when Zabag's trade routes were infringed upon by expanding Muslim influence.

However, there may have been a time when the Mihraj also attempted to reach out to the Sunni Muslim juggernaut at the very beginning of the Umayyad Caliphate. S. Q. Fatimi has analyzed two letters from the "Mihraj" to the first Umayyad caliph Mu'awiyah in in 661 CE, and to the caliph Umar ibn abd al-Aziz (717-20). Fatimi marshals evidence to show that this king of "al-Hind" is, in fact, the ruler of Zabag. The very title "Mihraj" or "Mahraj" was used specifically in Muslim texts for the monarch of Zabag.

The first letter is recorded by al-Jahiz (783-869) in Kitab al-Hayawan. According to Jahiz, Abd al-Malik b. Umayr (822-3) saw the letter from the diwan (secretary) of Mu'awiyah and it was passed from him to Abu Ya'qub al-Thaqafi who relayed it to al-Haytham b. Adi, the source of al-Jahiz.

Unfortunately, Jahiz only records the greeting of the letter from the king of al-Hind "in whose stables are a thousand elephants, (and) whose palace is built of bright gold and silver, who is served by a thousand daughters of the kings, and who possesses two rivers, which irrigate aloes plants, to Mu'awiyah..."

The second letter is found in Al-Iqd al-Farid by Abd Rabbih (860-940) who gives as his source Nu'aym b. Hammad.

Nu'aym b. Hammad wrote: "the king of al-Hind sent, a letter to Umar b. Abd al-Aziz, which ran as follows: From the King of kings [Malik al-Amlak], who is the descendant of a thousand kings, in whose stables are a thousand elephants, and in whose territories are two rivers which irrigate plants of aloes, odoriferous herbs, nutmeg, and camphor, whose fragrance spreads the distance of twelve miles -- to the king of the Arabs, who does not associate other gods with God. I have sent to you a gift, which is not much of a gift but a greetings and I wish that you may send to me someone who might teach me Islam and instruct me in its Laws."

Similarities with Prester John's letter

Now we can immediately note some resemblances of these two letters with those sent centuries later by Prester John to the Christian emperors and kings.

First, there is the mention of the gift, which is not unusual in communication between kings. There is also the flowery, somewhat pompous, self-introduction of the king. In particular, the Mihraj uses the title "King of Kings" or Malik al-Amlak just as Prester John refers to himself as Rex Regnum "King of Kings." Both monarchs claim to have many elephants at their command, and there is also the mention from both the Mihraj and Prester John of a palace constructed with precious metals.

In Prester John's communication with Alexander III, he asks for instruction in the Catholic religion, and we see the same request, but this time with reference to Islam, in the second letter of the Mihraj.

Ibn Tighribirdi (1410-1470) gives another version of the second letter, on the authority of Ibn Asakir, in which he adds a sentence near the end: "I have sent you a present of musk, amber, incense and camphor, Please accept it, for I am your brother in Islam." This would suggest that the Mihraj had accepted Islam, and Fatimi suggests that the king may have converted, but that the religion was latter rejected by his descendants. Another possibility, of course, is that Ibn Tighribirdi's late account uses unreliable sources. In either case, there is no evidence that Islam was practiced widely in Zabag at any point in its history.

However, we do see that the Mihraj follows a similar pattern of open patronage of multiple religions that we have suggested earlier was part of a long-standing royal policy of Zabag.

With reference to the "two rivers" mentioned in the Mihraj's letter, we note again the suggestion that one title for the king of the isles dating from ancient times was "Lord of the River." Fatimi, who holds that Zabag should be equated with Srivijaya, thinks that rivers mentioned are the Batanghari in Jambi and the Musi in Palembang.

The two rivers, in my view, would represent the primary drainage courses for the two sacred mountains, Pinatubo and Arayat. The Pampanga River, although it has its source further north, passes very close to Arayat and right through the town called Arayat, and thus was associated with that mountain. The river of Pinatubo could have been the Guagua River, but also the Masantol river which joins the Pampanga River in Masantol, where I have suggested the Zabag emporium was located. Visitors and merchants would have entered into the emporium by sailing up the Pampanga River and registering at the royal palace at Malauli before preceding further upstream.

In the Mihraj's letters, he mentions the spices of his kingdom including nutmeg, which was found only in the islands around and including Maluku (the Moluccas) and Mindanao. Nutmeg along with clove buds, which was found only in Maluku region, were traded mainly along the "Clove Route," which lead to the northwest along what the Chinese called the "Eastern Ship Route." I have suggested that this trade route was controlled primarily by the Mihraj.

The letters of the Mihraj can be viewed as early examples of a tradition of correspondence used by the king of Zabag to accomplish geopolitical goals. The timing of the letter coincided with the accounts of the Sayabiga, the natives of Zabag that I have suggested acted as agents of the Mihraj in latter times. However, the course of history would suggest that a "friendly" outcome was not achieved, and the kingdom of Zabag would later have to pursue other courses of action.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Fatimi, SQ. "Two Letters from Maharaja to the Khalifah", Islamic Studies (Karachi), 2, 1 (1963), 121-40.

Rost, Reinhold. Miscellaneous Papers Relating to Indo-China. London: Trübner & Co, 1886, 188-91.

Apocalypse, Swan Knight and the Crusades

2009-05-08T22:23:00.000-07:00

Turning a bit to more esoteric matters, the legend of the Swan Knight, it has been mentioned, was included in the genealogy of the famous leader of the First Crusade, Godfrey of Bouillon.

William of Tyre around the year 1170 was the first to mention this connection:

We pass over, intentionally, the fable of the Swan, although many people regard it as a fact, that from it he (Godfrey de Bouillon) had his origin, because this story seems destitute of truth.

From this quote we can surmise that the story of Godfrey's descent from the Swan Knight was already current and that there were "many people" who took it quite seriously; although William of Tyre was not one of them. The latter, who was archbishop of Tyre, was raised in Jerusalem when that city was co-ruled by Melisende, the daughter of Godfrey de Bouillon's cousin Baldwin II.

The legendary crusader histories, known as the Crusade Cycle, beginning shortly after William of Tyre wrote the statement above, appear to have been composed by those believers in the Swan Knight story.

Whether fictional or, at least party, based in truth, the Swan Knight origin of Godfrey de Bouillon can be shown to have links with the millenial thought that pervaded Europe in the period leading up to the First Crusade.

Apocalypse and the Crusades

There is some evidence that many people in Europe expected the apocalypse around the year 1000. The texts of Adso, Abbo and Glaber seem to indicate an increasing concern in this area in the lead up to the new millenium. Some believed the invasion of the Magyars heralded the beginning of the end-times.

When the year 1000 came and past, these millenarian feelings did not subside. These apprehensions were based as much on extra-biblical prophecies like the Sibylline oracles and Pseudo-Methodius, and their reworkings, as on the canonical works like Daniel or Revelations.

Pope Gregory VII in 1074 might be considered the first to, unsuccessfully, call for a crusade when he mentioned his plans to himself lead an expedition of 50,000 in liberating the Holy Sepulchre. It appears from Gregory VII's statements that he was casting himself as the Last Emperor mentioned in the Tiburtine Sibyl.

In 1086, Benzo, bishop of Alba, called on the emperor Henry IV to conquer Rome, Constantinople and Jerusalem, again mentioning the prophetic liberation of the Holy Sepulchre and reworking passages from the Cuman Sibyl into his message. In describing the Second Crusade, Otto of Freising quoted Sibylline works that mention the "pilgrim God" (peregrini Dei), and he describes the invading crusaders as "pilgrims" to the Holy Land.

H. Hagenmeyer's analysis of the Gesta Francorum, the anonymous chronicle of the First Crusade written by a member of Bohemund I of Antioch's expedition, gives an idea of the importance of the sibyls to crusader thought. Hagenmeyer found that the only written works referred to in the Gesta are the Bible and the "Sibylline prophecies."

Sibylline literature is known for its references to a savior "king from the east," a concept that I believe is important in both Godfrey's Swan Knight link and in the claims made in the letters of Prester John in the following century. Pseudo-Methodius, whose prophecies were also popular during this time, has his own version of the king from the east in Jonitus, the extra-biblical fourth son of Noah who settles in the "region of the Sun" (hiliu chora) to the East where we find the lands of Eden and Nod.

Pseudo-Methodius predicts one or two conquering Christian emperors in the last days. One will come from "the seed of Chuseth, the daughter of Phol, king of Ethiopia" arising as 'King of the Romans.' There is also a conquering king who descends, at least in collateral line, from Jonitus in the East. The prophecies do not clearly separate these two and that may be why latter writers wrote of two prominent Christian kings in the end-times. For example, Jacques de Vitry in the early part of the 13th century, wrote of a King of the West, who he equates with Frederick Barbarossa, and a King of the East, or Prester John, whom de Vitry identifies with the news trickling in of Genghis Khan's conquests.

We know from three prominent Benedictine historians of the period -- Guibert of Nogent, Baldric of Bourgueil and Robert the Monk -- that the crusades were viewed , in certain circles at least, as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Another indication of the millenarian environment is the case of Count Emicho of Flonheim and leader of the "German Crusade" who claimed he was himself the Last Emperor who would lead his armies to the final battle.

The King of the East concept appears to be directly linked with Godfrey de Bouillon's descent from the Swan Knight in the Crusade Cycle and other medieval literature.

House of Bouillon and the Swan Knight

The three earliest versions of the story linking Godfrey de Bouillon with the Swan Knight are Dolopathos, Elioxe and Beatrix, generally dated between the last quarter of the 12th century and first half of the 13th century.

Dolopathos -- A king meets a fairy woman who claims to be queen of the forest. The two marry and produce seven children with golden chains around their neck. The sons become swans until all except one are changed back to humans. The brother that remains a swan pulls a knight, the Swan Knight, in a boat using his gold chain.

Elioxe -- King Lothair from 'beyond Hungary,' meets the fairy Elioxe who comes from inside a mountain. They have seven swan children including one who is said will become a "king of the orient," (un roi d'Orient). Again one brother remains a swan and pulls the boat of his Swan Knight brother.

King Oriant of Lillefort (Illefort) the "strong island," marries Beatrix and the rest of the story follows the same pattern with swan children, and the Swan Knight drawn in his boat by his swan brother. "Oriant" or "Oryant" is an archaic form of French "Orient," and this name has been linked by some with "un roi d'Orient" of Elioxe.

These early stories mention either a 'king of the east' or indicate a fairy kingdom, which might also be an indication of an eastern location. Elioxe places the scene vaguely "beyond Hungary." The late 13th century Lohengrin places the Swan Knight in India along with the Holy Grail.

From the 15th to 17th centuries, a series of works claiming earlier sources have the Swan Knight born in the terrestrial paradise, and founding the House of Cleves rather than that of Bouillon. In 1478 Gert van der Schuren, secretary of the first Duke of Cleves, says that the Swan Knight "comes from the earthly paradise, which some call the Grail." He claimed to have learned this from a lost 13th century work of Helinandus. Dutch historian John Veldenaer in 1480 also citing earlier sources says: "Some chronicles say that the Knight of the Swan came out of the ' Gral,' as the paradise on earth was earlier called."

In 1609, the tutor of the Duke of Cleves named Stephanus Vinandus Pighius claimed that: "Some ancient chronicles assert that this Helius came from a certain splendid earthly paradise called Grail and that he came in a boat."

The words gral, grail, graele, etc. in these accounts is thought to be the same "graal" first mentioned by Chretien i.e, the Holy Grail; and thus refers to the Grail Realm. In Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach writes:

Upon a silken cushion green
She bore the wish of paradise,
Root and branch before their eyes.
A thing it was they called the grail.
Earthly wishes' fullest tale...

The grail's a prize from Eden's shore,
Earthly pleasures' fullest store,
In much 'tis heaven's counterpart

The Swan Knight associated with the House of Cleves was not apparently the same one found in the legend of Godfrey de Bouillon as Pighius says that the knight arrives at Nimegen in 732. According to the legend, the Swan Knight is called forth on his mission by a bell located in the earthly paradise or in some mountain on his unknown home. Therefore, he is sent periodically over the ages to perform his calling, which seems linked with protecting the rights of women. In three cases, he defends the duchesses of Brabant and Cleves; and the countess of Bouillon -- all in the Low Countries that are today known as Benelux -- from marauding dukes intent on forcibly taking their inheritance.

Pighius, Hermann Stangefol (1656) and other later writers tended to dismiss the wondrous tales of an earthly paradise and gave other explanations, for example, that the Swan Knight came from a monastery called Paradise in Thurgau.

However, in the earlier accounts the concept of the terrestrial paradise places it squarely at the furthest East in the Indies. Even Parzival's Wasteland, the realm of the Grail, while appearing to refer to Jerusalem in part, also by analogy, points to the eastern paradise and it was there that Lohengrin, his Swan Knight, was born.

The Ebstorf Map (1234) of Gervase of Tilbury is a traditional "flat earth" type of map showing the world in the form of the Corpus Domini. Notice the head of Christ at the top of the map, which signifies the East, near Paradise; with the feet at the bottom, or West; and the hands in the directions North and South, or right and left respectively. Click on image for full scalable version.

Close-up showing Christ's head signifying the East, to the left of which is the Terrestrial Paradise in an inset with Adam, Eve, the Tree of Knowledge and the Serpent. Notice the word "India" below this depiction of the Garden of Eden near the right-hand corner.

Gervais crammed all the legendary places of the East and the Indies found in the Alexandrine and other romances in his mappa mundi. Click on image for full version detailing certain locations and peoples including Chryse, the Cynocephali, the Kingdom of Women and the Tomb of St. Thomas.

Now the Crusade Cycle generally has the Swan Knight coming in his boat to Nijmegen (Nymegen) or Mainz, drawn by a swan, to rescue the lady of Bouillon from the Duke of Saxony. Their daughter becomes the mother, so they say, of Godfrey of Bouillon.

We find the story of a child, Sceaf, coming on a rudderless boat to Scandea (Scandinavia) in Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle both of the 8th century. Here it appears to be borrowed partly from Pseudo-Methodius as Sceaf is called, like Jonitus, the fourth son of Noah in the Anglo-Saxon genealogies and regnal lists. The European writers further made Sceaf the ark-born son of Noah from which idea apparently was derived the Swan Knight's boat.

Jonitus was closely associated in medieval Europe with Paradise, living himself in Nod to the east of Eden; and credited with having brought the seeds, fruit or branches of the Tree of Paradise from which was planted the tree used to make the cross of Christ.

Again, it was one of the lineage of Jonitus who would come in the end-times to conquer the Saracens and Jerusalem heralding the Second Coming. In Gerbert de Montreuil's continuation of Chretien's Conte du Graal written around 1226-30, Perceval is told in a vision that he will have a son from whose seed will descend the Swan Knight, who will in turn liberate Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre. Here again we find the Tiburtine Sibyl's prophecy of the Last Emperor who regains the tomb of Christ.

Whether fiction or (partly) truth, giving Godfrey the leader of the First Crusade a descent from the Swan Knight was to link him, at least through analogy, with Sibylline prophecies of the "king from the East," and with those of Pseudo-Methodius by suggesting lineage from Jonitus.

Swan Knight tales are centered in the multi-lingual areas of French Walloon, Flemish and Dutch speakers -- now known as Benelux -- and a bit southward into the German-speaking area of Mainz. Across northern France was the locus of fairy-related tales in Brittany and Anjou, also multi-lingual. This whole region between and including Brittany and the Netherlands contributed most of the participants in the First Crusade.

Interesting from an esoteric standpoint were the stories of the marriages of the Swan Knight and the Melusine, the female fairy type, with "humans." In the case of the Melusine, her husband was instructed never to look at her while she bathed. Inevitably the curious husband would succumb to curiosity discovering his wife's serpent form. The Swan Knight had the condition that his wife should never ask his true name or origin. Again, the wife would eventually break the agreement upon which the Swan Knight would take his leave on a swan-pulled boat headed for regions unknown.

In each case, there was a need to keep the real identity, the fairy identity, secret. Interesting also is the swan or bird identity of the male fairy, while the female fairy is serpentine -- a pattern that we have discussed here before.

The case of Prester John

In the century that followed the First Crusade, we find also that Prester John apparently makes claims in his famed letters based on the same concept of the millenarian "king from the east."

There have been attempts to analyze the internal evidence provided by the Prester John letters, one of the best undertaken by Vsevolod Slessarev.

Slessarev surmised, primarily due to the negative comments made against the Byzantine emperor, that the author of the letter to Manuel must have been a forgery by a Western Christian author. However, as noted by Sabine Baring-Gould, the slights against Rome appear even more intense in the same letter. Indeed, the eastern king says that one of his descendents would conquer Rome and all the Western Christian kingdoms!

In the letter addressed to the "Emperor of Rome" (Frederick Barbarossa) and the "King of France," Prester John only mentions his promise to retake the Holy Sepulchre and "all the Promised Land."

Nowhere does Prester John claim to be a member of, or the desire to be a member of, the Byzantine or Roman churches. Indeed, the importance given to St. Thomas and the titles of church officials attached to his kingdom give, as Baring-Gould notes, a solid indication of Nestorian bias. And in the message given by Hugh of Gabala earlier in the century, Prester John is expressely described as a Nestorian king.

The insults to Byzantine and Western Christian kingdoms make it unlikely also that the letters were sent by anyone living in those kingdoms. Yet, the knowledge of the political intrigues of Jerusalem, including those involving the Templars, hint that the letters were at least informed by someone living close to but not in the crusader kingdoms.

One manuscript of the letter to Emperor Manuel contains a note indicating it was translated from Greek into Latin by Archbishop Christian of Mainz. Versions of this letter do contain Greco-Latin forms such as "Romeon" instead of "Romanorum." Another manuscript claims to be translated into Latin from Arabic. Quite probably, the letters mentioned by Albericus in the Chronicon were in different languages -- the one to Emperor Manuel in Greek and that to Emperor Frederick in Latin -- for example.

There would have been little difficulty in obtaining translators for these letters. Many learned Arabs were very familiar with Greek, having helped preserved the ancient Greek corpus, and some were also versed in Latin. Aspects of the Alexandrine romantic literature, which pervade the Prester John letters, would have been widely familiar to scholars in the Muslim world.

As to the claim of forgery, we can note again as earlier in this blog that both letters mentioned here give indications of a previous meeting of envoys, who may also have aided in the composition of the letters between the monarchs.

In the letter to Manuel, we read:

Receive the dignity of our hierarch in our name and use it for they own sake, because we gladly use your vase of oil, in order that we mutually strengthen and corroborate our virtue.

Also according to Albericus:

Our Majesty has been informed that you hold our Excellency in love, and that the report of our greatness has reached you. Moreover we have heard through our treasurer that you have been pleased to send to us some objects of art and interest, that our Exaltedness might be gratified thereby.

Being human, I receive it in good part, and we have ordered our treasurer to send you some of our articles in return.

And in the letter to Frederick and Louie VII, Prester John states:

We beg you to keep in mind the holy pilgrimage, and may it take place soon, and may you be brave and of great courage, and pray, do not forget to put to death those treacherous Templars and pagans and, please, send us an answer with the envoy who brought the presents.

These statements indicate that envoys had been working behind the scenes and also suggest a previous exchange of gifts. Similar contact between envoys in found in Pope Alexander III's letter to Prester John. Obviously had such contact not taken place, the letters would be immediately revealed as fraudulent. Thus, a consistent tradition would indicate that such diplomatic contacts had taken place during the events recorded by Albericus starting in 1165. There must have been reasonable cause for the Pope, emperors and other kings to whom the letters were sent to have believed in their validity and in the integrity of the envoys. In addition, they must have had some reason to believe in the possibility of the self-described "Prester John" to fulfill some of the promises he offered in the correspondence.

However, the reason for mentioning these letters here is that both give indications that Prester John was appealing to the same millenarian yearnings that helped fuel the crusades, and which were likely linked with the Swan Knight legend.

In the letter to Frederick Barbarossa and Louis VII, Prester John promises to liberate the Holy Sepulchre and capture the entire Christian Holy Land -- a link with Sibylline prophecy. Furthermore he states that his own success was prophesied to his father:

Know that I had been blessed before I was born, for God sent an angel to my father who told him to build a palace full of God's grace and a chamber of paradise for the child to come, who was to be the greatest king on earth and to live for a long time.

The letter to Manuel also gives apocalyptic utterances:

These accursed fifteen nations will burst forth from the four quarters of the earth at the end of the world, in the times of Antichrist, and overrun all the abodes of the Saints as well as the great city Rome, which, by the way, we are prepared to give to our son who will be born, along with all Italy, Germany, the two Gauls, Britain and Scotland. We shall also give him Spain and all the land as far as the icy sea. The nations to which I have alluded, according to the words of the prophet, shall not stand in the judgment, on account of their offensive practices, but will be consumed to ashes by a fire which will fall on them from heaven.

Prester John was in effect claiming to be the promised "king from the east" of the pre-crusade prophecies.

As an aside it is worth mentioning that Prester John apparently had also requested Alexander III for permission to build a church in Rome and an altar in Jerusalem. Previously we have noted that the king of Zabag had engaged, as part of his policy of attraction, in building projects in India and China. Edrisi, writing around 1154, states that the king of Zabag was still actively trading along the African coast at that time. However, we hear nothing of the envoy sent by Alexander III to Prester John. Maybe this is not too surprising as Chinese annals record that the last envoys sent from this kingdom came in the year 1178, only a year after Alexander III's envoy was dispatched. The eastern king was named in transliterated Chinese characters Si-li-ma-ha-la-sha.

After the 1178 embassy, no more is heard of the kingdom during the remainder of the Sung dynasty or in the Yuan dynasty that followed.

Swan Knight as sleeping hero

In most versions of the Swan Knight tale, the hero comes sleeping on a boat from his mysterious homeland.

In the Wartburgkrieg written in the first half of the 13th century, we read:

How Arthur lives within the mount and many heroes bold,
Hundreds she to me did name;
With him from Britain's isle they came,
Nor may their names to any churl be told.

And Arthur too has sent forth knights
To Christendom since he departed mortal sight.
Hear how these a tocsin calls

Many thousand miles away,
Wherefrom a noble count hath lost his life in fray;
Hear how pride hath made him false,

Hear too the tale about this bell: all of Arthur's singers
Must leave their art and cease to sing,
For in their ears the bell doth ring,
Whence in the court no trace of pleasure lingers.

The Sibyl's child, Felicia,
With Arthur there both she and Juno are,
That from Saint Brandan's lips I know full well. Nor yet does Klinsor this explain,
Who is the knight whom Arthur has sent out again,
And neither does he say who 'tis who rings the bell. . . .

Canst thou to us in song explain
How Loherangrin by Arthur was sent forth again?"

Here King Arthur lives within a far-off hollow mountain together with Loherangrin, the Swan Knight, and other notables -- the Roman goddess Juno; Felicia, daughter of the Sibyl; and St. Brandon, who sailed east from Ireland to the "Island of Paradise" also called the "Promised Land of the Saints" never to be heard from again. This is the mountain of the "sleeping heroes" that appears so often in later medieval works.

Arthur probably first appears in a subterranean realm in Etienne's Draco Normannicus (1167-9) were he is described as 'King of the Underworld' in the far-off Antipodes. This is Avalon, or as called in Tristan, 'Avelun, the fairy land.'

Gervais of Tilbury and Caesarius of Heisterbach, both writing in the same period as the Wartburgkrieg also mention the underground realm of Arthur. However, rather than place the Arthurian underworld in the Garden of Eden, they rather place it in or on Mt. Aetna in Silicy, the entrance to Hell in some medieval traditions. Caesarius writes:

At the time when Emperor Henry had subjugated Sicily there was in the bishopric of Palermo a certain deacon who was, I think, a German. When one day he lost his best palfrey he sent his servant to look for it in various places. The servant met an old man who said to him: ' Where are you going and what are you looking for?' When the servant replied that he was hunting for his master's horse the old man rejoined that he knew where it was. ' And where?' asked the servant. ' In Mount Gyber [Aetna],' was the reply: ' there my lord King Arthur has it, and this mountain spits forth fire like Vesuvius.' To the astonished servant he said further, ' Tell your master that he come here in forty days to the court of King Arthur. If you neglect to tell him you will be heavily punished.' The servant went back and tremblingly told his master what he had heard. When the deacon heard he had been invited to the court of Arthur he laughed, but on the day set he was stricken and died. These things Godescalcus, canon of Bonn, told us, and said that they happened in recent times.

In this description, the domain of Arthur is described in volcanic terms as it "spits forth fire like Vesuvius."

Joe and the Volcano

The idea that the grail paradise of the Swan Knight was volcanic may also be seen in a latter tradition that equates this mountain home with the Venusberg of Tannhauser fame.

The Saxon Chronicle of Caspar Abel discovered in 1732 but dated to the 15th century says of Lohengrin "that he came from that mountain where Venus is in the grail." This hollow mountain of Venus is likened to hell and the fires of Vesuvius in the Tannhauser literature.

We can venture to the land of Prester John during medieval times for signs of active volcanoes near the area where most medieval geographers placed the Terrestrial Paradise.

In the mid-ninth century, we read in the Akbar al-Sin wa'l Hind: "...near Zabaj is a mountain called the Mountain of Fire, which it is not possible to approach. Smoke escapes from it by day and a flame by night, and from its foot comes forth a spring of cold fresh water and a spring of hot water."

Al-Mas'udi, writing about a century later, says:

There is no volcano on earth which makes a greater noise, nor any the smoke of which is more black, or the flames more copious, than that which is in the kingdom of the Maharaj [Zabag].

He further describes this volcano:

From these mountains issues fire, by day and night. By day it has a dark appearance, and at night it shines red. It rises to such a height, that it reaches the regions of the heaven (i.e. it ascends above the atmosphere). The explosion is accompanied with a noise like the loudest thunder. Sometimes a strange sound proceeds from these volcanos, which is indicative that their king will die; and, if the sound is lower, it foretells the death of one of their chiefs. They know the meaning of these sounds, by long habit and experience. This is one of the great chimneys (craters) of the earth. At no great distance is another island, from which, constantly, the sound of drums, lutes, fifes, and other musical instruments, and the noise of dancing, and various amusements, are heard. Sailors, who have passed this place, believe that the Dajjal (Antichrist) occupies this island.

Prester John's letters mention a river of stones and sea of sand that can also be interpreted as representing volcanic activity:

"Three days' journey from this sea are mountains from which rolls down a stony, waterless river, which opens into the sandy sea. As soon as the stream reaches the sea, its stones vanish in it, and are never seen again....In our territory is a certain waterless sea consisting of tumbling billows of sand never at rest. None have crossed this sea -- it lacks water all together, yet fish of various kinds are cast up upon the beach, very tasty, and the like are nowhere else to be seen."

The river of stones is part of a quite unusual reference to the Sambatyon River that sequestered the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. The references to the Sambatyon in Jewish literature appear to describe volcanic events. We also find in Prester John's letter to Emperor Manuel, mention of the salamander and the fire-proof cloth that it was supposed to spin:

In one of our lands, hight Zone, are worms called in our tongue Salamanders. These worms can only live in fire, and they build cocoons like silkworms, which are unwound by the ladies of our palace, and spun into cloth and dresses, which are worn by our Exaltedness. These dresses in order to be cleaned and washed are cast into flames.

Similar tales are told in Chinese works at least by 520 CE in the Liang Si Gong Zhi where we hear of the "Island of Fire" and "Burning Mountain" located near Fusang, the Cynocephali and the Kingdom of Women. These latter kingdoms are linked to very much the same region that is later known as Sanfotsi and Toupo i.e, the lands of Zabag and Wakwak, although the Liang Si Gong Zhi gives exaggerated distances between these lands.

Upon the summit of the mountain Yen- kuen [Burning Mountain] there live fire rats (ho-shu), the hair of which serves also for the fabrication of an incombustible stuff, which is cleansed by fire instead of by water.

Berthold Laufer thought the material described was not asbestos, as sometimes suggested, but instead a type of barkcloth made of "a certain wood, which, laid in the fire, burns, sparkles, and flames, yet consumes not, and yet a man may rub it to powder betwixt his fingers."

He quotes the Liang annals contemporary with the previous source: "On Volcano Island there are trees which grow in the fire. The people in the vicinity of the island peel off the bark, and spin and weave it into cloth hardly a few feet in length. This they work into kerchiefs, which do not differ in appearance from textiles made of palm and hemp fibres...".

Curiously, Sung Dynasty writings do not mention the volcanic eruptions given for the 100-year period between the 9th and 10th centuries found in Muslim works. Ma Tuan-lin does mention volcanic islands in the region concerned, but he appears to be copying much earlier works.

If we take that this volcano mentioned is Pinatubo, the documented eruptions are either too early or too late to match the related time period. However, J.C. Gaillard has noted that wood samples dating from 1670-1802 bp related to the filling of the paleo-shoreline of the Pampanga Bay may indicate an undocumented eruption phase. A vast area of the Pampanga Bay was filled with sediment, and Gaillard rightly notes that this likely did not happen after the last pre-Pinatubo eruption known as the Buag phase (800-500 bp), since Spanish chronicles make no mention of the phenomenon.

The wood sample dated at 1670 bp (WW-4685) would put the event very close to the eruptive activity indicated in the Liang Dynasty records. And there is evidence that the sedimentation mostly ended by 1000 bp when sea levels reached their present state. We could then postulate that instead of one massive explosive eruption, there was a long eruptive phase likely consisting of periodic eruptions that gradually filled in the Pampanga Bay between 1800 bp and 1000 bp.

Such eruptive activity and filling in of the Pampanga Bay could account for the river of stones and the sea of sand mentioned in Prester John's letter that would have been written about a century after the shoreline stabilized. However, either some minor activity may have continued or else the long history of volcanic eruption had worked its way into local tradition.

Additionally we find that both Prester John's letter and the Chinese notices of Sanfotsi (Zabag) contain references to subterranean regions.

From Prester John:

Near the wilderness trickles between barren mountains a subterranean rill, which can only by chance be reached, for only occasionally the earth gapes, and he who would descend must do it with precipitation, ere the earth closes again.

And from Zhao Rugua's description of Sanfotsi:

There is an old tradition that the ground in this country once suddenly gaped open and out of the cavern came many myriads of cattle, which rushed off in herds into the mountains, though the people all tried to get them for food. Afterwards the crevice got stopped up with bamboo and trees and disappeared.

We can see then a good match between the volcanic, underworld paradise of the Swan Knight and Arthur, and the historical eastern kingdoms of Zabag-Sanfotsi; and I would also suggest the kingdom of Prester John.

Here we have the same region where Iranian legend places Kangdez the hollow mountain fortress of sleeping heroes waiting for the apocalypse, and the Sea of Milk where Visnu's sleeping avatars await the end of the old era before awakening.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Baring-Gould, S. Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. London: Rivingtons, 1867.

Collins, John Joseph. The Apocalyptic Imagination: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic Literature. The biblical resource series. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans, 1998.

Frassetto, Michael. The Year 1000: Religious and Social Response to the Turning of the First Millennium. New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2002.

Gaillard, J.C. "Mt Pinatubo and the Kapampangan region before 1991," IN: K-list: Kapampangan List, 2005, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/k-list/message/11263.

Gaillard, J.C., F.G. Delfin, Jr., E.Z. Dizon, J.A. Larkin, V.J. Paz, E.G. Ramos, C.T. Remotigue, K.S. Rodolfo, F.P. Siringan, J.L.A. Soria, J.V. Umbal. "Anthropogenic dimension of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines, between 800 and 500 years BP," L’anthropologie. 102(2), 2005: 249-266.

Laufer, Berthold. "Asbestos and Salamander: An Essay in Chinese and Hellenistic Folklore," T'oung-pao XVI, 1915, 299-373.

Myers, Geoffrey M., Emanuel J. Mickel, and Jan Nelson. La Naissance Du Chevalier Au Cygne. The Old French Crusade cycle, v. 1. University: University of Alabama Press, 1977.

Schein, Sylvia. Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (1099-1187). Church, faith, and culture in the medieval West. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate, 2005.

Schwartz, Hillel. Century's End: A Cultural History of the Fin De Siècle--from the 990s Through the 1990s. New York: Doubleday, 1990.

Slessarev, Vsevolod. Prester John; The Letter and the Legend. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1959.

Soria, J., Siringan, F., Parreno, P. "Compaction rates and paleo-sea levels along the delta complex north of Manila Bay, Luzon Island, Philippines," Science Diliman, North America, 17, jun. 2007. Available at: http://journals.upd.edu.ph/index.php/sciencediliman/article/view/63/14. Date accessed: 09 May. 2009.

Rice types in Europe

2009-04-23T13:12:00.001-07:00

In relation to the last posting, I'm still doing research on this topic but would like to introduce it at this time.

The type of rice grown in Europe since medieval times -- like the paella of Valencia and the arborio of the Po Valley in Italy -- are of the Japonica variety. Rice agriculture in Spain as previously mentioned began possibly as early as the 8th century and definitely existed already by the 10th century. Rice was introduced into Italy probably in the 15th century or earlier, possibly from Spain.

Although I know of no studies yet that have investigated the types of rice used in medieval Europe, the general type can be ascertained by rice dishes traditional in the areas involved. Paella, which comes from the Moorish word for "leftover" was a dish made by mixing rice with other leftover foods, and thus dates from Muslim times. It always involved sticky, short to medium grain rice i.e., Japonica types. In the same sense, risotto also involves a short to medium grain sticky rice that has the ability to absorb liquid and release starch into the dish, a quality not found with long grain varieties.

Risotto (via Wikipedia)

In Egypt, while both Indica and Japonica varieties are now raised, the evidence points to Japonica as the older type.

Also, we can surmise by the practices used from the Shatt al-Arab to Valencia since medieval times that the rice varieties had to be planted entirely in wet fields -- something that is a requirement for Japonica but not Indica.

Regards.
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

Introduction of rice and tropical crops into Moorish Spain

2009-04-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

Rice may have been introduced into Moorish Spain as early as the late 8th century. By the time of Hakam II in the mid-10th century, we learn from his secretary Arib bin Sa'id that tropical crops like rice (Ar. al-ruz, Sp. arroz), sugar cane (Ar. al-sukkar, Sp. azucar), ginger, banana, watermelon, oranges (Ar., Sp. naranja), lemon (Ar. laimun, Sp. limon) and other citrus were grown in Spain. This general type of agriculture involving these crops was known as filaha hindiyya or "Indian agriculture."

While I'm not aware of any detailed exposition of the transfer of rice agriculture across North Africa to Spain, the general spread of rice in the western Muslim regions during this period is linked with the Zutt and Sayabiga as discussed before. In the early 8th century, these groups were relocated from Mesopotamia to Antioch in Syria where up to 8,000 water buffalo were transported. As mentioned in the previous blog, at the ascension of Hakam II, there is some evidence of domestic water buffalo in Muslim Spain. The 9th century ruler of Egypt and Syria, Tulun, was said to have died from dysentery after drinking too much buffalo milk while in Antioch, so at least by this time we could expect the buffalo to have reached North Africa.

The rice agriculture of Spain like that of the Shatt al-Arab was of the wet paddy type in which the plant was raised entirely in submerged fields. These fields were built in areas that normally flooded, like the Albufera lake region in Valencia, using dikes, canals and in some cases terraces. Most of the rice and sugar cane fields were located on the eastern coast in areas like Valencia, Murcia and Andalusia. Also interesting is the apparent introduction of the use of verbascum as a fish poison during the Moorish periods. The use of verbascum fish poison appears in Arab literature in the medieval period known by the name mahi zahraj or mahi zahre.

Irrigated fields in the Albufera region, Valencia, Spain. Abundant rice and sugar cane fields can still be seen in some areas of Valencia and Murcia. Click image for full view.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala
Sacramento

References

Dymock, William, Charles James Hislop Warden, and David Hooper. Pharmacographia Indica. A History of the Principal Drugs of Vegetable Origin, Met with in British India. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., ld; [etc.], 1890.

Imamuddin, S. M. Some Aspects of the Socio-Economic and Cultural History of Muslim Spain, 711-1492 A.D. Medieval Iberian Peninsula. Texts and studies, v. 2. Leiden: Brill, 1965.

Mez, Adam, S. Khuda Bukhsh, and D. S. Margoliouth. The Renaissance of Islam. 1973.

O'Callaghan, Joseph F. A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Country	Year	Quantity	Envoy
Champa	977	50 jin	Li Pai
Champa	986	50 jin	Li Chao-xian
Sanfotsi	988	50 jin	Pu Yao-tuo-li
Toupo	992	10 jin	Pu Ya-li
Champa	1007		Bu-lu-die-di-jia
Butuan	1007
Champa	1011	30 jin	Pu sa-duo-po
Sanfotsi	1017	30 jin	Pu Mou-xi
Champa	1018	80 jin	Luo-pi-di-jia
Champa	1072
Chola	1077
Sanfotsi	1156	30 jin