Kalinga Ancient Trade Routes

Mahatittha (Mantai)

Strongly Supported Archaeology

Mahatittha was ancient Sri Lanka's biggest sea port, where island ships met traders from India. Diggers found rice, spices and pots from far away lands buried there.

Mahatittha was ancient Sri Lanka’s biggest sea port. Scholars say it was the main port of the Anuradhapura kingdom. It held this role for nearly two thousand years. Its spot was ideal for moving goods between ships. So the port grew into a large, mixed city. [Kingwell-Banham, 2018b, Antiquity 92(366), 2018, pp. 1552-1553]

An old Buddhist text from the 400s CE says ships often sailed between Tamralipti and Mahatittha. Beads found at Mantai came from India. So did beads from another Sri Lankan site, Ridiyagama. Similar beads turned up at sites in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia too. [Dayalan, 2019, offprint pp. 17, 24]

For scholars

Mahatittha is not a Kalinga port. It is a trading partner in the Bay of Bengal network. The ship record comes from Dayalan. He retells an old text, the Samantapasadika. His version passed through French and English sources first. It has not been checked against a direct translation. Neither source prints a coordinate. The map position given follows the modern town of Mantai, near Mannar. It is not a dig site grid reference. [Dayalan, 2019, offprint pp. 17, 24]

Facts

Coordinates
8.99°, 80.00°
[Natural Earth, 1, n.d.]
  1. *Natural Earth, 1:50m Physical and Cultural Vectors*. n.d. public domain
Modern name
Mantai, Mannar District, Sri Lanka
Also known as
Mantai, Manthai
Region
sri-lanka

Routes through Mahatittha (Mantai)

  • Tamralipti to Mahatittha

    A 5th-century Buddhist book says ships often sailed between Tamralipti and Mahatittha, a great port in Sri Lanka. Both were busy stops for monks and merchants crossing the Bay of Bengal.

    [Dayalan, 2019, offprint p. 24]
    1. Duraiswamy Dayalan. *Ancient Seaports on the Eastern Coast of India: The Hub of the Maritime Silk Route Network*. in Acta Via Serica 4. 2019 , offprint p. 24 (The 5th-century Samantapasadika, Buddhaghosa's commentary, 'refers to ships often travelling between Tamralipti and Mahatittha.')
Scholar notes

Not a Kalinga port; included as a documented Bay of Bengal trading partner. The Tamralipti-Mahatittha ship record is Dayalan's paraphrase of Buddhaghosa's Samantapasadika via a French/English secondary chain, not independently checked against a primary translation. No printed coordinate was found in either source; position follows the modern-day identification of Mantai near Mannar, read from a gazetteer map, not an excavation grid reference.

  1. Eleanor Kingwell-Banham, Wijerathne Bohingamuwa, Nimal Perera, Gamini Adikari, Alison Crowther, Dorian Q. Fuller, Nicole Boivin. *Spice and rice: pepper, cloves and everyday cereal foods at the ancient port of Mantai, Sri Lanka*. in Antiquity 92. 2018b , Antiquity 92(366), 2018, pp. 1552-1553 ('Mantai thus drew trade and served as the main seaport of the Anuradhapura kingdom for nearly two millennia.' Its 'ideal locale at a key geographic point of transhipment meant that Mantai came to have a large, urban and multicultural population.')
  2. Duraiswamy Dayalan. *Ancient Seaports on the Eastern Coast of India: The Hub of the Maritime Silk Route Network*. in Acta Via Serica 4. 2019 , offprint pp. 17, 24 (p. 24: the 5th-century Samantapasadika 'refers to ships often travelling between Tamralipti and Mahatittha.' p. 17: beads from Ridiyagama and Mantai in Sri Lanka, alongside sites in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia, 'appear to have been imported from India.')