Kalinga Ancient Trade Routes

Sembiran

Probable Archaeology

Sembiran is a village on the north coast of Bali. Indian pots buried there show that ships from India reached Bali about two thousand years ago.

Sembiran is a village on the north coast of Bali, in Indonesia. Diggers worked there in 1987 and 1989. They found buried Indian pots, about two thousand years old. [Ardika, 1991, p.221]

The pots included rouletted ware. That is a fine stamped ware, also found at Kalinga’s ports. Diggers also found a piece scratched with letters. The letters are in an old Indian script called Kharoshthi. [Ardika, 1991, p.225]

Historians think these finds show ships from India reached Bali long ago, about two thousand years back. Those ships most likely used the same trade routes as Kalinga’s own ports. [Patra, n.d., p.110; Ardika, 1991, p.221]

No written record names a ship or its captain. So the link between Sembiran and Kalinga rests only on pots that look alike. [Ardika, 1991, p.225]

For scholars

The team who dug at Sembiran never wrote about Kalinga. That link comes only from a separate Odisha journal, based on matching pots. A scratched Kharoshthi letter at Sembiran is odd next to one found at Manikapatna. But no source ties the two together, so that idea is not made here. [Patra, n.d., p.110; Ardika, 1991, p.225]

Facts

Coordinates
-8.13°, 115.32°
[Natural Earth, 1, n.d.]
  1. *Natural Earth, 1:50m Physical and Cultural Vectors*. n.d. public domain
Modern name
Sembiran, Tejakula District, Bali, Indonesia
Region
southeast-asia

Routes through Sembiran

  • Palur to Bali

    Palur was where ships stopped following the coast and turned into open sea for Southeast Asia. Indian pots of exactly the same kind lie buried at Sembiran in Bali.

    [Patra, n.d., pp. 109-110]; [Ardika, 1991, pp. 221-232]; [Patra, 2014, p. 121]; [Xuanzang, 7th century CE, Beal 1884, vol. II, p. 205 n. 55]; [Nanda, 2019, pp. 41-42, 44]
    1. Sushanta Kumar Patra, Benudhar Patra. *Archaeology and the Maritime History of Ancient Orissa*. in Orissa Historical Research Journal XLVII. n.d. , pp. 109-110 (Palur was a departure port on the India-Southeast Asia route; the spread of rouletted ware suggests a trade link from the eastern coast to Southeast Asia.)
    2. I. Wayan Ardika, Peter Bellwood. *Sembiran: the beginnings of Indian contact with Bali*. in Antiquity 65. 1991 , pp. 221-232 (Excavations at Sembiran in Tejakula District, north-east Bali, in 1987 and 1989 found Indian Rouletted Ware, a sherd of Arikamedu type 10 and a body sherd carrying a graffito identified as Kharoshthi, in deposits dated about AD 1-200.)
    3. Benudhar Patra. *Ports in Ancient Odisha: Historical Perspective*. in Odisha Review. 2014 , p. 121 (Ptolemy's apheterion, a point of departure 'immediately to the south of Paloura (Palur), where ships bound for Khryse (the Malaya Peninsula) ceased to follow the littoral and entered the high seas'. Gerini placed it at Gopalpur; Patra prefers Mansurkota nearby.)
    4. Xuanzang. *Record of the Western Regions (Da Tang Xiyu Ji)*. 7th century CE. public domain , Beal 1884, vol. II, p. 205 n. 55 (Beal glosses Charitra as Chinese Fa-hing, 'city of departure', and equates it with 'Ptolemy's to apheterion ton eis ten Chrysen empleonton (lib. vii. c. 1, 15)' - the point where ships left the coast for the Golden Land.)
    5. R. K. Nanda. *Kalinga Bali Yatra and the Maritime Trade of Odisha*. in Odisha Review. Bhubaneswar: Information and Public Relations Department, Government of Odisha. 2019 , pp. 41-42, 44 (p. 41: Baliyatra or 'Boita Bandana Yatra' at Cuttack marks the day Sadhaba mariners sailed for Bali, Java, Sumatra, Borneo and Ceylon on Kartika Purnima. p. 44, NOT p. 43 as cited before: Sembiran's rouletted ware is grouped with Sisupalgarh, Manikpatna and Tamluk.)
Scholar notes

Ardika and Bellwood do not name Kalinga: the link to Odisha is made by OHRJ p. 110, which places Sembiran and the Odishan sites in one rouletted-ware distribution. The Kharoshthi graffito at Sembiran is intriguing beside the Kharoshthi potsherd from Manikapatna, but no published work read here connects the two, and the connection must not be asserted. No coordinate is printed in the paper; the position is taken from a modern map of Tejakula District and is approximate.

  1. I. Wayan Ardika, Peter Bellwood. *Sembiran: the beginnings of Indian contact with Bali*. in Antiquity 65. 1991 , pp. 221-232, esp. pp. 221-227 (Excavations by Ardika in 1987 and 1989 in Tejakula District, north-east Bali, found Indian Rouletted Ware, a sherd of Arikamedu type 10 and a body sherd carrying a graffito identified as Kharoshthi, in deposits the authors date to about AD 1-200 on combined ceramic and epigraphic grounds.)
  2. Sushanta Kumar Patra, Benudhar Patra. *Archaeology and the Maritime History of Ancient Orissa*. in Orissa Historical Research Journal XLVII. n.d. , p. 110 (Rouletted ware from Sisupalagarh, Manikpatna and Radhanagara in Orissa is listed together with the same ware 'from Buni complex in North Java, from Sembiran on the north coast of Bali', which the authors read as implying a trade route connecting the east coast of India with Southeast Asia.)