Kalinga Ancient Trade Routes

Manikapatna to Tamralipti

Probable Scholars say

A historian called Tamralipti, at the top of the bay, 'the first and foremost' of ancient Odisha's ports. The same patterned pottery lies at both ends of this coast, so boats seem to have worked between them.

Ships worked up the coast in short hops, from one big port to the next, until they reached Tamralipti.

Tamralipti stood at the top of the Bay of Bengal. One historian calls it “the first and foremost” port on this whole coast. He says traders once travelled by land and river to their nearest port. From there, they made short coastal hops to bigger ports. Then they sailed on to foreign lands. [Patra, 2014, pp.118-119]

The same stamped pottery has been found at Manikapatna and at Tamralipti. It is called rouletted ware. Historians think this hints that ships worked this coast, moving between the two. [Patra, n.d., p.110]

Historians think ships probably moved up this coast in short hops. They went from one big port to the next. This was likely safer than sailing straight across open water. [Patnaik, 2014a, p.103]

For scholars

No source read here records an actual voyage between these two ports. The route is guessed. It comes from a general picture of short coastal hops, and from matching pottery at both ends. Two of the three sources here share an author. So they are not fully independent voices. Tamralipti sits in West Bengal, at modern Tamluk. Some writers call it part of an old Kalinga kingdom. That claim is disputed, so it is not repeated here. [Patra, 2014, p.118; Patra, n.d., p.110]

Facts

Mode
Coastal
From
Manikapatna
To
Tamralipti

Ports on this route

  • Manikapatna

    Manikapatna is an old port on the shore of Chilika lake. People digging there found coins and broken pots from China, Sri Lanka and lands far to the west.

    [Tripati, 2021, pp. 1211-1212]; [Patra, n.d., pp. 111-112]; [Patnaik, 2014a, pp. 104-105]; [Tripati, 2022, Introduction; Sci. Rep. 12:13559]; [Patra, 2014, p. 120]; [Dayalan, 2019, offprint p. 23, section 'Manikapatna']
    1. Sila Tripati. *Indo-Arabian stone anchor of Manikapatna, Odisha, east coast of India: an indicator of maritime contacts of Odisha*. in Current Science 120. 2021 , pp. 1211-1212 (p. 1211: OIMSEAS, Bhubaneswar excavated 1989-1993; site lies on the bank of Chilika Lake in Brahmagiri taluk, Puri district. p. 1212: two periods, 2nd c. BCE to 5th-6th c. CE and 9th to 19th c. CE; Kharoshthi inscription, knobbed and rouletted ware, Puri-Kushan and Chola coins, Yuan/Ming porcelain.)
    2. Sushanta Kumar Patra, Benudhar Patra. *Archaeology and the Maritime History of Ancient Orissa*. in Orissa Historical Research Journal XLVII. n.d. , pp. 111-112 (Finds list: Chinese celadon and porcelain, rouletted pottery and amphora fragments, knobbed ware, Burmese and Siamese pottery, a Ceylonese coin of Sahassamalla, Indonesian terracotta, egg-white Arabian ware, and a Kharoshthi potsherd read as 'Dasatradeva'.)
    3. Sunil Kumar Patnaik. *Puri: A Study of Early Trade and Pilgrim Routes*. in Odisha Review. 2014a , pp. 104-105 (Excavation seasons 1989-90 and 1992-93; site c. 45 km south of Puri; mounds topped by the 13th-c. Bhabakundaleswar temple; period I 2nd c. BCE to 5th-6th c. CE, period II 9th c. to early 19th c. CE; East India Company copper coins, Mughal and Shah Alam coins, a British medal.)
    4. Sila Tripati, Jyotiranjan S. Ray, Rudra Prasad Behera, Prakash Babu, Milan Kumar Mahala, Murali Kocherla, Vijay Khedekar. *Geochemical provenance of an Indo-Arabian stone anchor from Manikapatna highlights the medieval maritime trade of India*. in Scientific Reports 12. 2022 , Introduction; Sci. Rep. 12:13559 (Confirms OIMSEAS 1989-1993 and Deccan College 2010 excavations, same two phases; a stone anchor near the mosque, 2018-19. Also: 'Chinese ceramic sherds ... of the 13th to 14th century CE ... produced in Fujian and Zhejiang Provinces of China' (pers. comm. Ran Zhang).)
    5. Benudhar Patra. *Ports in Ancient Odisha: Historical Perspective*. in Odisha Review. 2014 , p. 120 (Prints a coordinate for the site: 'Lat. 19 deg 43' 54" N and Long. 85 deg 33' 14" E', in the northern tip of the Chilika Lake, Brahmagiri tahsil, Puri district. Also the Sahassamalla-coin network linking Manikpatna, Polonnaruva and Kotchina (Sumatra), and Maratuan (Burmese) brown glazed ware.)
    6. 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. 23, section 'Manikapatna' (Independently gives 19 deg 43' N; 85 deg 34' E, agreeing with Patra 2014 to the arc-minute. Records Abul Fazl (1595-96) on Manikapatna as a large port where salt tax was collected. Journal pagination not verified.)

  • Tamralipti

    A historian called Tamralipti 'the first and foremost' of ancient Odisha's ports, at the top of the Bay of Bengal. Monks and traders sailed from here to Sri Lanka, Burma and China.

    [Patra, 2014, pp. 118-119]; [Dayalan, 2019, offprint pp. 24-25, section 'Tamralipti']; [Patra, n.d., p. 110]
    1. Benudhar Patra. *Ports in Ancient Odisha: Historical Perspective*. in Odisha Review. 2014 , pp. 118-119 ('Of all the ports of ancient Odisha ... the first and foremost was the port of Tamralipti.' Identified with Tamluk, at the Rupnarayana confluence, 'Lat. 22 deg 17' N and Long. 87 deg 57' E'. Ptolemy's Tamalities; Fa-Hien, Xuanzang and Yijing embarked here for China.)
    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. 24-25, section 'Tamralipti' (Independently gives Tamluk at 22 deg 17' N; 87 deg 57' E; the Dudhapani rock inscription of Udayamana (c. 8th century CE) recording Ayodhya merchants frequenting the port; Chinese, Sri Lankan and Southeast Asian potsherds from Tamluk and its neighbouring villages. Journal pagination not verified.)
    3. Sushanta Kumar Patra, Benudhar Patra. *Archaeology and the Maritime History of Ancient Orissa*. in Orissa Historical Research Journal XLVII. n.d. , p. 110 (Large quantities of rouletted ware from the ancient port site of Tamralipti; a Ganga fanam found at Tamralipti, taken to show the port lay under Eastern Ganga suzerainty; Roman gold coins from Bamanghati in Mayurbhanj argued to have arrived through Tamluk.)
Scholar notes

No source read here records a voyage between these two ports. The route is an inference from Patra's general model of short coastal hops and from rouletted ware found at both ends. Two of the three works share an author, so the independence is weaker than the count suggests. Tamralipti is in Bengal, at modern Tamluk; the claim that it was Odishan is a contested political one and is not adopted. Line schematic.

  1. Benudhar Patra. *Ports in Ancient Odisha: Historical Perspective*. in Odisha Review. 2014 , pp. 118-119 (p. 118: 'people from different parts used to come by land and river route to the nearest port, then made a coastal voyage to different big ports, and thence made voyage to different foreign countries'. Tamralipti is 'the first and foremost' of the ports treated.)
  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 Chandraketugarh and Tamluk in West Bengal, which the authors read as one Roman-period trade network.)
  3. Sunil Kumar Patnaik. *Puri: A Study of Early Trade and Pilgrim Routes*. in Odisha Review. 2014a , p. 103 ('the land routes extended from Taxila to Kaveripattinam in the south and Tamluk in the east up to Broach in the west'; Tosali, Kalingapatnam, Tamralipti and Pithunda are named as the Kalinga centres 'which were all in the trade circuit'.)