Kalinga Ancient Trade Routes

Tamralipti to Mahatittha

Probable Scholars say

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.

A 1,500-year-old Buddhist book says ships often sailed back and forth between Tamralipti and Sri Lanka's great port of Mahatittha.

A 5th-century Buddhist book, the Samantapasadika, says ships often sailed between Tamralipti and Mahatittha, a great port in Sri Lanka. [Dayalan, 2019, offprint p. 24]

For scholars

Only one source was read here. So the tier stops at Probable. This claim is a retelling of an old Pali text, passed through other scholars’ work. It is not an independent reading of the original commentary. No cargo is named. The sea lane shown is a schematic line down the Bay of Bengal, not a plotted sailing course. [Dayalan, 2019, offprint p. 24]

Facts

Mode
Maritime (open sea)
From
Tamralipti
To
Mahatittha (Mantai)

Ports on this route

  • 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.)

  • Mahatittha (Mantai)

    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.

    [Kingwell-Banham, 2018b, Antiquity 92(366), 2018, pp. 1552-1553]; [Dayalan, 2019, offprint pp. 17, 24]
    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.')
Scholar notes

Only one source was read, so the tier stops at Probable; the claim is Dayalan's paraphrase of the Pali commentary via a secondary chain, not an independent reading of the Samantapasadika itself or of Buddhaghosa scholarship. No cargo is named. The sea lane is a schematic great-circle-ish line down the Bay of Bengal and across to north-western Sri Lanka, not a plotted sailing course.

  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.')