Indian Antiquary Vol 22

SR No.: 032514
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 442
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 19 MB

Page 377

DECEMBER 1993.). NOTES ON ANTIQUITIES IN RAMANNADESA.
341
variety of proses badge the wond there The Pegia Jat is, alyse vessel of pottery about four feet high, covered with a bard dark glaze, and was formerly much prized as a water jar itlder ROIR Aps and to the brug of Watatanduids in many parts of the world. They worocooted from Martaban and under the name of that port became famous over the whole of the East and even in Europe, Ibn Batuta mentions them in the 14th century under the pame Martaban as Thimons at Steles continerce, and they were largely in use all over India and much prized for storage air in the days of Linschoten and Pyrard de Laval (15th and 16th centuries). As early as 1915 we find a Dictionary in Latin stating this :-vasa figulina quæ vulgo Martabonia dicuntur per Indiam nota sunt. Per Orientem omnem, quin et Lusitaniam, borum est usus So that we see they early spread to Portugal and were familiar to the Arabs. We find also in France, Galand, in 1673, and the "1001 Jours," groting respectively Merdebani and Martabani as "une certaine terre verte" and "porcelaine verte." In 1820 Baillie Fraser fonndimitti okus of the Pegu Jar manufactured in Arabia and called Martaban;" while, writing so long ago as 1609, De Morga, Philippine Islands, Hak. Ed. p. 285f., gives an obvious reference to the Pegu Jar, when he says :-" In this island of Luzon, particularly in the provintos of Manila, Pampanga, Pangasinan, and Ylocos, there are to be found amongst the natives, soune large jars of very apcient earthenware, of a dark colour, and not very sightly, some of them of a middHe'size, and others smaller, with marks and seals, and they can give no account front whence they got them, nor at what period; for now none are brought, nor are they made in the islands. The Japanese seek for them and value them, because they have found out that the root of a herb, which they call cha' (tea!), and which is drunk hot, as a great daintata inedicine, among the kings and lords of Japan, does not keep or last, except in these jars, and so on. The jars were known as tibors, and, under the name gusih, were similarly known and valued among the Dayaks of Borneo, as the Editor of De Morga tells us, referring to Boyle's Adventures in Borneo, p. 93.
Whencesoever, therefore, the Talaings and Burmans got their art of glazing" with lead-oar, Alexander Hamilton puts it, it is clear that an art that had reached the perfection of the Pegu Jar, and had become famous in trade throughout the civilized world as early as the 14th century, must have flourished vigorously in the country quite early enough to be contemporannuus with the earliest date we can reasonably assign to the existing monuments in which the glazed bricks are found.
As to fixing dates when glazing was actually in use in Burma on & large scale, the following evidence may be useful in addition to that collected by Yule, s. v. Martaban, in Hobson-Jobson. Mr. E. H. Parker in his Burma, Relations with China, p. 12, says, quoting from Chinese Annals, of the king of Piao (Burma), that “the circular wall of his city is built of greenish glazed tiles .... their house tiles are of lead and zinc .... they have a hundred monasteries, with bricks of vitreous ware." This quotation, Mr. Parker tells me, is from the Han History, chapter on the T'an (Burma) State, and refers to the doings of the Tang (Chinese) Dynasty (A. D. 600-900), and apparently to knowledge acquired in the year 832 A. D. He further kindly gave me the following quotation from Fan Ch'oh's work on the Southern Barbarians "the Piao State (i. e., Capital) is 75 journeys south of Zung-ch'ang, and communications with it were opened by Koh-lo-fêng. In this State they use greenish bricks to make the city-wall, which is one day's journey in circuit." The date of Koh-lo-fêng is 748-779 A. D.
" A fine collection of quotations extending from 1350 to 1837 A. D., supporting the above stated facts, is to be found in Yule's Hobson-Jobson, page 428 f. But he is wrong in supposing the words 'Pegu Jar' to be obsolete, for the article is still well known in Rangoon and Burma generally to Europeans to this day under that name. See also his Cathay and the Way Thither, Vol. ii. p. 476: and the valuable quotations in Wilson's Documente of the Burmese Wur (1824), Appx. p. lxiv. Low, # very careful obseryer, in his Geological Observations of Portions of the Malay Peninsula, As. Res. (1833) Vol. xviii. pp. 128-162, also makes the mistake of thinking the Pogu Jar obsolete. See also Miscell. Papers on Indo-China, Vol. I. p. 195. He also thought (p. 198) that Martaban was not settled till 1236 A. D. : but this was a mistake.
45 Galena and rice water, B. B. Gazetteer, I. 419.