Indo-Pacific Beads Prove Ancient India's Global Presence

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Indo-Pacific Beads

 

Small, monochrome drawn (cut from a tube) beads are found at

archaeological sites stretching from Ghana to China, Mali to Bali and

South Africa to South Korea. There has been a lot of discussion about

them and controvery over their name. I coined Indo-Pacific, and that

name is now widely used. The details of this debate and the history

of their discovery are in a box at the end of this article.

 

These beads were made by a unique method developed in South India

several centuries B.C. It is still in use.

 

It requires a couple dozen men and women, three furnaces, two of them

unique to the system, and specialized tools. Glassmakers prepare a

large cake of glass by pouring molten glass onto a flat platform. The

cakes are broken up and heated on a shelf adjacent to the unique tube-

drawing furnace (below).

 

Click Link for a sketch of the unique tube drawing furnace, used to

make the beads, at Papanaidupet.

 

http://thebeadsite.com/bb-dg-1.gif

 

 

 

When the glass begins to melt it is taken up on two iron-clad sticks

called gedda paru (Tamil for the stick used to stir mud in house-

building) and kneaded into a viscous mass. Then it is transferred

onto a long iron tube called the lada (e) and rolled along a short,

low wall into a cone (f).

 

The men then pierce the cone by inserting a long iron rod (the

chetleak) through the lada and banging against the base until it

emerges through the apex. The hollow cone on the lada is then

inserted into a high port of the furnace (b). On the opposite side, a

master reaches in with an iron hook, grabs the tip of the cone and

(usually after several tries) begins pulling the cone out into a

tube. He walks back a few meters and pulls the tube out continually,

breaking it into meter lengths as he goes (g).

 

Some 40 to 50 kgs (about 100 pounds) are worked at a time. The

drawing takes about three hours; there are two masters on each team.

The resulting tubes are chopped between two blades by other workers,

then packed in ash and stirred over heat for 20 to 30 minutes to

round off their sharp edges. They may then be sieved and finally

strung up by women with 15 or so long needles, passing them through

the beads held in a winnowing basket.

 

There are at least two intriguing unanswered questions about this

technology. For one, the tube-drawing process is very similar in

conception to the machine that Edward Danner of the Libby Glass

Company patented in 1917 to draw glass tubing automatically. (It is

still in operation in much of the world.) For another, the way the

tubes are subsequently processed is exactly the way Venice processed

tubes until the introduction of machines in the 1860s. There is no

question that the Indians were doing this for two millennia or more

before either Venice or Danner. Coincidences?

 

The waste products of this industry (rather than a large number of

beads), particularly of the tube-drawing step, confirm that

beadmaking was done at a particular site. Arikamedu continued to make

these beads, but in the first century A.D. or so some of the

beadmakers went elsewhere: Mantai, Sri Lanka; Khlong Thom (also

called Kwan Lukpat, "Bead Hill"), Thailand and Oc-eo, Vietnam. Oc-eo

and Khlong Thom were part of Funan, the first state in Southeast

Asia. Their products seem to have enjoyed prestige. Indo-Pacific

beads are found in royal or noble tombs in China (particularly not

yet Sinicized regions such as Annam and Guangzhou), in royal tombs in

Korea (at least in Silla and Paekche ones) and probably in Japan.

 

When Funan fell apart, the beadmakers apparently moved to its

successor, Srivijaya. They worked at Kuala Selinsing and Sungai Mas,

Malaysia and Takua Pa, Thailand as well as Srivijaya/Palembang

itself. By the time the Sailendra dynasty fell and the capital was

moved to Jambi, Indo-Pacific beadmaking had disappeared in Southeast

Asia.

 

Most of these centers made their own glass. They did not recycle

Western glass and do not seem to have had a central glassmaker

distributing glass to each site. This I conclude from the analyses

done by Ron Hancock of the University of Toronto for me.

 

Until the 11th century Indo-Pacific beads were ubiquitous. In the

Philippines they account for 66.2% of all beads of all materials from

all archaeological sites from roughly A.D. 1 to 1200. After that they

virtually disappear (from 1200 to 1450 they account for only 1.2%).

The same pattern is to be seen (though we don't have statistics) in

Sarawak, Java and no doubt elsewhere.

 

Indo-Pacific beads also went west. Arab traders took them to trade

into Africa; they are found all along the East Coast and Madagascar

and down into the northern Forest Zone of West Africa. The Portuguese

continued the pattern, at least in regard to Mozambique.

 

It is no exaggeration to say that Indo-Pacific beads were the

greatest trade beads -- perhaps the greatest trade items -- of all

time.

 

 

History of their Study and the name debate:

 

Ivor Evans saw evidence for their production at Kuala Selinsing,

Malaysia in the 1920s. Horace C. Beck, recognized similar beads in

several places, including Great Zimbabwe. Alastair Lamb suggested

there might have been a nomadic group of Indian craftsmen making

these beads in different places in Southeast Asia.

 

W.G.N. Van der Sleen included them in his "Trade Wind Beads" group as

early as 1956. Although an evocative term, "Trade Wind Beads" was

flawed, as he included all beads brought from Asia to East Africa.

The small drawn beads were there, but so were unrelated types,

including wound beads and stone beads

 

In 1965 Lamb published a paper describing "mutisalah" beads, in the

journal Man as small opaque red (or orange) drawn beads that were

heirlooms on Timor. He said that were all over Southeast Asia. Van

der Sleen wrote a letter to Man saying that Lamb was wrong; "true"

mutisalahs were wound beads heavy in lead. The problem was neither

understood what a mutisalah was.

 

Both "Trade Wind Beads" and "Mutisalah" are common in the literature,

the former especially in Africa and the latter in Southeast Asia.

Since both are inappropriate I coined "Indo-Pacific beads" (a shorter

form of my earlier IPMDGB -- Indo-Pacific Monochrome Drawn Glass

Beads). The name reflects the region in which they were made. The

term is increasingly in use.

 

 

 

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