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The Tamil Bell Mystery

Writer's picture: Akanksha Damini JoshiAkanksha Damini Joshi

The mighty Tamils and their remarkable seafaring ventures—long before the so-called 'Age of Discovery.' Here I am, sitting in Chennai, near the Bay of Bengal, absorbing  this rich history. And I must add, simultaneously discovering the mystery … as so much of the past still lingers as an intriguing question mark.


One of the greatest mysteries? That bell. Bronze. Not too big. Not too small. Once used as a cooking pot, found far, far away in the land of the Maoris, New Zealand. And most astonishingly, engraved with ... Tamil script.

In the late 1830s Cornish missionary William Colenso stumbled upon a curious bronze object, thinking it’s just a cooking pot, until he realized it’s something far more intriguing—the top of a ship’s bell, engraved with Tamil script.


The bell, known as the Tamil Bell had been with the Māori women for generations. How did it get there? No one really knows. All one can decipher is the script and the time.


This is where Nalina Gopal, a young Tamil curator from Singapore, made a path breaking discovery.


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Till, as recent as 2019, it was believed that the bell was from the 15th century. In one glance she knew that was incorrect. Tamil script from that era would have been much harder to read for a modern speaker, yet she could easily decipher the inscription. Her insight led to revising the bell’s origins to the 17th or 18th century.


The inscription mentioned Mohaideen Bakhsh, previously thought to be the ship’s owner or name. Working closely with Tamil researcher J. Raja Mohamad, Nalina uncovered that Mohaideen Bakhsh was, in fact, a Muslim saint revered by merchant communities in Southeast Asia. It seemed likely that the inscription was a dedication, placing the ship under the saint’s protection.


While, thanks to Nalina and her team, we have the date and script sorted, the mystery of how this Tamil bell got all the way to New Zealand remains just as it was.


In fact, adding a tadka (spicy tempering) to the mystery is none other than that which could be cooking in the Tamil-Maori bell-pot: Sweet Potatoes!


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Guess what the Maori's call Sweet Potato? Kūmara.

Sounds familiar? Certainly, if you are in the Land of Murugan, aka, Kumara!


No, no, I am not the one making these connections. These are courtesy the visionary maritime archaeologist, Orissa Balu

He tells us that the Tamil fishermen carried sweet potatoes to sea for their long shelf life. In parts of Indonesia and Australia, it's known as kumara.


Why? How? Besides, didn't Sweet Potato originate in Central America?!


Well, that was what was believed till 2018. Then, 57-million-year-old leaf fossils were discovered in Meghalaya. 

Now, scientists suggest that the sweet potato may well have first appeared in India!


As the Tamil Bell or the Kumaras remind us, neither history nor science is fixed. 

They are an unfolding journey, a constant exploration. Like, Life.


This is ... Sometimes, the frustration. Othertimes, the delight!


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PS:


Nalina later founded Antāti, Singapore’s first South Asian historical research and museum consultancy. In 2022, the Center for Embodied Knowledge (co-founded by Hari Kiran Vadlamani, Sunny Narang and me) partnered with Nalina in Singapore for an immersive workshop on the Indian textile art of Kalamkari, showcasing her passion for bridging history and practice.


Supported by a small grant by CEK, participants experienced firsthand the art of Kalamkari, blending traditional techniques with scholarly insights from the one and only Peter Lee.


The workshop design was much like Nalina's approach to the Tamil Bell. Whether through textiles or mysterious artifacts, her work continues to bridge cultures and craft, reminding us that history, like art, is a continuous dialogue between the past and the present.

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© 2020 Akanksha Damini Joshi

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