Early Asiatic Navigators

Few Traces in the South Seas

By F. J. Morgan

Place the adz in the sacred place To be charged with divine power.

To become light in the worker’s hands And accomplish work amid flying sparks.

Old Tahitian Invocation: Peter Buck in “Vikings of the Sunrise.”

AS the chant of the sacred invocation arose from the shadows of the coconut palms, on the last night of the full moon in Old Tahiti, the working tools were placed in the sacred repository to await the light of day. When the sun rose, the craftsmen, with further incan tations, laved their adzes in the sea to awaken them for their sacred task. A canoe was to be built; an important voyage to be undertaken.

At last, the planks and outriggers were lashed into place with twisted coconut fibre; for the white-man with his nails and bolts had not yet sailed in the South Seas.

Fourteen centuries, and more, had the shipwrights of Tahiti been making their vessels the same way. Sturdy, ocean going craft which traversed the great Pacific and carried on trade and cul tural intercourse between the islands of Polynesia, from New Zealand to Hawaii —yes, and it is said, to the shores of Chile and Peru as well.

Considering all the maritime activity in the South Seas, and the even more an cient and regulated commerce between China and India, it is strange that no attempts to open up trade with Poly nesia have been recorded by the Chinese or Hindus. The subject becomes even more complex when it is known that, about 75.8. C.. the Indian invasion of Java and Indo-China was carried out successfully by sea-borne armies.

The Tamils, in particular, were a hardy, fearless, sea-faring race from south-eastern India, who built sturdy ships and ventured as far as Africa in the Indian Ocean, and to Java and Cambodia to the east. At first, Tamil ships were built with out-riggers and braided with fibre, in the same manner as the Tahitian vessels many centuries later.

By the year 75 8.C., Tamil ships were well-found craft. The Tamils themselves had attained a high state of cultural development, including the use of writ ten characters peculiar to their race.

Each ship, as it put to sea, was equip ped with a bell for use on board: and was armed against pirates.

With the improvement in ship-build ing brought about by experience, and also through contact with Chinese junks and Arab dhows, trade between India and the Hindu colonies in South China expanded rapidly, so that by 120 A.D.. the Hindus were sailing to the Pacific in ships as well built, and exactly the same in appearance, as the Tamil ves sels of to-day. From Java and Cam bodia, Indian sailors extended their voy ages to China proper, even as far as where Shanghai now stands.

YET, it is unknown whether Indian or Chinese navigators made regular voyages into the South Seas. There are slight grounds for belief that such at tempts were made; but the evidence is not at all conclusive.

The discovery of ancient Chinese characters inscribed on the wall of a

cave, at sea level, on one of the Yasawa Islands in the Fiji Group, by Mr. A. J.

Vogan in 1934. and recorded in the "Pacific Islands Year Book. 1939”, is a definite link with the past; but whether they were written by a party of ship wrecked cast-a ways, or by the crew of a trading junk, none may tell.

Of great interest, too. is the Tamil Bell, a treasured exhibit in the Dominion Museum at Wellington.

In 1836, a missionary in the Whan garei district, north of Auckland, visited a native village where no European had been previously. His attention was drawn to a curious, bell-shaped cooking pot, in use by the women. Inquiries amongst the tribe elicited the informa tion that it had been found many years before, at the foot of a large tree, which had been uprooted during a storm.

Subsequent investigations proved the object to be the upper part of a Tamil ship’s bell such as is in use at the pre sent day. An inscription in unknown characters was photographed and sent to India for identification. From two separate sources the same translation was received: “Hohoyiden Buks ship’s bell”.

Tamil writers described the characters as very ancient lettering, some of them dif fering greatly from modern Tamil script.

There is nothing to show how the bell reached New Zealand. There have been many theories to account for its presence there. All are conjecture, and must re main so; but, with the evidence of voy ages and migrations by Hindu vessels embracing China and other lands, we may conclude that at least one Indian ship ventured into the vast Pacific wastes, as far south as New Zealand.