Place · pearl & cinnamon port · Sri Lanka
Mantai
The ancient port at the north-western tip of Sri Lanka in Mannar district, 25 kilometres from the Palk Strait — the pearl-and-cinnamon entrepot that served as the hinge between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea trade routes from the 2nd century BCE through the 10th century CE. Mantai is named in the Periplus and in Tamil Sangam sources, and was a key supplier of Sri Lankan pearls to the Roman Mediterranean through the Red Sea route. Excavations by the Sri Lankan Department of Archaeology from 1980 (interrupted by the civil war 1983-2009, resumed 2009) have documented Roman amphorae, Chinese ceramics and Arab coins across the stratigraphy. The site is central to Indian Ocean trade archaeology.
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 8.980, 79.980
Connections (6)
- Trade routeTamralipta / Tamluk
Tamralipta at the head of the Bay of Bengal and Mantai at the Palk Strait were the two ends of the eastern coasting route: Faxian sailed from Tamralipta and Ashoka's mission to Lanka is said to have left from there, and Mantai was the pearl and cinnamon entrepot where Bay of Bengal shipping met the Arabian Sea trade. A ship that did not want to round Sri Lanka transhipped at Mantai, which is why so small a place mattered so much.
- Trade routeArikamedu
Mantai at the Palk Strait was the hinge between the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, where a ship that did not want to round Sri Lanka transhipped its cargo — which is why so small a place mattered so much, and why it has Roman, Persian, Chinese and Indian material in the same levels. Arikamedu on the Coromandel is a few days' sail north, and the two were the working ends of the same eastern circuit.
- Trade routeKodungallur & Mar Thoma church
Muziris and Mantai were the two great Indian Ocean entrepôts at either end of the Malabar and Lankan pepper trade, named in Roman and in Tamil sources alike. Excavation at Pattanam near Kodungallur has produced Mediterranean amphorae and a first-century wharf, so the port that the Thomas tradition needs for its story to be possible demonstrably existed and was in regular contact with the Roman world.
- Trade routeKorkai
Korkai on the Tamil coast and Mantai on Lanka's northern tip faced each other across the Gulf of Mannar pearl banks, which both worked. The Periplus, Pliny and the Arab geographers all name the fishery, and the strait between them was the hinge on which Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea shipping turned without rounding the island.
- Traveller routeMarco Polo
Polo coasted Ceylon on the way home in the 1290s, described the pearl fishery in the Palk Strait in detail, including the divers, the shark-charmers and the ruler's tenth, and then worked up both Indian coasts. His account of the fishery matches the Periplus twelve centuries earlier and the Dutch reports four centuries later, because the banks and the method had not changed.
- Maritime routeKaveripattinam (Puhar)
Mantai and Puhar face each other across the Palk Strait, which is shallow enough that large vessels could not pass and cargo was carried overland across the Jaffna isthmus instead. That portage is why both towns existed, why the pearl banks between them were contested for two thousand years, and why the Cholas eventually took the whole northern coast of the island.
On these journeys
- Indo-Roman & monsoon trade
- The Indian Ocean World — the whole rim
- Indian port cities — the coast itself
Sources
Mantai excavation reports
Open Mantai in the repository →