Sidestep: The Tamil Bell revisted
Brief Version:
The missionary William Colenso met Maori near Whangarei using this bell about 1836 as a kohua (iron pot) to cook potatoes. It is bronze, thirteen centimetres long and nine centimetres deep, and has an inscription. Colenso was told that the bell had been found after a heavy gale had blown down a large tree; it was uncovered from the tree roots. Its owners believed that the bell had been in the possession of the iwi (tribe) for several generations.
Colenso swapped an iron pot for the bell. After his death he bequeathed the bell to the Colonial Museum, forbear to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The bell produced a lot of interest when it was exhibited, and discussions and theories abounded about its origins.
The bell was photographed and copies sent to England and various people in India. Tamils in Southern India immediately recognised the writing on the bell. The bell has been identified as a type of ship's bell. Some of the characters in the inscription are of an archaic form no longer seen in modern Tamil script suggesting that the bell could be about 500 years old. The bell is believed to have been cast about the year 1450. Archaic Tamil script on the bell has been translated as meaning, "Bell of the Ship of Mohaideen Bakhsh".
How the Tamil bell came to be in New Zealand remains an unsolved mystery.
Full article from 19th February 2016: : http://tangatawhenua16.wixsite.com/the-first-ones-blog/single-post/2016/05/12/The-Tamil-Bell
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The point being that it was found in 1836 yet was in possession of Maori for 'at least' 7 generations which means it was in the possession of one village of one tribe since the 1670's. However, it could have been from a shipwreck from as far back as 1470 as when it was found it was under the roots of a tree around 200 years old (like the Korotangi Bird). The bell was dated at 1450 based on the old language which means, like the korotangi, when it was found it was feared (or revered), and then buried. 200 years later the tree is blown over. The local inhabitants know nothing of it as no one remembers the circumstances of why the bell was buried and therefore npo tapu applies...they simply keep this strange new item and eventually use it as a cooking pot, probably doinf so after the first Europeans showed them cooking pots. (Maoir never used cooking pots prior to European contact)
That suggests, (if the stories are true), that at least one ship from the Indian Ocean could have arrived here in the 1400's... That is food for thought! - like we have said previously, if Captain Cook had not arrived home to England from his first journey, who would have ever known that he had landed here? No one would because there would have been no evidence of his arrival.
On that basis alone we cannot discount the possibility that a ship from India reached these shores in the late 1400's.
Postscript:
In 2021 we discovered that on 2nd June, 1923, the Bishop of Dornakal, South India, examined the bell and observed that it is not an artifact of great antiquity, inasmuch as the name Mohoyiden is a Mahometan name. Both forms of the Tamil script given are comparatively modern, neither represents the really ancient form of Tamil script.
