Heritage of Sri Lanka - pearl fisheries

Prof W. I. Siriweera

Pearls were the most valuable aquatic resource in Sri Lanka and were exploited from pre-Christian times. Megasthenes; the Greek ambassador to the Mauryan royal court in India in the fourth century B.C; the Roman writers Pliny and Solinus Polyhistor as well as the author of the Periplus of the Erythrian Sea, the Chinese travellers Fa-Hsien, Wang-Ta-Yuan, Hieun-Tsang, Mahuan and Fehsin; Suleiman, the nineth century Arab geographer; Al-Beruni, the Persian historian who served in the court of Sultan Ghazni Mahmud of Delhi in the 11th century; the 12th century Arab traveller Al Idrisi; the 13th century Arab geographer Kazwini and the historian Al-Maqrisi; the 14th century Bishop Jordanus as well as the Italian Friar Odoric; the famous Arab traveller Ibn Batuta who arrived in the island in 1344; have all alike emphasized the importance of the pearl banks and pearl fisheries in Sri Lanka.

Fa-Hsien records

Some of them, such as Megasthenes, Polyhistor and Fa-Hsien, state that large and precious pearls were found in the island of Taprobane. According to Fa-Hsien, there were extremely valuable gems and pearls deposited in the monastic store-houses at Anuradhapura. Hieun-Tsang as well as Wang-Ta-Yuan refer to the rituals performed by the king just before the pearl fisheries began. Polyhistor states that the value of pearls depended on feeding patterns of the oysters. Fa-Hsien records that three out of every five pearls belonged to the king while Hieun-Tsang mentions that a share of the pearls was taken by the king as tax.

String of pearls

According to Wang-Ta-Yuan three out of every ten pearls were given to the king. These discrepancies indicate the fact that the king’s share was not static and uniform and that it varied from time to time. Ibn Batuta stated that the king of Jaffna or Aryacakravarti possessed many valuable pearls and that when he visited the court of Jaffna he saw the king’s employees sorting out pearls.

Political developments

Bishop Jordanus has written on pearl fisheries conducted in the sea between India and Sri Lanka, (most probably off Mannar) by utilizing about 8,000 crafts. Wang-Ta-Yuan too provides a graphic description of the pearl fisheries and pearl divers off the cost of Sri Lanka.

The Portuguese chronicles and documents of the 16th and 17th centuries have preserved detailed evidence on pearl fishing off the coast of Mannar. As C.R. de Silva has pointed out, they enable us to obtain some idea of the size and importance of the industry, the methods of fishing employed and the impact of the pearl fishery on religious and political developments of the littoral. During this era, the best known and the largest of the pearl banks were located off Hainan in the South China sea, off the island of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf and in the Gulf of Mannar.

The pearl beds off South India and Sri Lanka constituted one of the two major sources of pearls in the world, rivalled in size only by that of Hainan. The pearls fished from the Gulf of Mannar were also considered among the best in the world and fetched a high price in Europe.

During the Portuguese period a total of 50,000 to 60,000 persons including divers, merchants and others were occupied in the pearl fishery at Mannar when it was held. The decision whether or not to hold the fishing was taken on the basis of a pilot survey carried out in the previous year. In the month before the actual harvesting took place, a series of temporary buildings were constructed on the seashore near the oyster beds.

These buildings served as store houses, shops and dwellings. The captain of Mannar, who supervised the construction, allotted different areas to different castes. Then the participating vessels and divers were registered.

The number of such vessels varied between two hundred and four hundred with a maximum of eight divers to a boat.

Colonial rule

The exploitation of pearl fisheries continued during the Dutch and the British colonial rule. The British earned considerable revenue from pearls of Ceylon. For example from March 1828 to May 1837 alone Sterling Pounds 227,131 were credited as revenue into the Ceylon Treasury on account of the pearl fisheries. To be continued