Merchants to the Golden City: The Persian Farmān of King Chandrawizaya Rājā and the Elephant and Ivory Trade in the Indian Ocean, a View from 1728
2018; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 51; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00210862.2018.1519665
ISSN1475-4819
Autores Tópico(s)Maritime Security and History
ResumoThis paper provides a translation and analysis of Sloane Mss. 3259 in the British Library, a Persian farmān from the court of King Chandrawizaya Rājā in the Arakanese Kingdom of Mrauk U (1429−1784). Written in 1728 and addressed to the Armenian merchant Khwājeh Georgin of the port of Chennaipattana across the Bay of Bengal in India, the decree is a permit for the lucrative trade in elephants and ivory from the forests of Arakan. The royal decree reveals the presence of Persian as a mutual language of encounter, exchange, diplomacy, and correspondence in eighteenth-century Southeast Asia. Through the manuscript, a view emerges of a sovereign forest kingdom of manifold rarities at the margins of the Persianate and Mughal worlds.
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