Replicas of Pattanam bowls as souvenirs

How would it feel like having burnt clay household wares in the shape and size of those used by your ancestors several centuries ago?

A tableware that’s a throwback to the begging bowl in the hands of the Buddha and another, reminiscent of the ‘magic food bowl’ described in the Tamil epic, Manimekalai! In a unique and innovative experiment, the Kerala Council for Historical Research (KCHR) is trying to create credible replicas of the ceramic bowls and other household wares exhumed as fragments or in full at the Pattanam archaeological excavation site, near north Paravur in Ernakulam.

Over the seasons, the site threw up some 45 lakh pottery shards. The effort of the KCHR is to make these replicas available as souvenirs at the upcoming Muziris Children’s Museum that will be opened shortly.

Tie-up with ceramic unit

The KCHR has already tied up with a traditional tile and ceramic ware maker near Chengamanad to fashion the replicas.

“The rim of a bowl points to quite a few things in archaeology including the size of the bowl/jar, what it could have been used to store, the extent of the users and the like,” said P.J. Cherian, KCHR director who leads the excavation team.

“Ranging in diameter from 12 cm to 20 cm, the Pattanam bowls seem to have been the commonest type of pots used in the period of the Muziris port (BC 3 to BC 5). It will be a challenge for researchers to reconstruct their biographies: how and where they were made, how they travelled, the uses they were put to, its influence on design and technique in the societies where they were traded,” he wrote in a note on the bowls, attempting to draw parallels between the Pattanam bowl and the begging bowl of the Buddha.

KCHR is to make the replicas available at the upcoming Muziris Children’s Museum