China’s Maritime Links with Medieval Kerala: An Examination of the Vadakkanpāttukal and Recovered Chinese Artefacts

This paper is an attempt to glean the meanings that the Malayalam literary source, the VadakkanpāttukalFootnote1 carry, specifically in terms of the references therein to "China" (or objects and artefacts associated with China) along with an examination of recovered Chinese artefacts from the Kerala coast. The paper extends study into the historical maritime contacts between southern India and China by examining an academically hybrid category of objects and literary references situated in medieval Kerala. The effort is to gain insights from regional historiography in order to reveal the "subjective understandings" that shaped the relationships between "States" at an earlier point in history within a Constructivist International Relations paradigm. The study uniquely interrogates aspects of microhistory using autochthonous sources revealed through literary references, besides recovered archaeological artefacts connecting China with Kerala in order to bring to light hitherto less-known aspects of the cross-cultural encounters.