UNESCO has accepted for its Memory of the World Register 2025, the “Trilingual inscription” found in Sri Lanka. The tablet containing the inscription was brought to Sri Lanka from China by Chinese Admiral Cheng Ho [also Zheng He]. The item was therefore submitted to UNESCO jointly by Sri Lanka and China.

UNESCO described the Trilingual Inscription as a stone tablet with Chinese, Persian and Tamil inscriptions, praising the Buddha, Vishnu and Allah.[1] It is the only trilingual inscription having texts in Chinese, Tamil and Persian, UNESCO has said.

UNESCO has uncritically parroted the popular account attached to this tablet, regardless of the fact that it is partially incorrect. This shows that UNESCO has not done any independent examination of this trilingual tablet; neither, it appears, has China.

UNESCO’s recognition of this trilingual tablet has aroused fresh interest in the artefact. This tablet is seen as a unique one specially prepared for Sri Lanka. Observers want to know, therefore, why did the tablet not contain a statement in Sinhala if it was intended for Sri Lanka.

 “Can someone enlighten me on why the Sinhala language was not used in this plaque?” This question was asked by retired Navy Admiral Ravindra C Wijegunaratne, when the UNESCO recognition was announced.[2]

From 1405 to 1433 Chinese admiral Cheng Ho directed seven ocean expeditions for the Ming emperor Zhu Di. They are considered to be unmatched in world history. The first expedition was to Champa (central Vietnam), Siam (Thailand), Java to Cochin and the kingdom of Calicut in Kerala. The second expedition (1407-1409) took 68 ships to the court of Calicut to attend the inauguration of a new king.

The third voyage (1409-1411) with 48 large ships and 30,000 troops, visited many of the same places as on the first voyage but also went to Malacca. The fourth voyage (1413-15) in addition to visiting many of the earlier sites, Zheng Ho went onto Hormuz on the Persian Gulf. The fifth voyage (1417-1419) went to Aden, and then on to the east coast of Africa, stopping at the city states of Mogadishu and Brawa (in today’s Somalia), and Malindi (in present day Kenya).

In the sixth expedition (1421-1422) 41 ships sailed to many of the previously visited Southeast Asian and Indian courts and stopped in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the coast of Africa; the fleet was then sent on to pursue several separate itineraries, with some ships going perhaps as far south as Sofala in present-day Mozambique.

The seventh and final voyage (1431-33) had more than one hundred large ships and over 27,000 men, and it visited all the important ports in the South China Sea and Indian Ocean as well as Aden and Hormuz. One auxiliary voyage travelled up the Red Sea to Jidda, only a few hundred miles from the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Records show that on this journey, the ships left for Sri Lanka from Banda Aceh, in Indonesia, reached Sri Lanka on October 10, 1432 and arrived at Calicut in Kerala on December 10.

Zheng He’s voyages would have required many independent fleets to be simultaneously at sea, said one analyst. Dates for outbound and returning voyages make it clear that different fleets departed and returned under different commanders, often years apart. [3] Chinese records indicate that more than 2,700 ships were built during this time.

The distances travelled and places reached in these seven voyages are not disputed. Historians agree that Zheng sailed the Indian Ocean as far as East Africa and the Red Sea.[4] They also agree that China had the capacity to undertake such voyages.

Admiral Cheng Ho

The Chinese fleet visited Sri Lanka on the first voyage and probably on all subsequent voyages too, as Sri Lanka was a useful port of call. On the third voyage, Zheng Ho brought a tablet to be erected in Sri Lanka. The tablet was prepared in Nanking, dated 15th February 1409. It was set up in Galle in 1411.

The slab says, “We (i.e. China) have dispatched missions to announce our mandates to foreign nations”. It spoke of the Buddhist temples in the mountainous isle of Sri Lanka, and listed the generous gifts the group had made to a Buddhist temple in the mountain of Ceylon, presumably Sri Pada. This inscription appears to be intended for Sri Lanka alone.

The other two inscriptions in the Trilingual slab made similar statements. One gave praise to Allah and the other praised the god Tenavarai-Nayanar. To each god the Chinese offered similar lavish tributes. However, there is no definitive translation of the full text, and it is not possible to say anything more about the text.

The local researchers easily identified two of the three scripts as Chinese and Persian. The choice of Persian for Islam probably indicates that Persian would have been the common language in Islamic countries at the time.

Paranavitana thought the third script was Tamil. However, Tamil historians in Sri Lanka had great difficulty in reading this so-called Tamil inscription. ‘This inscription is of a unique kind. There is no similar record in the whole range of Tamil inscriptions,’ they said. The language and orthography show characteristics which are not found in any other Tamil inscription. The word ‘Manittar’ found in the inscription is not found in Tamil, they added. (Tamil inscriptions in the Colombo National Museum p 53, 56)

Gavin Menzies in his book “1421: The Year China Discovered the World”, gives the third language in the inscription as Malayalam, the language of Kerala. It appears that the Galle tablet is not the only one with Malayalam. Menzies says Matadi Falls inscription was also in Malayalam. Presumably, the two slabs in Kerala were in Malayalam too, and that makes a total of four slab inscriptions using Malayalam. (Menzies p 120, 134-136).

 Menzies views on the Cheng Ho voyages have been heavily disputed, but as far as I know, the identification of Malayalam as the third language in the stele (slab) has not been contested.

The choice of Malayalam for the Hindu inscription suggests that the one location Cheng Ho visited regularly in the Indian peninsula was Kerala, the other Indian stops would have been brief ones. Cheng Ho’s voyages included regular visits to Kerala. It was the next stop after Galle.

The first and second voyages ended at Kerala. The second voyage was to attend a coronation there. The sixth expedition saw three units of the fleet go to Kerala and separate at Kerala. The Chinese fleet probably touched Kerala during the other three visits too.

Gavin Menzies, in his book “1421: The Year China Discovered the World”, suggests that the Galle slab inscription is one of a series of trilingual slabs prepared in China, and deposited in various foreign ports visited by the Chinese fleet of Cheng He. Similar tablets have been found elsewhere.

Slab inscription

Menzies says that slab inscriptions were found in Cochin and Calicut in Kerala, at Ribeira de Janela in Cape Verde and Matadi Falls in Congo. The Janela one is rejected by critics. There is no such tablet at Janela, they have said. The other inscriptions were not rejected but critics point out that Menzies has not supported his statement with photos of the other tablets.[5]

The argument that the Galle Trilingual tablet proves that Sri Lanka had three religions which ranked equally, cannot be accepted. It is also difficult to believe that China specifically sent to Sri Lanka a tablet written in Persian and Malayalam.

 One possible explanation is that these tablets were designed to suit several countries in one go. Three inscriptions in three languages for three religions all carved on one tablet ensured that each country would find an inscription that would suit them. This eliminated the need to carve different tablets for different countries, also the problem of getting the right ship into the right port to deliver the right tablet to the right country.

Sri Lanka ‘s Trilingual slab was discovered in 1911 by the British engineer H.F. Tomalin, who was told of a carved stone covering a culvert near Cripps Road in Galle. There is no record of any other inscription in Sri Lanka getting tossed about in this manner. This shows that the Sinhala king was not interested in this tablet, otherwise it would have been carefully preserved.

One possible reason for this indifference is that Cheng Ho meddled in the internal politics of the host country. On his first voyage, he put down a pirate uprising in Sumatra, bringing the pirate chief, an overseas Chinese, back to Nanjing for punishment. On his third visit he clashed with the authorities in Sri Lanka and took some people to China. They were treated well and were returned to Sri Lanka.

Amateur historians have woven a story around this event. But professional historians, such as W. I Siriweera have told me that the available information is insufficient to form any opinion about the event. It is agreed, however, that the Sinhala king was not captured and taken to China and that Sri Lanka did not pay tribute to China. There is no evidence of either.

It is argued that Cheng Ho’s visits to Sri Lanka were a great honour for Sri Lanka. That is the attitude displayed in the museum in Galle Fort when I visited some years ago. There was a huge picture of Cheng Ho and an emphasis on every possible foreign ruler and visitor who had come to Galle, little or nothing on indigenous culture.

Cheng Ho was engaged in ocean exploration and was using Sri Lanka as a stopover. Sri Lanka was a much-patronised port of call for foreign ships. In addition to its strategic location, it had bays and harbours that could accommodate visiting ship and foreign ships had been making use of this facility for centuries.

Sri Lanka ports were more than a mere stopover. Sri Lanka provided ship repair services as well. Sri Lanka coir rope was much valued for ships. Sri Lanka would have provided good service to Cheng Ho, and that may be why Sri Lanka was gifted one of the trilingual tablets with special reference to its Buddhist temples.

It has been claimed that ‘Tamil inscription’ in the Trilingual slab, (which, local Tamil scholars have said, is not Tamil) shows the importance of the Tamil language in international relations and international trade.

Nirmala Chandrahasan says, “We have seen from the Galle Inscription that China gave the Tamil language pride of place in Sri Lanka at a certain point of time, and similar inscriptions have also been left by them in other south Asian countries. We learn that the Tamil community in Sri Lanka was a powerful and respected one, hence the inscriptions in Mandarin along with Tamil and Persian. She adds that at that time Tamil was a language of commerce and trade in the Indian Ocean region. Tamil Buddhist monks from Kancheepuram brought Buddhism to China. [6]

This is incorrect. Buddhism would have gone to China directly from North India via the land route, not from Kancheepuram in faraway south India. Tamil Nadu was never a strong, Buddhist state. In the 7th century the Bhakthi school of Hinduism replaced Buddhism in Tamil Nadu.

Tamil merchants could not have led international trade, as Nirmala says, because the Tamil kingdom was not even on the international trade route, to start with. The main East-west international trade route went along the north-west and south-west of the Indian peninsula. Tamil Nadu is in the south-east, far away from the international trade route. It lost its proximity to the east-west trade route when Kerala broke away and became independent.

Further, the Tamil kingdom had lost its sovereignty before the Cheng Ho voyages even started. The Tamil kingdom was conquered by the Vijayanagara kingdom of Karnataka in 1378. The kingdom was thereafter administered in Telugu. The Tamil language was suppressed. Therefore, the Tamil language could not have been a language of commerce and trade in the Indian Ocean region in the time of Cheng He.

Tamil language lost vitality thereafter and did not recover for a long time. The following account bears this out. In 1816, Rasmus Rask left Denmark to collect Asian manuscripts for the University of Copenhagen library. Rask returned to Copenhagen in May 1823, bringing manuscripts in Persian, Middle Persian (Zend), Pali and Sinhala languages. He had travelled through Madras and Jaffna, to get to Colombo, but showed no interest in acquiring Tamil manuscripts. (Concluded)

[1] https://www.unesco.org/en/memory-world/register2025

 [2] https://island.lk/why-sinhala-omitted-in-famous-stone-inscription-by-ancient-chinese-admiral/

 [3]https://archive.org/stream/1434theyearamagnificentchinesefleetsailedtoitalyandignitedtherenaissancebymenziesgavin/.

 [4]https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/is-gavin-menzies-right-or-wrong

 [5]https://nabataea.net/explore/travel_and_trade/book-review-1421-the-year-china-discovered-the-world/

 [6]  https://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2021/06/13/chinese-admiral-zheng-he-and-the-tamils-of-sri-lanka/

 BY KAMALIKA PIERIS