Wanli Shipwrecked Bowl-- A Mystery

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time. --Francis Bacon

My beautiful bowl. It was sold as an artifact found at the bottom of the sea. From the Wanli Shipwreck (+/- 1625), which was a European vessel loaded with Chinese kraak porcelain--mainly from Jingdezhen. I really wanted a bowl from the wreck but this was the only one I could afford. It is incredible how well it withstood hundreds of years underwater. 

I was, however, puzzled by the interior. Not very beautiful, right? The catalogue said it is Sanskrit for 福 (fortune). I spoke to the salvager and he said that an expert at Jingdezhen told him that was what it was and that many ceramics at the time had sloppy Sanskrit--perhaps for the Japanese market, I wondered, since Shingon Buddhism in Japan values expressions in Sanskrit language--written in Siddam.

The Siddham script is a descendent of the Brahmi script and an ancestor of the Devanagari script. The name Siddham comes from Sanskrit and means "accomplished or perfected" The Siddham script is mainly used by Shingon Buddhists in Japan to write out mantra and sutras in Sanskrit. It was introduced to Japan by Kukai in 806 AD after he had studied Sanskrit and Mantrayana Buddhism in China. In Japan the Siddham script is known as 梵字 (bonji).

Poking around with the help of scholars Victor Mair and Jan Walls, we (and by "we" I mean they) figured out that it was almost certainly not Siddam 福 (fortune) but "Buddha" 佛。

It is possible, anyway, if a Portuguese or Dutch ship (the Wanli wreck was Portuguese) was sailing back to Europe from Macao, loaded down with ceramics for the European market, they might carry some things for the Japanese market since the ships stopped in Malacca, where there was a thriving spice and ceramics market... this is the basic background of my novel manuscript from way back that I want to finish.... off-load ceramics for Japan and buy spices. The ship went down before reaching the harbor... but not far off-shore.

I have seen unreadable Arabic script on Chinese ceramics --but this really was pretty bad... 

Victor Mair cautions:

A number of bowls found in the Belitung shipwreck had pseudo-Arabic
writing, and I've also seen pseudo-Siddham writing on various objects.

Professor Mair contacted Suzanne Valenstein, long term curator of ceramics at the Met in New York (now retired), who had this to say:

Regarding Leanne Ogasawara’s inquiry, below, I have consulted the following:

First and foremost, a book by John Ayers, now-retired Keeper of the Far Eastern Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum (and my personal Chinese-pot-guru for over sixty years): The Baur Collection, Geneva. Chinese Ceramics, Volume Two: Ming Porcelains and Other Wares. Geneva, Switzerland, 1969. (And now, obviously, out of print.)

No. 588, Plate A 185. “Blue-and-white dish of lotus form. Mark and reign of Wan Li (1573-1619). Diameter 19.0 cm.

Moulded in the form of an open lotus flower with two ranks of sixteen scalloped petals, the lower rank with projecting points on the outside; the rim foliate; small, low foot. In the center inside is a medallion with a Sanscrit character with ju-I heads, and round the outside the upper rank of petals contains eight further characters alternating with floral sprays, forming an inscription. The six-character mark is written underglaze blue.” He further mentions similar bowls in several museum collections.

John’s book was revised and republished in Geneva in 1999, Chinese Ceramics in the Baur Collection, Volume 1. The dish is illustrated in Plate 78 [previously as Plate A185]. The physical description is the same as before, but there is a change in the description of the characters: “Inside is a medallion painted with the Sanscrit character for ’Buddha’ (Chinese fo) bordered with ru-i heads, and round the outside the upper rank of petals contains eight further characters alternating with floral sprays.”

Another of my favorite authorities is Wang Qingzheng, of the Shanghai Museum. His 368-page book, A Dictionary of Chinese Ceramics (in English), Singapore, 2002, is absolutely indispensable in the study of Chinese pots.

Under the topic of Motifs, on page 256, Mr. Wang lists: “Sanskrit (fan wen). An ancient written language of India, this script is used as a decorative element on temple vessels in the Ming dynasty. Sanskrit inscriptions, mainly rendered in underglaze blue, are quotations from Buddhist scriptures or incantations.” He illustrates a blue-and-white dish that is not foliated like the one that John Ayers illustrated. This dish has a large, presumably Sanskrit, central character, surrounded by three rows of other presumably Sanskrit characters.

• My friend Professor Jan Walls reminded me that at the Ming court the influence of Tibetan Buddhism was strong but that many mistakes in the various scripts could be found on porcelain. 

Please be in touch if you have anything to add to this… I am hoping to buy another piece—but one without any mysterious script…