A painting depicting the historical trade connections between the Maldives and China, featuring a Chinese coin discovered on Kaashidhoo Island and cowrie shells symbolizing the ancient cowrie trade routes of the Indian Ocean.
Courtesy of cowryroute.com
In the mid-seventh century, Chinese official records registered the arrival of ambassadors from a distant maritime kingdom known as Mo La . The ruler of this polity, named 施婆羅地多 (Shī pó luó dì duō) and widely reconstructed as King Sri Baladitya, sent missions to the Tang court of Emperor Gaozong in 658 and 662 CE. These embassies mark the earliest external written references potentially connecting China to the Maldives or neighbouring regions of the western Indian Ocean. Over the following centuries, this early diplomatic contact evolved into a distinctive economic relationship. The “dragon spit” (Maavaharu”) in Sino-Maldivian maritime trade
history refers to the dual-commodity exchange system in which Indian Ocean cowrie shells (Monetaria moneta), used as currency across vast regions, and ambergris (Maavaharu)known in Chinese as “dragon’s spittle” formed the prized bulk and luxury imports into imperial China.
The primary source for the embassies is the Cefu Yuangui, volume 970. In the eighth month of the third year of the Xianqing era (658 CE), three kings dispatched envoys together: Fa Tuo Ba Di of Qian Si Fo, Shi Li Ti Po of She Li Jun, and Shi Po Luo Di Duo of Mo La. The text records that these kingdoms were dependencies of South Tianzhu (South India), that they were extremely remote, and that
they had never previously communicated with China. After sailing for many months, the ambassadors reached Jiaozhou (in present-day northern Vietnam) and presented local products as tribute. A second embassy from Mo La followed in 662 CE (Longshuo 2). The royal name is phonetically consistent with the Sanskrit Śrī Bālāditya. Maldivian tradition later associates a figure of this name with an exiled Kalinga prince who married a local queen, though chronological gaps remain between the Tang record and later genealogies. Scholars continue to debate whether Mo La refers specifically to the Maldives or to a related South Indian coastal polity; either interpretation confirms that Tang authorities recognised structured contact with far-western maritime societies capable of organising long-distance missions.
These embassies occurred within the hierarchical tributary system of the Tang court. Distant rulers were incorporated into a ritual order that affirmed the emperor’s cosmic authority. The multi-month sea voyage ending at Jiaozhou highlights the importance of the southern maritime routes linking China to the Indian Ocean. Although the Chinese notices are brief, they preserve the name of a king and the fact of two successful missions, offering a rare seventh-century window onto the political organisation and navigational reach of a society already participating in wider Indian Ocean networks.
Over subsequent centuries this fragile diplomatic thread developed into a durable commercial relationship. The Maldives emerged as the global epicentre for the harvesting of Monetaria moneta cowrie shells, which circulated as currency from South Asia and Southeast Asia into Africa and, at various periods, into parts of China. Simultaneously, the islands and surrounding waters supplied ambergris, the rare and aromatic substance produced in the digestive system of sperm whales. Chinese sources referred to ambergris as “dragon’s spittle,” a term that captured both its mysterious oceanic origin and its high value as a luxury item used in medicine, perfume, and imperial ritual. Together these two commodities,cowries as bulk currency and ambergris as elite luxury,constituted what scholars have described as the “dragon spit” dual-commodity system of Sino-Maldivian (and broader Indian Ocean–Chinese) trade
Evidence of this evolving relationship appears in material and textual records from the Song period onward. Northern Song cash coins and ceramics reached Maldivian Buddhist sites such as Kaashidhoo by the late tenth century. Yuan-dynasty travellers, most notably Wang Dayuan in the Daoyi Zhilüe, described the islands’ products, including cowries. Under the Yuan, particularly after the Mongol incorporation of Yunnan, Maldivian cowries continued to circulate as money in southwestern China and were shipped in quantity to the Yangzi Delta. Ambergris remained a prized import sought by the imperial court. The dual flow of shells and “dragon’s spittle” thus linked the early Tang embassies of Śrī Bālāditya to a centuries-long pattern of exchange that shaped both regional currency networks and Chinese luxury consumption.
The Tang missions of 658 and 662 CE therefore stand as the foundational moment in a long arc of Sino-Maldivian contact. What began as formal diplomatic recognition of a remote maritime king evolved into an economic partnership centred on two of the Indian Ocean’s most characteristic exports. The “dragon spit” trade,cowries for currency and ambergris for luxury,embodied the enduring, if intermittent, ties between the central Indian Ocean archipelago and imperial China, ties first signalled by the ambassadors of Śrī Bālāditya more than thirteen centuries ago.
Courtesy of cowryroute.com