Merchants to the Golden City: The Persian Farmān of King Chandrawizaya Rājā and the Elephant and Ivory Trade in the Indian Ocean, a View from 1728

Abstract

This paper provides a translation and analysis of Sloane Mss. 3259 in the British Library, a Persian farmān from the court of King Chandrawizaya Rājā in the Arakanese Kingdom of Mrauk U (1429−1784). Written in 1728 and addressed to the Armenian merchant Khwājeh Georgin of the port of Chennaipattana across the Bay of Bengal in India, the decree is a permit for the lucrative trade in elephants and ivory from the forests of Arakan. The royal decree reveals the presence of Persian as a mutual language of encounter, exchange, diplomacy, and correspondence in eighteenth-century Southeast Asia. Through the manuscript, a view emerges of a sovereign forest kingdom of manifold rarities at the margins of the Persianate and Mughal worlds.