Dear Lee,

As mentioned in a previous post from just a few days ago, here, there are very few realistic ways to date Himalayan decorated agate (zi) beads.

The most than can be said about phum zi is this: the practice of placing net patterns on agate beads (brown/black and red or reddish carnelian) was typical during Beck's Third Period—roughly the time of the Roman Empire, about 2,000 years ago, in India.

Consequently, phum zi, that most often have similar net patterns (though the beads tend to be larger and more crude, and to exhibit poor technique), most likely date to a more recent time, since they appear to be derivative. But whether this would be 100 years later or 500 years later is anyone's guess (for instance). So I would be comfortable to speculate that phum zi might be less than 2,000 years old.

I hope this helps. Jamey

Hello All,
Really appreciate your info on Phum Dzi, Jamey. But I have never heard of Beck ("Beck's Third Period"). It sounds like something I should read, and I would appreciate the full title so that I can locate a copy. Thanks again.

As an aside, is there a connection between Indian Phum with net patterned decoration (and Phum found in Tibet), and Burmese Pyu culture decorated agate "soccer ball" beads? I recall reading that the Pyu were a "Tibeto-Burman" people that began their migration into Burma beginning around 200 BCE.

Dear Lao-yeh,

Stefany has cited Beck's most important and encompassing work—his Classification of 1928 (illegally reprinted, but at least available, by Shumway in 1981).

However, the work I referred to is his significant paper on "etched" carnelians and agates:

Beck, Horace C., “Etched Carnelian Beads,” The Antiquaries Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 4, pp. 384 - 398, 1933. Oxford University Press, London.

(I can only cite this in-full because it's in the bibliography of my zi bead article, that is available online at my Zi Group—so I was able to open it. URL below.)

I recommend reading the article I composed, posted here, on Pyu beads. On the 5th and 6th pages you can read about decorated stone beads, including with network patterns. It's under ARTICLES.

By the way, it's true I wrote "Beck's third period," but this is a mistake! I ought to have said "the Middle Period" (which is his second period—they being Early, Middle, and Late). Sorry for any confusion.

The connection between Indian agates, "Pyu" beads, and Tibetan zi beads with net patterns lies with India. The zi beads either came from there, or were made by someone who learned from the Indians. Likewise, the Burmese folks learned these skills from India—as part of the "Indianization" of SE Asia, that grandly affected Burma, Siam (Thailand), Cambodia, and Indonesia, and changed these countries profoundly, including their statecraft, architecture, religions, and crafts.

When SE Asian people are characterized as "Tibeto-Burmese," this is a reference to their language group—and this is a very big group in SE asia (!). There is not necessarily much in the way of racial nor cultural similarity implied by this designation. For instance, we should not think that the Pyu "migrated from Tibet to Burma," nor anything as simple as that. Nevertheless, what we call "Pyu" beads, that eventually became "pumtek" beads in modern times, share MANY cultural affinities with zi beads, in terms of the ideas and stories told about them.

Although I was the first American bead researcher to see, acquire, and write about "Pyu" beads, in recent years I have come to a different understanding. I no longer use the name "Pyu" exclusively for these beads. Burma was inhabited by the Mon before and after the Pyu kingdom was dominant—and I think it is possible and it is just as sensible (or perhaps MORE sensible) to think of these beads as "Mon beads."

These are the two early papers I wrote about them:

Allen, Jamey D., “Pumtek: An Introductory Report upon an Unusual Class of Decorated Stone Beads,” The Bead Forum, No. 9, pp. 6 - 13, 1986. Society of Bead Researchers, Ottawa.

Allen, Jamey D., “Ancient Beads from Burma,” The Bead Museum Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 2, p. 3, 1990. The Bead Museum, Prescott, AZ.

I hope this is helpful. I can send you xeroxes of the above papers, though they are short articles. The piece posted here is just as good, really..., and one day I will compose Part II.

Jamey

I get obliquely chastized for posting Wikipedia entries here, but they are often pretty good, easy to read, and they come up in searches as fast as anything.

Below is a link to their page on Burmese culture. If you're Wiki-phobic, please ignore it.

JDA.

Hello Jamey,
Thank you very much for the citations, as well as directing me to your article on Pyu beads. I will certainly read it with interest.

I hope you had a great time in Santa Fe and AZ, looking forward to reading your report. Can't be in Santa Fe enough!

Dear Jamey

Thank you for the information.

Lee

Dear Jamey,

In general I’m a fan of the whole Wikipedia project, but I’m very aware of its limitations if it starts to be thought of as an encyclopaedia – which is what its name implies. With an encyclopaedia we have entries written by “experts” in a given field, the entries are signed and consequently we are able to identify their positions and possible prejudices. With Wikipedia what we have in fact is a huge, ongoing discussion forum, which conceals the steps that have led to the present stage in the discussion. If one looks beneath the surface, this can actually be quite fascinating; it can also be akin to a war zone. Just two examples that I’ve looked at in recent days: entries concerning contemporary Southeast Asian political history (Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand), and ancient Persian and Central Asian linguistics; they are filled with venom and anger, but the outsider who is just looking for information wouldn’t have a clue as to what was going on. I’ve tried sometimes to get a little involved in areas I know something about, so as to correct glaring inaccuracies of fact, or to try to balance what appear to be minority positions pretending to be consensual ones. But it means that one has to be prepared sometimes for an endless series of time-consuming negotiations which frequently are not worth the bother. I know a lot of other people who feel the same way.

That said, the entries on Burmese history and culture seem to be very thin and sometimes inaccurate. A case in point that relates to the present thread is the following: “The Pyu arrived in Burma in the 1st century BCE and established city-kingdoms at Binnaka, Mongamo, Sri Ksetra, Peikthanomyo, and Halingyi.” Now this is not a statement of fact at all; it comes from much later histories, which themselves are suspect. In fact, there’s a growing awareness amongst the main archaeologists working at present in Burma (Tanpawaddy Win Maung, Bob Hudson from Australia, Elizabeth Moore from the SOAS in London and Jean-Pierre Pautreau from France) of the likelihood that Pyu society actually developed gradually and organically out of a very advanced Bronze and Iron Age culture that was centred on the Samon Valley. At present the academic trend seems to be to call it that - the Samon (Valley) culture - but my own view is that it’s all really Pyu from at least the beginning of the first millennium BC in a direct continuity up to the fall of the Pyu kingdom in the ninth century.

In any case, this is the culture that used and/or produced many of the finest hardstone animal beads in the late first millennium BC. There is very little evidence for those beads being present in any quantity in the Mon territories which at that time were well to the south of the Samon, or for any substantial Mon influence on this stage in the development of Pyu culture. They were really quite discrete societies, though linked later on by their shared commitment to Theravada Buddhism and to a remarkably peaceful coexistence.

One more point that may be worth noting: the word Pyu is derived from the Chinese name for the culture we’re talking about; there’s quite a lot of evidence that their own name for themselves was Tircul, so perhaps that’s what we should be calling them.

In any case, that’s where I’m heading tomorrow for a few days. I’m taking the plane to Mandalay and then I’ll make my way to Halin, Beikthano and Mount Popa, the holy mountain that was sacred to the Pyu, which was also the source for a lot of agate, carnelian and rock crystal. It’s a wonderful place (picture attached). After that, I’m off to Cambodia for a month, so more from there when I return.

All the best,

Will