Ship's Bell

The missionary William Colenso met Māori near Whangārei using this bell in about 1841 as a kōhua (iron pot) to cook potatoes. It is bronze, thirteen centimetres long and nine centimetres deep, and has a Tamil inscription.

Colenso was told that the bell had been found after a heavy gale had blown down a large tree; it was uncovered from the tree roots. Its owners believed that the bell had been in the possession of the iwi (tribe) for several generations.

Colenso swapped an iron pot for the bell. After his death he bequeathed the bell to the Colonial Museum, forbear to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. The bell produced a lot of interest when it was exhibited, and discussions and theories abounded about its origins.

The inscription on the bell has been translated as meaning ‘the bell of the ship of Mohaideen Bakhsh’. Alternative spellings have been suggested, including Mohideen Baksh, Mohideen Bux and Muhaidin Baksh.

For his 1975 article ‘The Story of the Tamil Bell,’ Brett Hilder consulted experts on Tamil script who suggested that the bell could be about 500 years old, and Hilder placed the date of casting at c.1450. A more recent palaeographic reading by scholars in Tamil Nadu dated the inscription to the 17th or 18th century. 

How the bell came to be in New Zealand remains an unsolved mystery.

This extract originally appeared in Between Dreams (Te Papa Press, 2026) on page 31.
This extract was authored by Grace Gassin.

Some objects bear obvious clues to their past; others leave us with questions. This ship’s bell, better known as the ‘Tamil Bell’, most certainly belongs in the second category.

Our knowledge of the bell’s history begins in the nineteenth century, after the missionary William Colenso brought its existence to the attention of colonial society. According to Colenso’s former neighbour, Rev. Richard Taylor, William came across Māori using the bell as a kōhua (cooking pot) near Whangārei around 1839.1 The iwi had discovered the bell in the roots of a storm-felled tree, and they believed it to have been in their possession for several generations.2 William bequeathed the bell to the Colonial Museum, and it entered the collection in 1899 following his death.3

Around the bell’s centre is a Tamil inscription that scholars have dated back to the seventeenth or eighteenth century. It reads: ‘Mohideen Bux udiya kappal udiya mani’, which means the bell belonging to Mohideen Baksh or Bux’s ship.4 The inscription offers tantalising clues about the bell’s origin. Mohideen Bux was a common name for ships owned by Muslim mercantile communities operating out of ports such as Nagapattinam, Nagore, Karaikal and Tuticorin, and the Coromandel Coast in south-east India was home to many such traders in the nineteenth century. No itinerary for a ship of that name travelling as far as New Zealand, however, has been identified to date.

For now, the bell’s beginnings and journey to Aotearoa remain a mystery. Numerous theories have been put forward over the decades: some believe the bell was washed ashore after a shipwreck, while others think it’s more likely to be a souvenir from Java, perhaps brought to New Zealand on board a trading vessel. In his book Tamil Imprints in New Zealand, AT Arumugam links the bell to inscriptions on a rock at Manu Bay, Raglan, which he sees as ‘indisputable evidence for the early presence of Tamils in New Zealand’.5 There are, in addition, alternative theorists who view the bell as proof that New Zealand was settled by an ancient people whose arrival pre-dated Māori, though there is no evidence to support this claim. The museum does not subscribe to any particular theory.

While the bell’s origins may be disputed, its significance to many Tamils living in New Zealand and abroad is not. Recently, the bell has become a touchstone in burgeoning relationships between Māori and Tamil communities around Aotearoa. On 28 September 2024, it was proudly displayed as part of the ‘Māori–Tamil Hui’ organised by the Dunedin Tamil Society and held at Puketeraki Marae.6 This marked the first time the bell had been shown in Dunedin since Colenso exhibited it there at the New Zealand Exhibition of 1865.7

1 Reverend Richard Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, or, New Zealand and Its Inhabitants, Wertheim and Macintosh, London, 1855, p. 184. There is some uncertainty around the exact year the bell came into Colenso’s possession. Notes from the 1865 New Zealand Exhibition suggest that Colenso acquired the bell in 1836 or 1837, but his diaries suggest the year was more likely 1841; see William Colenso (1811–1899): Journals, MS-Papers-11062, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.

2 AG Bagnall and GC Paterson, William Colenso: His life and journeys, edited by Ian St George, Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2012, pp. 448–49.

3 Executor of Colenso Estate: To Hector regarding Colenso bequest to Hector £100 and items for Museum Collection including Tamil Bell and New Testament, 24 February 1899, MU000147/008/0050, museum archives, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. 257 Notes

4 In 2019–20 the bell was loaned to the Indian Heritage Centre in Singapore. They consulted scholars in Tamil Nadu who dated the inscription to the seventeenth or eighteenth century.

5 AT Arumugam, Tamil Imprints in New Zealand, Wellington Tamil Society, Wellington, 2012.

6 Dunedin Tamil Society, ‘Bridging cultures in Ōtepoti Dunedin – Tamil bell at Puketeraki Marae’, Facebook, 15 September 2024, www.facebook.com/share/v/14HmPYhp3Ny, accessed 18 July 2025.

7 ‘A Story of a Bell’, Hawke’s Bay Times, 16 November 1865, p. 1.