Śri Vijaya is certainly not a mirage. Inscriptions from its capital city, Palembang, state the name of this kingdom and say a little about its political structure. It is difficult to be sure how accurate Chinese or Arabic reports of life in Śri Vijaya were; some of the most colourful detail was supplied by Zhao Rugua in around 1225, by which time the kingdom had certainly passed its peak. But his comments were in large part recycled from earlier material; and even if they are not based on intimate knowledge, they testify to the exotic reputation that Śri Vijaya obtained. He wrote of a kingdom with many provinces or dependencies, though it is impossible to believe that they included Xilan, Ceylon; more to the point, his reference to Ceylon is further proof that the reach of Śri Vijaya extended far to the west, as Malay and Indonesian mariners sailed back and forth to India and Sri Lanka. Reports reached him of a sizeable capital city surrounded by solid walls, ruled by a king who processed under a silk umbrella to the accompaniment of guards carrying golden lances. The king, who only bathed in rose-water, was not permitted to eat cereals, but only sago; the Śri Vijayans believed that if he did eat cereals, this would bring drought and high prices. At grand court ceremonies (assuming that his diet of sago brought him sufficient strength), the king was expected to wear a very heavy crown adorned with hundreds of jewels. The succession was decided by choosing from among his sons the one who could bear its weight on his head; and the new king would dedicate a golden statue of the Buddha, to which the king’s subjects would bring offerings such as golden vases. The death of a king was treated as a national calamity: the people shaved their heads and many courtiers even immolated themselves in the royal funeral pyre.11
The Śri Vijayans used Sanskrit letters, in which one of the rare inscriptions from Palembang was written (though in an early form of the Malay language); but there were experts who could read and write Chinese characters, required when writing to the Chinese court. The inhabitants of the main city lived not within the town walls but around it in suburbs, and even on riverboats – it will be seen that the Chinese writers were actually describing a snake-like town that stretched for miles along the riverbank. The image was conveyed of a state that was ready to go to war against troublesome neighbours, with a competent army and brave soldiers. Rather than adopting the currency favoured by the Chinese, the copper coins known to Europeans as ‘cash’ that were threaded together through a central hole, the Śri Vijayans made use of hack silver, pieces of silver that were cut into pieces and weighed. (The term ‘cash’ is apparently derived from the Portuguese word caixa, ‘cash-box’, and the Chinese word was wén.)12 They imported both silver and gold, and also acquired – certainly from China – porcelain and embroidered silk, as well as rice and rhubarb. Camphor, cloves, sandalwood, cardamom, civet perfume, myrrh, aloes, ivory, coral and many other spices and luxuries were for sale on the island. Its markets sold both local products, including some of those spices such as aloe wood, and goods brought from further afield, such as cotton goods carried across the Indian Ocean by Dashi, Muslim merchants from Persia and Arabia; and one could also find slaves brought all the way from Kunlun, the coast of Africa.13 There must have been a lively traffic from the smaller Indonesian islands towards south-eastern Sumatra, bringing the resins and spices that the Chinese and Arabs keenly sought. By about AD 500, the Chinese valued benzoin resin from Indonesia as much as or more than Middle Eastern myrrh, while pine resin from Śri Vijaya was used, honestly or dishonestly, as a substitute for Arabian frankincense. One Chinese writer described the trade in frankincense, some no doubt genuine, some adulterated, some substituted by similar resins:
The Arabs bring their goods by ship to San-fo-chi and exchange them for goods. Thus this perfume is usually found in great quantities at San-fo-chi. Each year great ships leave San-fo-chi for Guangzhou or Quanzhou. At these two ports the shipping officials examine the amounts of perfume and establish its value.14
Zhao Rugua thought that Śri Vijaya and China began to make contact in the Tang period, at the start of the tenth century; but it has already been seen that contact can be traced back two centuries earlier. And the Song histories mention a whole series of embassies sent to China around 960, which were taken as recognition of Chinese overlordship; it is interesting to find sugar listed among the gifts, for at this period sugar stocks were only slowly becoming known in India and further west, and they are native to Indonesia. These gifts were regarded as tribute, to be sure; but the ambassadors received rewards for their efforts, including such wonders as yaks’ tails and white porcelain. As well as official visits, which conformed to the Chinese idea of what trade with the imperial court was all about, there were visits by merchants of San-fo-chi: in 980 a Śri Vijayan merchant reached the south coast of China after a sixty-day voyage, carrying rhinoceros horns, perfumes and spices. This was a rather longer voyage than many experienced – a month was normal, or even three weeks.15
One might ask why the Śri Vijayans were so keen to acknowledge the distant ruler of China as their lord. Precisely because the emperor was so distant, the chance of direct interference was slim, but imperial approval would enhance the authority of the king of Śri Vijaya over sometimes troublesome vassals; it might even be of some use in fending off claims from independent neighbours with their own ambitions to create a commercial network, such as the Javans, who invaded Sumatra in 992, and who sent a particularly magnificent embassy to China the same year, conveying the message that Java (rather than Śri Vijaya) was the place with which to cultivate friendships and do business.16 So it hardly comes as a surprise that in 1003 the Śri Vijayan king sent the Song emperor an embassy, declaring that he had erected a Buddhist temple in his home town specifically to pray for the long life of the emperor. Nor is it a surprise that the emperor sent temple bells in return, as well as a title of honour for his faithful subject. A few years later the favours of the emperor extended even further. Instead of the belts adorned with gold embroidery that most ambassadors received on taking leave of the emperor, the Śri Vijayan ambassadors were given belts entirely covered in gold. In 1016 Śri Vijaya was granted the rank of ‘first-class trading state’, though Java also received the same promotion.17
The value that the Chinese emperors placed on ties with Śri Vijaya becomes more and more obvious; and the main motive, without a doubt, was the desire to channel perfumes, spices and exotic goods from Sumatra to the Tang court and its Song successor. In the best tradition of the Chinese bureaucracy, officials such as the ya fan bo shih, or Superintendent of Barbarian Shipping, were established in the ports along the Chinese coast; they registered the goods being brought into the Heavenly Kingdom and provided essential services such as translation to and from Chinese to the ‘barbarian’ merchants who flocked to these ports as early as the eighth century. One term used for port superintendents, shiboshi, may be derived from the Persian word shahbandar, with a similar meaning, providing further evidence of the links between China and the western Indian Ocean. In one Chinese port, ‘rhinoceros horns were so numerous that bribes were offered to the servants and retainers’. The local governor was unimpressed by some of the practices he observed. The goods of foreign merchants who died in China were confiscated if they were not claimed within three months; but the governor pointed out that it could take much longer to reach China, from barbarian lands, so this practice was unfair and should be banned.18
All this supervision of trade does little to explain why Śri Vijaya was such an important place in the early Middle Ages; and Zhao Rugua provided a clear answer: ‘the country is an important thoroughfare for the traffic of foreign nations, the produce of all other countries is intercepted and kept in store there for the trade of foreign ships.’ This statement suggests a rather aggressive policy on the part of the kingdom’s rulers, who were as careful as the Chinese to check ships, cargoes and merchants that arrived in their lands.19 Elsewhere, they blocked one of the straits that gave access to their waters with an iron chain, to keep at bay pirates from neighbouring land
s. With the coming of peace, the chain lost its usefulness; it now lay coiled up on the shore, and people travelling on passing ships treated the chain as a god and sacrificed to it, rubbing it with oil until it glistened; ‘crocodiles do not dare pass over it to do mischief.’ However, the Śri Vijayans too behaved no better than pirates. Zhao Rugua accused them of attacking any ships that tried to pass by without coming into port, for they would rather die than let unaccounted ships through their domains.20 Yet it might be asked whether their location was quite so perfect. The capital, Palembang, does not even lie on the seashore, while the area of Sumatra in which it lies is some distance from the strait that, in later centuries, would form the vital link between the Pacific and the Indian Ocean: the Strait of Malacca. Somewhere like Singapore, at the entrance to those straits, might seem a much better location from which to control trade.21 Bearing all this in mind, it makes sense to look elsewhere for clues to the special attraction of the kingdom of Śri Vijaya.
II
The answer to the puzzle can be found in writings produced much further west, in Arab and Persian lands. In the ninth and tenth centuries, Arabic works of geography expressed wonder at the kingdom of Zabaj, which was visited by the merchant Abu Zayd Hassan in the tenth century; he hailed from Siraf on the coast of Iran, at a time when trade through the Persian Gulf, and particularly Siraf, was very lively. This writer claimed that the normal sailing time from Zabaj to China was one month.22 Although a Tamil inscription of 1088 uses the term Zabedj to describe the inhabitants of the camphor-laden lands of north-western Sumatra, and accuses them of being cannibals, this was a word whose meaning was much wider. Zabaj can best be translated as ‘East Indies’ or Indonesia, and is related to the name ‘Java’, while the name Sribuza, obviously a corruption of Śri Vijaya, was used for the main island, Sumatra. Arab travellers were impressed by a fiery volcano in the lands of Zabaj, but they also noted that its king ruled over a considerable empire, which included the trading emporium of Kalahbar, thought to have lain on the western flank of the Malay peninsula, and therefore some distance from Palembang.23 Zabaj’s other wonders included multilingual white, red and yellow parrots that had no difficulty learning Arabic, Persian, Greek and Hindi, and ‘beings in human form who speak an incomprehensible language’ and who eat and drink like humans – perhaps a description of the Orang-utan, or perhaps another example of a common fantasy about lands over the horizon.24 Around the same time, the maharajah of Zabaj, ruler of the isles, was reputed to be the richest king in the Indies, thanks to his massive revenues, derived in part from the extensive trade between Zabaj and Oman, which had begun to flourish in the early tenth century.25 An earlier king had been so rich in gold that a ceremony was concocted to prove the point: every morning the head of his household stood before the king and threw a gold ingot into a tidal inlet beside his palace. As the water receded a golden glow would arise from the inlet. His successor had a more practical attitude, and trawled every last piece of gold from the water; however, he then distributed it to his family, his staff, the royal slaves and even the poor of his kingdom.
Arab writers also knew that Zabaj faced China, which could be reached by sea in a month, or less when favourable winds blew. It lay midway between China and Arabia. Not just its position but its own resources – large brazilwood plantations, massive camphor trees, rich supplies of benzoin resin, and so on – brought it great commercial wealth. In the Arabian Nights, Sindbad the Sailor’s graphic description of how camphor was extracted has its origins in tales told of Arab merchants who ventured across the Indian Ocean to Indonesia, as the reference to rhinoceros horns (another very desirable item) makes plain:
And on the morrow we set out and journeyed over the mighty range of mountains, seeing many serpents in the valley, till we came to a fair great island, wherein was a garden of huge camphor trees under each of which a hundred men might take shelter. When the folk have a mind to get camphor, they bore into the upper part of the bole with a long iron; whereupon the liquid camphor, which is the sap of the tree, floweth out, and they catch it in vessels, where it concreteth like gum; but after this the tree dieth and becometh firewood. Moreover, there is in this island a kind of wild beast, called ‘Rhinoceros’, that pastureth as do steers and buffaloes with us … It is a great and remarkable animal with a great and thick horn, ten cubits long, amiddleward its head; wherein, cleft in twain, is the likeness of a man.26
Arab writers were struck by the simple fact that the rich, fertile countryside covered the whole of the island of Sumatra on which the maharajah resided. There are no deserts! one of these writers exclaimed. The rare spices that could be obtained from Zabaj included cloves, sandalwood and cardamom – indeed, ‘more varieties of perfumes and aromatics than any other king possesses’.27 Stories of Zabaj grew in the telling, and Mas‘udi, a tenth-century traveller, asserted that two years would not be sufficient to visit all the islands under the rule of the maharajah. By the tenth century the fame of the maharajah of Zabaj had reached as far west as Muslim Spain. Al-Idrisi from Ceuta in northern Morocco, writing at the court of Roger II, the Christian king of Sicily, in the middle of the twelfth century, was an enthusiastic geographer whose description of the world was more ambitious than anything that had been attempted before. For sure, he knew about Śri Vijaya, even if he had never been near there; he knew that the natural resources of Sumatra attracted merchants keen to obtain its spices; but he also knew why Śri Vijaya had become such an important market:
It is said that when the affairs of China were affected by rebellions and when tyranny and disorder became too great in India, the Chinese transferred their business to Zabaj and the other islands dependent on it, and became friendly with its inhabitants, for they admired their equity, their good behaviour, the agreeable nature of their customs and their good business acumen. This is why Zabaj is so well populated and why it is visited by foreigners.28
Yet this was only part of the story, as al-Idrisi also indicated. The inhabitants of Zabaj were not simply passive recipients, who took advantage of their geographical location to host visits by Chinese, Arab and Indian merchants, and sold them the perfumes and spices of their islands. They were also busy navigators, whose voyages reached as far as Sofala on the south-east coast of Africa, where they bought iron that they carried back to India and to their homeland. They were accompanied to these African markets by people from Komr, Madagascar, which makes sense since, as has been seen, the first settlers on the island were not of African origin but hailed from the islands of Indonesia, whose language they carried with them.29
This rich evidence for a wealthy kingdom is derived almost entirely from the writings of those who lived outside Śri Vijaya, though a few Arab travellers did visit the kingdom and recorded their impressions. Its own records are few – some inscriptions from Palembang and elsewhere that extol the king of Śri Vijaya as a maharajah (literally, ‘great king’) above many other kings, and records of conflicts with island neighbours in Java and with mainland neighbours in the Khmer kingdom, whose greatest city was Angkor Wat in Cambodia. One important inscription in Malay dates from the seventh century, when Palembang already possessed ‘overseers of trades and crafts’; it also mentions sea captains.30 And it has to be said that Arabic writers, prone to repeat one another, can leave the impression that there was a wide consensus about a fact or a place, when they actually go back to a single rumour made real; in other words, they are not independent voices.
The capital, Palembang, has yielded rather few significant finds, though the modern city stands on top of the ancient site, rendering very difficult any attempt to identify its medieval buildings. After a team from Pennsylvania declared that there was nothing on the site that was really ancient, further investigation turned up Tang pottery and demonstrated that there were wharves and warehouses all along the northern bank of the river on which Palembang stood, the River Musi. These installations stretched across a distance of twelve kilometres. The archaeologist John Miksic has po
inted out how similar this long, narrow town of wharves is to the extraordinary town described in the nineteenth century by the great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. What he found at Palembang was a ‘city’ about half as long as the medieval evidence suggests, but one that consisted simply of a strip along the river bank; the houses stood on stilts above the River Musi, and Zhao Rugua had already pointed out that everyone in Śri Vijaya lived either ‘scattered about outside the city, or on the water on rafts of boards covered over with reeds’, which enabled them to claim exemption from government taxes.31 In the nineteenth century, only the sultan and a couple of his chief advisers lived on land, on low hills close to the river. The building material was wood, which decays easily; however, it can be taken for granted that the maharajah lived in some style, in a large wooden palace with finely decorated timbers, the lineal ancestor to the fifteenth-century royal palace at Melaka described in the Malay Annals and now handsomely reconstructed in modern Melaka.32 As for the extensive town walls described by Zhao Rugua, sections of earth ramparts, probably from the seventh century, have been discovered. The use of brick and stone was rare, though in 1994 the stone foundations of a seventh-century temple were uncovered by French and Indonesian archaeologists. And yet there was enough debris to indicate that Palembang had trading links with both China and India; 10,000 fragments of imported pottery were excavated in the centre of Palembang, though only 40 per cent were actually of Śri Vijayan date. The temple contained sixty Chinese bowls, admittedly from the twelfth century and therefore deposited after Śri Vijaya had passed its peak; other sites have produced an impressive range of green or white Chinese ceramics, though nothing dating earlier than about 800; the Śri Vijayans particularly liked the glazed greenware fired in Guangdong, in southern China. But another source of fine glazed pottery lay far to the west: iridescent lustre-wares from Arab lands and turquoise pottery made in Persia also arrived in Śri Vijaya during the ninth and tenth centuries. Several statues of the Hindu god Vishnu have also been found, though that is not to say they were actually made in India. A statue of a Buddhist divine being, Avalokitesvara, may date from the late seventh century.33
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