The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  The legitimacy of the later rulers of Melaka could (according to the Sĕjarah Mĕlayu) be traced right back to Alexander the Great, who appears as ‘Rajah Iskandar, the Two-Horned, son of Rajah Darab, a Roman of the country of Macedonia’.25 This supposed fact betrays the strong cultural influence of India and Islam on Malaya at the end of the Middle Ages; the early stories in the book are about India, not south-east Asia. But gradually the history of that area comes into focus. The author told how an Indian prince called Rajah Chulan decided to attack China, for ‘the whole of India and Sind was subject to him and every prince of East and West was his vassal’ – every prince except the ruler of China, here cast not as an emperor but as a weakling who pretended to be ‘Lord of the Earth’, but who knew that if the army and navy of Chulan arrived, ‘assuredly this country of ours will be destroyed’. The Chinese could not rely on greater military force, so they had to rely on a ruse. When the rajah was already at Temasek (later known as Singapore) a Chinese ship came to meet him; to the surprise of the Indians it carried a crew of very old men, and on board they found a number of fruit trees. The men claimed that they had boarded the ship when they were twelve years old, when the trees were mere seeds. That was how long it took to sail from China to the Strait of Malacca. The rajah reflected on this and decided that ‘China must be a very long way away. When should we ever get there?’ Instead of advancing against China, he decided to explore the sea. He had a sort of glass submarine made in which he visited underwater cities and was received with honour at the court of one of the sea princes. The two rajahs became good friends, and the sea prince offered Chulan the hand of his daughter; they married, lived under the sea for three years and had three sons, before Chulan decided he had to abandon his distraught family so that his kingdom on earth would continue to be ruled by his dynasty. A winged steed carried him out of the sea, and once back home he took another wife, who came from Hindustan.26

  Surprisingly, this fable does have some historical value. There is the simple fact that the sea fascinated the Malays, in this and other stories in the same book. More specifically, Rajah Chulan is thought to be a distant memory of the same Chola king who launched an attack on Śri Vijaya in 1126; and this legend not merely mentions the site of Singapore but it immediately precedes a story about the old capital of Śri Vijaya, Palembang: ‘formerly it was a very great city, the like of which was not to be found in the whole country of Andelas [Sumatra]’. The three princes born under the sea were adopted by the ruler of Palembang and became rajahs in their own right; the youngest, blessed by a miraculous being who emerged out of sea foam, took the name Sri Tri Buana, which has strong Buddhist overtones and means ‘Lord of the Three Worlds’ in Sanskrit; he took up residence in Palembang, whose ruler abdicated in his favour.27 But one day he announced: ‘I am thinking of going to the coast to find a suitable site for a city. What say you?’ He set out with a great navy:

  So vast was the fleet that there seemed to be no counting it; the masts of the ships were like a forest of trees, their pennons and streamers were like driving clouds and the state umbrellas of the rajahs like cirrus. So many were the craft that accompanied Sri Tri Buana that the sea seemed to be nothing but ships.28

  During his travels, Sri Tri Buana went hunting; and one day, while chasing a deer, he climbed a high rock and found himself looking across a stretch of water towards a pure white beach in the distance.29 He asked what that land was and was told that it was called Temasek; archaeology confirms that a white beach would have fringed the southern shores of what was then Temasek island during the Middle Ages. The channel separating Temasek from where he was (which would be one of the Riau islands, now under Indonesian control) proved much more difficult to cross than he could have imagined; a storm blew, and the rajah’s ship began to fill up with water. The best the sailors could do was to throw overboard all the goods on board, to lighten the vessel; but one item, the rajah’s crown, was kept on board. The boatswain insisted that this too should be cast in the sea, and Sri Tri Buana replied, ‘Overboard with it then!’ So over it went and the storm abated.

  None the worse for this experience, Sri Tri Buana went on land and saw a strange animal bigger than a he-goat that had a red body, a white breast and a black head. Mystified by this, the rajah was told that it was some sort of lion, though the description hardly matched that of a lion, and it has been suggested that the author might have been thinking of an orang-utan instead. Whatever the animal was, it was considered a good augury, and Sri Tri Buana decided to build a city on that site, which he named ‘Town of the Lion’, Singapura. Like Sri Tri Buana’s new name, this was a Sanskrit rather than Malay word, and was intended to show that the ruler and his court were in contact with the high civilization of the Buddhist and Hindu lands to the west.30 ‘Singapura’ was a common name for towns in this region, but that a new town came into existence on this site somewhere around 1300 cannot now be doubted.31 The Sĕjarah Mĕlayu reported that ‘Singapura became a great city, to which foreigners resorted in great numbers so that the fame of the city and its greatness spread throughout the world.’32

  In south-east Asia that was not entirely good news. The ruler of Majapahit enters the story told by the Malay chronicler at this point. He had ‘heard that Singapura was a great city but that its ruler did not acknowledge the Batara [rajah of Majapahit] as its overlord’. This made him exceedingly angry. He sent a strange gift to the rajah of Singapore, an extremely thin wood shaving seven fathoms long, rolled up to look like a girl’s earring. At first confused and irritated, Sri Tri Buana realized that he would have to show that his own carpenters were just as skilled as those of Majapahit, and he ordered a carpenter to shave a boy’s head with an adze rather than a razor, which proved he was as adept with his adze as the Javan carpenter had been. On hearing of this, the rajah of Majapahit jumped to the conclusion that the ruler of Singapore was threatening to invade and to shave the heads of all the Javans. He ordered a fleet of a hundred warships to be prepared, and launched a vicious attack on Singapore. Nonetheless, he was beaten off.33 So too were equally vicious garfish (a type of small swordfish) that leaped out of the sea and stabbed anyone who was on the seashore; in modern times, fishermen in the waters around Singapore have been attacked and killed by these fish, which jump out of the water when they see the bright lights of lanterns aboard the fishing boats, and woe betide anyone in their way. The ruler was unable to work out how to stop these attacks, and thousands died until a young boy suggested the Singaporeans should make a barricade out of the stems of banana trees along the beach; after that, each time a garfish jumped out of the water it buried its snout in the foliage, and could be cut down and killed. However, the ruler was jealous of the boy who had come up with a solution that had eluded him, and put him to death, after which ‘the guilt of his blood was laid on Singapura’.34 The story therefore foreshadows the fate of Singapore, which the rajah was soon to lose to his old enemies.

  This event was an unpleasant interlude before the next Javan attack, which was prompted by dissension at the court of the current ruler of Singapore, Iskandar Shah. One of the king’s mistresses, who was the beautiful daughter of the royal treasurer, was accused of carrying on with other men; the angry rajah ordered her to be displayed naked in the town marketplace. Her father would have preferred her to be put to death rather than let her face this humiliation; and he wreaked revenge by sending a letter to the rajah of Majapahit, promising his help if the Javans attacked again. So the Javans made ready 300 large ships and countless smaller craft, bearing (supposedly) 200,000 soldiers. Soon after their arrival the treasurer opened the gate of the fort that was supposed to protect Singapore, and the Javans streamed into the city; the fort was flooded with the blood of those killed on either side.35 Yet Iskandar survived, and fled from the city, which remained in the hands of the ruler of Majapahit. The lesson of these events was that Iskandar had lacked wisdom: he had been unable to deal with the garfish, and he provoked his treasurer into treachery
when he disgraced the daughter of a loyal officer of the crown.

  These extraordinary tales established not just a dynastic genealogy going back, it was claimed, to ancient Macedonia, but a genealogy of cities: Palembang was the mother city of Singapore, which itself, as will be seen, was the mother city of Melaka. By the time the author reached the end of the fourteenth century, his knowledge of the past became much more precise; the magical atmosphere of his early chapters gave way to a more factual, though not entirely credible, account of what happened, without underwater princes and prophets born out of sea foam. The general picture of Singapore as a thriving emporium in the fourteenth century can now be confirmed, thanks to broken sherds, a shattered inscription, and bits and pieces of brick foundations. Moreover, there is other written evidence, this time from far beyond Singapore, that speaks of Temasek before it took its new name, and that shows how it had already become a centre of trade and piracy by the early fourteenth century.

  V

  Wang Dayuan was a merchant who was born in 1311 and who lived for a time in Quanzhou. In the 1330s he set out twice across the South China Sea, and recorded his impressions in a book entitled Description of the Barbarians of the Isles. Although his style is considered poor, he enjoyed composing poetry and was a keen geographer – writing from the perspective of someone who had sailed the seas, he divided the world into two oceans, an eastern one and a western one, corresponding to the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. Dan-ma-xi (his transcription of Temasek) in his view marked the point where the two oceans met. He described the people who lived there and whom he had visited: they tied their hair in a bun and they manufactured rice wine; they wore short tunics made of cheap cloth coloured dark blue; but this was a place where one could trade gold, silk, metal vessels and fairly ordinary ceramics. However, the goods they traded ‘were obtained by piracy’. Ships sailing out into the Indian Ocean would be permitted to pass without interference, because what the pirates wanted was for them to return laden with goods. As these ships came back past Temasek ‘the sailors have to install arrow guards and special cloth screens and sharpen weapons to prepare for defence’. With a fair wind, one could sail straight through and escape being attacked, but if the pirates did manage to seize a ship, they ruthlessly killed those on board and took their possessions. The most dangerous place was Longya-men, ‘Dragon’s Tooth Strait’, a narrow passage off the southern tip of Singapore, separating a small skerry from the main island. And yet Wang also described how the governor of Temasek insisted that everyone should ‘live in harmony with the Chinese people’, or, in an alternative translation, ‘men and women reside beside Chinese people’.36 In other words, a Chinese settlement existed on Temasek in the early fourteenth century, at a time when the town lay under Javanese dominion. Precisely because it was so exposed, the town was very vulnerable and at the same time in a good position to reap great benefits from the sea trade that passed its doors – which, in the early days, it chose to do by piracy, although the presence of pirates would also draw the armies and navies of Siam and Majapahit towards the Malacca Strait. The people of Temasek, for their part, tried to make friends in the region: there is evidence that they sent gifts to the king of Vietnam.37 In the end, as will be seen, it was the Ming Chinese who cracked this nut, and not at Singapore but at its replacement, Melaka.

  Before that, however, the Ming dynasty set off a crisis in the region. The accession of the first Ming emperor in 1368 was followed by tighter and tighter restrictions on foreign trade, aimed at Chinese traders or Chinese settlers overseas, who were ordered to return to their native land, but evidently did not do so. Under the new regulations, Chinese worshippers were expected to burn Chinese rather than foreign incense. This might have greatly eased the outflow of bullion, which had been a serious problem under the Song, but it also undermined the relationship that had been built up with the rulers of Java and other lands around the South China Sea, as well as Japan and Korea. By 1380 the relationship between Java and China had worsened still further. The Javans intercepted and put to death Chinese ambassadors who were on their way to Jambi to invest the maharajah of Śri Vijaya as a vassal king. The ruler of Majapahit insisted that the rajah of Śri Vijaya was his own vassal, and it seems that this rajah was hoping to free himself from Javan tutelage by turning to China instead. The attempt backfired; Java asserted its control over Sumatra. Following this outrage, the Ming emperor wanted nothing to do with the peoples of Indonesia.38 This left the Javans free to pursue their own aggressive policies.

  Meanwhile Sumatra was in turmoil. At Palembang, a prince named Parameśvara had taken charge; this is the figure the Malay Annals named as Iskandar, although, to add confusion, the real Iskandar may have been his son. There are as many versions of who was who and what happened as there are accounts of Parameśvara’s stormy life. Palembang, as has been seen, was no longer the great emporium that it had been in the glory days of Śri Vijaya, but Parameśvara aimed to throw off Javan overlordship. The Majapahit navy attacked Palembang; after only three years in charge there, Parameśvara fled westward, landing in Singapore. His tenure of power there was brief: enemies would unseat him in 1397, and he would acquire his third princedom with the foundation of Melaka.39 Before looking at early Melaka, a close examination of early Singapore is required.

  The Malay Annals described how Sri Tri Buana was buried on the ‘hill of Singapura’, and the author of the Malay Annals and other writers mentioned additional royal burials in what is now Fort Canning Park.40 Memories of these tombs remained alive, and the area came to be known to those living there when Raffles arrived as the ‘Forbidden Hill’; it was a taboo area, perhaps because of the graves, and it was also credited with being the site of the royal palace. One story told how earlier rulers had forbidden anyone to ascend the hill unless the king summoned them; and there was a stream where the queen would bathe, and that too was forbidden ground. Here, in the time of Raffles, the first antiquarians to take an interest in the remote past of Singapore found tumbledown sections of ancient walls and brick foundations; since most buildings, including the royal palace, would have been of wood, and since many would have stood on stilts, the lack of extensive remains is no surprise. But with the coming of British rule no one bothered to investigate further; the sacred hill became the British headquarters, and the ground was levelled.41 Over the years other discoveries have taken place, but by accident: some elaborate gold jewellery in an Indian style, including a bracelet and earrings, was turned up in 1928 and evidently belonged to someone of very high rank.

  One potentially important written record inscribed on stone (the so-called Singapore Stone) was blown to smithereens by the British army, which needed the site near the mouth of the Singapore River where it lay for a new fort. No one has deciphered the writing on the small surviving fragment that is proudly displayed in the Singapore History Museum.42 Here myth and history once again become entangled. The Malay Annals mention a giant named Badang who came to Singapore and challenged a rival strongman from nearby Kalinga to a contest:

  Now in front of the hall of audience there was a huge rock, and the Kalinga champion said to Badang, ‘Let us try our strength in lifting that rock. Whichever of us fails to lift it is the loser.’ ‘Very well’, answered Badang, ‘you try first.’ Thereupon the Kalinga champion tried to lift the rock but failed. He then put forth every effort and raised it as far as his knees, then he let it down again with a crash, saying, ‘Now it’s your turn, sir.’ ‘Very well’, said Badang, and he lifted the rock, swung it into the air and hurled it as far as the bank of Kula Singapura [Singapore River]. That is the rock which is there to this day.43

  The Kalinga champion had to hand over the seven ships laden with goods with which he had arrived in Singapore, and, humiliated, he headed back home. More importantly, perhaps, Badang was credited with stretching a chain across the river mouth, to block free access to the port of Singapore – evidence, for what it is worth, that efforts were being made to create a working ha
rbour, and one that could be closed off when pirates or enemy navies threatened.44

  Only in the 1980s and after did serious investigation of what remained under the surface of the hill begin, confirming that this was an important fourteenth-century centre of trade.45 The evidence mostly consists of fragments of pottery, in their thousands, though plenty of glass beads and coins complement the pottery, and all point in the same direction: fourteenth-century Singapore was an important trading emporium with links to China, Java and the lands around the South China Sea, and westwards to the Indian Ocean. The most striking feature of the discoveries on the hill is the predominance of Chinese ceramics even over local ones; those from China nearly all date from the Yuan dynasty, that is, before the Ming dynasty threw out the Mongols in 1368.46 Chinese silence after then reflects the new Ming hostility to foreign trade; there is simply not much early Ming porcelain to show from the excavations. But before the trade with China dried up the Singaporeans made much use of good-quality Chinese porcelain: light-green celadon, some of it from Fukien province in the neighbourhood of Quanzhou; white porcelain, very typical of the Chinese export trade and produced in large quantities at Dehua not far from Quanzhou; the famous blue-and-white porcelain, one piece of which is especially remarkable, as it carries the Chinese characters for compass directions.47 This bowl is more likely to have been used in divination, for feng shui, than at sea, but at least it is clear that it arrived along the sea lanes. These good-quality bowls, vases and cups were found in the area where the royal palace must have stood, so they give a clue to the standard of living of the princely court during the fourteenth century.