KP

JB 53
 MBRAS 1992

Edited
for the Council of the Society by
Dr. Pierre-Yves Manguin and
Tan Sri Dato' Dr. Mubin Sheppard

MONOGRAPH No. 20
Sriwijaya - History, Religion & Language
of an Early Malay Polity
KDN PP 119/3/92
MITA (P) No. 284/5/92
ISBN 983-996144-6
r - - - - \.----,

KP l'v)
JB 53 95"9,~1
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11 AUG 1995
Perpustakaan Negara
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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of conten s iii

Table of illustrations iv

P.-Y. Manguin, Introduction v

Biographical note on authors xiii
Notes xvii

G. Coedes, The Kingdom of Sriwijaya 1

Appendices 23
Notes 31
G. Coedes, The Malay inscriptions of Sriwijaya 41
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Notes 85
G. Coedes, A new theory about the site of Sriwijaya 93
Notes 102
G. Coedes, The Ligor stone: the current state of its interpretation 103
L.-Ch. Damais, Language B of the Sriwijaya i'nscriptions 113
Notes 151

Bibliographic References . . . . . . . : . :. . . ~', T ;.~' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

.. .).- .
 TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate I The Wiang Sa inscription (Wat Serna Muang, side A) facing p.24

Plate II A. The Wiang stt inscription (Wat Serna Muang, side B) .. 0 o' facing po25
B. The inscription on the Wat Wieng Buddha 0 0 •••• 0 0 •••• facing po25

Plate III The inscribed Buddha statue at Wat Wieng 0 0 0 0 0 • 0 0 0 0 0 •• facing p.26

Plate IV The Kedukan Bukit inscription 0 0 0 0 0 •• 0 • 0 • 0 0 o. facing p.46

Plate V The Talang Tuwo inscription (inscribed stone) .... 0 •••• o. facing p.47

Plate VI The Talang Tuwo inscription (rubbing) facing p.50

Plate VII The Karang Brahi inscription (rubbing) facing po51

Plate VIII The Kota Kapur inscription (rubbing) . 0 •••• 0 • • • • • • • • o' facing p.54
Plate IX Ao Dates given in figures 0 0 0 • 0 0 • 0 ••• 0 •••• 0 • • • • • •• facing p.55
ao Talang Tuwo inscription
b. Kota Kapur inscription
co Sambor inscription (Cambodia, K 127)
d. Dinaya inscription (Java)
B. Inscription on a river stone near Kota Kapur (rubbing) 0 ••• facing p.55

MAPS

Map I Western Southeast Asia .. 0 0 0 •• 0 0 0 0 0 •• 0 •• 0 •• 0 • 0 o' facing poviii

Map II South Sumatra in Sriwijayan times '. 0 0 •••• 0 0 0 •• 0 • • • • •• facing p.ix

Map III The Malay Peninsula in Sriwijayan times 0 0 0 • 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 • 0 0 facing p.27

 Introduction ix

Sriwijaya, and from the ambiguity and difficulties of interpretation of the Chinese and Arabic
sources describing the region. Although he attempted to integrate.the development of these
other sites into the history of Sriwijaya, Coedes maintained to the last his initial position: of
all possible sites, that of Palembang, despite the relative poverty of its archaeological
remains, was the most likely to have given birth to the state of Sriwijaya in the 7th century
and to have been its first capital. The first of the two articles is, in particular, a reply to the
theories of Quaritch Wales, who had excavated the Kedah sites, and attempted to place the
centre of Sriwijaya on the Malay peninsula. The second article, written twenty-three years
later, provides an update on the question of the sites found in southern Thailand, based on
a new, detailed examination of the Wat Serna Muang inscription in Nakhon Si Thammarat
(still known as Ligor at the time).
Can these four articles written by G. Coedes be accepted today without reservations of
a scientific nature? This is doubtless true as far as the basic matter is concerned, especially
with regard to the long article of 1918, and more particularly, that of 1930: as we can see
from the constant reference made to them in recent works, these articles are still of such
value that no scholar of ancient South-East Asian history can allow himself not to read them.
This does not mean, however, that their detail should not be corrected by reading more
recent work. Thus, the date of the Kedukan Bukit inscription was corrected by Damais: it
should be 604 Saka (682 AD) and not 605. 3 Thus also, the reading of the text of the Kota
Kapur and Karang Brahi inscriptions was improved and completed by the more recent
research of de Casparis and Boechari, who took into account similar texts of inscriptions
discovered since 1930 in Telaga Batu (Palembang), Palas Pasemah (Lampung Selatan) and
Bungkuk (Karanganyar, Lampung Tengah).4 Certain passages whose reading was doubtful
, have been clarified; other passages are still controversial and the reader must refer to more
recent hypotheses, which it would take too long to enumerate here. Some aspects of Coedes'
overall interpretation of the contents of the inscriptions are also open to revision, being
influenced by his time and by the global theories on the history of South-East Asia and
"Indianization" that nobody then dreamed of questioning. The recent analysis by Herman
Kulke, 5 who examines more closely the text of the 7th century inscriptions in an attempt to
reach a better understanding of the structure of the polity of Sriwijaya, proves that re-reading
of sources by historians with a different perception of the process by which the early states
of South-East Asia were formed has now become necessary.

Regarding the controversial question of the location of the centre of Sriwijaya in

Palembang, Coedes always remained faithful to his original theory, which he exposed for the
last time in his Etats Hindouises (1964, and English translation revised by the author in
1968). J.G. de Casparis translated and analyzed with the greatest care the inscriptions
discovered in Palembang after 1930, especially the long inscription of Telaga Batu (now also
known as Sebokingking), a "central" inscription if ever there was one, and he did not deviate
 Mangum

on this point from Coedes' original hypothesis. 6 O.W. Wolters, who devoted a substantial
part of his historical work to Sriwijaya, although the debate about the location of the capital
was not one of his major concerns to start with, continued to situate the first capital in
Palembang, following in this respect Coedes and those whom he named the "veterans". 7 The
recent work of Thai archaeologists in the region of Chaiya, Takuapa and Nakhon Si
Thammarat certainly confirms the importance of archaeological sites in Southern Thailand
and their close links with Sriwijaya. But the Sumatran origins of Sriwijaya are no longer the
subject of serious discussion among them. 8 As for the conclusions voiced by Bennet Bronson
after his excavations in Palembang in 1974, according to which the town contained no
remains earlier than the 14th century, it is clear today, after work on the site since 1979, that
these were based on erroneous premises. 9
Coedes himself wrote in 1930 that "the almost complete absence of archaeological remains
in Palembang is still a mystery whose solution cannot as yet be glimpsed". 10 He did not live
to see this mystery solved, but the results of the latest excavations carried out in Palembang
by the Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional, in collaboration with the Ecole fran~se
d'Extr~me-Orient, prove at least that this absence was only apparent, and the lack of
visibility of the sites is easily explicable.

The article by Louis-Charles Damais

The very long article by Louis-Charles Damais, as published posthumously in the Bulletin
de ['Ecole fran~aise d'Extreme-Orient in 1968, is a study of the mysterious language in
which the short imprecation preceding the Old Malay text of the Telaga Batu, Karang Brahi
and Kota Kapur inscriptions (and those subsequently discovered in Palas Pasemah and
Bungkuk) is written. Although Coedes, in his 1930 article, and de Casparis after him, had
not attempted to clarify a language that they reckoned would remain forever incomprehen-
sible, Damais attempted here to tackle this tricky problem. Rejecting the idea of an artificial
language, and using a long and rigorous linguistic and philological analysis, comparing the
terms of this "language B" with a variety of Austronesian languages (including Cam and
Malagasy), he attempted to prove irrefutably that this was simply an Austronesian language,
certainly unknown, but not necessarily mysterious. Faithful to his legendary rigour, Damais
remained very cautious in his conclusions, leaving the way open for a new approach. His
article, however, remains of great utility, both in its methods and in its conclusions. It is
sufficient proof that new research is now coming to light among historians and linguists
interested in the relationship between the Malay World and Madagascar: the question of the
origins of the Malagasy language (of which it is known today that it is close to the languages
of the Barito group, while displaying clearly the marks of Malay influence), gives a key role
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