Srivijaya 00: Un-Imagining “Srivijaya” – A Series

In 1918, French scholar George Cœdès made the claim that there was a kingdom in Southeast Asia that no one had ever heard of before. He said it was called “Srivijaya” and that it was based on the island of Sumatra.

Cœdès worked in Thailand and in French Indochina. He studied inscriptions and synthesized his findings in a 1944 work entitled The Ancient History of the Hinduized States of the Far East (Histoire ancienne des États hindouisés d’Extrême-Orient).

In the post-colonial era it became fashionable to criticize colonial-era scholars like Cœdès for having argued that Southeast Asia had been influenced by outside peoples and cultures, however, the new generation of “Southeast Asianists,” particularly at American universities like Cornell, still relied heavily on the work of their colonial predecessors as they attempted to forge a new path writing about indigenous agency and the “localization” of outside cultural practices.

The topic of Srivijaya is a perfect example of a place where the work of colonial and post-colonial scholars converged, and it is also a perfect example of why that convergence proved to be disastrous for the field of premodern Southeast Asian history.

In the 1960s, historian O. W. Wolters solidified colonial-era research on Srivijaya. He published two books on the topic and delivered this supposedly “once forgotten” polity to center stage of the newly emerging field in Western universities of Southeast Asian history.

Indeed, one could argue that Srivijaya became the crown jewel of the field of premodern Southeast Asian history as it represented various traits that scholars at that time were promoting about the region.

Here was a maritime polity that had connected peoples and extended its influence across the region. What is more, it had done so not by coercion, as Europeans later did, but with trade. Indeed, a millennium before Europeans arrived on the scene and took control of the major trade networks, the indigenous kingdom of Srivijaya had ruled the seas.

While Wolters and others wrote extensively about Srivijaya, they all relied heavily on some key points that Cœdès first made way back in 1918.

The first concerns the name, “Srivijaya.” In 1913 a Dutch epigrapher by the name of Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern published an article about an inscription that had been found in 1892 in Kota Kapur on the island of Bangka off the coast of Sumatra. In writing about this “Kota Kapur inscription,” as it is now known, Kern stated that it mentioned a person called “His Majesty Vijaya,” or “Sri Vijaya.”

In his 1918 article, Cœdès compared what Kern had written with what had been written about an inscription from southern Thailand that also contained the term “Sri Vijaya” (the “Ligor inscription”). He argued that this term must be understood as the name of a kingdom and that this “Srivijaya” that was mentioned in these two inscriptions was the same kingdom.

Given that Bangka and southern Thailand are far apart, this “Kingdom of Srivijaya” therefore appeared to be more akin to an empire, or at least a maritime empire, and Cœdès believed that its capital was probably in the area of Palembang in southern Sumatra.

Finally, Cœdès argued that this “Kingdom of Srivijaya” was referred to in Chinese sources by two names, as Shilifoshi and as Sanfoqi. This is another key point that he made in his 1918 article.

These points, that the name “Srivijaya” must be understood as the name of a kingdom, that this kingdom was based at Palembang on the island of Sumatra, that it had a wide influence, and that this kingdom is known as Shilifoshi and Sanfoqi in Chinese sources have been foundational for the research that has been conducted on Srivijaya ever since.

Here arguably no scholar has made them more foundational than the late O. W. Wolters, as he examined virtually everything that he could find relating to the topic and used that information to write about “Srivijaya.”

However, these key points are false. First, Cœdès did not provide a convincing argument that “Srivijaya” was the name of a kingdom, and there is no reason to think that there ever was a kingdom of that name. Second, Shilifoshi and Sanfoqi are not Chinese names for a polity based at Palembang.

The only clear indication of where Shilifoshi was is when it is associated with Muaro(-Jambi), but as I explain in the first post in this series, it is easier to see that Shilifoshi as an institution rather than a place.

As for Sanfoshi, there is no question in my mind but that this is a reference to Kambuja, meaning Angkor.

This should not surprise us. After all, the archaeological evidence shows us that Angkor was one of the largest settlements in premodern history, and yet, in the way that scholarship is currently formulated (i.e., thinking that Sanfoshi refers to an imagined “Srivijaya”) we have almost no evidence of foreigners ever visiting it.

How can it be that the Chinese official Zhou Daguan was the only person to visit Angkor? How can it be that countless traders from as far away as the Middle East passed through Southeast Asia for centuries without realizing that there was an enormous settlement right there in the neighborhood?

Of course, they visited Angkor. The evidence is sitting there right in front of us. We just need to stop following Cœdès and Wolters.

Finally, that there was a polity in southern Sumatra that left behind inscriptions in the 680s is certain, and there have been many scholars who have examined the inscriptions that make this clear. However, their examinations of that polity have all taken place in the context of an imagined “Srivijaya” that scholars like Wolters have “documented” from Chinese sources that actually record information about other places, like Angkor.

These scholars have understandably struggled to reconcile the limited scale of what they see in Palembang with the grandiose vision that Cœdès, Wolters et al. have put forth.

The 10 posts in this series [update: there are 15 now] are meant to help disconnect the “imagined Srivijaya” from actual Southeast Asian history.

They have been produced over a two-week period and are presented in the order that they were posted. As such, some ideas in one post might get updated in the next.

They were also usually posted late at night, and my eyesight is getting pretty bad. . . so please accept my apologies in advance for any typos, etc.

Enjoy reading!! 🙂 And I look forward to any comments and I welcome everyone’s input!!!

Update: I have now written a new post on my methodology. This post gives a conceptual overview of what I do in the other posts. Some readers might find it helpful to read this post first.

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This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Kareem

    Came across this today! This is amazing.

  2. Anh Tran

    The series is amazing overall. Didn’t expect such a massive breakthrough in the history of Southeast Asia.

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