Srivijaya is a myth! I can clearly see this now. Let me explain.
In 1918, French scholar George Coedès “discovered” a maritime kingdom in Southeast Asia that he said was called “Srivijaya.”
He did so by saying that the name “Srivijaya” that he saw in inscriptions from Sumatra and the Malay peninsula referred to a kingdom (I will argue in a future post that they did not), and that this kingdom appeared in Chinese sources as “Shilifoshi” 室利佛逝 and “Sanfoqi” 三佛齊.
The information about “Shilifoshi” and “Sanfoqi” in Chinese sources has been very important for constructing the history of Srivijaya. However, as I demonstrated in a previous post, “Shilifoshi” does not refer to “Srivijaya,” and as I will demonstrate in this post, nor does “Sanfoqi.”
Therefore, there is no evidence in Chinese sources for an historical kingdom in Southeast Asia called “Srivijaya.”
Let me repeat that because it’s kinda important. There is no evidence in Chinese sources for an historical kingdom in Southeast Asia called “Srivijaya.”
Let us begin by looking at the name “Sanfoqi.” Like the term “Shilifoshi” discussed in the earlier post, there is absolutely no way that Sanfoqi can mean “Srivijaya.”
Phonetically there is no way to get those three characters to indicate “Srivijaya,” and in terms of meaning, these three characters literally mean “three,” “Buddha” and something like “simultaneously/together.”
However, if we try to reconstruct the historical pronunciation of these words using a source like Edwin G. Pulleyblank’s Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation: In Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese and Early Mandarin, we get “Samfhutshiaj,” and that is significant.
It is significant because it is very similar to a Chinese name for “Cambodia” that was first used during the period of the Ming Dynasty, a point we’ll return to below. This term is 柬埔寨. Pronounced “Jianpuzhai” in modern Mandarin, in the Song-Ming period it might have sounded something like “Kyampusek” or “Kyampusaj.”
Additionally, “qi” the third character in “Sanfoqi,” was interchangeable with a character that is pronounced “zhai” 齋 in modern Mandarin, and that is like the “zhai” in “Jianpuzhai.”
Using the historical reconstruction of the pronunciation of this character, the historical pronunciation of Sanfoqi could have been something like “Kyamputsaj” (the “j” at the end is indicating a soft sound, not the actual sound of a “j”).
“Samfhutshiaj” (Sanfoqi) and “Kyamputsaj” (Jianpuzhai) are clearly very similar, and they closely resemble the term “Kambuja,” that the ruling family of Angkor used to refer to their realm. But is there any historical evidence that can link these two names to the same place?
Yes! There is!!
Before we can look at that information, however, we need to first resolve an issue concerning another term, Zhenla 真臘.
This term is often seen by historians as referring to “Cambodia,” which it kind of does, but we need to be specific about what it refers to.
There are various scholars (such as the late Michael Vickery) who have argued that Zhenla refers to a place either in southern Laos (around Vat Phou) or around the Dangrek mountains in northern Cambodia.
That seems logical, particularly when we consider the fact that Zhenla regularly presented tribute to the Vietnamese in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This is a time when Angkor was very powerful. Big Angkor definitely did not not pay tribute to the little Lý Dynasty. . . So Zhenla definitely was not Angkor.
I suspect that Zhenla is a reference to Champassak, but that the exact location of this polity may have changed over the centuries, from southern Laos to the area around Phnom Penh.
In any case, what we need to know is that Zhenla was not “Cambodia,” but “a part of what is now Cambodia.”
Let’s now return to the term that does refer to Angkor, Sanfoqi/Samfhutshiaj.
The name “Sanfoqi” appears in four dynastic histories: it is mentioned once in the Old Book of the Tang (Jiu Tangshu), numerous times in the History of the Song (Songshi), once in the History of the Yuan (Yuanshi), and a few times in the History of the Ming (Mingshi).
For the Ming, there are also a few references to Sanfoqi in the Veritable Records of the Ming (Ming shilu), the annals of the Ming dynasty.
Most of the references to Sanfoqi in the various dynastic histories simply note when Sanfoqi presented tribute. They give no clear indication of where exactly Sanfoqi was located.
For instance, there is a passage in the History of the Song that places Sanfoqi in relation to Champa as follows:
“The Kingdom of Champa is to the southwest of the Middle Kingdom. To the east it reaches the sea, to the west, it reaches Yunnan, to the south, it reaches the Kingdom of Zhenla, and to the north, it reaches the border with Hoan Châu. Crossing the sea to the south, Sanfoqi is a five-day journey.”
(占城國在中國之西南，東至海，西至雲南，南至真臘國，北至驩州界。汎海南去 三佛齊五日程。[宋史卷四百八十九；列傳第二百四十八；外國五])
So five days from Champa. . . I guess that could be Sumatra, but you would have to go straight across the sea, and I’m not sure that people did that in those days.
Another place to look for Sanfoqi would thus be somewhere in the region of the Mekong Delta or along the Gulf of Thailand, that is, in the area where Angkor was located.
In the early thirteenth century, a Chinese official by the name of Zhao Rukuo 趙汝适 compiled a text of information about foreign lands, the Treatise on the Various Barbarians (Zhu fan zhi 諸蕃志). This text contains a section on Sanfoqi.
A recent translation can be found here.
At the end of the section on Sanfoqi, it mentions the kingdoms that are vassals of that land. They include the following (these are the ones that I feel somewhat confident in identifying): 蓬豐 [Pahang]、登牙儂 [Terengganu]、凌牙斯加 [Langkasuka] 吉蘭丹 [Kelantan]、佛羅安、日羅亭、潛邁拔沓、單馬令 [Tambralinga]、加囉希、巴林馮 [Palembang]、新拖、監篦 [Jambi]、藍無里、細蘭.
Scholars have argued that Srivijaya was located at Palembang (or that its capital was perhaps later moved to Jambi – but that argument is based on information about Shilifoshi that I disproved in the previous post), yet here both of those places are listed as vassals of Sanfoqi. What is more, in the order that the names are presented, we can get a general sense of movement down the eastern coast of the Malay Peninsula towards Sumatra.
In other words, what we see in Zhao Rukuo’s text are vassals of the Cambodian empire of Angkor, not vassals of (an imagined) Srivijaya.
There is stronger evidence for equating Sanfoqi with Angkor in the Veritable Records of the Ming and in the History of the Ming.
Sanfoqi is mentioned in a few entries in the Veritable Records of the Ming, however those entries all date from the second half of the fourteenth century. The final mention of Sanfoqi comes in 1397.
In this year, the Ming emperor expressed his anger at the fact that Sanfoqi had stopped sending tribute missions. He noted that when the Ming Dynasty was founded, that it had done so, but recently something had happened. As historian Geoff Wade has ably translated this passage,
“San-fo-qi created discord (生間諜) and deceived our envoys into going there. The king of Java (爪哇), hearing of this matter, admonished San-fo-qi and required it to courteously escort the envoys back to China. After this, the envoys and merchants were stopped from coming and the thoughts of the kings of the various countries have not been reaching me.”
http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-wu/year-30-month-8-day-27
The emperor then goes on to request that the ruler of Siam intervene in this matter to get Java to tell Sanfoqi to send tribute again, and the Ming emperor thinks this will be successful because Sanfoqi is under the subordination of Java (三佛齊係爪哇統屬).
Let’s stop and reflect here a moment. What we have here sounds like a contemporary meeting of ASEAN ministers. The Thai ask the Indonesians to pressure the Cambodians to be nice to China. . .
Is that really how things worked in the fourteenth century? How did Siam and Java even meet? Where did they meet? How did they communicate?
For those who have followed the unfounded claim of George Coedès that Sanfoqi = Srivijaya, this information makes some sense to them, as they see this as a sign that “Java” had conquered “Srivijaya” (Sanfoqi) and that this was the beginning of the decline of that (imagined) maritime empire. Although the participation of Siam in such a scenario still makes no sense.
Let’s also stop and think about what was going on in the Siam-Cambodia area at that time. The late thirteen hundreds was a period of intense intrigue and turmoil as the newly established kingdom of Ayutthaya expanded its power.
One of the casualties of that expansion was Angkor. The final “fall” of Angkor did not come until the 1420s, but Ayutthayan interference in the affairs of Angkor began as early as the 1350s and continued on and off for the rest of the fourteenth century.
What we refer to with the singular term “Ayutthaya” was actually the creation of two families or royal lines that had intermarried: the Uthong line from Lavo (Lavapura) and the Suphannaphum line from Suphanburi.
The Ming were aware of this. In Ming sources, we can find a reference to the two kingdoms of Xian (Suphanburi 暹) and Luohu (Lavo 羅斛), and in the early entries in the Veritable Records, Ayuttaya is referred to as Xianluohu ( Suphanburi + Lavo, 暹羅斛), whereas in later entries the final “hu” was dropped to get Xianluo, the common Chinese term for “Siam” (which during the Ming, referred to Ayutthaya).
The first ruler of Ayutthaya, Ramathibodi I, was from the Utong line, and he appointed his son, the future Ramesuan, to rule over Lavo. When Ramathibodi I died in 1369, his son briefly ruled before being pushed from power by an uncle from the Suphannaphum line, Borommaracha I.
Borommaracha I died in 1388. He put his young son, Thong Lan, on the thone. Ramesuan saw this as an opportunity to come to power, and he launched an attack from his base at Lavo, killed Thong Lan, and declared himself ruler of Ayutthaya.
Therefore, in the second half of the fourteenth century, there was a “back and forth” between the Uthong of Lavo and the Suphannaphum line from Suphanburi for control of Ayutthaya.
Angkor got caught in the middle of this competition for power.
In the 1350s, the first king of Ayutthaya, Ramathibodi I of the Utong/Lavo line, placed three of his sons on the throne. Then in 1362, a Khmer ruler ascended the throne.
After Borommaracha I of the Suphannaphum line came to power in 1370, he attacked Angkor in 1373. The ruler of Angkor at that time was named Dhammasokaraj. He died at some point after Angkor was captured. Borommaracha I then put his own son on the throne.
Things at this point get really confusing. A few “known” points are that 1) Borommaracha I’s son was killed, 2) a Khmer ruler of Angkor moved to a place called Basan, and then to Phnom Penh, and 3) after Ramesuan of the Utong/Lavo line came to power in 1388, he captured Angkor in 1393 (which means that it must have broken away from Ayutthayan influence for a while) and placed a son on the throne (who I think was shortly after assassinated – I need to check that though).
What is not clear is when exactly the Khmer ruler moved eastward, and if only one member of the royal family did this, or more than one.
It is also not clear who was on the throne in Angkor in the 1390s.
Let us now look for evidence of these events in the Veritable Records of the Ming. We will do this by examining entries for Xianluo (Siam/Ayutthaya), Sanfoqi (what I say is Samfhutshiaj, or Cambodia/Angkor), and Zhenla (Champassak).
For Ayutthaya, the Veritable Records note that tributary relations were established in the early 1370s, and then in December of 1373 an envoy arrived at the Ming court who reported that (quoting Geoff Wade’s translation), “the king of the country of Siam Can-lie Zhao Pi-ya [參烈昭毘牙] had become incompetent and unable to rule. The people of the country thus promoted his paternal uncle Can-lie Bao Pi-ya Si-li Duo-luo-lu [參烈寶毘牙(口/思)哩哆囉祿] to manage the affairs of state.”
http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-wu/year-6-month-11-day-23
The first term mentioned here is a royal title, Somdet Chao Phraya, and is a reference to the young Ramesuan who ruled briefly after his father, Ramathibodi I, died in 1369.
The second name is a reference to his uncle, Borommaracha, whose full official name was Phra Borommarachathirat, and whose more colloquial name was Khunluang Pha Ngua.
It begins with the same title, Somdet Chao Phraya, with one character written differently. It then appears to have something like “Sri Thirat,” followed by a final character, 祿, which at that time would have been pronounced something like “lwek,” and which I suspect is meant to indicate “Ngua” in the name “Khunluang Pha Ngua,” which would make sense because “Khunluang” is a title (and should we read “Pha” in that way too?).
My guess would therefore be that this is a “condensed” version of a longer title, something like Somdet Chao Phraya Sri Phra Borommarachathirat Khunluang Pha Ngua.
In other words, in late 1373, the Ming were informed that the king of Ayutthaya, a place that they had just begun to send tributary missions, was Borommaracha I, a man whom we know captured Angkor that same year.
Let us now look at what information about “Sanfoqi” in the Veritable Records of the Ming around this time period says.
On 5 February 1374, not long after they had learned about Borommaracha I, the Ming received an envoy from the king of Sanfoqi. To quote from Geoff Wade’s translation,
“The minister Ba-ti Zu-han and others who had been sent by Da-ma-lai-sha-na-a-zhe [怛麻來沙那阿者 ], the king of the country of San-fo-qi, presented two gold memorials in felicitation on the coming New Years’s Day.”
http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-wu/year-6-month-12-day-24
Even from Wade’s transliteration into modern Mandarin, it is obvious here that “Da-ma-lai-sha-na-a-zhe” is Dhammasokaraj[a], the Khmer king who was ruling when Borommaracha I captured Angkor, and who died at some point after that, but obviously not before first sending this mission to the Ming.
We can therefore see that this information in the Ming Veritable Records about Xianluo (Siam/Ayutthaya) and Sanfoqi (what I say is Samfhutshiaj, or Cambodia/Angkor) support each other, and fit the historical context of the interactions between Ayutthaya and Angkor in the early 1370s.
Let’s now look at the information about Zhenla (Champassak). I provide below some entries from the Veritable Records. These are Geoff Wade’s translations. He refers to Zhenla as “Cambodia.” I’ve changed the places where he wrote “Cambodia” to “Zhenla.”
7 November 1373
“The minister Nai Yi-ji-lang and others who had been sent by Hu-er-na [忽兒那], the Ba-shan prince/king (巴山王) of the country of [Zhenla]. . .”
http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-wu/year-6-month-10-day-22
6 January 1378
“The envoy Nai Mei and others who had been sent by Can-da Gan-wu-zhe Chi-da-zhi (Alt: Can-da Gan-wu-zhe Te-da-zhi [參答甘武者持達志]), the king of the country of [Zhenla] presented a memorial and offered tribute of local products in felicitation on the coming New Year’s Day.”
http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-wu/year-10-month-12-day-7
15 November 1380
“The minister Kun Ming-zhao, who had been sent by Can-da Gan-wu-zhe Chi-da-zhi [參答甘武者持達志], the king of the country of Cambodia, presented a gold memorial and offered tribute of local products.”
http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-wu/year-13-month-10-day-12
30 October 1387
“The envoy sent by Can-lie Bao Pi-ye Gan-pu-zhe (Alt: Can-lie Bao Kun-ye Gan-ruo-zhe [參烈寶毘耶甘菩者]), the king of the country of Cambodia, presented elephants and local products.”
http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/reign/hong-wu/year-20-month-9-day-18
So in 1373, there was a “Basan Prince” in Zhenla by the name of Hu-er-na. I have no idea how to translate that name.
Then in 1378 and 1380, the Zhenla ruler had a different name (or there was a new ruler), and at the core of that name are three characters, 甘武者, that would have been pronounced at that time something like “Kam-uu-tsia.” The two characters that precede these three, meanwhile, are “Somdach” (Thai = Somdet), meaning something like “His Majesty.” In other words, what we have here is “His Majesty of Kambuja.”
Finally, in 1380 we have a very clear name: Somdach Chau Phnhea Kambuja (參烈寶毘耶甘菩者). “Somdach Chau Phnhea” is a royal title and is the same as the Siamese “Somdet Chao Phraya” that we saw above in Borommaracha I’s name.
This entire name can be read as “His Majesty the Lord of Kambuja.”
Kambuja was the term that the rulers of Angkor used to refer to their realm. What we can see in these records about Zhenla, is that in the 1380s there was someone in Zhenla who was claiming to be the King of Kambuja. This fits perfectly with what we know about the historical context, as we know that at least one Khmer ruler left Angkor and went to Basan and then Phnom Penh, that is, into the area of Zhenla (Champassak).
So the information about Xianluo (Ayutthaya), Sanfoqi (Kambuja), and Zhenla (Champassak) in the Ming Veritable Records all reinforces each other, and it all fits the historical context. This is because Sanfoqi was Kambuja, not (the imaginary) Srivijaya.
So how then can we make sense of the final record about Sanfoqi in the Veritable Records?
Let us recall that in 1397 it is recorded that “San-fo-qi created discord (生間諜) and deceived our envoys into going there. The king of Java (爪哇), hearing of this matter, admonished San-fo-qi and required it to courteously escort the envoys back to China. After this, the envoys and merchants were stopped from coming and the thoughts of the kings of the various countries have not been reaching me.”
And as I mentioned above, this document then goes on to say that the Ming emperor requested that the ruler of Siam intervene in this matter to get Java to tell Sanfoqi to send tribute again and that the Ming emperor thought that this would be successful because Sanfoqi was under the subordination of Java (三佛齊係爪哇統屬).
The 1390s is a time period for which there is not much information in the Cambodian and Ayutthayan chronicles (actually, I need to check the Chronicles of Ayutthaya, but as I write this my copy is somewhere on a boat between Hawaii and Brunei. . .)
It was recaptured by Ramesuan. And as we have seen above, by that point the Siamese had struggled for decades to keep Angkor under their rule.
With all of that in mind, I would argue that the expression “Java” (爪哇), which at the time would have been pronounced something like “tsaw-wa,” was a transliteration of the Siamese title “Chao Fa,” meaning “lord” (16 Nov Update: I no longer think that this is Chao Fa, but I still think that it is referring to the ruler of Lavo, I’ll post an explanation soon).
What I envision is that in the 1390s the Siamese let a Khmer nominally rule over Angkor, but that they had a “Chao Fa” (a prince or a high official), keep an eye over him, kind of like the colonial “protector-generals” of more recent times.
Further, the ruler of Ayutthaya could have granted this Chao Fa control over the region of Angkor as his own territory. Hence the reference that “Sanfoqi” was under the subordination of Java, or “subject to Java,” as Geoff Wade translates it.
Further, this could also explain why he is referred to in the Ming sources as the “Chao Fa king” (guo wang 爪哇國王), for as we all know, the Chinese terms “guo” (kingdom) and “wang” (king) were flexible in their meaning when it came to referring to foreign political systems.
I’ve also toyed with the idea that “tsaw-wa” might be a reference to Lavo/Lavapura, but there is a Chinese term for that place (Luohu 羅斛), and it appears quite regularly during this time period in the Ming chronicles.
It, therefore, makes more sense to me that it is a transliteration of Chao Fa, because one thing I am 100% certain of is that there is no way that “Java” somehow was involved in the events that we just discussed above.
Instead, it makes perfect sense to think that the Khmer man on the throne of Angkor tried to use Chinese envoys to gain recognition from the Ming court as an independent kingdom and that this is what made the Chao Fa angry, leading him to force “Sanfoqi” (Kambuja) to send the envoys back.
When this led to a complete termination of contact between Sanfoqi/Kambuja and the Ming, we can then understand why the Ming emperor would think that it would work to get the ruler of Ayutthaya (Xianluo) to tell his Chao Fa (Java/tsaw-wa) to get the ruler of Kambuja (Sanfoqi) to send tribute again. The Ming emperor understood the political relations between these three people, and he thought that Sanfoqi was still a separate (albeit subject) kingdom.
What he did not realize, is that Sanfoqi/Kambuja was in the process of being forcefully incorporated into the Ayutthayan empire. And that is exactly what the Chao Fa did not want him to know either.
In the end, “Sanfoqi” was never mentioned again in the Chinese chronicles. This is not because “Srivijaya declined” as many scholars have argued, believing the unfounded claim of George Coedès that Sanfoqi = Srivijaya.
Instead, Sanfoqi never appeared again in the Chinese chronicles because Sanfoqi was Kambuja, and “Kambuja” was almost fully erased by the Siamese in the 1420s.
I say “almost” because while the territory of Angkor was incorporated into the Ayutthayan empire, members of the Kambuja royal family, as we have seen above, relocated to the area of Zhenla, and there they left the trace that enabled me to start to deconstruct the myth of “Sanfoqi = Srivijaya.”
The History of the Ming contains a section on Zhenla. At the end of that section it states the following: “The kingdom calls itself Ganbozhi which was later corrupted to Ganpozhe. From the Wanli era [1572-1620] onward it was changed to Jianpuzhai.” (其國自稱甘孛智，後訛為甘破蔗，萬曆後又改為柬埔寨)
I am transliterating these names into modern Mandarin which makes the phonetic similarities of these terms less obvious than they really are, but in Ming times these names would have all sounded like “Kambuja.”
Zhenla was of course not the original “Kambuja,” but it became a version of it after Angkor fell.
As for Srivijaya, what we can see from the above discussion and from the previous post is that it never existed. It rose in the imaginations of Western historians starting a century ago, and it will now fall in the minds of whoever reads this.
Srivijaya, R. I. P.
This Post Has 2 Comments
Something to keep in mind is that the Chinese (漢文) names of tropical realms “known by sea” were most likely transcribed in Hokkien or some other subtropical seaboard tongue.
Thanks!!
However, we don’t have (as far as I know) historical reconstructions of Hokkien pronunciation for 1000+ years ago, so using modern Hokkien to think about the past is also problematic. That being said, what is interesting to see is that when you compare the historical reconstructions of “Chinese” with the pronunciations of terms in modern Hokkien, Vietnamese, etc., you find that they are pretty close. So while we can never know what language the person who initially wrote down a name spoke, I think the historical reconstructions get us into the ballpark.
Update: A couple of days after writing this I decided to check a contemporary Hokkien pronunciation for Sanfoqi, and it gets us even closer to “Cambodia” than Pulleyblank’s historical reconstruction of “Chinese.”
https://leminhkhai.blog/srivijaya-15-sanfoqi-in-hokkien/