Maritime Trade and State Development in Early Southeast Asia Maritime Trade and State Development in Early Southeast Asia ii Maritime Trade and State Development in Early Southeast Asia Kenneth R. Hall Open Access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities / Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Licensed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 In- ternational (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits readers to freely download and share the work in print or electronic format for non-commercial purposes, so long as credit is given to the author. Derivative works and commercial uses require per- mission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The Cre- ative Commons license described above does not apply to any material that is separately copyrighted. Open Access ISBNs: 9780824882082 (PDF) 9780824882075 (EPUB) This version created: 17 May, 2019 Please visit www.hawaiiopen.org for more Open Access works from University of Hawai‘i Press. © 1985 UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII PRESS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED To Randy, Janie, and Jason Contents Contents DEDICATION vi MAPS viii FIGURES ix LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS x PREFACE xi 1 TRADE AND STATECRAFT IN EARLY SOUTHEAST ASIA 1 2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARITIME TRADE IN ASIA 28 3 THE “INDIANIZATION” OF FUNAN, SOUTHEAST ASIA’S FIRST STATE 52 4 TRADE AND STATECRAFT IN EARLY ŚRĪVIJAYA 85 5 THE ŚAILENDRA ERA IN JAVANESE HISTORY 113 6 TEMPLES AS ECONOMIC CENTERS IN EARLY CAMBODIA 148 7 ELEVENTH-CENTURY COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS IN ANGKOR AND CHAMPA 183 8 TRANSITIONS IN THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN COMMERCIAL AND POLITICAL REALMS, A.D. 1000–1400 209 9 MARITIME TRADE AND STATE DEVELOPMENT IN FOURTEENTH-CENTURY JAVA 250 ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 282 Notes 284 BIBLIOGRAPHY 441 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 466 vii Maps Maps Classical Southeast Asia Frontispiece 1 Maritime Trade in Southeast Asia: First through Sixth Centuries A.D. 25 2 Major First-Century Maritime Routes 32 3 Southeast Asia in the Funan Age 72 4 Western Indonesia in the Early Śrīvijaya Period 89 5 Java in the Classical Era 117 6 Distribution of Commercial Activity in the Khmer Domain 189 7 Early Vietnam Population Centers 197 8 Distribution of Asian Trade, A.D. 1000–1400 242 viii Figures Figures Figure 1 Riverine System Exchange 16 Figure 2 Marketing in Pre-European Java 18 Figure 3 Śrīvijaya’s State Hierarchy based on the Telaga Batu Inscription 105 Figure 4 Early Javanese Rulers 121 Figure 5 Temple of Trapaeng Don On: Redistribution of Temple Land Production 177 Figure 6 Temple Hierarchy in Angkor and Java (Classical Era) 182 ix List of Photographs List of Photographs Major river system: the Irrawaddy in Burma 8 Paddy fields, eastern Java 9 Dry-field agriculture, Pagan, Burma 10 Wooden Buddhist statue from Oc-èo 11 Roman coin from Oc-èo 12 Sanskrit rock inscription, Sumatra 95 Telaga Batu inscribed stone with seven-headed nāga canopy, Sumatra 96 Avalokiteśvara, early Śrīvijaya era, Palembang, Sumatra 97 Caṇḍi Kiḍal, pre-Majapahit era, eastern Java 134 Upper terrace, Borobudur 135 Borobudur 136 Śiva temple, Caṇḍi Loro Jonggrang, Prambanan, central Java 137 Caṇḍi Plaosan, central Java, with Ratubaka Plateau in background 138 Sanggariti mountain “bathing” temple, eastern Java 139 Central Tower, Angkor Wat 155 Angkor Wat 156 Ornamental apsara, Angkor Wat 157 A ngkor Thom, the Bay on 158 Relief of naval battle, A ngkor Wat 158 The Bay on, face of Lokeśvara 159 Pagan remains, Burma 203 Cham temple relief, Saigon National Museum 203 Cham temple architecture in Mi-so’n region of Vietnam 204 Gaṇeśa standing on heads of slain enemies, eastern Java 269 Caṇḍi Panataran, Majapahit era, eastern Java 270 Preface Preface esearch in the premodern history of Southeast Asia has Rbeen limited by a paucity of sources, a fact that has dis- couraged many from undertaking further study of the pre-1500 era. There is, for instance, a total absence of a local chronicle tradition until after the eleventh century. The bulk of the available local sources for Southeast Asia’s early history are the inscribed stones and metal plates through which religious insti- tutions and political elites presented their idealized view of early Southeast Asian society. When historical events or indi- viduals are mentioned at all, it is to illustrate that the proper order of the universe is maintained by the subordination of those in the secular realm to those who are concerned with the universe’s harmony. To overcome the ambiguities, distortions, and voids in these sources, historians have looked to external references that reflect the visits of foreigners to Southeast Asia, for example, the accounts of Western travelers (including Arabs) and Chinese pilgrims, and to the records of diplomatic contact between Southeast Asian states and the great civiliza- tions of India and China. Among the latter the Chinese dynastic chronicles have been the most useful. Early scholarship on Southeast Asian history in the West was the product of well-trained Dutch, French, and British his- torians whose research was an extension of their countries’ colonial experience. They tended to focus on external forces that shaped Southeast Asia. Furthermore, these historians con- centrated on the religious and political aspects of the epi- graphic and literary sources and thus were especially con- cerned with the reconstruction of dynastic chronologies. Working from this base, modern historians have begun to re- examine the sources critically in order to filter out information useful for the reconstruction of social and economic history. They have also attempted to balance the picture of outside xi Preface forces by focusing equally on indigenous responses. And in the past fifteen years archaeological research in Southeast Asia has become sufficiently sophisticated to begin to supply these histo- rians with new data. To appreciate these advances and new orientations, one might make a comparison of George Coedès’ impressive works The Making of South east Asia or The Indianized States of Southeast Asia with O. W. Wolters’ Early Indonesian Commerce and The Fall of Srivijaya in Malay History. Coedès was syn- thesizing early twentieth-century Western history of Southeast Asia, much of it done by Coedès himself, and work that was con- cerned with Indian culture as the basis for state development. Wolters, on the other hand, focused on the activities of those Southeast Asians who responded to the presence of traders and other foreigners—on their own initiative—by optimizing their opportunities. Unlike Coedès, however, Wolters and other recent scholars have normally examined specific areas within the region without coming to terms with the general regional patterns that characterize Southeast Asia’s early history. But in his extended essay History, Culture, and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives, Wolters summarizes his percep- tions of features common to the various early Southeast Asian societies he has researched. To demonstrate the validity of studying Southeast Asia as a regional unit, Wolters stresses the linkages and cultural dialogue among Southeast Asian peoples who shared a “common ocean.” Like Coedès, Wolters is con- cerned with the role foreign culture (Indian or, in the case of Vietnam, Chinese) assumed in the process of societal devel- opment; but in contrast to Coedès, Wolters is more sensitive to the indigenous elements that shaped the “localization” of foreign forms. This study also puts Southeast Asia on a large canvas and treats areas not previously brought together for treatment along comparative lines. By bringing together new theoretical constructs and recent archaeological finds and interpretations it attempts two things: to ask new questions of old sources and to integrate the histories of individual civilizations to demon- strate general regional patterns. It is intended to stimulate and encourage further study of Southeast Asia’s premodern era. Chapter 1 introduces Bennet Bronson’s model of riverine exchange and statecraft and postulates a hierarchical and in- tegrated marketing system that reflects the pattern of trade and state relations characteristic of the wet-rice civilizations of mainland Southeast Asia and Java. Chapter 2 describes trade xii Preface during the era of the Roman Empire. It integrates archae- ological evidence with Roman and Chinese texts to examine the expansion of the international maritime trade in the first century of the Christian era. It looks at why the Funan state grew and the increasing volume of trade from India to the Isthmus of Kra, from the isthmus to Funan’s coastal realm on the lower Vietnam coast, and from there to China. Chapter 3 emphasizes the dual nature of Funan’s success as both a maritime depot and wet-rice producer and begins to demonstrate the descriptive value of the models of statecraft introduced in chapter 1. Reevaluating the evidence concerning Funan, a realm whose authority by the third century A.D. had spread from lower Vietnam across modern Thailand and Cam- bodia’s coasts to the upper Malay Peninsula, the demise of Funan is explained by the development of a route around the Malay Peninsula and the subsequent emergence of new trade depots in Sumatra and Java around the fifth century. The sources for Funan’s history include archaeological, epigraphic, and Chinese dynastic records, and a new look at them estab- lishes that although Funan was not the well-integrated political system the Chinese believed it to be, it was nevertheless im- portant because of the cultural forms it evolved, forms that anticipate later riverine and wet-rice plain political systems. Chapter 4 analyzes the rise of Śrīvijaya and its rule over the Strait of Malacca from the sixth through the eleventh centuries and argues that Śrīvijaya was essentially a Sumatran state. By examining in detail the earliest epigraphy of the Śrīvijaya state, one finds that Śrīvijaya’s coastal depots had elaborate systems of statecraft that integrated the depots with their hinterland and also separated international traders from those hinterland people who actually produced the commodities that the depot- based rulers collected and sold.