Recent Researches of Insular Southeast Asia and the Problem of Srivijaya

Abstract

Historical geography of early Southeast Asia remains a point at issue since the late nineteenth century. Since George Cœdès discovered ‘The Kingdom of Srivijaya’ in his 1918 paper, its history, chronology, and localization is still a subject of long debates despite a few data available. While the center of Srivijaya may be located in the area of modern Palembang in South Sumatra because of Old Malay and Sanskrit inscriptions and other archaeological findings, there is still a problem of its long-term polity which presumably survived for several centuries, changed its name from Shilifoshi 室利佛逝to Sanfoqi 三佛斉in Chinese texts in the tenth century, controlled the Malacca Strait, fought with Javanese kingdoms and built monasteries in South India. Srivijaya is often called а empire or thalassocracy. The basic methodology implies a juxtaposing of epigraphy, archaeological data, and the Arab and Chinese texts. But one should take into account specific features of any testimony survived as well as one should use historical phonology of Old and Middle Chinese. Recent researches of Stephen Haw, Johannes Kurz, and Liam Kelly offer new interpretations of the Chinese sources which deal with Shilifoshi and Sanfoqi. The present paper gives an overview of recent scholarship of Srivijaya and early Southeast Asian historical geography. Haw’s conclusion that the Sunda Strait was a major maritime route in the fifth to eighth centuries seems well-grounded. Kurz’s statement that Sanfoqi could not be Shilifoshi also seems plausible. But Haw’s phonetic reconstructions are probably not reliable.