Srivijaya: A Visual History

Srivijaya was a Malay thalassocracy based at Palembang in south Sumatra from the seventh century until the thirteenth. It controlled the Straits of Malacca and Sunda, taxing the trade between India, Arabia and China, and became a centre of Mahayana Buddhist learning visited by the Chinese pilgrim Yijing in 671. It was linked to the Sailendra dynasty of Java, builders of Borobudur. The Chola raid of 1025 crippled it, and by the late thirteenth century Javanese and Thai powers and the rise of Malacca had ended it. Its existence was rediscovered only in 1918.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Srivijaya. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

Srivijaya's sphere of control

Timeline of the Srivijaya

1. 671
   Yijing visits Palembang
2. 682
   Kedukan Bukit inscriptionFoundation of Srivijaya.
3. 775
   Ligor inscriptionSrivijaya rules the peninsula.
4. 860
   Nalanda charterSailendra endowment in India.
5. 1025
   Chola raid
6. 1079
   Embassy to Song China
7. 1275
   Pamalayu expeditionJava takes over.

Rise

Old Malay inscriptions from the 680s record a ruler, Dapunta Hyang, leading 20,000 men on a 'sacred journey' of conquest that founded Srivijaya. Palembang controlled the Musi river and the coast; vassal ports and the Orang Laut sea peoples enforced its monopoly, forcing ships to call and pay dues. Yijing spent months there studying Sanskrit and said it had over a thousand monks.

Empire of the straits

Srivijaya sent regular embassies to Tang and Song China and dominated the Malay Peninsula (Kedah), western Java and Borneo's coasts. Under the Sailendras Buddhism flourished; kings endowed monasteries as far as Nalanda in India and Nagapattinam in the Chola realm. Arab geographers described its Maharaja as fabulously rich, throwing a gold brick into a lake each day.

Decline

In 1025 the Chola king Rajendra I sent a fleet that sacked Palembang, Kedah and other ports, apparently over trade disputes. Srivijaya survived but weakened; the centre moved to Jambi (Malayu). Javanese Singhasari's Pamalayu expedition of 1275 and Majapahit's rise, along with the Thai kingdoms and then Malacca, took over the trade. Srivijaya was forgotten until the historian George Coedes pieced it together from inscriptions and Chinese records in 1918.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Khmer Empire (802 to 1431)
• Tang dynasty (618 to 907)
• Northern Song dynasty (960 to 1127)
• Abbasid Caliphate (750 to 1258)
• First Portuguese Empire (1415 to 1663)

Wars of the same era and region

• Song-Dai Viet War (1075 to 1077)

8 surprising things about the Srivijaya

1. Srivijaya was completely forgotten by the Indonesians and Malays themselves until French scholarship revived it in 1918.
2. The Kedukan Bukit inscription of 682 is the oldest text in the Malay language.
3. The Chola raid of 1025 was one of the very few Indian military expeditions overseas.
4. Arab writers said the Maharaja's parrots spoke Arabic, Persian, Greek and Hindi.
5. The Buddhist scholar Atisha, who reformed Tibetan Buddhism, studied in Srivijaya for 12 years.
6. The name means 'shining victory' in Sanskrit; Indonesians named a football club and university after it.
7. Srivijaya's fleets included Orang Laut sea nomads who still live in the region.
8. Its capital Palembang has almost no monumental remains; the empire lived on ships and river banks.

Sources

• Srivijaya empire Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Srivijaya Wikipedia
• Srivijaya World History Encyclopedia
• O. W. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce (1967) Cornell University Press

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