Central Java

from the 8th to the 10th century

Eastern Javanese inscriptions throw little light on happenings before the 10th century, but the evidence from south-central Java, and especially from the Kedu Plain in the 8th and 9th centuries, is more abundant. This period in central Java is associated with the Shailendra princes and their rivals. An Old Malay inscription from north-central Java, attributed to the 7th century, establishes that the Shailendras were of Indonesian origin and not, as was once suspected, from mainland Southeast Asia. In the middle of the 9th century the ruler of Shrivijaya-Palembang was a Shailendra who boasted of his Javanese ancestors; the name Shailendra also appears on the undated face of an inscription on the isthmus of the Malay Peninsula; the other face of the inscription--dated 775--is in honour of the ruler of Shrivijaya. In spite of ambiguous references to Shailendra connections overseas, there is no solid evidence that the territories of the central Javanese rulers at this time extended far beyond central Java, including its north coast. Yet the agricultural wealth of this small kingdom sustained vast religious undertakings; the monuments of the Kedu Plain are the most famous in Indonesia. The Borobudur temple complex, in honour of Mahayana Buddhism, contains 2,000,000 cubic feet (57,000 cubic metres) of stone and includes 27,000 square feet (2,600 square metres) of stone bas-relief. Its construction extended from the late 8th century to the fourth or fifth decade of the 9th. Shiva's great temple at Prambanan, though not associated with the Shailendra family, is less than 50 miles (80 kilometres) away, and an inscription dating to 856 marks what may be its foundation stone. The two monuments, which have much in common, help to explain the religious impulses in earlier Javanese history.

Borobudur is a terraced temple surmounted by stupas, or stone towers; the terraces resemble Indonesian burial foundations, indicating that Borobudur was regarded as the symbol of the final resting place of its founder, a Shailendra, who was united after his death with the Buddha. The Prambanan temple complex is also associated with a dead king. The inscription of 856 mentions a royal funeral ceremony and shows that the dead king had joined Shiva, just as the founder of the Borobudur monument had joined the Buddha. Divine attributes, however, had been ascribed to kings during their lifetimes. A Mahayana inscription of this period shows that a ruler was said to have the purifying powers of a bodhisattva, the status assumed by the ruler of Shrivijaya in the 7th century; a 9th-century Shaivite inscription from the Kedu Plain describes a ruler as being "a portion of Shiva." The divine qualities of these kings, whether of Mahayana or of Shaivite persuasion, had important implications in Javanese history and probably in the history of all parts of the archipelago that professed the forms of Indian religion. The ruler was now and henceforth seen as one who had achieved union with the supreme god in his lifetime. Kingship was divine only because the king's soul was the host of the supreme god and because all the king's actions were bound to be the god's actions. He was not a god-king; he was the god. No godlike action was more important than extending the means of personal salvation to others, always in the form of union with the god. The bas-relief of the Borobudur monument, illustrating Mahayana texts and especially the Gandavyuha--the tale of the tireless pilgrim in search of enlightenment--is a gigantic exposition of the Mahayana path to salvation taken by the king; it may be thought of as a yantra, or instrument to promote meditation and ultimate union with the Buddha. But Borobudur can also be identified as a circle, or mandala, of supreme mystical power that signified the Void of the Vairocana Buddha according to the Vajrayana persuasion of Tantric Buddhism. The mandala was intended to protect the Shailendra realm for all time. The pedagogical symbolism of the Prambanan temple complex is revealed in its iconography, dominated by the image of the four-armed Shiva, the Great Teacher--the customary Indonesian representation of the supreme deity. Prambanan affirms the Shaivite path to salvation; the path is indicated in the inscription of 856, which implies that the king had practiced asceticism, the form of worship most acceptable to Shiva. Shaivism in Java as well as Mahayana Buddhism had become hospitable to Tantric influences. An almost contemporary inscription from the Ratu Boko Plateau, which is not far from the Prambanan complex, alludes to special rites for awakening Shiva's divine energy through the medium of a ritual consort. Keraton Ratu Boko These royal tombs taught the means of salvation. The royal role on earth was similar. The kings, not the religious elite, bore the responsibility of ensuring that all could worship the gods, whether under Indian or Indonesian names. Every god in the land was either a manifestation of Shiva or a subordinate member of Shiva's pantheon, and worship therefore implied homage to the king, who was part of the god. The growing together, as a result of Tantric influences, of Shaivism and Mahayana Buddhism meant that, over the centuries, the divine character of the king became continually elaborated. His responsibility was the compassionate one of maintaining his kingdom as a holy land. The bodhisattva-king was moved by pity, as were all bodhisattvas, while the Shiva-like king, as an inscription of the 9th century indicates, was also honoured for his compassion. Compassion was expressed by providing an environment wherein religion could flourish. Keeping the peace, protecting the numerous holy sites, encouraging religious learning, and above all performing purification rituals to render the land acceptable to the gods were different aspects of a single mission: the teaching of the religious significance of life on earth. The lonely status of the ruler did not separate him from the religious aspirations of his subjects; Prambanan provides a recognition of the community of interest between ruler and ruled. The 856 inscription states that a tank of purifying water, filled by a diverted river, was made available as a pilgrimage centre for spiritual blessings. Hermitages had been built at the Prambanan complex, and the inscription states that they were "to be beautiful in order to be imitated." Prambanan Temple The great monuments of the 9th century suggest something of the cultural ambience within which events took place. One new development in central Java was that capable local rulers, called raka, were gradually able, when opportunities arose, to fragment the lands of some raka and absorb the lands of others. At the same time, they established lines of communication between themselves and the villages in order to guarantee revenue and preserve a balance between their own demands and the interests of the independent and prosperous agricultural communities. When a ruler manifested divine qualities, he would attract those who were confident that they were earning religious merit when they supported him. Local princes from all over the Kedu Plain constructed small shrines around the main Prambanan temple in a manner reminiscent of a congregation gathered around a religious leader. The inscription of 856 states that they built "cheerfully."

from:http://users.skynet.be/network.indonesia/ni4001c4.htm

Malay kingdom of Srivijaya Palembang 3

The maritime influence.

Special circumstances affecting Shrivijaya-Palembang toward the end of the 7th century are consistent with this conclusion. In the centuries before the Chinese undertook long voyages overseas, they relied on foreign shipping for their imports, and foreign merchants, trading with China, required a safe base in Indonesia before sailing on to China. This seaborne trade, regarded in China as "tributary" trade with the "emperors' barbarian vassals," had developed during the 5th and 6th centuries but languished in the second half of the 6th century as a result of the civil war in China that preceded the rise of the Sui and T'ang dynasties. Chinese records for the first half of the 7th century mention several small harbour kingdoms in the region, especially in northeastern Sumatra, that were pretending to be Chinese vassals. The rulers of Palembang, hoping for a revival of trade under the new T'ang dynasty, must have been anxious to monopolize the China trade and eliminate their rivals. They succeeded in doing this. Before I-ching left Southeast Asia in 695, Shrivijaya was in control of the Strait of Malacca; the ruler's determination to control all harbours in the region that might compete in the China trade explains his militancy, as shown in the Old Malay inscriptions.

The subsequent power of the maharajas of Shrivijaya depended on their alliance with those who possessed warships. The fact that Arab accounts make no mention of piracy in the islands at the southern end of the Strait of Malacca suggests that the seafaring inhabitants of these islands identified their interests with those of the maharajas, refraining from molesting merchant ships and cooperating in controlling Shrivijaya's potential competitors in northern Sumatra. The maharajas offered their loyal subjects wealth, posts of honour, and--according to the inscriptions--supernatural rewards. But the grouping of maritime Malays in this geographically fragmented region survived only as long as the Palembang entrepôt was prosperous and its ruler offered enough largess to hold the elements together. His bounty, however, depended on the survival of the Chinese tributary trading system, which needed a great entrepôt in western Indonesia. Early Malay history is, to an important extent, the history of a Sino-Malay alliance. The maharajas benefited from the China trade, while the emperors could permit themselves the conceit that the maharajas were reliable imperial agents.

The Palembang rulers' exact span of territorial influence is unknown. The Banka Strait and the offshore islands at the southern entrance of the Strait of Malacca would have been essential to their maritime power. According to the 7th-century inscriptions, the rulers also had influence in southern Sumatra on the Sunda Strait. Elsewhere in the hinterland, including what became known as Malayu in the Hari River basin, their authority would have been exercised by alliances with local chiefs or by force and always with decreasing effect the further these areas were from Palembang.

Malay unity under the leadership of the maharajas was inevitably undermined when, as early as the 10th century, Chinese private ships began to sail to centres of production in the archipelago, with the result that the Chinese market no longer depended on a single Indonesian entrepôt. Toward the end of the 11th century, Shrivijaya-Palembang ceased to be the chief estuary kingdom in Sumatra. Hegemony had passed, for unknown reasons, to the neighbouring estuary town of Jambi, which was probably controlled by the great Minangkabau country of Malayu in the interior. With the decline of the tributary trade with China, a number of harbours in the region became centres of international trade. Malayu-Jambi never had the opportunity to build up naval resources as Shrivijaya-Palembang had done, and in the 13th century a Javanese prince took advantage of the power vacuum.

Malay kingdom of Srivijaya Palembang 2

Buddhism in Palembang.

Shrivijaya-Palembang's importance has been established by Arab and Chinese historical sources spanning a long period of time. Its own records, in the form of Old Malay inscriptions, are limited almost entirely to the second half of the 7th century (682-686). The inscriptions reveal that the ruler was served by a hierarchy of officials and that he possessed wealth. The period when the inscriptions were written was an agitated one. Battles are mentioned, and the ruler had to reckon with disaffection and intrigues at his capital. Indeed, the main theme of the inscriptions is a curse on those who broke a loyalty oath administered by drinking holy water. The penalty for disloyalty was death, but those who obeyed the ruler were promised eternal bliss.

I-ching recommended Palembang, with more than a thousand monks, as an excellent centre to begin studying Buddhist texts. The 7th-century inscriptions, however, are concerned with less scholarly features of Buddhism. They deal with Tantric aids to magical power (see below), in the form of yantra symbols, which were distributed by the ruler as favours to faithful servants. Some of his adversaries disposed of them, too. Especially interesting as evidence of the influence of Buddhism within the context of royal power is the Talang Tuwo inscription of 684, which records the king's prayer that a park he has endowed may give merit to all living beings. The language and style of this inscription, incorporating Indian Tantric conceptions, make it clear that the ruler was presenting himself as a bodhisattva--one who was to become a Buddha himself--teaching the several stages toward supreme enlightenment. Here is the first instance in the archipelago's history of a ruler's assumption of the role of religious leader.

The inscriptions show that the teachings of the Tantric school of Mahayana Buddhism, with its magical procedures for achieving supernatural ends, had reached Palembang before the end of the 7th century. Tantric Buddhism came into prominence in India only in the 7th century, and the synchronism of its appearance in Palembang reflects not only the regularity of shipping contacts between Sumatra and India but, more importantly, the Malays' quick perception of the contribution of Tantric Buddhism as a source of personal spiritual power. The word for "curse" in the inscriptions is Malay, and it is reasonable to suppose that the Malays grafted Tantric techniques onto indigenous magical procedures. The vitality of Malay religion is probably also reflected in the prestige of the sacred Seguntang Hill near Palembang, which was visited by those in search of spiritual power. Seguntang Hill would not suddenly have become such a centre as a result of traffic in Tantric conceptions during the 7th century. In other words, the disturbances reflected in the inscriptions are less likely to have been the growing pains of a rising kingdom than the efforts of an already important kingdom to achieve, or perhaps recover, hegemony in southern Sumatra.

Malay kingdom of Srivijaya Palembang

The kingdom of Shrivijaya is first mentioned in the writings of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim I-ching, who visited it in 671 after a voyage of less than 20 days from Canton. He was on the first stage of his journey to the great teaching centre of Nalanda in northeastern India. The ruler of Shrivijaya assisted I-ching on his journey. Archaeological surveys undertaken since the late 1970s immediately to the west of Palembang city--an area now being overtaken by suburban development--have revealed such a quantity of materials as to make it practically certain that this was Shrivijaya's heartland in the 7th and subsequent three centuries. Surface remains of more than a thousand shards of Chinese ceramics, two-thirds of which are datable from the 8th to the 10th century, have been recovered from several sites. Shards from the 11th to the 14th century found elsewhere in the neighbourhood may represent shifts of political and commercial activity in the Palembang area. Shards found on nearby Seguntang Hill (Bukit Seguntang), on the other hand, span all these centuries. A piece of Romano-Indian rouletted ware, attributable to the early centuries AD, has been dug up in Palembang near the river; the same ware has been found in Java near Jakarta. Moreover, new stone statues have been found, and the sheer bulk of Buddhist and Hindu statuary now recovered from the Musi River basin has suggested to at least one art historian that the basin must have contained the site of a polity near the sea that enjoyed considerable international contacts. Only Palembang suggests itself as the site in question. Finally, stupa remains have been unearthed at the foot of Seguntang Hill. These discoveries reinforce the textual evidence that Palembang was the heartland of this empire.

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