No empire in historical times has disappeared as completely as Srivijaya. Yet this vast Nusantarian enterprise thrived for almost a thousand years, feeding on and sometimes dominating seaborne trade between China and the archipelago on the one hand and India and beyond on the other. Its importance was noted many times in Chinese annals, yet, unlike other vanished empires, it left barely a physical trace. Its existence was almost unknown to modern historians until the 1930s, when Georges Coedès defined it by reference to Chinese records of a place named Sanfoqi and some inscriptions written in Old Malay. Later, aerial photography identified a system of irrigation canals and other works which once supported a large population. Archaeologists unearthed Buddhist statues, Chinese ceramics and other items so that it is now possible to identify Palembang on the banks of the Musi River in south-east Sumatra as its principal city.
This may seem an unlikely spot for a capital, some distance from the sea and surrounded by flat but not very fertile land, better for root crops than for rice. The same conditions apply to a similar old settlement, Jambi, known also as Melayu, farther north on the Batang Hari River. This was at one time a rival of Srivijaya and later its capital. Jambi at least still boasts the remains of a Buddhist temple from the seventh or eighth centuries; Palembang has no such evidence of its former glory.
The lack of physical imprint has several causes. First, it was what is called a thalassocracy – an empire built on control of trade not of land. The lack of stone or brick evidence of Palembang’s greatness is because buildings on land, including fortifications, were all of wood. There was no nearby supply of stone. Records were written on palm leaves which perished long ago. Most people lived on rafts. There was a practical reason for this: floods were not uncommon in the rainy season and spring tides on the Musi River were up to 4.5 metres. Nothing much changed over the centuries. Even in 1820 a European visitor noted that only the rich lived on dry land in houses with tiled roofs. While the sultan and some senior persons lived on separate islands, all trade and transport took place on the river.
So why Palembang? Its location seems scarcely ideal: it was 120 kilometres upriver, mangrove swamps occupied most of the area down to the sea and its land was incapable of supporting a large population. However, its position on a river which was navigable far inland gave access to the jungle products and timber for ships as well as more precious items from the interior including gold and foodstuffs from the fertile Sumatran highlands. The coastal lands were of marsh and mangrove. Terra firma began at Palembang. There was plenty of space where vessels could anchor and stores be unloaded. The river is wide, deep, tidal for a long distance and its mouth lies close both to the southern entrance to the Melaka strait and to the Sunda strait between Sumatra and Java, thus giving access to the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. It is well south of the typhoon belt and, being almost on the equator, has calm seas and is an ideal location to wait for the change of monsoon winds from south-west to north-east. Also, the mangrove swamps at the mouth of the Musi and its many inlets meant the city could easily be defended.
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While there appears to have been an increasing dependence on the growing China trade, reports from I-Tsing and other records show the high level of development of Palembang, the size of its forces and the respect of the Chinese for its Buddhist monks and practices. This was no petty state kowtowing to China but one seeking trade preferences from an equal. Correspondingly, Chinese sought enlightenment from the west (India and Sri Lanka) via Sumatra. The Palembang inscriptions also show that, although the kingship systems, the rituals and the religion were of Indian origin and it was a place where Chinese could study Sanskrit, the official written language was not Sanskrit but Malay. Also, for its inhabitants, commerce, not religion, was its mainspring. Srivijaya’s rise to dominance was also reflected in a change of the Chinese name for it. Prior to 903 it was known as ‘Shih-li-fo-shi’, a phonetic translation, or just ‘Fo Shi’, but it then became ‘Sanfoqi’, the san suggesting that Foqi (Vijaya) had three centres: probably Palembang, Jambi and Kedah, or one of the Java ports.
With its small population and shortage of agricultural land, Srivijaya’s first achievement was its superior organization of the people of the region, the orang laut (‘sea people’). They had centuries of seafaring behind them and could act as pilots or pirates as opportunity offered. By bringing them under its umbrella, Srivijaya could reduce piracy by allowing the orang laut a share of the spoils of war and thereby encourage trade. Trade brought merchants, money, advanced ideas from India and the wherewithal to buy from elsewhere the food needed to sustain the urban settlements. Through better marshalling of the talents of the local sailors and boatbuilders, Srivijaya was able to conquer Melayu. The interior could supply the forest products and gold which Srivijaya needed for trade. In turn, the population of the interior provided a ready market for Srivijaya’s goods. The interior also supplemented Srivijaya’s manpower so that King Jayanasa could field an army several thousand strong as well as a large naval force.
