Article

A primary Chinese record relating to Ho-lo-tan, and miscellaneous notes on Srivijaya and Fo-Che

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A primary Chinese record relating to Ho-lo-tan, and miscellaneous notes on Srivijaya and Fo-Che

William T. Kao’s 1956 article examines a contemporaneous Chinese court diary (the Yuan-chia Ch’i-chu-chu, A.D. 424–453) as the most reliable primary source for the five embassies sent from the Southeast Asian polity of Ho-lo-tan to the Southern Sung court, and argues that the usurper king Shi-li-p’i-jia-ya’s name constitutes a superior phonetic rendering of “Sri Vijaya” compared to the later T’ang-era form Che-li-fo-che. The article further reassesses the duration of Srivijaya’s diplomatic relations with China and clarifies the methodology behind the cartographer Kia Tan’s geographical descriptions.

Summary

Kao’s central intervention is methodological: he demonstrates that the two standard official histories (Sung Shu and Nan Shi) contain internal inconsistencies in their treatment of the Ho-lo-tan embassies—omitting the third embassy entirely, misdating the fourth, and failing to identify the usurper who deposed King P’i-sa-pat-maw. By turning to quotations from the Yuan-chia Ch’i-chu-chu preserved in the T’ai-p’ing Yu-lan (A.D. 977–983), Kao recovers the name of the third embassy’s sender, Shi-li-p’i-jia-ya, and reconstructs the political sequence: the usurper seized the throne between the departure and return of the second envoy (c. 430–434), consolidated his position, and was eventually recognised by the Southern Sung emperor in 449 through an imperial edict conferring a title. Kao argues that this recognition, coming fifteen years after the coup and coinciding with tribute from two other polities (P’an-huang and P’an-tat), implies that Ho-lo-tan had by then achieved sufficient regional power—possibly through control of Kalasapura and the China sea route—to warrant imperial honour.

The article then extends this analysis to the question of whether Ho-lo-tan and Srivijaya (Che-li-fo-che) are the same polity under different names. Kao supports Moens’s hypothesis by noting that Shi-li-p’i-jia-ya, read in the Amoy dialect, is a more consonant transliteration of “Sri Vijaya” than Che-li-fo-che, and that the usurper’s personal name becoming an honorific for the kingdom is a plausible political development. He also challenges the conventional dating of Che-li-fo-che embassies to 670–741, arguing that the later compilation Suh T’ung-tien (1767) extends the range to the K’ai-ch’eng period (836–840) on the basis of more careful citation practices that include the reigning emperor’s name alongside the year-style, reducing the likelihood of clerical confusion between K’ai-yuan and K’ai-ch’eng.

Finally, Kao addresses a widespread misconception that the T’ang cartographer Kia Tan (d. c. 825) based his geographical descriptions on personal travel. He shows that Kia Tan never left China, compiling his forty-volume work from Pan Ku’s Han Shu, other reference books, and data supplied by returning traders and envoys who were interrogated by the Hung-lu sze upon arrival at the capital.

Key Findings

  • The Yuan-chia Ch’i-chu-chu, a contemporaneous court diary of the Southern Sung reign (424–453), is no longer extant but survives in fragments quoted in the T’ai-p’ing Yu-lan (Vol. 787); it was listed as a 71-volume work in the Hsin T’ang Shu (c. 1060) and 60 volumes in the Chiu T’ang Shu (p. 163).
  • Five embassies from Ho-lo-tan are recorded during the Yuan-chia reign: the first in the 7th year (A.D. 430), the second in the 10th year (A.D. 433), the third in the 11th year (A.D. 434), the fourth in the 14th year (A.D. 437), and the fifth in the 29th year (A.D. 452) (pp. 166–167).
  • The usurper’s name, Shi-li-p’i-jia-ya (Amoy pronunciation), is identified as a more phonetically accurate rendering of “Sri Vijaya” than the T’ang-era Che-li-fo-che (Kuo-yu: Shi-li-p’i-che-ye) (p. 170).
  • The imperial edict of 449 (26th year of Yuan-chia) conferred titles on the kings of Ho-lo-tan, P’an-huang, and P’an-tat simultaneously, suggesting Ho-lo-tan had achieved a new level of regional significance by that date (pp. 167, 170).
  • The Suh T’ung-tien (1767) extends the period of Che-li-fo-che embassies from the conventional 670–741 to the K’ai-ch’eng period (836–840), a span of approximately 170 years rather than 70 (pp. 172–173).
  • Kia Tan’s geographical work, completed at age 72, was compiled entirely from secondary sources and interrogations of foreign envoys at the Hung-lu sze; he never travelled beyond China’s borders (pp. 176–177).

Conclusion

Kao’s definitive takeaway is that the fragmentary quotations from the Yuan-chia Ch’i-chu-chu resolve long-standing ambiguities in the Ho-lo-tan narrative—identifying the usurper, establishing the sequence of political events, and providing a phonetic bridge between Ho-lo-tan and Srivijaya that strengthens the case for their identity. The article ultimately argues that the Chinese documentary record, when read critically and with attention to dialectal pronunciation, supports the identification of Ho-lo-tan as the precursor of Srivijaya and suggests a longer period of sustained diplomatic engagement with China than previously recognised.

Context

  • The study draws on the T’ai-p’ing Yu-lan (977–983), Sung Shu, Nan Shi, Chiu T’ang Shu, Hsin T’ang Shu, and Suh T’ung-tien (1767), with particular reliance on the former as a repository for the otherwise lost Yuan-chia Ch’i-chu-chu.
  • Historiographically, the article intervenes in the ongoing debate (Moens, Braddell, Wilkinson, Hsu Yun-ts’iao) over the location and identity of Ho-lo-tan/Srivijaya, and corrects a persistent misconception about Kia Tan’s methodology that had influenced interpretations of T’ang-era geographical knowledge of the Southeast Asian maritime world.

References