How Many Polities Called Tanjungpura Have There Been in Borneo?

Abstract

There has been extensive trade between Borneo and the outside world for at least 1000 years but there are considerable problems in establishing the precise locations of the major polities that were involved in this trade. One of them, Tanjungpura (with spelling variations), appears in Chinese, Javanese, Malay, and Portuguese records until the end of the 16th century CE and then disappears. The popular view is that it lay on the Pawan river and that Sukadana is its successor, but some maps show Tanjungpura in northerly locations in Borneo or in the south. This issue now deserves attention, particularly because a recently published oral history mentions more than one Tanjungpura in Borneo. This article reviews references to Tanjungpura in early records, to address the question in the title, and wider occurrences of the name in the Indonesian archipelago.

Summary

This article tackles one of the most persistent locational puzzles in Bornean historiography: how many distinct polities have borne the name Tanjungpura (and its spelling variants) across the island’s pre-colonial history. Smith reviews the full corpus of early references—Chinese, Javanese, Malay, Portuguese, and Dutch—alongside a recently published oral history from the Santubong region of Sarawak that introduces a previously underappreciated northern dimension to the problem. The central tension he addresses is between the popular West Kalimantan narrative, which identifies Tanjungpura with the Pawan river and treats Sukadana as its direct successor, and the 16th-century Portuguese evidence, which places a major Tanjungpura in the Barito basin of southern Borneo.

Smith’s core argument is that the Portuguese textual and cartographic record is incompatible with a Pawan river location. Tome Pires’s statement that Tanjungpura lay approximately 70 leagues from Java, combined with his note that Lawei (in the Kapuas basin) was a four-day sail beyond it, firmly situates the polity in the south. The proliferation of “Tanjungpura” names on 16th-century maps—sometimes appearing simultaneously in the south and the north—suggests either cartographic confusion over a single polity or the existence of genuinely distinct polities sharing the name. The Santubong oral history, while requiring cautious treatment, adds references to a Tanjungpura in the northwest (near Santubong) and another near Ketapang, further complicating any single-site identification.

The article also examines the archaeological record, which provides limited but suggestive support: a temple site with 12th–13th century Chinese ceramics at Benua Lama on the Pawan, and a fortified Ngaju settlement at Kuta Bataguh in the Kapuas Murung area dated from the 8th to 18th centuries. Neither site, however, offers definitive proof of external trade connections that would confirm either as the Tanjungpura known to Portuguese traders.

Key Findings

• Tome Pires (c. 1515) records that Tanjungpura was approximately 70 Portuguese leagues (~350 km) from Java and that Lawei lay a further four days’ sailing (~900 km at 5 knots) to the north, placing Tanjungpura in the Barito basin rather than on the Pawan river (pp. 7–8).
• The anonymous Wolfenbüttel map (c. 1540) shows “Tajopura” on the northern Borneo coast south of Tanjung Datu, while Diogo Homem’s atlas (1558) and Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570) both display a southerly “Tamiampura” and a northerly “Taiapura” simultaneously, suggesting either two polities or cartographic duplication (pp. 8–11).
• By the 1580s, Portuguese commercial summaries note that Borneo was no longer being visited because of warfare, and Tanjungpura disappears from subsequent Dutch and English trading records, which instead reference Sukadana and Banjarmasin (p. 12).
• The displaced Sukadana sultans assumed the title “Matan and Tanjung Pura” only after relocating to the village of Tanjung Pura around 1870, meaning the name’s association with the Pawan river is a 19th-century development rather than a continuous dynastic tradition (p. 13).
• The Santubong oral history (McLaughlin et al. 2018; Suriani and McLaughlin 2020) references Tanjungpura in the northwest from an uncertain 6th-century date and near Ketapang from the 10th century, with the polity declining and being renamed “Bakulapura” in the mid-15th century (p. 15).
• Archaeological evidence at Benua Lama (Negeri Baru) includes 12th–13th century Chinese ceramics and 15th-century tombstones with Arabic and Javanese inscriptions, while Kuta Bataguh in the Kapuas Murung area yields remains of a fortified Ngaju settlement spanning the 8th to 18th centuries (pp. 13–14).

Conclusion

Smith concludes that the question posed in the title cannot be answered with certainty. The evidence reviewed suggests, with varying degrees of confidence, three areas in Borneo associated with a past Tanjungpura: the south (Barito basin), the west (Pawan/Ketapang), and the northwest (Santubong region). These may have been separate residues of a wider polity mentioned in the Nagarakertagama, or the name may have been independently adopted by different polities at different times—a pattern of name-sharing that Smith notes is not uncommon in the Indonesian archipelago, citing parallel examples of multiple “Sukadana” and “Boni” locations.

Context

• The article draws on a wide range of primary sources including Chinese travel and trade texts (Zhufan Zhi, Dade Nanhai Zhi, Daoyi zhilue, Xingcha shenglan, Shunfeng Xiangsong), Javanese dynastic histories (Nagarakertagama, Pararaton), Malay chronicles (Sejarah Melayu, Hikayat Banjar), Portuguese accounts (Pires, De Barros, Linschoten, Eredia, Teixeira), 16th-century European maps (Rodrigues, Wolfenbüttel, Homem, Mercator, Ortelius, Gastaldi), and the Santubong oral history compiled by Sapian bin Morni and published by McLaughlin and Suriani.
• The study’s main historiographical contribution is to challenge the entrenched West Kalimantan identification of Tanjungpura with the Pawan river and to demonstrate that the Portuguese evidence points decisively to the Barito basin, while simultaneously introducing the Santubong oral history as a new and problematic source that complicates any single-site solution.

References