Article

Langkasuka, the island of Asoka

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Langkasuka, the island of Asoka

W. Linehan’s 1948 note in the JMBRAS proposes that the ancient Kedah kingdom known to Chinese, Indian, and Javanese sources as Langkasuka derived its name from Lanka Asoka—“The Island of Asoka”—in honour of the Mauryan Buddhist emperor (r. c. 264–228 B.C.), and that the etymological derivation offered in the Kedah Annals (Lanka-suka, “Island of Gladness”) is a later folk-etymological fiction. The article is a compact piece of onomastic and historical argumentation drawing on the Kedah Annals, Chinese dynastic histories, South Indian inscriptions, and Arab geographical texts.

Summary

Linehan’s central problem is the origin of the name Langkasuka. The Kedah Annals (Hikayat Marong Mahawangsa) explain the name as arising from the festive construction of the audience hall—ber-suka-sukaan (with rejoicings)—hence Lanka-suka, “Island of Gladness.” Linehan finds this derivation implausible, noting that the Annals’ own author seemed to sense the incongruity and laboured to justify it. He instead argues that the name is a phonetic corruption of Lanka Asoka, a dedication to the great Mauryan emperor whose fame as a patron of Buddhism would have made him a natural namesake for the first Indian settlement at the foot of Kedah Peak.

The argument is supported by several converging lines of evidence. The Tamil form Ilangasogam in the Tanjore Inscription of 1030 A.D. can be parsed as Ilanga (Lanka) + Asoka, with the initial i and the ga/ka substitution being standard features of Tamil transliteration—a reading confirmed by Professor K. A. Nilakanta Sastri, who reviewed the note. The geographical term Lanka (“island”) is appropriate because Kedah Peak was, at the time of Indian colonisation, a peninsula so narrow at its isthmus that it was functionally an island, a point corroborated by the Annals’ own narrative and by Quaritch Wales’ archaeological analysis. The absence of the name Langkasuka in all Arab geographical sources (Ibn Khordadbeh, Sulaiman, Ibn Muhalhal, Idrisi), who consistently use Kedah, suggests the name had already fallen into disuse by the ninth century, which would explain why the Annals’ author—writing under the influence of Arab missionaries—could not trace its true origin.

Linehan further situates the naming within the broader context of Asokan Buddhist expansion. Asoka’s missionaries Sona and Uttara were dispatched to Suvannabhumi (“the country of gold”), generally identified with the Mon country and Thaton, but which may well have encompassed the gold-exporting ports of the Malay Peninsula. Kedah, with its harbour at the base of the Peak, was an almost inevitable landing point for Indian Buddhist traders and missionaries of that era, making a dedication to Asoka entirely plausible.

Key Findings

  • The “History of the Liang Dynasty” (502–556 A.D.) records a country called Langgasu or Langga, established approximately four hundred years before that text (i.e., first to second century A.D.), whose king Pa-ka-da-to sent a Buddhist envoy to China in 515 A.D. (p. 121).
  • The Tanjore Inscription of 1030 A.D. uses the form Ilangasogam alongside Kadaram (Kedah), providing the critical epigraphical support for the Lanka + Asoka reading (p. 121).
  • No Arab geographer—neither Ibn Khordadbeh (846 A.D.), Sulaiman (c. 920 A.D.), Ibn Muhalhal (c. 941 A.D.), nor Idrisi (1154 A.D.)—ever uses the name Langkasuka or any variant; all employ forms of Kedah (p. 122).
  • The Nagarakrtagama (1365 A.D.) mentions both Langkasuka and Kedah as distinct entities, and the Pasai Annals record the destruction of Langkasuka c. 1370 A.D. (p. 121).
  • Asoka reigned c. 264–228 B.C.; his son Mahinda introduced Buddhism to Ceylon, and his monks Sona and Uttara were sent to Suvannabhumi in the third century B.C. (pp. 122–123).
  • The name Langkasuka survives in the modern Malay Peninsula as a tributary of the Perak (or Patani) river and in the north Malayan folk-tale of Negeri alang-kah suka, “Land of all one’s wishes” (p. 122).

Conclusion

Linehan concludes that the name Langkasuka is best understood as a commemorative dedication to the Mauryan emperor Asoka, given by early Indian Buddhist colonists to their settlement at the foot of Kedah Peak. The true etymology was lost over the centuries, and the Annals’ author, unable to recover it, constructed the folk-etymology of “Island of Gladness.” While Linehan acknowledges the absence of direct documentary evidence linking Asoka personally to Malaya, he considers the convergence of the Tamil epigraphic form, the geographical appropriateness of Lanka, and the historical context of Asokan Buddhist expansion sufficient to make the identification highly probable.

Context

  • The article draws on the Sturrock romanised text of the Kedah Annals (J.R.A.S. Straits Branch, 1916), Low’s 1849 translation, the Tanjore Inscription, Chinese dynastic sources as compiled by Groenveldt, and Coedes’ 1944 Histoire Ancienne des États Hindouis d’Extrême-Orient.
  • Historiographically, the note sits within the 1930s–40s wave of MBRAS scholarship on early Indian colonisation in Malaya (Quaritch Wales, Wilkinson) and contributes a specific onomastic solution to the Langkasuka problem that remains influential in subsequent discussions of the kingdom’s identity.

References