Studying Srivijaya
O.W. Wolters published this survey of Srivijayan studies in 1979, on the eve of the Jakarta SPAFA workshop, to assess the state of knowledge concerning the great maritime kingdom of the seventh to thirteenth centuries and to propose a new methodological direction. His overarching thesis is that Srivijaya’s persistent elusiveness—its fame in foreign sources contrasted with the near-total absence of indigenous monumental evidence—should be treated not as a deficiency but as a meaningful sign, and that the riverine landscape of Sumatra, read through both its visible and absent features, constitutes the primary text for reconstructing the kingdom’s political and cultural geography.
Summary
Wolters traces the historiographical arc from Coedes’ seminal 1918 identification of the Arab toponym ‘Sribuza’ and the T’ang Chinese Shih-li-fo-shih as ‘Srivijaya,’ tentatively located at Palembang on the strength of Groeneveldt’s misreading of fourteenth-century Ming sources (pp. 3–4). He then narrates the successive revisionist challenges: Majumdar’s 1933 theory that the maritime empire was Peninsular, Moens’ 1937 attempt to relocate the seventh-century capital to Kelantan and then Muara Takus by misreading I-ching’s sundial passage, and the 1974 Indonesian-American expedition to Palembang which found “not enough pre-14th century domestic artifacts to make one small village” (p. 14). The narrative reaches its turning point with Professor Boechari’s recovery of the toponym ‘Upang’ from the Kedukan Bukit inscription of 682, a village and river some twenty-five miles downstream from Palembang, which re-established the Palembang area within seventh-century Srivijayan geography (p. 15).
The article’s most original contribution is its proposal of a “semiological” approach. Wolters argues that the absence of land-grant inscriptions, the absence of large-scale monumental religion, and the absence of a walled city are all predictable consequences of a riverine environment with limited wet-rice agriculture and no settled villages available for temple endowment (pp. 16–17). In such a landscape, royal presence was signified not by immovable monuments (as in central Java) but by mobile messengers in distinguished boats, and spatial integration was achieved through the responsive obedience of dispersed settlements to royal summons—a mechanism attested in the Kedukan Bukit inscription, the Sabokingking inscription, Abu Zayd’s account of a thousand-ship mobilization, and Chao Ju-kua’s description of wartime assembly (pp. 17–18). The paddle, not the monument, is the key sign of Srivijayan political culture.
Wolters closes with a geographical reconstruction that reinterprets I-ching’s list of Indonesian dvipas. He identifies Mo-ho-hsin as ‘Mukha Asin’ (Briny Surface), a zone of salt marshes and shifting tidal creeks south of the Musi estuary, and argues that the Palembang area belonged to this inhospitable coastal zone rather than to Malayu-dvipa proper (pp. 30–32). This opens the possibility that three centres—Srivijaya, Malayu, and Palembang—were involved in the events of the seventh century, and that the Kedukan Bukit expedition of 682 represented Srivijaya’s expansion from Malayu-dvipa southward into the Musi basin. He further suggests that the Chinese toponym San-fo-ch’i of the Sung period means simply “the Three Vijayas,” reflecting a ruler who governed three neighbouring Sumatran states (pp. 23–24).
Key Findings
- Coedes’ 1918 identification of Srivijaya was influenced by Groeneveldt’s analysis of early Ming sources stating that after a Javanese attack c. 1377 the king of San-fo-ch’i lived at Jambi and Palembang became “the Old Harbour”; both Pelliot and Coedes were thus led to Palembang by misunderstood fourteenth-century evidence (pp. 3–6).
- The 1974 joint Indonesian-American archaeological expedition to Palembang concluded that “the entire vicinity of Palembang does not contain enough pre-14th century domestic artifacts to make one small village,” and its members even suggested that the inscriptions and statues there were redeposited in later times (p. 14).
- Boechari’s re-examination of the Kedukan Bukit inscription (682) retrieved the toponym ‘Upang’ where Coedes had read mata jap and Krom had read Malayu; Upang is a village and river approximately twenty-five miles downstream from Palembang, halfway between the city and the Musi estuary (p. 15).
- Wolters identifies the paddle as the key invisible sign of Srivijayan riverine culture: in the nineteenth century, local craft could cover the fifty miles from Palembang to the Musi estuary in a few hours on an ebbing tide, and goods from Palembang reached the Pasemah highlands in fourteen days by paddle over some three hundred miles to Muara Malang (p. 17).
- The royal compound at the Srivijayan centre would have resembled a Malay kota—earth, felled trees, and bamboo defences relying on the river for reinforcement or evacuation—rendering permanent stone or brick fortifications superfluous in a paddle-based environment; bricks were reserved for the gods (brick stupas), not for men (pp. 19–20).
- Wolters reconstructs I-ching’s Mo-ho-hsin as ‘Mukha Asin’ (Briny Surface), associated with the Banju Asin river estuary north of the Musi, a vestige of an ancient gulf; the geomorphic evidence indicates that much of the present coastline between the Banju Asin and the Batang Hari was under the sea in early times (pp. 30–31).
Conclusion
Wolters’ definitive historical takeaway is that Srivijaya was not a “city” or a territorial empire in the conventional sense but a network of riverine settlements integrated through paddle-based mobility, royal charisma, and the ceremonial responsiveness of dispersed communities to summons. The landscape—its rivers, creeks, geomorphic history, and the absence of features one would expect from an agrarian state—constitutes the master-text, and the continued absence of familiar evidence is itself a significant sign pointing to a political culture fundamentally different from that of agrarian Java. The 1979 Jakarta workshop’s commitment to multi-disciplinary field research, combining geological, archaeological, ceramic, and ethnographic methods, represents the turning point that will transform Srivijayan studies from library-based source criticism into landscape-based cultural reconstruction (pp. 24–25).
Context
- The article was written as a personal tribute to the organizers of the March 1979 SPAFA-sponsored workshop in Jakarta, which prepared an international multi-disciplinary research proposal for studying Srivijaya over the following five years, with delegates from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand (p. 3).
- The article appears in a JMBRAS number that also contains Nik Hassan Shuhaimi bin Abdul Rahman’s study of the Palembang Buddha (referenced in n. 37), situating Wolters’ work within the Malaysian scholarly engagement with Srivijayan heritage and the broader post-independence Indonesian conviction that Srivijaya symbolized the nation’s maritime achievements (p. 12).