In writing about George Cœdès’s 1918 article, “Le royaume de Çrīvijaya,” it dawned on me that it would be difficult for many people to understand what I am talking about if they can’t read the original article.
I therefore translated it with ChatGPT, and am sharing the translation here. I haven’t checked every word, but it seems to have done a good job.
This article was previously translated and published in Sriwijaya: History, Religion & Language of an Early Malay Polity: Collected Studies by George Cœdès and Louis-Charles Damais edited by Pierre-Yves Manguin and Tan Sri Dato’ Mubin Sheppard published in Kuala Lumpur by MBRAS (Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society), 1992. It is Monograph no. 20 in the MBRAS series.
However, MBRAS lists this book as “out of stock,” and I don’t see a digital copy floating around anywhere, so unless someone is at a research university, they are not going to have access to it. But even for such people, I have almost never seen this work cited, so, unfortunately, it does not appear to have ever reached much of an audience.
Therefore, I decided to translate the article again and share it here.
Thank you sir, always on the list but never had an access.
Coedes, Pelliot, Finot . . . you’re reminding me of using AltaVista translator thirty years ago.
That’s a painful memory. . . 🙂