In 2021, archaeologist Pierre-Yves Manguin published an article entitled “Srivijaya: Trade and Connectivity in the Pre-modern Malay World.” At the beginning of the article, Manguin traces the history of the…
Over the past couple of months, I have written a lot of blog posts on the scholarship on “Srivijaya” that makes use of Chinese sources.In particular, I went back to…
One of the core inscriptions that is cited in the Srivijaya narrative, the Ligor Inscription, as well as some inscriptions from southern India, mention alongside the name “Srivijaya” the name…
The first fifty years of scholarship on “Srivijaya” was conducted through the study of inscriptions and texts. Then in in 1974, a group from Indonesia and America supported by the…
In his 1918 article, “Le Royaume de Çrivijaya,” George Cœdès examined information from three types of sources—inscriptions, Arabic texts, and Chinese texts—to make the argument that there had historically existed…
By the time George Cœdès wrote and published his 1918 article, “Le Royaume de Çrivijaya,” there were various false assumptions that scholars had created about certain placenames mentioned in Chinese…
In thinking about how to explain the problems that we find in George Cœdès’s 1918 article, “Le Royaume de Çrivijaya,” I realized that it would be helpful for readers to…
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…
By the late nineteenth century, as I documented in the previous two series of posts, scholars had linked two placenames recorded in Chinese sources, Shilifoshi 室利佛逝 and Sanfoqi 三佛齊, with…
In 1967, historian O. W. Wolters published his Early Indonesian Commerce: A Study of the Origins of Srivijaya. In that work, Wolters mentions Yijing, the seventh-century Chinese monk who traveled…