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 the nineteenth century to see who the first scholars were to identify key placenames in Chinese sources that were later used by scholars who write about Srivijaya, such as Shilifoshi, Moluoyu, Heling, Shepo, and Sanfoqi, and I was able to identify flaws in their understandings and to document precisely how they went wrong.
I then traced certain key ideas about those placenames to the present, and saw that scholars today have the same misunderstandings as scholars in the nineteenth century did.
What I then came to realize is that people today simply do not know about the topic of what we could call “Srivijaya Sinology.” Indeed, there are absolutely no “Srivijaya Sinology” experts in the world. However, there should be, because the topic of “Srivijaya” cannot advance without expertise in that key realm.
The Two Main Sources for the Study of Srivijaya
Ever since George Cœdès made the argument in 1918 for a polity called Srivijaya by combining information from inscriptions and historical texts, scholarship on Srivijaya has relied heavily on those two sources.
In particular, epigraphers have studied the inscriptions in Old Malay, Sanskrit, and Tamil that mention, or are related to, Srivijaya. Further, epigraphers and others have also attempted to understand how the mention of the name Śailendra in the Ligor and Chola inscriptions relates to evidence of a Śailendra dynasty/line on Java, and how this relates to the name “Srivijaya” that is mentioned in inscriptions in southern Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula.
As for the Chinese historical sources. Starting in the nineteenth century, early Sinologists attempted to identify certain placenames in Chinese sources, such as Shilifoshi, Moluoyu, Heling, Shepo, and Sanfoqi, but they failed. There are different reasons for this, but one of the primary ones is that these early scholars used inaccurate information from much later sources to identify certain early placenames.
However, once George Cœdès proposed in 1918 that Srivijaya was the same place as the Shilifoshi and Sanfoqi in Chinese sources, the flawed ideas of earlier scholars were incorporated into the examination of Srivijaya.
While Arabic sources, and certain texts from South Asia have been employed as well, in general, I think it is safe to say that there are two key sources for the study of Srivijaya, and they are inscriptions and the Chinese sources, the domains of epigraphers and Sinologists, respectively.
The epigraphers have not known that the understandings of the Chinese sources that were produced by early Sinologists are flawed. As such, they have used them in good faith, but not surprisingly, they have not been able to produce a clear and coherent narrative about the past that combines information about the inscriptions and Chinese sources.
Meanwhile, there has only been one scholar who has worked directly on Srivijaya and who theoretically “knew Chinese,” and that is O. W. Wolters. However, Wolters was not trained as a sinologist, and when he began publishing on Srivijaya in the 1960s, he dismissed/ignored precisely the kinds of key issues that sinologists address, like whether or not Shilifoshi really is a transcription of “Srivijaya” (it’s not), and whether or not Shilifoshi and Sanfoqi were the same place (they were not, and even Cœdès himself admitted that he didn’t have clear evidence for that).
Instead, Wolters simply accepted what earlier scholars had claimed, which is definitely not the approach of a sinologist.
“Knowing Chinese” vs. Having a Sinological Understanding of the Key Texts for a Topic
One of the biggest problems that I see in the world of scholarship on Srivijaya and early Southeast Asian history more generally, is a fantasy belief in the power of “knowing Chinese.”
Many people seem to imagine that “knowing Chinese” is like a switch that one can turn on, and then suddenly, one “knows Chinese” and is an expert on everything related to Chinese sources.
However, there is no such switch. Instead, every topic requires that one make a significant effort to understand the sources. That is what the field of Sinology is all about. Sinologists don’t just “know Chinese,” but instead, they know how to carry out philological investigations of Chinese texts in order to attain the most accurate reading possible.
As such, even if someone “knows Chinese,” if s/he doesn’t make that sinological effort to investigate the sources for a given topic, then s/he will not be knowledgeable about that topic.
In the early 2000s, historian Geoff Wade was the most prominent scholar working on premodern Southeast Asia who was viewed as someone who “knew Chinese,” and many people therefore sought out his assistance. However, Wade spent the most time working with the Ming Shilu (Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty). That text is not the same as the Tang and Song dynasty era texts that have been used by people who have written about “Srivijaya.”
As such, and again, if one doesn’t make the effort to engage in sinological investigations of those earlier texts, one will not have an accurate understanding of them. And that is precisely what we see in the case of Wade.
For example, in 2005, Michael Laffan, an historian of Indonesian Islam and its transnational connections, wrote a working paper for the Asia Research Institute in Singapore on “Finding Java: Muslim Nomenclature of Insular Southeast Asia from Śrîvijaya to Snouck Hurgronje” where he has a section on “Śrîvijaya: Gatekeeper to the China Sea and Heir to Malayu (and Jaba?).”
In that section, Laffan mentions a name that appears in Song-era sources, Zhanbei 詹卑 or Zhanbi 詹畢. Zhanbei appears in the History of the Song as the reference for the king of Sanfoqi, and it also appears as the name of a kingdom related to Sanfoqi. I have explained that usage here.
Laffan believed, following the flawed ideas of earlier scholars, that Zhanbei was the same as Jambi, a place on the island of Sumatra. However, to gain a deeper historical understanding of the term, Zhanbei, Laffan asked Geoff Wade for assistance, and apparently this is what he was told:
According to [Geoff] Wade, Chan-pei/Zhan-bei was first noted in the You-yang za-zu of 840. Wang records its first mission to Tang China as being in 852, with another in 871. See Wang, Nanhai Trade, 121. Thereafter it appears in the Bei-hu-lu of that decade (though with different orthography), but then there is silence until the 11th century. Wolters gives the missions of the 9th century as occurring in 853 and 871 and then implies (without documentation) that Malayu-Jambi sent independent tribute missions to China after taking over as the capital of Śrîvijaya some time between 1079 and 1082. See Wolters, Śrîvijaya, pp. 41-42. (20, fn. 57)
The Youyang zazu 酉陽雜俎 is a collection of marvelous tales that was compiled by scholar-official Duan Chengshi 段成式 (803-863). It mentions a place called Zhanpi 瞻披, which to some extent resembles the later Zhanbi (an alternative for Zhanbei), although both characters are different. However, if we continue to read the passage where this name appears, it quickly becomes obvious that it is probably not talking about Jambi on the island of Sumatra.
異果，瞻披國有人牧羊千百余頭，有一羊離群，忽失所在。至暮方歸，形色鳴吼異常，群羊異（一曰長）。之。明日，遂獨行，主因隨之，入一穴。行五六裏，豁然明朗，花木皆非人間所有。羊於一處食草，草不可識。有果作黃金色，牧羊人切一將還，爲鬼所奪。又一日，復往取此果，至穴，鬼復欲奪，其人急吞之，身遂暴長，頭才出，身塞於穴，數日化爲石也。
Strange fruits: In the country of Zhanpi, a man was herding more than a thousand sheep. One sheep strayed from the flock and suddenly disappeared. Only at dusk did it return, and its appearance, color, and bleating were all highly unusual. The other sheep reacted strangely to it.
The next day, it went off by itself again, and its master followed it into a cave. After going five or six li, everything suddenly opened out into brightness and clarity. The flowers and trees were all unlike anything in the human world. The sheep grazed in one place, eating a kind of grass that could not be identified.
There was a fruit there the color of gold. The shepherd cut one and was about to take it back, but a ghost snatched it away. Another day, he went again to fetch this fruit. When he reached the cave, the ghost again tried to seize it, but the man hurriedly swallowed it. His body thereupon suddenly grew larger; only his head came out, while his body became stuck in the cave opening. After several days, he turned into stone.
Ok, there are sheep that are indigenous to Java and Sumatra, but a herd of over 1,000. . . Something seems off here.
Meanwhile, the second text mentioned, the Beihu lu, records the following:
占卑國出偏核桃，形如半月狀，波斯人取食之，絕香美，極下氣力，比於中夏桃仁，療疾不殊。《會最[蕞]》云︰偏桃仁，勃律國尤多，花殷紅色。郎中解忠順使安西，以蘿蔔插接之而生，桃仁肥大，其桃皮不堪食。
From the country of Zhanbei 占卑 comes the pianhetao. Its shape is like a half moon. Bosi [“Persians”] eat it. It is exceptionally fragrant and delicious, and is highly effective in causing qi to descend. Compared with the peach kernel of central China, its medicinal effect is no different.
The Huizui says: “Pian-tao kernels are especially abundant in Bolü; their flowers are a deep crimson. When the Gentleman Xie Zhongshun was sent to Anxi, he grafted them onto radish-root and they grew. The kernels were plump and large, but the flesh of the fruit was not edible.”
While the Beihu lu recorded information about plants and customs in southern China, the (dried) fruit that it described here was clearly imported.
Anxi is a reference to the northwestern reaches of the Tang dynasty empire, and the fact that this fruit is described as eaten by Bosi people [“Persians”], likewise suggests that this was a fruit imported from someplace to the west of China, that is, the world of places where people herded sheep, as the previous text noted.
In other words, the context and content of these passages strongly suggests that this Zhanpi/Zhanbei was not in Southeast Asia.
My point here is that Laffan got bad advice, and he got bad advice because “knowing Chinese” is not enough. In addition to “knowing Chinese,” one also has to understand the passages in the texts one is dealing with, and to do that, one has to engage in the sinological work of checking names (like Bosi, Anxi, and Bolü, which was also somewhere to the West of China), comparing texts, etc.
Johannes Kurz has a note on this topic on Academia.edu entitled “Forgotten Elephants of Jambi” in which he engages in a sinological investigation of the terms that scholars have believed indicate Jambi. He has done the same for many other placenames. That is what one needs to do in order to become an expert on a topic. Wade never did that for the sources that are discussed in the Srivijaya scholarship.
Further, Wade is not the only scholar who has never carried out sinological investigations of those sources. The same is true of scholars like Tansen Sen and Derek Heng. Yes, they may “know Chinese,” but they do not understand the issues surrounding the passages in the Chinese texts that have been used in Srivijaya scholarship because they have never engaged in sustained sinological investigations of those sources. That is blazingly clear from their publications.
Further, and most significantly, O. W. Wolters never did that either.
Again, “knowing Chinese” is not the same as gaining a deep understanding of the key texts for a topic through Sinological research.
There Is No, and Never Has Been, a “Srivijaya Sinology”
And as for the topic of Srivijaya, sinological research is essential, and yet, it has never been carried out by any of the scholars who have written on Srivijaya.
Besides Chinese sources, the other main source for the study of Srivijaya are inscriptions, and there has long been a field of “Indonesian/Malay Epigraphy” where experts on epigraphy have examined inscriptions, such as Brandes, Kern, Bosch, Krom, Casparis, Damais, Cœdès, Boechari, Poerbatjaraka, Sukarto K. Atmodjo, Suhadi, Griffiths, Sastrawan, etc.
The above scholars were/are undoubtedly not all equally perceptive, and some later scholars certainly must have benefited from certain knowledge that their predecessors did not possess, nonetheless, the fact that scholars have been working on inscriptions for over a century means that it is likely the case that current ideas about inscriptions are the product of a process of scholarly development.
Meanwhile, for the Chinese sources on Srivijaya, there has only been O. W. Wolters who has “examined” them, and he simply repeated the same ideas of the earliest sinologists. As such, for people today, there has been NO process of scholarly development AT ALL with regards to the Chinese sources for the study of Srivijaya.
This is because there has never been a “Srivijaya Sinology” or even an “Early Southeast Asia Sinology.” Instead, there has just been a very small number of scholars who “know Chinese.”
