Five years ago, I listened to a colleague at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Johannes Kurz, give a presentation on how problematic the scholarship on “Srivijaya” is, and in particular, how problematic the use of Chinese sources has been in that body of scholarship.
That all made sense to me, because although I had never focused on that topic, I had come across information in Chinese historical sources over the years that clearly indicated to me that there was a big difference between what scholars had written and what the sources actually record.
Further, the main historian who had employed Chinese sources to write about Srivijaya was O. W. Wolters, whose work on Vietnam I had already found to be insanely bad and had already written on that. Therefore, that there was a major problem with the scholarship on Srivijaya was not a revelation to me, but the presentation stirred my interest in looking at the topic more closely.
So, that evening, I went online and started looking at historical sources about the Chines place names (Shilifoshi and Sanfoqi) that historians claim referred to “Srivijaya,” a supposed historic polity based on Palembang on the island of Sumatra.
As had been the case previously, I saw that the information in the sources and the things historians had written did not match.
I then asked myself, “Ok, Sanfoqi is clearly not the name ‘Srivijaya,’ but it must mean something. What could it be?”
I then turned to Edwin G. Pulleyblank’s Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin and looked up the characters for “Sanfoqi” and got an Early Middle Chinese (~Tang era) pronunciation of something like “Sam-fut-tse.”
I asked myself, “Is there any place name in Southeast Asia that might sound close to this?” And “Kampuchea/Kambuja” came to my mind.
So, I then said to myself, “Ok, let’s imagine that Sanfoqi was ‘Kambuja.’ If I now read the sources thinking that Sanfoqi = Kambuja will they make sense?”
They did.
EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
In Chinese sources, we also find other place names that are mentioned in relation to Sanfoqi, and one is a place called “Shepo” (and other variations). Pretty much everyone today thinks that this refers to island Java.
As I kept reading through various sources, while Sanfoqi kept making sense as “Kambuja,” Shepo did not make sense as island Java. So, I started to investigate where this place might be.
The source that provides the most detailed geographic information about Shepo is Zhao Rukuo’s thirteenth-century Zhu fan zhi [Treatise on Foreign Lands] which states the following:
闍婆國，又名莆家龍，於泉州為丙巳方；率以冬月發船，蓋藉北風之便，順風晝夜行，月餘可到。
東至海，水勢漸低，女人國在焉；愈東則尾閭之所泄，非復人世；泛海半月，至崑崙國。南至海三日程，泛海五日至大食國。
西至海四十五日程，北至海四日程。
The kingdom of Jaba [Shepo] is also called Pujialong. It is to the south-southeast of Quanzhou. If one leaves in the winter months, one can take advantage of the northern winds. With favorable winds and sailing day and night, one can arrive in just over a month.
To the east, it reaches the sea. The water gradually descends, and there [one finds] the Kingdom of Women. Further to the east, is the place where the accumulated water is discharged, and one is no longer in the human world.
Crossing the sea for half a month, one reaches the Kunlun kingdom. South to the sea is a three-day journey. Crossing the sea for five days one reaches the Dashi kingdom. West to the sea is a forty-five-day journey. North to the sea is a four-day journey.
While we can never totally trust distances and directions in old Chinese texts and therefore should never base an argument on a single distance or anything like that, what struck me in reading this is the more general point that it mentions journeying to the sea in four directions. If this was island Java, then that would make no sense. Why would one record that? Were Chinese mariners going on cross-island treks in their free time?? It makes no sense.
Instead, it would only make sense if this was recorded about a place where there was a need to journey in all four directions, and for medieval mariners, the main purpose of their journeying was to engage in trade. So, I asked myself, “Where in Southeast Asia could this be describing?”
I came to settle on the area that stretches between what is now Lake Songkhla and the west coast of the Malay Peninsula.
As I did with Sanfoqi, I said, “Ok, let’s imagine that Shepo was ‘Songkhla/Phatthalung to Kedah/Trang.’ If I now read the sources thinking this, will they make sense?”
They did.
EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
That said, while I could find evidence of overland routes between Songkhla and Kedah, and Phatthalung and Trang, and while it is easy to imagine a location in what is now the Songkhla Lake area that would be one day from the sea, I wasn’t sure about the four-day journey to the north.
Today, there is a lake (Lake Songkhla), a freshwater lagoon (Tale Noi) and some wetlands in that area and a long stretch of land along the coast known as Sathing Phra. Archaeologist Janice Stargardt found evidence of a citadel and canals in Sathing Phra in the 1980s, so I thought that the route to the north might has passed through a canal, but that didn’t really seem “north” and it also seemed too close.
However, I later found that there is much clearer evidence of this northern route in early European maps from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Here are a few examples.
Jaillot, Alexis-Hubert (1632?-1712). Cartographe. [Carte manuscrite de la côte Occidentale du Golfe de Siam depuis Pahang jusqu’à Ligor] / Jaillot fecit. 1600-1799.
Carte plate du golfe de Siam, Malaya, Cambodia et Tsiompa. 1687.
Carte de l’Isle Timon jusques à Siam : corrigée sur les lieux dans le vaisseau du Roy Loyseau. 1687.
Carte hollandaise du golfe de Siam. 1687.
Carte plate qui comprend le Golfe de Siam, les costes de Cambodia, de Tsiompa et les Isles adjacentes, avec une partie de l’Isle Bornéo. 1687.
Coronelli, Vincenzo (1650-1718). Cartographe. Royaume de Siam avec les royaumes qui lui sont tributaires et les isles de Sumatra, Andemaon, etc… / Dressé et Dedie à Mr. l’abbé de Dangeau, Par… le père Coronelli, …. 1687.
Thornton, John (1641-1708). Cartographe. [Carte du Golfe de Siam] Made by John Thornton at the / signe of the Platt in the Minories. Anno / 1701.
Carte générale des mers de Chine depuis le détroit de Malacca jusqu’à l’île Formose, avec une partie des Philippines et de Bornéo. 17??
From these maps, some of which were clearly modeled on a common base map, it is obvious that there was a navigable route from Songkhla (Sangora/Singora) to Nakhon Si Thammarat (Ligor) as late as the early eighteenth century.
There is a river that flows southward from Nakhon Si Thammarat, the Pak Phanang River, but now it runs into wetlands. Clearly, this was not the case in the past, and there was a passage through those areas to the Tale Noi.
As such, besides all of the textual information that I have found that supports the idea that Shepo was located in this area, the geography is a perfect match as well.
This is where in the mighty trans-peninsular trade hub of Shepo (Jaba) was located, the great rival of Sanfoqi (Kambuja).
Howdy,
It’s very interesting to read about that canal connecting Pak Phanang and Tale sap.
The land mass (and klong ranod) seem first appeared on the western map in the early 17th century. It was also around this time the settlement of Singora appeared on the map. The land mass then was identified as Tantalem, Tantalam, pulo papier, koh Yay and others. The maps those days relied on experience of the sailors and navigators who thought what they went through was channel or even a straight, and recognised the landmass as an island.
It was used well into the mid 19th century it seems. F.A. Neal went through it onboard a 1400 ton frigate of Siam navy. Only 50 years later, Warington Smyth wrote it was no longer passable. Also he writes that the locals never heard of Tantalem.
Tantalem of course includes stingpra peninsula, on which Hsü Yün-ts’iao, takakuwa and others place some earlier civilisations like Chitu. Which fits nicely with what J.Stargardt and others have dug up from the ground. Most fascinating aspect of their discovery is the existence of canal networks for irrigation and navigation.
I think there’s a lot more investigations need to be done on the history of the area around Singora, ‘talung, stingpra,and how they relate to NST to the north and Chana,Patani to the south.
Thanks for inspiring work.
Thank you for the kind and helpful comment!!
I checked out Neal’s book. Although that section is brief, it’s very interesting to see 1) how quickly he moved through the region, 2) the mention of a river at Talung, and 3) how he entrusted the king at Singora to have a letter delivered overland to Kedah.
I can’t remember what it was now, but I recently came across another British account of an inspection of the Kra Isthmus. It’s so clear from these accounts how easy it was to cross over the Malay Peninsula in different places.
So much of that area of Tale Noi, etc. is a natural park now, right? I swear, if someone can invest in a project to scan the territory with LIDAR and bathymetric LiDAR, I think you’re guaranteed to find something. While Stargardt found canals and a citadel on Sathing Phra, I would imagine that the “better stuff” would be more inland, away from the coast. But there must have been ships that sank as well, so there has to be some interesting stuff underwater.
But back to canals, yes, I think that is an overlooked part of history. I can see that the area where Ha Tien is now probably experienced a repeated rise and fall of fortunes over time as the canals that connected it to the interior were maintained or not maintained. The same probably applies for this area in what is now Thailand too.
Thanks again for the comment and for mentioning Neal!!
A few things to note. The northern canals and or rivers were last remnants of a strait that once separated a barrier island and the mainland Malay peninsula. A barrier island (southern half is Satingpra peninsula) that stretches some 175km is a relatively new,that began emerging only some 4000 years ago. Till then Pattalung was an ocean port.
This is the island depicted on the maps you quoted. It seems that the area north of the lakes was fast silted up and connecting up but still remained a boggy marshland, some deep enough to navigate, up to the end of 19th century. Pattalung became finally landlocked.