When Funan fell under Khmer rule, the Indochina trade was taken up by other states. The one in the best location was Srivijaya, on the southeastern coast of Sumatra near both the Malacca and Sunda straits. It was probably in existence as a kingdom before the collapse of Funan, but the first record that mentions Srivijaya is the travel diary of I-ching, a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who visited in 671 and praised its capital, Palembang, for its 1,000 monks and an excellent library of holy texts. One hundred years later Srivijaya not only ruled Sumatra but also the Malay peninsula and western Java, giving it almost complete control over the Indochina trade. And with the growth of powerful new states eager to trade with one another (the Tang dynasty of China and the Islamic caliphates of the Middle East), Srivijaya could look forward to a prosperous future.

Srivijaya never forgot that its prosperity came from abroad. The Srivijayans kept the Chinese friendly with diplomacy, sending merchants to the Chinese court in the guise of vassals offering tribute. To supplement their income as middlemen, local industries were developed in pepper, nipa mats, tortoiseshell, beeswax, aromatic woods, and camphor. The Orang Asli (Forest People) were hired to gather the wood and locate the diseased trees that are the source of camphor, and the Malaccan pirates (Orang Laut or Sea People) were recruited into the Srivijayan navy, to defend the straits rather than plunder them. All of their vassals and allies, on land and sea, were taught that the Srivijayan kings were sons of the gods, and that they had the power to strike down anyone guilty of treason. This idea soon became so widely believed that servants of the monarch routinely committed suicide upon his death.

Despite all this, Srivijaya did have to deal with competition, and the most aggressive competitor was the kingdom of Mataram, in central and eastern Java. Mataram's first important king was Sanjaya (732-750), who went forth with his fleet to raid everyone within reach, including Srivijaya, Cambodia, and even China. At first the Srivijayans could not resist this threat, but a few years later a second dynasty, the Sailendras, arose in Java. Because the Sailendras were Buddhists, while Sanjaya and his successors were Hindus, Srivijaya and the Sailendras quickly became friends. The Sailendras probably received aid from Srivijaya when they overthrew their rivals in 775. Then Srivijaya and Mataram's new ruler cemented good relations with a treaty and a royal marriage. By 860 the ruler of Srivijaya was also a Sailendra, boasting of his Javanese ancestors.

Whereas Srivijaya depended on trade for its wealth, Mataram was an agriculture-oriented society. Its monarchs showed their devotion to Buddhism by constructing the Borobudur temple in the center of Java. Immense by any measure, Borobudur contains two million cubic feet of stone, 73 bell-shaped shrines ("stupas"), and 1460 bas-reliefs. Srivijaya, by contrast, was so preoccupied with commerce that it built no enduring monuments of any kind.

But in both places devotion to the Buddha was on the way out, just as it was in Champa, Cambodia, and post-Gupta India. By 850 the Sailendra monarchs of Mataram had converted to the Saivite sect of Hinduism, which teaches that the king is an avatar or living incarnation of the god Shiva, and they started building Hindu temples to match Borobudur, 50 miles away. Because the Srivijayans were still Buddhists, the alliance cooled. When Mataram was overthrown by a rival, the prince of Kediri (a city near Mataram), in 928, the Javanese went back to their old habit of raiding. So hostile did relations become that Srivijayan ambassadors went to China in 992, pleading for aid against the Javanese pirates. The Chinese declined to intervene.

More trouble was coming. Srivijaya's principal customers, China and the Abbasid Caliphate, went to pieces in the early tenth century, causing an economic slump. Then in 1030 came a devastating raid from the Chola Empire of south India; Srivijaya was forced to pay tribute to the Cholas until 1190. There was some recovery in the 12th-early 13th centuries, but the country never prospered the way it did before. The Orang Laut became pirates again, since they could no longer make an honest living. The end came sometime after 1230, when Srivijaya lost control over the all-important waterways. No details are available, but when Marco Polo visited Sumatra in 1292, he found the island divided into eight states, none of them claiming to be the old trading empire.


*Posted by Berosus on Jan. 22, 2001