An illustrated catalogue of the ethnographical collection of the Sarawak Museum
H.G. Quaritch Wales published this reconsideration in 1970, thirty years after his foundational archaeological fieldwork in Kedah and the Isthmus, to revise his historical-geographical conclusions while defending his core cultural thesis that the Malay Peninsula functioned as a critical relay in the Indianization of South-east Asia. The article engages directly with the challenges posed by A. Lamb’s University of Malaya excavations and the broader historiographical shifts of the 1950s and 1960s, particularly the work of Wheatley, Dupont, and Griswold.
Summary
Quaritch Wales opens by drawing a clear distinction between conclusions that rest on his own archaeological observations and those that were speculative historical geography. He readily concedes the latter: his earlier proposal that Ch’aiya rather than Palembang was the capital of Srivijaya, and his identification of the Sailendra headquarters on the Isthmus, are abandoned in favour of the consensus established by Coedes and Wolters. He also acknowledges the disruptive influence of J.L. Moens’ 1937 monograph, which had temporarily destabilized the entire field of South-east Asian historical geography and left traces of indecision in his 1940 publication.
The substantive core of the article is a defence of the Peninsula’s role as a “western zone” of Greater India, a chain of heavily Indianized territory stretching from the Mon country of Burma through the Isthmus to Sumatra. Against Lamb’s argument that the Peninsula was “missed out” in the spread of early Indian influences, Quaritch Wales marshals three categories of evidence. First, Chinese texts from the third to sixth centuries describe a populous Indian colony at Tun-sun with over a thousand Brahmans, and close dynastic ties between Lankasuka and India—details with no parallel in contemporary Java, Champa, or Cambodia. Second, the epigraphic record, including the Wat Maheyang inscription near Ligor (sixth century), which prescribes monastic discipline and therefore implies an established Buddhist community. Third, and most decisively, the art-historical analysis of Buddhist sculpture, following the method pioneered by Dupont for Dvaravati and applied to the Peninsula by Griswold. The composite character of images from Kedah, Songkhla, and the Kinta valley—showing persistent Amaravati or Ceylonese features (flat ushnisha, lug at the back of the head) grafted onto Gupta or Post-Gupta models—demonstrates that a local school was operating under Indian tutelage, not merely receiving imports.
Quaritch Wales then turns to the trans-peninsular route from Takuapa to the Bay of Bandon as the principal overland conduit of Indian cultural expansion. The Pallava-inspired mitred Visnus found along this corridor, from the superb sixth-century Takuapa statue through the Satingphra torso to the later, deteriorating series at Wieng Sra and Satingphra, trace a clear chronological and geographical sequence of cultural transmission. He argues that the relative abundance of this sculpture in the Isthmian region, combined with the Tamil inscriptions at Takuapa and Ligor (both ninth century), confirms the route’s importance. In Kedah, the Pallava-phase Siva temple foundations (sites 4, 5, 6) on the Merbok fill what would otherwise be a hiatus in the record during the most active period of Pallava colonization.
The final section addresses the Mahayanist and Tantric temple at Bukit Batu Pahat (site 8), where Quaritch Wales rejects Lamb’s interpretation in terms of Javanese influence. The absence of the cruciform plan characteristic of Pala-influenced architecture (present at Biara Sitopajan in Padang Lawas and at Ch’aiya) shows that Kedah’s sanctuaries remained essentially South Indian in plan, even as they absorbed certain north Indian features. The nine-chambered foundation deposit caskets, which Lamb had used as a linchpin for his “Indonesian” thesis, are shown to be of Indian origin through the Ceylonese yantra-galas and the Dvaravati example at Ku Bua, with the Javanese practice of inserting royal ashes being a later local adaptation.
Key Findings
- Chinese sources record that Tun-sun (third century) contained “five hundred families of hu from India, two fo-t’u (stupas) and more than a thousand Indian Brahmans,” with local people giving their daughters in marriage to the Brahmans (p. 5).
- The Wat Maheyang inscription near Ligor, dated to the sixth century at latest, consists of six lines of Sanskrit on schist prescribing rules for monastic domestic discipline, evidencing an established Buddhist community (p. 9).
- The granite Buddha of Bukit Seguntang, Palembang, in pure Amaravati style, must have been made locally (granite being available on Bangka); Nilakanta Sastri argued it was “better to assume an export of workmen rather than of their work” (p. 10).
- Griswold’s analysis of the Kedah site 16A bronze Buddha (sixth century) identifies a flat ushnisha “inherited from Ceylon” combined with a Post-Gupta robe type, proving a local Peninsular school trained under successive Indian masters (p. 12).
- An Arab coin dated 234 A.H. (848 A.D.) was recovered from the foundation deposits at Kedah site 14, providing a firm terminus post quem for that phase of construction (p. 30).
- The Takuapa Visnu, a six-foot mitred image of Pallava style, is dated by Dupont to the sixth century and represents the prototype for the long-robed Visnu series found across the Isthmus, Dvaravati, and Chen-la (pp. 16–19).
Conclusion
Quaritch Wales’ definitive takeaway is that the “limited originality” characterizing the art of the western zone of Greater India—the Peninsula, Sumatra, and Dvaravati—is not a sign of Javanese or Cham influence but the direct product of extreme Indianization, in which successive waves of Indian artistic canons were layered without the transformative local genius that produced true evolution in the eastern zone (Champa, Cambodia, Java). The Peninsula was not a passive waypoint but an active relay, and the composite, conservative character of its sculpture is itself the evidence of intensive and sustained Indian cultural presence from at least the fifth century onward.
Context
- The article draws on Quaritch Wales’s own excavation reports (JMBRAS Vol. XVIII, 1940; Vol. XX), the art-historical analyses of Dupont (La Statuaire Préangkorienne, 1955) and Griswold (1966), and the historical geography of Wheatley (The Golden Khersonese, 1961) and Braddell.
- The study’s historiographical contribution lies in reconciling the Chinese textual evidence for early Indian settlement with the archaeological record through the art-historical method of composite style analysis, thereby resolving the apparent contradiction that had led Lamb to dismiss the Peninsula’s early Indianization.