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Concerning some old Sanskrit inscriptions in the Malay Peninsula

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Concerning some old Sanskrit inscriptions in the Malay Peninsula

H. Kern, a professor at the Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen in the Netherlands, published this article in 1907 as a contribution to the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Working from facsimiles of inscriptions discovered by Colonel J. R. M. Low in the Malay Peninsula, Kern argues that the earliest of these records—particularly the pillar inscription naming the shipowner Buddhagupta—dates to approximately the fourth century A.D., making it the oldest Buddhist epigraphic evidence yet found in the region and demonstrating the presence of organised Buddhist establishments and maritime trade networks in the Malay Peninsula far earlier than previously established.

Summary

Kern’s article is a palaeographic and philological study of four groups of Sanskrit inscriptions from the Malay Peninsula: a stone from Kedah, a pillar from the north of Province Wellesley, a series of small rock fragments at Tokun (also in Province Wellesley), and a damaged stone formerly at the entrance to the Singapore River. The central analytical task is to date and interpret these records by comparing their letter-forms with better-known inscriptions from South India (Wenggi, Tjampa), Java, and Cambodia.

The Kedah inscription, found under the floor of a small ruined building, contains the standard Buddhist creed-formula Ye dharma hetuprabhavah followed by a verse on the accumulation and cessation of karma through ignorance and knowledge. Kern notes that the building’s dimensions (ten to twelve feet square) and the inscription’s content suggest it was the kuti (hut) of a Buddhist monk. The Province Wellesley pillar carries the same karma verse and, crucially, a donor formula identifying the inscription as the gift of Buddhagupta, described as a mahānāvika (eminent shipowner) resident at Raktamrttika. Kern identifies this place-name with the Chinese port Chih-tu (Red-earth) in the Gulf of Siam, attested in Chinese sources, thereby linking the inscription to a known node in Indian Ocean maritime commerce.

The Tokun rock fragments are too small and indistinct to yield much beyond palaeographic data, though one fragment appears to contain the word arama (monastery-garden), confirming the existence of a Buddhist establishment at the site. The Singapore River inscription, written in Kawi script, is far more damaged; Kern can recognise individual letter-groups but cannot reconstruct words with certainty. He assigns it to the Javanese Kawi type on the basis of the letter ma and notes that palaeography does not contradict a proposed date to the reign of Cri-Raja Wikrama (1223–1236), though he cannot confirm the language of the text.

Key Findings

  • The Buddhagupta pillar inscription is dated to roughly 400 A.D. on the strength of its exact palaeographic agreement with the Wenggi and Tjampa inscriptions of West Java, which Burnell had assigned to the fourth century (pp. 98–99).
  • Raktamrttika, the residence of the donor Buddhagupta, is identified with the Chinese port Chih-tu (Red-earth) in the Gulf of Siam, as recorded in Chinese navigational accounts (p. 98).
  • The Kedah inscription was found under the floor of a ruined building measuring ten to twelve feet square, a size and context consistent with a Buddhist monk’s kuti (p. 95).
  • The Tokun rock inscription No. 2 is judged not older than the sixth century on the basis of the advanced development of the vowel-sign for i, with letter-forms comparable to those at Djamboe, Pattadakal, and the earliest Cambodian inscriptions of Bhavavarman (pp. 99–100).
  • The Singapore River inscription is assigned to the Javanese Kawi type rather than the Sumatran type, on the diagnostic evidence of the letter ma, which differs markedly between the two traditions (p. 101).
  • The Singapore inscription may date to the reign of Cri-Raja Wikrama (1223–1236), a conjecture drawn from Captain Begbie’s The Malayan Peninsula and not contradicted by palaeographic evidence (p. 101).

Conclusion

Kern’s definitive takeaway is that the Malay Peninsula possessed Buddhist establishments and active participation in Indian Ocean maritime trade by the fourth century A.D., as demonstrated by the Buddhagupta inscription and its palaeographic parallels. The convergence of epigraphic, toponymic, and textual evidence places the peninsula firmly within the sphere of early South and Southeast Asian Buddhist culture, challenging any assumption that such religious and commercial networks reached the region only in later centuries.

Context

  • The primary source material consists of facsimiles published by Colonel Low and J. W. Laidlay in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal (vols. IV, XVII, XVIII) and in Miscellaneous Papers Relating to Indo-China (1886); Kern works entirely from these published reproductions rather than from the original stones.
  • The article contributes to the historiography of early Southeast Asian epigraphy by extending the Wenggi–Tjampa palaeographic sequence into the Malay Peninsula and by providing the first systematic dating of the region’s oldest Sanskrit inscriptions.

References