Article

Palembang

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Palembang

The Maritime Empire of Palembang

Palembang, situated in Southern Sumatra, was for approximately six centuries the centre of a maritime empire that controlled the Straits of Malacca through a network of outstations on both sides of the waterway, extracting toll from the international trade that passed through them [1, p. 23]. From the seventh century to its conquest by the Javanese of Majapahit around 1377, Palembang appears in Chinese, Arabic, Tamil, and Javanese sources as a flourishing polity of Hindu and particularly Buddhist civilisation, whose political reach extended from the Nicobar Islands in the north to Ceylon in the west and from the Malay Peninsula in the south to Central Java in the east [1, pp. 23–25]. The empire’s dynastic style was “Maharaja,” and its kingdom bore the name Srivijaya, a term that earlier scholarship had misread as a personal name rather than a dynastic or state designation [1, p. 24]. The significance of Palembang to the history of the Malay Peninsula and the wider archipelago lies not merely in its local importance but in its role as the dominant political force shaping the early colonisation of the Peninsula, the transmission of Indian civilisation to Western Indonesia, and the structure of maritime trade between China and the West [1, pp. 23].

Scope and Historical Definition

The conventional view of Palembang as a single kingdom localised in Southern Sumatra was fundamentally revised by the work of M. G. Coedes, whose 1918 synthesis of epigraphic and textual evidence demonstrated that the polity was in fact an empire with outstations on both sides of the Straits [1, p. 23]. C. O. Blagden’s 1920 article in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society presented this revised interpretation to a wider readership and drew out its implications for the early history of the Malay Peninsula [1, p. 23].

The earliest secure reference to Palembang comes from the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim I Tsing, who in 671 sailed from Canton in a Persian ship and arrived at the country of Fo-she, where he stayed for six months before proceeding to India; fourteen years later, on his return, he stayed there again for four years [1, p. 23]. All available evidence points to the conclusion that this Fo-she, or Shi-li-fo-she, was Palembang [1, p. 23]. In I Tsing’s time, Palembang had already annexed the Malayu country, probably in Central Sumatra somewhere about Kampar or Siak, with a port at which the pilgrim also stayed [1, p. 24].

A century later, the political reach of the Maharaja is attested by a Sanskrit inscription set up at Vieng Sa, an inland place south of the Bay of Bandon in what is now Lower Siam, situated at approximately 9° north latitude [1, p. 24]. This inscription records the erection in the year 775 of certain Buddhist buildings by order of the King of Srivijaya, demonstrating that the empire’s authority extended into the northern Peninsula as early as the eighth century [1, p. 24]. The inscription reflects back a ray of light on the kadatuan Srivijaya mentioned in the Kota Kapur inscription from Western Bangka, which is nearly a century older and commemorates an attack on Java [1, p. 24]. It now seems highly probable that Srivijaya was not the name of the king who set up the Kota Kapur inscription but rather the name of his kingdom [1, p. 24].

For the early Arab traders, the great emporium was Kalah or Kilah, where there were tin-mines that localise it in the tin-bearing tract of country extending from Southern Tenasserim through the greater part of the Malay Peninsula [1, p. 24]. Its identification with Kedah is at least highly probable, for Kedah is the port which a traveller from the West would first reach and call at [1, p. 24]. Ibn Khordadzbeh, the earliest Arab authority who goes into these matters, says that Kilah was six days’ journey from the island of Langkabulus, one of the Nicobars, probably Great Nicobar [1, p. 24]. It is mentioned about the beginning of the tenth century as a dependency of the Maharaja, and probably stood in that relation a century or two earlier [1, p. 24].

The Chola Conflict and Imperial Zenith

The strongest evidence for the extent and importance of the Palembang empire comes from its relations with the Tamil dynasty of the Cholas in the eleventh century [1, p. 24]. In 1005, a grant of a village to a Buddhist temple at Negapatam was made by two Palembang kings, father and son; the grant is in Sanskrit and Tamil, and in the Sanskrit portion the second king is styled “king of Kataha and king of Srivishaya” [1, p. 24]. Their identity as kings of Palembang is confirmed by two entries in the Chinese annals of the Sung dynasty, which give their names and mention embassies from them in 1003 and 1008 respectively [1, p. 24]. In the Tamil text, Kataha is called Kidaram, which is almost certainly Kedah [1, p. 24].

Some twenty years later, the Chola king of that day boasted in his inscriptions of conquests overseas, resulting in the capture of the king of Kadaram and the taking of a number of places in his empire, including the Nicobars, Lambri near Achin, Kadaram, Langkasuka (the old site in Southern Kedah), and Srivishaya itself [1, pp. 24–25]. In 1068, another Chola king claimed to have captured Kedah but restored it to its ruler, and a few years later Palembang had persuaded the Chinese Court that the Maharaja was the overlord and the Chola his vassal [1, p. 25]. From this period of conflict, Blagden inferred that honours were divided, though it does not appear that Palembang retaliated by a genuine strategic offensive in the eleventh century [1, p. 25].

By the early thirteenth century, the empire was at its zenith in terms of documented extent. Chao Ju Kua, writing about 1225, represented Palembang as having fifteen provinces or dependencies, including Pahang, Trengganu, Kelantan, Langkasuka, half a dozen more places less easily identified but of which two had been definitely located in Lower Siam, and five others, namely Palembang, Sunda, Kompai, Lambri, and Ceylon, the last named, like some of the others, sending a yearly tribute [1, p. 25]. A relatively late inscription, probably of the twelfth century, referring to the Maharaja and apparently executed by his order, is in the Cambodian language but in a script which in those days was common in Western Indonesia and is almost identical with the contemporary script of Burma, indicating that the northernmost outstations made the Maharaja for some time a near neighbour of the great Indo-Chinese power of Camboja [1, p. 27].

Decline, Rivalry, and the Majapahit Conquest

Even in 1225, the empire showed signs of internal decay: Chao Ju Kua, after enumerating Kompai among the dependencies, devoted a separate chapter to it in which he expressly stated that “formerly it was a dependency of San-fo-ts’i, but after a fight it set up a king of its own” [1, p. 25]. External pressure compounded the problem. The Javanese expedition of 1275 to “Malayu” may have been directed at Sumatra, though the precise target is unknown [1, p. 25]. More seriously, in the extreme north of the Peninsula, Malay forces were falling back before the growing Siamese kingdom whose capital was then at Sukhodaya, far to the north near the Lao country; the Mon chronicles speak of these conflicts at some date not long before 1280, and the Chinese records say they had been going on for many years before 1295 [1, p. 25]. The upshot was that the northern outstations of Palembang in the Peninsula were included in Lower Siam [1, p. 25].

At about the same time, Islam was making its first and as yet peaceful conquests in Northern Sumatra, and small places like Perlak, Pasai, and Samudra set up as independent states and made a bid for a share in the trade of the Straits [1, p. 25]. Singapore must also have become independent about this period, or possibly a little earlier, and begun to take advantage of its unique position [1, p. 25]. The command of the Straits so long exercised by Palembang rested not on nature but on force: Palembang was quite off the direct trade route, and so long as by threats of what would now be called piracy it could compel trading ships to come into its ports and pay toll, it did so, even as late as the early thirteenth century [1, p. 25]. But when the outstations began to drop away, the old monopoly was gone, and the Maharaja lost his hold on the trade which he had controlled and taxed for some six centuries [1, p. 26].

The postscript to Blagden’s article, reporting the findings of N. J. Krom in his inaugural address at the University of Leyden on 3 December 1919, added a crucial dimension to this narrative. Javanese inscriptions showed that as early as 778 A.D. the dynasty of “the king of the mountains” was ruling Central Java, and it seems to have continued to do so for about a century, during which period it erected important monuments there [1, pp. 27–28]. Meanwhile Eastern Java was under another dynasty which claimed South Indian origin [1, p. 27]. It would appear that in those early days the Sumatran house was the more powerful, and it continued to maintain, or at any rate claim, supremacy over Western Java (Sunda) until about 1200 A.D. [1, p. 27]. There is much reason to believe that its influence on the development of Indian civilisation in Java was very great, and that amongst other things it was the means of introducing the Mahayana form of Buddhism, which is known to have prevailed at Palembang, into Java [1, p. 28]. The two great rival powers in the archipelago, the one centred in Southern Sumatra, the other in Eastern Java, saw the Javanese power, soon to be centred at Majapahit, gain upon the Sumatran and eventually complete its ruin by conquering its capital and many of its outlying possessions and dependencies somewhere about 1377 A.D. [1, p. 28].

The Post-Imperial Period: Vassalage and Colonial Subordination

R. W. McRoberts’ 1986 article examined the political trajectory of Palembang across the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, arguing that the city never achieved genuine independence during this period, remaining perpetually a vassal or colony of a greater power—first Majapahit, then Melaka, then Demak—and that the people of Palembang were “reagents rather than catalysts” in their own history [2, p. 83].

McRoberts challenged the conventional identification of the Palembang ruler who ascended in 1389 as a fully sovereign monarch. Drawing on the Sejarah Melayu, Chinese records, and Pires’ Suma Oriental, he argued that this ruler—known variously as Parameswara, Sri Tri Buana, or Mjcura—was a minor of perhaps thirteen to fifteen years on accession, likely controlled by his premier, Demang Lebar Daun [2, pp. 73–76]. The title “Parameswara,” which Winstedt had translated as “Prince Consort,” should be restricted to the period 1389–1391, before the ruler assumed sole authority and the regnal name “Mjcura” [2, pp. 73–76]. McRoberts contended that the Sejarah Melayu’s hagiographic narrative of this period, including the “chloasma” motif and the marriage ceremony, masked what Wolters and Winstedt had identified as an abhiseka ceremony in which the ruler assumed a divine right to rule as heir to Srivijaya—a public declaration of rebellion against Majapahit [2, pp. 73–76].

The consequences of the failed 1391 rebellion were severe. Majapahit reconquered Palembang and attacked the Chinese imperial mission that had arrived in response to Palembang’s appeal to the Ming court [2, pp. 75–76]. In the resulting power vacuum, Chinese traders—first Chen Zu-i, then the Shi family—effectively governed Palembang as principal chiefs invested by the Ming, while the Ming continued to recognise Palembang as within Majapahit’s sphere [2, pp. 76–77]. Chen Zu-i, a Cantonese, ruled Palembang as a de facto leader until 1407, when Zheng He had him arrested and executed in China; Shi Qin-ching was then appointed principal chief by the Yung-lo emperor [2, p. 77]. In 1412, Melaka petitioned the Yung-lo emperor to transfer Palembang from Majapahit’s to Melaka’s sphere of influence; Zheng He delivered the emperor’s definitive refusal to both states in 1413 [2, p. 78]. By the 1450s, Palembang had been absorbed into the larger state of Indragiri, which was brought into Melakan hegemony through a marriage alliance arranged by Mansur Shah circa 1463 [2, pp. 76–80].

Pires recorded Palembang’s annual export trade as “ten or twelve junks” carrying rice, vegetables, slaves, cotton, rattans, gold, pitch, iron, wax, honey, wines, meats, garlic, onions, and benzoin, but noted that the city was not involved in the deep-water spice trade [2, pp. 79–80]. During the circa 1501 civil war in Indragiri, in which Raja Nara Singa displaced his cousin Maharajah Isak, McRoberts offered multiple interpretations—political, dynastic, and religious—suggesting the conflict may represent a traditionalist restoration against Melakan Islamic cultural imperialism, possibly orchestrated by the Bendahara Tun Mutahir for his own power [2, pp. 80–83]. By 1511, Palembang was under Demak control, and its population’s documented reluctance to fight for the Portuguese in 1512, when “the people of Palembang came to fight… very unwillingly (against Melaka), all those who came died,” suggests they had retained traditional religious and political loyalties rather than fully adopting Islam [2, pp. 82–83].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on Palembang reveals a clear evolution in scholarly priorities across the twentieth century. Blagden’s 1920 article, published in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, was a secondary synthesis built almost entirely on Coedes’ 1918 paper “Le Royaume de Srivijaya” in the Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient, supplemented by Krom’s 1919 inaugural address at Leyden [1, pp. 26–28]. Blagden’s own contribution lay in the interpretive framing, the connection to Malay literary tradition, and the postscript on Javanese rivalry [1, p. 26]. The primary epigraphic sources underpinning the argument were the Vieng Sa inscription published by Finot in 1910, the Kota Kapur inscription previously published in the Society’s own journal, the Chola inscriptions at Negapatam, and the Javanese inscriptions cited by Krom [1, pp. 24].

The shift from the imperial to the post-imperial period is marked by McRoberts’ 1986 article, which drew on the Sejarah Melayu (Brown’s recension), Ma Huan’s Ying-yai sheng-lan (Mills translation), the Ming She, Pires’ Suma Oriental, and d’Albuquerque’s Commentaries [2, pp. 73–83]. Historiographically, McRoberts extended and complicated the work of Wolters (The Fall of Srivijaya in Malay History, 1970) and Winstedt (A History of Malacca, 1962) by reinterpreting the 1389–1391 events as a constitutional compact between ruler and premier rather than a simple succession, and by situating Palembang’s political history within the broader dynamics of Ming-Majapahit-Melakan competition for regional hegemony [2, pp. 73–76]. His argument that the first eighty-four folios of the Sejarah Melayu “need to be examined with more care than has hitherto been accorded them” points to a continuing historiographical task [2, p. 76].

A brief but notable intervention came from C. E. Wurtzburg in 1949, whose article on Raffles and the massacre at Palembang addressed the British colonial encounter with the city in the early nineteenth century [3, pp. 38–52]. Wurtzburg’s subsequent postscript, responding to Professor Coolhaas’s 1951 critique, corrected the dating of letters in the Raffles–Badru’d-din correspondence from December 1809 and March 1810 to December 1810 and March 1811, on the grounds that Raffles was still Secretary to the Penang Government in 1809 and only arrived at Malacca on 4 December 1810 [3, p. 179]. This correction reinforced Wurtzburg’s broader argument that Badru’d-din deliberately withheld the first letter from Batavia [3, p. 180].

Taken together, the Society’s publications trace a movement from the reconstruction of Palembang’s imperial geography in the early twentieth century, through the analysis of its post-imperial subordination in the late twentieth century, to the documentation of its colonial encounter in the nineteenth century—a sequence that mirrors the broader shift in Southeast Asian historiography from the search for ancient polities to the examination of their long afterlives in the modern period.

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. C.O. Blagden (1920). The empire of the Maharaja, King of the Mountains and Lord of the Isles JSBRAS 81: 23–28. Read on JSTOR
  2. R.W. McRoberts (1986). Notes on events in Palembang 1389–1511: the everlasting colony JMBRAS 59(1): 73–83.
  3. C.E. Wurtzburg (1949). Raffles and the massacre at Palembang JMBRAS 22(1): 38–52. Read on JSTOR