The Bukit Choras Inscriptions and the Significance of the Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā Verses to Ancient Kedah.
Abstract
The Bukit Choras archaeological site in present-day Kedah’s Bujang Valley was first reported in 1849. Earlier archaeological interventions were incomplete, however, because they only focused on a section of a seventh-to-ninth-century CE Buddhist stupa. In 2023 and 2024, three further excavations exposed several sides of this stupa. Among the new items unearthed were two Sanskrit inscriptions in the Southeast Asian style of Brahmi, engraved on narrow rectangular shale-bars, and three life-sized stucco Buddha images. The statues were set in recesses of the laterite projections that marked the cardinal directions of the stupa. Both inscriptions bore three verses of the Sagaramatipariprccha, similar to three other Buddhist textual artefacts previously discovered in the Bujang Valley. This article focuses on the archaeological contexts of these new inscriptions and, with reference to the three previously found artefacts, describes their significance to the Buddhist practices of Ancient Kedah during the second half of the first millennium CE. By treating the Kedah epigraphs as a whole, taking into account their local contexts and broader cultural connections, they add to growing evidence that Ancient Kedah was an active participant in contemporaneous exchanges of ideas and practices within the larger framework of Asian Buddhist networks, while retaining its distinctive and autonomous features.
Summary
This article reports on the 2023–24 excavations at the Bukit Choras stupa site in Kedah’s Bujang Valley, which exposed two new Sanskrit inscriptions bearing three verses of the Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā Mahāyāna sūtra, along with three life-sized stucco Buddha images set in the cardinal-direction recesses of the laterite structure. The authors situate these finds within the broader corpus of five Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā inscriptions now known from the Bujang Valley and argue that their distinctive presentation—engraved on narrow, tapering rectangular shale bars and installed within stupas—represents a ritual practice unique to Ancient Kedah, with no parallel in India or elsewhere in South or Southeast Asia (pp. 5, 20–21).
The central historical problem addressed is the nature and maturity of Buddhist practice in Ancient Kedah during the second half of the first millennium CE. By conducting a comparative palaeographic analysis of all five inscriptions, the authors demonstrate that they were produced by different scribes over several centuries, ruling out the possibility of a single exemplar or workshop. The differential use of sandhi between the earlier and later inscriptions, combined with the testimony of the Chinese monk Yijing regarding Sanskrit education in Srivijaya and the later composition of the Durbodhāloka by Dharmakīrti of Suvarṇadvīpa, supports the inference of a resident monastic community with sustained textual scholarship (pp. 23–25).
The authors further position the Bukit Choras inscriptions within a wider framework of intra-Asian Buddhist connectivity, comparing them with the ye dharma, ajñānac ciyate karma, and Bodhigarbhalankaralakṣa-dhāraṇī epigraphic traditions to show that Ancient Kedah was simultaneously a participant in pan-Asian ritual networks and the locus of autonomous local innovation (pp. 25–26).
Key Findings
- The two new inscriptions (Bukit Choras II and III) were discovered on 5 September 2023 and 3 May 2024 respectively, both engraved on rectangular shale bars of the Mahang formation measuring approximately 7.6 cm in length, found at knee- and chest-level of the stucco Buddha sculptures in the southern and northern recesses of the stupa (pp. 13–16).
- The northern stucco Buddha, the best-preserved of the three, measured 90.0 cm in height from seat to head and 71.5 cm knee-to-knee, seated in dhyāna posture on a lotus throne (p. 11).
- Palaeographic analysis dates the five Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā inscriptions across a span from the sixth or seventh century (SB1B) to the eighth or ninth century (Bukit Choras II and III), with the Site 2 inscription falling between the seventh and eighth centuries (pp. 22–23).
- The stupa’s laterite platform measures 6.6 m on the western side and stands 1.34 m high above the slaty bedrock, with five projections on each side and a central recess with stairway at each cardinal direction (pp. 10–11).
- The Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā verses are known to survive in Sanskrit only in the Bujang Valley inscriptions, a few Indian works that quote other passages, and two palm-leaf fragments in Gilgit/Bamiyan Type I script in the Schøyen Collection; the original Sanskrit text is lost (pp. 17–18).
- The site was saved from quarrying in the 1980s when the Kedah state government withdrew permits and placed it under the Akta Benda Purba 1976 (Antiquities Act 1976), later replaced by the National Heritage Act 2005 (Act 645) (p. 10).
Conclusion
The authors conclude that the Sāgaramatiparipṛcchā inscriptions demonstrate that Buddhism in Ancient Kedah was not merely a transient phenomenon catering to foreign traders and travellers, but a mature, established practice sustained by a local monastic community that creatively selected and ritually installed these specific verses into stupas over several centuries. The site’s location away from the three known economic centres of the Bujang Valley further supports the inference of a dedicated religious settlement, and the combination of pan-Asian textual traditions with locally distinctive ritual formats testifies to a community that was both connected to and autonomous within the broader Buddhist networks of Asia (pp. 26–27).
Context
- The study draws on the excavation records of the Centre for Global Archaeological Research, Universiti Sains Malaysia, and the collections of the Asian Civilisations Museum (Kuala Lumpur) and the National Heritage Department of Malaysia, building on Quaritch Wales’s 1936–37 fieldwork and subsequent surveys by Kamaruddin Zakaria.
- Historiographically, the article extends the work of Peter Skilling on Kedah’s Buddhist epigraphy and contributes to the ongoing reassessment of Ancient Kedah’s role within Srivijaya, challenging earlier characterisations of the Bujang Valley as primarily a commercial entrepôt with incidental religious activity.