Malay Peninsula: Part II

The above sources for the location and political history of Langkasuka also supply some information regarding the social and economic life of ancient Langkasuka. One source tells us that the men and women of the country usually did not cover the upper part of their body, their hair hung loose on their backs and they wore cotton sarongs. The King and high officials covered their shoulders with cloth, wore golden cords as girdles and golden ear-rings. The women wrapped themselves in cotton cloth and wore jeweled belts. Another writing in 1226 states that the ruler wore silk and used no footwear. The inhabitants of the country trimmed their hair and wore silk. A fourteenth-century Chinese trader records that the people were honest; men and women braided their hair into chignons and wore cotton cloth. They had white teeth. They maintained strong family ties and showed much respect and consideration to their elders. They boiled sea-water to make salt and fermented rice to make wine. Quoting the seventh-century records, the kingdom was surrounded by walls with double gates, towers and pavilions. The King, shaded by a white parasol, rode on an elephant and was accompanied by banners, fly whisks, flags and drums. He was guarded by soldiers. I-tsing informs us that the King of the country received the foreign guests with courtesy and respect.

The various commercial products of Langkasuka are enumerated as follows in the various works: aromatic woods—aloes wood (eagle wood or gharu wood), laka wood, barus champor—ivory, and rhinoceros horns. The Chinese exchanged them for textiles and porcelain. Chau Ju-kua records:

Foreign merchants trade here in wine, rice, skeins of Ho-ch’ih (after the name of the district) silk, porcelain vessels, and such-like goods. Each of them first weighs his goods against gold and silver and afterwards engages in barter…

There was easy access from Patani (which no doubt was Langkasuka’s main town and port throughout her history) to the gold mines of Kelantan, Terengganu and Pahang. Gold could also be panned out from the Patani River. With plenty to offer in the way of commercial products, and being itself situated strategically and with a harbor safe in most seasons and available for both monsoons, Patani was a favourite stopping place for the early traders.

Kedah was by far the most important Kingdom and port of ancient Malaya from the third century A.D. It continued to enjoy that position until the rise of Malacca in the fifteenth century A.D. The Ptolemaic geography of the second century A.D. makes no mention of Kedah, although it gives us the names of two ports in the Golden Chersonese, Takkola (Trang) in the north and Sabana (Klang) in the south. It appears, however, that soon after this the traders realized the greater advantages of the hitherto insignificant harbor of Kedah, for from the third century onwards it figures prominently first in Indian and then in Chinese and Arab sources.

The famous Tamil poem of the second and third century A.D. speaks of regular trade between Kalagam (Kedah ?) and the ancient southern port of India.

Kedah appears again as Kidaram, Kadaram, and Kataha in the Chola inscriptions of the eleventh century. The importance of Kedah at this time could not be better highlighted:

First an attack on the capital of Sri Vijaya in which the King was taken prisoner, followed by the occupation of two important ports of the East Coast of Sumatra; then the conquest of the Malay Peninsula, and finally Atjeh (Lamuri) and the Nicobars on the way home; and all this summed up in the fall of Kataha.

In the Chinese works, Kedah first figures in the writings of the Buddhist pilgrim I-tsing who refers to it as Chieh-ch’a. He visited the Kingdom himself in A.D. 671:

Tamralipti was the place where we embark when returning to China and sailing from there two months in the south-east direction we come to Chieh-ch’a, by which time a ship from Sri Vijaya will have arrived, generally in the 1^st or 2^nd moon; we stay in Chieh-ch’a till winter, then start on board ship for the south and come after a month to Mo-lo-yu, which has now become Sri Vijaya, arriving generally in the 1^st or 2^nd moon; we stay there till the middle of summer and sail to the north reaching Kwangtung in about a month, by which time the first half of the year will have passed.

The course of the voyage described by I-tsing makes it clear that by Chieh-ch’a he meant the entrepot of Kedah on the west coast of Malaya.

The consensus of opinion also identifies Ko-lo with Kedah, the Chieh-ch’a of I-tsing (which, however, he mentions as a separate island) and Kalah of the Arabs. Chia-tan clearly places it on the west coast of Malaya.

As for Arab evidence, the Muslim geographers place Kalah between India and China. According to Ya’qubi (9^th century A.D.), after the sea of Harkand, which contained Sirandib (Ceylon), lay the sea of Kalah-bar, then the sea of Salahit (Selat, seas south of Singapore). Sulayman (9^th century A.D.) explains that bar designates both a kingdom and a coast. Kalah-bar, he says, is a dependency of Zabaj, i.e. Sri Vijaya. At Kalah-bar the ships got well-water which is preferable to spring- or rain-water. The distance between Kulam (Quilon on the Malabar coast) and Kalah-bar was one month’s sail.

Mas’udi (10^th century A.D.) records that there were mines of gold and silver in the neigbourhood of Kalah and Sribuza. Several authors state that Kalah had aromatic woods, tin mines, ivory and bamboo.

The cumulative result of all evidence places Kedah on the west coast of Malaya. It does not, however, help us to fix its exact limits, which in any case must have varied to some extent during the course of its long history. From the archaeological finds, it is clear that the earliest settlement was along the River Bujang, a tributary of the River Merbok, which provided excellent anchorage for the ships. The Kedah River then, as now, was a shallow-mouthed estuary exposed to the south-west monsoon. The Kedah Peak (Gunung Jerai) which “could be seen thirty miles out at sea” served as a landmark for sailors.

In addition to having a good harbor, Kedah had a fertile land that provided food for its vast population. There was also access to Ligor on the east coast, although this short cut to avoid a sea journey was not the greatest attraction for traders, who could have used an even shorter route by landing at Takua Pa farther north. Kedah’s River Muda, connected with the Merbok, provided a most valuable means of communication down which were carried most of the Kingdom’s exports. Kedah was famous for its tin, if we identify the Kalah of the Arabs with Kedah, “… a tin-mine there was such as existed nowhere else in the world…from which Kala’I swords were forged and they were true Indian swords”. “No other kind (of swords) in the whole world are better than those of this Kala’i”. Many Arab writers all speak of the good tin that Kedah produced. Bamboo “exported all over the world” is also often mentioned as growing in Kalah. Kedah was also the centre of the trade in aloes, champor, sandal, ebony, brazil-wood, logwood, ivory and spices of all kinds.

Some description of the city and its people is obtained from Chinese and Arab sources. The New T’ang History tells us that the city walls were built of stone, while pavilions, the palace and other buildings were thatched with straw. The Kingdom was divided into twenty-four districts. It supplied a large army consisting of infantry and an elephant corps. The weapons of war were bows, arrows, swords and lances; an armour of leather was used. Silver was in circulation and was the mode of paying taxes. Cows were the favourite domestic animal, while ponies were also reared. Cotton was used for garments. Only high officials were allowed to tie up their hair and wrap scarves round their heads. The King’s name was Mi-si-po-ra, his family name Sri-po-ra. The Arab chroniclers described Kalah as:

very large, surrounded by big walls with numerous gardens and abundant streams of water….Around Kalah there was a succession of towns, small market towns and gatherings of houses. It is a rendezvous for the Brahmana, who are the sages of India.

Malay Peninsula: The Ancient States (Part. I)

In the words of Sir Roland Braddell, “The earliest periods in the ancient history of the Malay Peninsula and the Straits of Malacca can only be visualized as a part of the general history of South-Eastern Asia and so of Greater India.”

Ancient Malaya should be spoken of in terms of the Malay Peninsula, a geographical entity in contrast with modern Malaya, a political entity. Like other countries her history is closely connected with that of her neighbours, Thailand in the north and Indonesia in the South.

The place-names such as Tambralinga, Kataha, Takkola etc are all to be located in the north, important for their harbours, connected by suitable routes with the hinterland of Malaya and serving as convenient links between India and China. The north was thus the more advanced region of Malaya, the development of the south being eclipsed by Sumatra, on which the traders concentrated because of her gold and her good harbours that served as convenient halting points before proceeding farther east or west. The architectural and sculptural remains of ancient Malaya are therefore concentrated in the north.

Earliest Chinese sources also bear testimony to the greater development of northern Malaya. Funan, founded in Indo-China in the first century A.D., was the earliest Hinduised empire of South-East Asia. The Liang Shu of the seventh century A.D. informs that in the third century her powerful king Fan Che Man “crossing right over the South China Sea” attacked more than ten kingdoms including Ch’u-tu-k’un (Tu-k’un of other texts ?), Chiu-chih and Tien-sun (Tun-hsun). Then he attacked the kingdom of Chin-lin (on the northern shores of the Gulf of Siam). The names of three of the ten kingdoms may be located on the Malay Peninsula. The tenth-century compendium the T’ai p’ing yu lan states that (Chu ?) Tu-k’un, Chu-Li (Chiu-chih ?), Pien-tou and Pi-sung were situated across the Gulf of Siam. Among the inhabitants were many with white complexions. These four places too were then on the Malay Peninsula, though their exact locations are a matter of conjecture. Chu-Li (Ptolemy’s Kole) may have been on the estuary of the Kuantan River on Malaya’s east-coast.

Of greatest importance to the Malayan historian is the mention of Tien-sun or Tun-hsun in the Chinese sources. Tun-hsun had five kings, all vassals of Funan. On the east the kingdom was in communication with Tong-king, on the west with India (T’ien-chu) and Parthia. All countries came to Tun-hsun for purposes of trade. At this mart (Tun-hsun) East and West met together so that daily there were more than 10,000 people. Precious goods and rare merchandise—there was nothing which was not there. The place was famous for a “wine tree”.

Some source indicates that Tun-hsun was originally an independent kingdom but Fan-Man (Fan Che Man) subdued it. The king of Tun-hsun, a dependency of Funan, was called K’un-lun. In the country there were five hundred families of hu (merchants ?) from India, two hundred fo-t’u (Buddhists ?) and more than a thousand Indian Brahmans. The people of Tun-hsun practiced the doctrine of the Brahmans and gave them their daughters in marriage so that the Brahmans settled there. The kingdom could be situated nowhere else but on the Malay Peninsula. The source indicates that Tun-hsun was a large kingdom and the fact that it was in contact with both India and Tongking would seem to imply that it stretched from coast to coast.

The information pertaining to Tun-hsun, a confederation of five units, testifies to the fact that political organization had developed considerably in Ancient Malaya in the early centuries of the Christian era. Tun-hsun’s trans-peninsular trade with a busy mart presupposes the existence of some legal and economic organization also.

Tun-hsun probably contained some of the states especially those of very early origin. P’an-p’an may be one such state and probably passed under the control of Funan when the latter annexed Tun-hsun and other kingdoms. P’an-p’an “lies to the south-west of Lin-I (Champa) in a corner of the sea. To the north it is parted from Lin-I by a small sea (Gulf of Siam). The country is conterminous with Lang-ya-hsiu (Langkasuka).” “the state of Tuo-ho-lo (Dvaravati) is bounded in the south by P’an-p’an”. South-east of P’an-p’an was Ko-Lo, also called Ko-lo-fu-sha-lo. The latter is placed “in the region of Kedah or of Kra”. The scholar says that P’an-p’an was situated in the Malay Peninsula, on a coastal place on the Gulf of Siam.

Langkasuka is another ancient kingdom of Malaya which figures several times in the Chinese annals and is also mentioned in Indian, Arab, Javanese, Malay and possibly European records. Langkasuka sent embassies to China in A.D. 515, 523, 531 and 568. The first envoys from Lang-ya-hsiu stated that, according to the tradition of their kingdom, it had been founded four hundred years before. If the statement be correct, the beginnings of Langkasuka may be traced back to early second century A.D.

I-tsing, who left his country for India by sea in A.D. 671-2, gives us the itinerary of some of the pilgrims who used Langkasuka as a halting place on their way to India. “Three pilgrims sailed from a small port near Canton passed Funan and reached the country of Lang-chia. The king of Lang-chia-shu treated them well”. Both the name forms stand for Langkasuka.

Cheng Ho (Zheng He), the eunuch admiral, made seven voyages to the West between 1403 and 1433. His collection map depicts the north-east coast of Malaya, Lang-his-chia (Langkasuka) is placed to the south of Singora. Its southern boundary appears to be at the Patani River.

An equally late Arab work (A.D. 1511) places Langkasuka between Kelantan and Singora in the vicinity of Patani.

The Tanjore temple prasati recording the exploits of Rajendra Chola I who invaded Sri Vijaya, also appears to place Langkasuka (Ilangasokam) somewhere in the north of the peninsula, since it groups it with Tambralinga and Takkola. Three other names, however, occur in between, one of which is possibly Panduranga in Indo-China.

The Javanese work, Nagarakritagama, composed in A.D. 1365, lists the Malay Peninsula states as subject to Majapahit in two groups. Langkasuka is grouped with the other east coast states like Kelantan and Terengganu, although also with Saimwang (Johore ?) and Hujang Medini.

The Kedah Annals stand alone in their claim that Langkasuka was a west coast state. It appears that a late annalist was giving written form to current legends and oral history. A fortress with a palace and hall built by Raja Marong Mahawangsa in Kedah is called Langkasuka. It is stated that the king’s son mounted an elephant and with his party set off towards the rising sun [east]. After crossing a vast forest they came to a plain. The king’s son crossed several hills and mountains. When he had almost reached the sea he came upon a great river flowing into the sea. On that plain he stopped. The princess consort said, “Go back to Kedah, to my royal father, and tell him that this is the country called Patani”. The memory of the ancient state of Langkasuka that lasted for a millennien and a half persists in Malay folk-lore. The Patani peasantry remember it as the spirit land of Lakwan Suka, while the Kedah Malays believe that Alang-ka-suka was ruled over by the fairy princess Sadong who never married. A rivulet flowing into the upper Perak was known as Langkasuka until the beginning of this centrury and is shown as such on a manuscript map in the Taiping Museum in Perak.

The cumulative result of the above evidence, except that provided by the Kedah Annals, places Langkasuka on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, south of Ligor. Its extent during the early period seems to have been larger that it was perhaps in the latter part of its existence, when its northern boundary seems to have shrunk. Patani appears to have occupied the position of its most important town and port, especially in the latter part of Langkasuka’s history.

The political history of Langkasuka may be reconstructed somewhat as follows. Founded early in the second century A.D. it almost certainly passed under the control of Funan when Fan Che Man made his southern conquests. Later, when unsettled conditions prevailed in Funan, Langkasuka restored its fortunes.