STORY OF THE THIRD TRIBE PART III

STORY OF THE THIRD TRIBE PART III

THE EARLIEST MAP OF MAI ACCORDING TO THE EARLIEST MAP  OF YHE NAVIGATORS IS BETWEEN 1535 AND 1538   

 
RAJENDRA CHOLA
Rajendra Chola became king in India and he developed an empire from Ganges River to southern India and he captured the empire of Kham bo ja and theMalacca Islands 
 HE DISPATCHED MANY SHIPS AND CAPTURED SANGRAMAVIJAYO VARMAN , THE KING OF KADARAM AND THE VIDHARATORANA , THE CITY OF SRI VIJAYA EMPIRE INCLUDINg THE ANCIENT COUNTRY OF MALAIYUR A  


 The Chola empire existed in southern  iNDIA. Around the mid-ninth century, Vijayalaya, a Pallava vassal, conquered Tanjore and rose from obscurity. He and his people had Tamil origins but some of their ancestry reveals traces o Indo-European influence, such as the name Aryaman in the Chola genealogy. As well as ruling their heartland, they also ruled large tracts of lands in adjoining Andhra, Kerala and Karnataka. Thanks to their impressive naval power, they expanded their kingdom to include the present day countries of Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and areas of Malaysia and Indonesia

Srivijaya

The story of Srivijaya begins witha geopoliticalpreface.

Just as allroads once led to Rome,so too

maritimetradein Asia converged on

the narrow sea route that became known as the

Strait of MalaccaUnlike ancient Rome, however

,

the Malacca Straithas retained itsgeographical salience

at different times inhistoryOne such erawas well

conveyedbythesixteenth century Portuguese adventurer, Tom

éPires, who wrote shortly after his country’s

acquisition of the port city of Malacca

THE LAND CALLED ANCIENT MALACCA

LATITUDE.

The equator divides it obliquely, its general direction being north-west and south-east, into almost equal parts; the one extremity lying in five degrees thirty-three minutes north, and the other in five degrees fifty-six minutes south latitude. In respect to relative position its northern point stretches into the Bay of Bengal; its south-west coast is exposed to the great Indian Ocean; towards the south it is separated by the Straits of Sunda from the island of Java; on the east by the commencement of the Eastern and China Seas from Borneo and other islands; and on the north-east by the Straits of Malacca from the peninsula of Malayo, to which, according to a tradition noticed by the Portuguese historians, it is supposed to have been anciently united.

LONGITUDE.

The only point of the island whose longitude has been settled by actual observation is Fort Marlborough, near Bencoolen, the principal English settlement, standing in three degrees forty-six minutes of south latitude. From eclipses of Jupiter's satellites observed in June 1769, preparatory to an observation of the transit of the planet Venus over the sun's disc, Mr. Robert Nairne calculated its longitude to be 101 degrees 42 minutes 45 seconds; which was afterwards corrected by the Astronomer Royal to 102 degrees east of Greenwich. The situation of Achin Head is pretty accurately fixed by computation at 95 degrees 34 minutes; and longitudes of places in the Straits of Sunda are well ascertained by the short runs from Batavia

By the general use of chronometers in latter times the means have been afforded of determining the positions of many prominent points both on the eastern and western coasts, by which the map of the island has been considerably improved: but particular surveys, such as those of the bays and islets from Batang-kapas to Padang, made with great ability by Captain  John Macdonald; of the coast from Priaman to the islands off Achin by Captain George Robertson; and of Siak River by Mr. Francis Lynch, are much wanted; and the interior of the country is still very imperfectly known. From sketches of the routes of Mr. Charles Campbell TO delineate the principal features of the Sarampei, Sungei Tenang and Korinchi countries, inland of Ipu, Moco-moco, and Indrapura; and THRU  Indian Hydrography

           Notwithstanding the obvious situation of this island in the direct track from the ports of India to the Spice Islands and to China, it seems to have been unknown to the Greek and Roman geographers, whose information or conjectures carried them no farther than Selan-dib or Ceylon, which has claims to be considered as their Taprobane; although during the middle ages that celebrated name was almost uniformly applied to Sumatra. The single circumstance indeed of the latter being intersected by the equator (as Taprobane was said to be) is sufficient to justify the doubts of those who were disinclined to apply it to the former; and whether in fact the obscure and contradictory descriptions given by Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Pliny, and Ptolemy, belonged to any actual place, however imperfectly known; or whether, observing that a number of rare and valuable commodities were brought from an island or islands in the supposed extremity of the East, they might have been led to give place in their charts to one of vast extent  

                OPHIR.

The idea of mALACCA being the LANDS of Ophir, whither Solomon sent his fleets for cargoes of gold and ivory, rather than to the coast of Sofala, or other part of Africa, is too vague, and the subject wrapped in a veil of too remote antiquity, to allow of satisfactory discussion; and I shall only observe that no inference can be drawn from the name of Ophir found in maps as belonging to a mountain in this island and to another in the peninsula; these having been applied to them by European navigators, and the word being unknown to the natives  

                ARABIAN TRAVELLERS.

The first of the two Arabian travellers of the ninth century, the account of whose voyages to India and China was translated by Renaudot from a manuscript written about the year 1173, speaks of a large island called Ramni, in the track between Sarandib and Sin (or China), that from the similarity of productions has been generally supposed to mean Malacca; and this probability is strengthened by a circumstance  noticed. It is said to divide the Sea of Herkend, or Indian Ocean, from the Sea of Shelahet) Salahet in Edrisi), and Salat being the Malayan term both for a strait in general, and for the well-known passage within the island of Singapura in particular, this may be fairly presumed to refer to the Straits of Malacca.  

               Edrisi,  Nubian geographer, who dedicated his work to the King of Sicily, in the middle of the twelfth century, describes the same island, in the first climate, by the name of Al-Rami; but the particulars so nearly correspond with those given by the Arabian traveller as to show that the one account was borrowed from the other. He very erroneously however makes the distance between Sarandib and that island to be no more than three days' sail instead of fifteen. The island of Soborma, which he places in the same climate, is evidently Borneo, and the two passages leading to it are the Straits of Malacca  What is mentioned ar, is the climate, has no relation to Malacca

      MARCO POLO   

             Marco Polo, the celebrated Venetian traveller of the thirteenth century, is the first European who speaks of this island, but under the appellation of Java minor, which he gave to it by a sort of analogy, having forgotten, or not having learned from the natives, its appropriate name. His relation, though for a long time undervalued, and by many considered as a romantic tale, and liable as it is to the charge of errors and omissions, with some improbabilities, possesses, notwithstanding, strong internal evidence of genuineness and good faith. Containing few dates, the exact period of his visit to Sumatra cannot be ascertained, but as he returned to Venice in 1295, and possibly five years might have elapsed in his subsequent tedious voyages and journeys by Ceylon, the Karnatick, Malabar, Guzerat, Persia, the shores of the Caspian and Euxine, to Genoa   

  Marco Polo            Taking his departure, with a considerable equipment, from a southern port of China, which he (or his transcriber) named Zaitum, they proceeded to Ziamba (Tsiampa or Champa, adjoining to the southern part of Cochin-China) which he had previously visited in 1280, being then in the service of the emperor Kublai Khan. From thence, he says, to the island of Java major is a course of fifteen hundred miles, but it is evident that he speaks of it only from the information of others, and not as an eyewitness; nor is it probable that the expedition should have deviated so far from its proper route. He states truly that it is a mart for spices and much frequented by traders from the southern provinces of China. He then mentions in succession the small uninhabited islands of Sondur and Condur (perhaps Pulo Condore); the province of Boeach otherwise Lochac (apparently Camboja, near to which Condore is situated); the island of Petan (either Patani or Pahang in the peninsula) the passage to which, from Boeach, is across a gulf (that of Siam); and the kingdom called Malaiur in the Italian, and Maletur in the Latin version, which we can scarcely doubt to be the Malayan kingdom of Singa-Pura, at the extremity of the peninsula, or Malacca, then beginning to flourish.            

         His arrival at Java  Thes island, lying in a south-eastern direction from Petan the kingdom called Malaiur, the place last mentioned) he expressly says he visited, and describes it as being in circumference two thousand miles (not very wide of the truth in a matter so vague), extending to the southward so far as to render the Polar Star invisible, and divided into eight kingdoms, two of which he did not see, and the six others he enumerates as follows: Ferlech, called Parlak, at the eastern extremity of the northern coast, where they were likely to have first made the land. Here he says the people in general were idolaters; but the Saracen merchants who frequented the place had converted to the faith of Mahomet the inhabitants of the towns, whilst those of the mountains lived like beasts, and were in the practice of eating human flesh. this nearly approaches in sound to Pasaman on the western coast, but I should be more inclined to refer it to Pase (by the Portuguese written Pacem) on the northern. The manners of the people there, compared with  in the other vishaya kingdoms such as Sultan of Sulu and the Rajah of Zabag in the islands called by the chinese as Mai  meaning the islands in the South China Sea  

           The mentioned savage people was observed  with the practice of caannibalism eating human flesh ; supposed to be Samar-langa, likewise on the northern coasts of he Malacca Islands , and noted for its bay. Here,Marco Polo said, the expedition, consist of two thousand persons, was constrained to remain five months, waiting the change of the monsoon; and, being apprehensive of injury from the barbarous natives    

              The customs of the natives are painted as still more atrocious in this district. When any of them are afflicted with disorders pronounced by their magicians to be incurable their relations cause them to be suffocated, and then dress and eat their flesh; justifying the practice by this argument, that if it were suffered to corrupt and breed worms, these must presently perish, and by their deaths subject the soul of the deceased to great torments. They also kill and devour such strangers caught amongst them as cannot pay a ransom. Lambri might be presumed a corruption of Jambi  

          ODORICUS     

            Odoricus, a friar, who commenced his travels in 1318 and died at Padua in 1331, had visited many parts of the East. From the southern part of the coast of Coromandel he proceeded by a navigation of twenty days to a country named Lamori ( a corruption of the Arabian word  Al-rami), to the southward of which is the lands called Malacca, and not far from there was  a large island named Java.   

           NICOLO DI CONTI    

              Nicolo di Conti, of Venice, returned from his oriental travels in 1449 and communicated to the secretary of Pope Eugenius IV a much more consistent and satisfactory account of what he had seen than any of his predecessors. After giving a description of the cinnamon and other spices got fromthe lands called Malacc he saids he also sailed to the lands called Mai by the chinese  

         LUDOVICO BARTHEMA

        Ludovico Barthema (Vartoma) of Bologna, began his travels in 1503, and in 1505, after visiting Malacca, which he describes as being the resort of a greater quantity of shipping than any other port in the world, passed over to Pedir in Sumatra, which he concludes to be Taprobane. The productions of the island, he says, were chiefly exported to Catai or China. From Sumatra he proceeded to Banda and the Moluccas, from thence returned by Java and Malacca to the west of India, and arrived at Lisbon in 1508              

         ANTONIO PIGAFETTA     

           In the account given by Antonio Pigafetta, the companion of Ferdinand Magellan, of the famous circumnavigatory voyage performed by the Spaniards in the years 1519 to 1522, it is stated that, from their apprehension of falling in with Portuguese ships, they pursued their westerly route from the island of Timor, by the Laut Kidol, or southern ocean, leaving on their right hand the lands called Malaccaf the ancients. Hementioned of a native of that island being on board, who served them usefully as an interpreter in many of the places they visited; and we are here furnished with the earliest specimen of the Malayan language   

          SANSKRIT   

              yhe naive was conversant with the languages of the continent of India it must be obvious that the name, however written, bears a strong resemblance to words in the Sanskrit language: nor should this appear of the Malayan accent , 

Singapura was at the extremity of the peninsula, and Sukapura and the mountain of Maha-meru in Java) are indisputably of Hindu origin. It is not my intention however to assign a precise etymology; but in order to show the general analogy to known Sanskrit terms it may be allowed to instance Samuder, the ancient name of the capital of the Carnatik, afterwards called Bider; Samudra-duta, which occurs in the Hetopadesa, as signifying the ambassador of the sea; the compound formed of su, good, and matra, measure; and more especially the word samantara, which implying a boundary, intermediate, or what lies between, might be thought to apply to the peculiar situation of an island intermediate between two oceans and two straits   

            MALAYAN NAMES FOR THE ISLAND.

Since that period however, having historians become much better acquainted with Malayan literature, and perused the writings of various parts of the peninsula and islands where the language is spoken and cultivated, that in the  Vishaya empire well known among the eastern people and the better-informed of the natives themselves by the two names of Indalas and Pulo percha (or in the southern dialect Pritcho) 

         NDALAS meaning    to the Arabian denomination of Spain or Andalusia. In one passage  Straits of Malacca was termed as the sea of Indalas, over which, we are gravely told, a bridge was thrown by Alexander the Great  

           PERCHA  a common name is from a Malayan word signifying fragments or tatters, and the application is whimsically explained by the condition of the sails of the vessel in which the island was circumnavigated for the first time; but it may with more plausibility be supposed to allude to the broken or intersected land for which the eastern coast is so remarkable. It will indeed be seen in the map that in the vicinity of what are called Rupat's Straits there is a particular place of this description named Pulo Percha, or the Broken Islands. As to the appellation of Pulo Ber-api, or Volcano Island,             .

THE POST-SRI VIJAYA PERIOD (1260-1300 A.D.) With the death of Chandrabanu in Ceylon about 1260, the Sri Vijaya Empire, if I may call it by such a highfalutin name, came to an end. The histories of the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra then took separate courses. The city-states sent embassies to the Chinese court, which the Chinese still recorded as coming from San-fo-tsi; but complete control of the Malacca Straits, based on Muara Takus (Malayu) in Central Sumatra and Kedah on the west coast of the Peninsula, was no more.

 Into this vacuum stepped the Thai and the Javanese. We have seen m section 18 that about the beginning of the 13th century, Tao U-Thong, king of Ayodbia, had already gone down the Peninsula to Bang Sa pan in Prachuab Kirikhand Province and divided the Peninsula with Chao Phya Sri Thammasokaraja of Nakorn Sri Tbammaraj. Half a century later Sri In tara tit, King of Sukhothai, went down to Nakorn and co-operated with Chandrabanu in acquiring the image known as the Buddha Sihing fron:i Ceylon (section 18). By the end of the century Ram Kambaeng, Intaratit's youngest son who came to the throne of Sukhothai about 1279, claimed sovereignty over Nakorn to "where the sea marks the limit". Some people think that this extended as far as Singapore, while others think that Ram Kambaeng never even got control of Nakorn. If anything, they think, it was Ayodhia and not Sukhothai that controlled the south. In any case, "to where the sea marks the limit'' means that whoever got control of Nakorn also controlled the Twelve Naksat Cities, ranging from Cbumporn in the north to Pahang in the south

: