This Land of Golden Kings
A History of the Kingdom of Srivijaya
Introduction:
In 1988 three men fishing just off the Southern coast of Sumatra found their net caught more than they bargained for when they hauled up a chunk of metal about 3 inches in length and 2 in diameter that, while largely worn down and damaged by the sea over the centuries, showed distinctly some form of advanced metalworking. To these fishermen, uneducated in the finer parts of archaeology and conservation, this was merely a curiosity with strange markings pulled out of the ocean. It wasn't until a local historian and archaeologist saw the piece of metal and requested to be taken to the area from which it was found that this find would explode in importance. This archaeologist, and those who arrived once news got out, soon began to uncover a huge series of ships spread out over the seabed that seemed to indicate that some military engagement may have taken place here.
Nevertheless, it wasn't until 1994 that archaeologists finally got permission to actually excavate parts of the underwater site. What these archaeologists found was astounding as they could distinctly tell apart two different types of ships from two different sides of what must have been a battle and a big one at that. Excavations took place sporadically between 1994 and 2005 on and off with archaeologists facing troubles of both funding and a continued legal battle over both the ships and the right to excavate which frequently halted excavation for months or even, in the case of the 1998-2001 period, years. This meant that very little was learnt about these ships during the initial set of excavations and archaeologists were unable to definitively give an explanation for the site as a whole. Nevertheless the excavations did have a profound effect on our knowledge and understanding of the site as archaeologists were able to use dendrochronology [1] and radiocarbon dating [2] to give a tentative date of about 1030 with a range of about 40 years either side for the ships. More intriguingly, the archaeologists revealed that the ships came from two different sources only one of which was actually Indonesian. Indeed the bulk of the ships were not of Indonesian origin but were instead from India (probably the east coast) which began to lead archaeologists down a very specific road to indetifying the site.
In 2013 archaeologists picked up excavation again and began focussing more on the various human remains found within the shipwrecks and performed a number of tests including isotope analysis [3] which confirmed that many of the corpses were from the South-East of India. In particular, a number of the skeletons were found to have come the city of Kanchipura which, at the time, was under the control of the Chola Dynasty. This all but confirmed a theory that archaeologists had been formulating ever since the excavations ended in 2005 that this site was in fact the site of the legendary Battle of the Sunda Strait that was recorded by the Sumatrans. Of course the 11th Century Sumatrans didn't know the Battle of the Sunda Strait as 'The Battle of the Sunda Strait' but instead gave it the name 'Pencerobohan Indian Besar' [4] or 'The Great Indian Invasion'. It wasn't until after the discovery that the name 'The Battle of the Sunda Strait' was actually given as the Srivijayans had never specified exactly where the battle took place save for it being in the seas around southern Sumatra which led many to think it may have been the Sunda Strait. Until now, however, the location of the battle had never been found and historians frequently debated and argued about where it may have taken place.
This discovery, a fleet of ships on the seabed littered with the skeletons of the dead, did indeed attract attention worldwide and, although it soon faded from public interest as excavations got caught and trapped in legal difficulties, it led to a renewal of interest in the Srivijayans and their great empire. Indeed the Srivijayans played a massive role in world history and what is more fitting than the battle that shows their importance as a point to base our history of the Srivijayans upon in an attempt to explore Indonesian, Asian and, indeed, world history through the eyes of one of histories most fascinating civilisations?
[1] This is dating by analysing the number and width of rings on large peices of wood as trees grow rings for every year they're alive with thicker rings for better years of growth and thinner rings for worse years of growth.
[2] When an animal or plant dies, the C14 element found within it begins to degrade at a known rate allowing archaeologists to analyze when these deaths took place.
[3] Isotope analysis is the process of analyzing the isotopes found within human and animal bones and, particularly, teeth to locate a 'fingerprint' of where they may have come from.
[4] This is in modern Malay as opposed to the version that the Srivijayans actually spoke, Old Malay.