Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Srivijaya Empire

Starting point is 00:00:00 Over the centuries, one of Asia's most powerful empires controlled the vital sea lanes connecting China, India, and the Middle East. It grew fabulously wealthy from trade, became a major center of Buddhism, and dominated much of maritime Southeast Asia. But then, its power faded, its cities declined, and eventually the empire itself was almost completely forgotten. But centuries later, historians pieced together scattered inscriptions and foreign records and realized what had been lost. Learn more about the rise. fall and rediscovery of the Shrevehaya Empire on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. New from Nespresso. Blend wellness into your coffee routine with a coffee plus range, infused with functional benefits. Choose the coffee you love with added B vitamins, like coffee

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Starting point is 00:01:39 Scotia Bank. You're richer than you think. At its height, the overland Silk Road depended on massive land empires anchoring either end of Eurasia, with the Islamic Caliphates, commanding the Western routes and the Tang Dynasty holding down the east. The maritime routes that complemented the Silk Road were under the jurisdiction of a very different type of state. Shriva Jaya was never a conventional land empire built on territorial conquest, defensive walls, or massive armies. It was a maritime state that derived its power by, locking down river mouths, dictating shipping lanes, and commanding the world's most important shipping bottleneck, the Strait of Malacca.

Starting point is 00:02:26 Merchants traveling between Chinese markets and ports in India, the Persian Gulf, or East Africa, had few route options. And controlling this crucial choke point brought unimaginable wealth. The Shreveh Gaya Empire emerged in the 7th century on the island of Sumatra in what is today Indonesia. Sumatra's eastern coastline is a maze of. of rivers cutting through dense mangrove swamps, a fractured geography that made decentralized political systems almost inevitable. Chiefdoms that developed along these river systems organized food

Starting point is 00:02:58 production and controlled maritime trade routes. Before the Sri Vigaya unified the region, each river port and valley functioned as an independent state called a Wanua, and Sumatra was filled with dozens of Wanua's. The Wanua were fiercely independent and had to offer trading ships competitive fees, otherwise ships would just sail by and stop at the next port. None of the Wan Nua were strong enough to absorb the others. Chinese sway and Tang Dynasty court documents identify only local kingdoms, offering no mention of a unified Srivajaya. Sumatra's rugged interior deep in this political divide, where inland rice farming chieftains viewed the cosmopolitan merchants on the coast with

Starting point is 00:03:42 deep suspicion. Shrivedayan conquest over the region's coastal city, began near the end of the 7th century. The founder of the Sri Vajian Empire was a warlord named Dapunta Hyeong, who led an army of 20,000 on more than 200 ships into the city of Palembang on the Moosey River. Today, Pallambang remains a major city in transit hub, the population of nearly 2 million people. The name Sri Vajaya comes from Sanskrit. Sri means something like radiant, splendor, prosperity, or auspiciousness. It's also an honorificic associated with wealth and good fortune. Vigaya means victory, conquest, or triumph. So Sri Vigaya can be roughly translated as glorious victory, splendid victory, or prosperous triumph. At first, researchers thought

Starting point is 00:04:30 that Sri Vigaya was the name of a king, however later it was found to just be the name of the realm. A chronicle of the conquest called the Kudukin Buket Stone was found in the 1920s by a Dutch explorer and is now in Jakarta at the National Museum of Indonesia. The stone describes a sacred expedition called a Sidhyatra and proclaims control over the region's river exits. De Punta Hiyang established Pallambang as the center of the new Srivajaya State, and from that base began seizing control of other river strongholds. De Punta Hian next marched on the town of Malayu to the north and seized the offshore island of Banca, locking down Sumatra's primary river. river trade and the eastern approaches to the sea lanes. Seizing Banca Island closed the only back door bypassing the Malacca Strait. And by locking down the maritime choke points,

Starting point is 00:05:24 the Shrevejaya funneled regional trade to its own harbors, turning the strait into a lucrative tollway. De Punta Hyeong marked his conquest in stone, planting inscribed boulders across the region. The carved boulders served a dual purpose. They chronicled the rise of Shrevehayan civilization, while broadcasting a clear warning of future expansion. Dominating the Sumatran coast and closing the route at Banca was only half the trap. Across the water from Sumatra lay the Malay Peninsula. Vessels that hugged the western shore of the peninsula could still slip past Palembang's grasp. The Shrevejians had no intention of leaving that escape route open, so they began operations to seize key trade ports along the Malay Peninsula. In the early 8th century, Shriva Jians had no

Starting point is 00:06:12 Friyan fleets crossed the Strait and seized the town of Old Kada. Old Kada was the port where Indian and Arab merchant ships harbored after crossing the Bay of Bengal before making the journey to the South China Sea. Securing Kada provided a second strategic point, locking down passage for ships arriving from the west, and giving the Shrevehaya total command of the straits' northwestern entrance. By the late 8th century, Shrevehayan fleets pushed into southern Thailand. The Ligore inscription carved in 775 confirms this northern expansion, recording that the Shrevehayan leader, the Maharaja Darindra, commissioned three Buddhist sanctuaries as Shrivedayan leaders were actively

Starting point is 00:06:56 promoting the expansion of Buddhism across the region. Shriva Jaya's imperial prestige and its Buddhist leadership credentials took a massive leap forward in the 9th century through a dynastic union with Java's Salindra dynasty. The Selindras were indigenous Javanese who embraced Indian cultural and religious ideas, transforming central Java into a vibrant center of Mahayana Buddhism. Their commitment to Buddhism and their emulation of the statecraft of earlier Indian Buddhist leaders, like Ashoka, whom I covered in a previous episode, led to the construction of the magnificent temple of Boro Bador, which I also covered in a previous episode.

Starting point is 00:07:36 Shreveh Giant control over the trade in the region involved more, more than simply conquering coastal harbors along the Malacca Strait. It required military strength. And to secure their control over the strait, Shrevejian leaders turned to the Orang Laud. Oren Laud translates to sea peoples. They were a seafaring people indigenous to the region who had built their influence by patrolling trade routes and enforcing trade tariffs and taxes. As nomadic sea peoples, they were unmatched mariners with knowledge of every reef, sandbar,

Starting point is 00:08:10 and hiding spot along the trade routes. The Shrevehayan leaders didn't conquer these people, however. They hired them. By giving the Orang Laud a share of the trade and granting them imperial titles, the Shrevegian rulers made them the de facto imperial navy. The arrangement was simple and ruthless. In many ways, they patrolled waters, much like the Mongols police the Overland Silk Road nearly five centuries later,

Starting point is 00:08:37 locking down transit corridors through checkpoint-neutral. networks and passport systems. If a captain docked at a Shrevehayan port and paid his transit dues, the Orang L'Ot guided his ship safely through the dangerous shoals. Those who refused or attempted to run the gauntlet were hunted down by striking from obscured positions in coastal mangrove swamps. The empire then seized their cargo, killed everyone who resisted, and enslaved the rest. The Orang Laud ensured that Triva Jaya was the master of the region's trade. Shrevehine dominance over the region's trade produced extraordinary levels of wealth. Persian, Arab, and Chinese accounts provide primary sources that reflect the scale of their economic success.

Starting point is 00:09:23 A 10th century Arab chronicler named El Serafi noted, quote, The town in which the Maharaja resides faces an estuary, which is like a great river. Across it lies the ocean, and the tide rises and falls. The palace of the king stands by the bank of this water. extending from it is an arm into which the tide enters at the flood and retreats at the ebb. The king has a storehouse there, and it is the practice of his treasurer every day to bring an ingot of gold shaped like a brick of a weight which is known and thrown into the water in the presence of the king. When the water has risen, the ingot is covered, and when it ebbs, the gold appears glistening

Starting point is 00:10:03 in the sun, while the king sits in his reception hall overlooking the estuary. He does this every day, without fail." End quote. Shrivedai's decline was not a singular collapse, but a gradual unraveling over centuries. Its grip on the world's richest sea lane slipped away one broken alliance and one lost port at a time. The Shriva Jai had created what's known as a Mandala Confederacy. A Mandala Confederacy was a political system in which a powerful central ruler exercised varying degrees of influence over surrounding semi-independent states, with authority weakening, the farther one moved away from the center. Holding together a Mandala Confederacy based on trade relationships,

Starting point is 00:10:49 alliances, and a monopoly of trade between other great empires was a daunting task. Mandala confederacies depended upon controlling river systems, which became perilous as other regional powers emerged and formed alliances with people living inland at the head of those rivers. Many of the luxury goods coveted across the region didn't come from the coastal areas. They came from the deep interior. When the Singh Hasari, a rival Javanese kingdom, formed alliances with interior peoples of Sumatra, it effectively strangled regional trade. In the interior, tribes harvested the real wealth,

Starting point is 00:11:27 vast amounts of gold from mountain streams, aromatic resins, elephant ivory, and the legendary Boris Kampfor worth its weight in silver. compounding this catastrophe, relentless monsoon rains washed heavy volcanic sediment down from the mountains, aggressively silting up the river mouths. Palembang's harbors were choking on silt, making trade increasingly difficult. The most devastating blow came in the year 1025. Tired of paying Shreveh giant duties and trade taxes, the Indian Chola Empire struck with a single, devastating raid which smashed the city of Palembang, plundered at the city of Palembang, plundered at

Starting point is 00:12:05 gold reserves and even captured the Maharaja. Other regional powers began bypassing the strait and ignoring Sri Vajaya's dominion. Song China delivered another devastating blow to Sri Vajian greatness. In the 12th century, territorial losses in northern China pushed Song leaders to be more aggressive in trade and diplomacy. Rather than waiting for merchants to come to them, they began to sail outward to seek foreign trade. The policy was formalized by the Song Emperor Gao Zong, who decreed, quote, the profits from maritime commerce are very great. If properly manage, they can amount to millions of strings of cash.

Starting point is 00:12:44 Is this not far better than taxing the people directly? End quote. The song began bypassing Shriva Giant ports with their own merchant fleets. Without the transit revenues that were paid for by the Oranglaut, the loyalty of the sea nobads vanished. The final blow occurred in the 14th century, when the Javanese Mahapaget kingdom reduced Shriva Jaya to a mere vassal. After an attempt to subvert the Mahapaget by forming a direct alliance with the Ming dynasty in 1377,

Starting point is 00:13:13 the Mahabajit attacked Pallambang, captured their leader, and effectively ended the Shriva Jain state. With that final act of destruction, Shriva Jaya didn't just fall as a trading confederacy. It basically vanished from historical memory. This wasn't an instance of Demnatia. Memori. No one deliberately tried to erase the empire. It simply hid in plain sight. Its geography and climate made preserving historical records difficult, and our best sources on the Shriva Jaya are foreign records from Persia, Arabia, and China. Other regional powers, such as the Khmer, also left behind large stone monuments built on a massive scale.

Starting point is 00:13:55 The Shrivedayan Maharajas, by contrast, built from wood, which has long since rotted or been destroyed by fire. The swampy mangrove coastlines offered little stone for building, and even if they had, no evidence shows that Shrivedayan rulers were even interested in monumental public architecture. The rediscovery of the empire actually happened by chance. For centuries, Shri Vajaya had basically been completely forgotten. Historians had read about a kingdom called San Fokhi in Chinese records, a realm called Zabaj in Arabic accounts, and wars against

Starting point is 00:14:31 Sri Vashaya in Indian transcriptions. Still, they assume that these were all completely different things. That assumption was erased by George Sades, a French linguist and classicist, who realized while working with the Ligur stone, that all these names referred to the same thing, the Sri Vajaya. Saydas had unlocked a mystery that history didn't even know existed. He restored the memory that a once mighty Buddhist trading confederacy oversaw the commercial activity that linked empires across the Strait of Malacca. The Shriva Jaya proved that an empire didn't need towering stone temples to shape the destiny of continents. For 700 years, Shriva Jaya ruled the waves and commanded world trade,

Starting point is 00:15:21 all before vanishing into the jungle and the pages of history, leaving just the Strait of Malacca, as it's true. only lasting monument. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research in writing for this episode was provided by Joel Hermanson. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible.

Starting point is 00:15:48 And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord, as this is where everything happens outside of the podcast. As always, if you leave a review, you on any of the major podcast apps, you two can have it run in the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Srivijaya Empire

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