Download PDF | (Handbook of Oriental Studies 13) Michel Jacq-Hergoualc'H, Victoria Hobson - The Malay Peninsula_ Crossroads of the Maritime Silk Road (100 BC - 1300 AD)-Brill Academic Publishers (2001).
788 Pages
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research that led to this book could not have been accomplished without a great deal of help and collaboration. We wish to thank the entire team of the Muzium Negara of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, who made it possible for us to re-examine the archaeological remains of South Kedah and to excavate one of the monuments there. Special thanks are due to Dr. Adi bin Haji Taha, one of the Directors of the Muzium, who was able to find efficient solutions to many practical problems, to Dr. Othman Mohd. Yatim, who assisted in this effort, to Mr. Kamaruddin bin Zakaria, curator of the Muzium Arkeologi of Merbok and the sites in South Kedah, who welcomed us to the archaeological areas under his protection and to the museum of which he is the Director. Our friendship and gratitude go to Mr. Abdul Latib bin Ariffin, who made the archaeological survey with us, to Limah who made beautiful maps for us, and to Sanim Ahmad for his splendid photographs, as well as to all the other members of the Kedah team with whom we sweated and 'scratched' over a period of several months. We express our warmest thanks to Professor Dato' Dr. Nik Hassan Shuhaimi Nik Abdul Rahman, who kindly agreed to share his extensive knowledge of this subject with us.
We are also indebted to many people in Thailand, in particular to Drs. Amara and Tharapong Srisuchat, archaeologists from the Fine Arts Department in Bangkok, who guided and accompanied us on our visit to the archaeological sites of peninsular Thailand. We cannot adequately thank Pakpadee Yukongdi and Pornthip Puntukowit, also archaeologists from the Fine Arts Department, for so generously sharing their intimate knowledge of the site of Yarang. We are most grateful for the facilities provided by the directors of many national museums to enable us to take urgently-needed photographs of certain objects related to our work: the Museum of Bangkok, and the Museums of Lopburi, Chaiya, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Songkhla, Phuket, and the University Museum of Pattani.
Finally, we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Professor Thiva Supajanya of the Faculty of Science of the Chulalongkom University of Bangkok, and to his assistant Wichapan Krisanopol, for their inestimable work on the topographical evolution of the shores of the Malay Peninsula; the presentation of many of the maps that illustrate this book and the observations derived from them are entirely the fruit of their labours.
INTRODUCTION
No doubt it was ambitious to undertake a study on a subject that so many researchers before me had laboured to clarify through diligent work and from differing points of view; but I have not felt presumptuous in doing so, since it has come about as the natural outcome of my research. Certain opportunities led me to begin this study in South Kedah almost ten years ago, and once the work was completed, it seemed a logical next step to go to Southern Thailand to see what I might find there that would correspond to the picture that had emerged in this part of Malaysia: a civilization of entrepot ports developed within the framework of a movement of international trade involving every Asian culture beginning in the first centuries of the Christian era. I found elements that were very similar to those I had just studied, and others that were very different; I believe that including these in the study adds depth and richness to the subject.
I realized at the very outset of this project that the centres of commercial exchange that had evolved from this international trade were so diverse and so unevenly distributed that the civilization as a whole could not be explained without recourse to both physical and climatic geography. Their only common denominator was the entrepot ports that received the ships. I therefore focused my study on archaeological remains of a commercial order linked to these ports. Because the second important type of remains encountered in this study consists of a jumble of religious works of entirely Indian inspiration, it seemed necessary at a later stage to specify what is intended here by the use of the overworked and variously interpreted word 'Indianization' . It was then appropriate to undertake a stylistic and chronological assessment of these remains, placing them within the framework of the political entities that either created or received the original works. In this connection, the Chinese texts provided some useful information.
This investigation then made it possible to examine different sites, one by one, considering periods which, though sometimes relatively long, reveal historic rhythms. These rhythms, while totally foreign to the Peninsula itself, since they are related to the succession of Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern dynasties, were nonetheless indispensable to the prosperity of the Peninsula. Indeed, unlike certain other regions of Southeast Asia such as Cambodia, the Menam Chao Phaya Basin, or Central Java, whose chiefly rural activities sheltered them somewhat from the great upheavals of Asian history, the Malay Peninsula was a crossroads open to every influence, and thus, a priori, exposed to every repercussion. At one time or another, inevitably, all the tradespeople of the Asian world passed through the Peninsula as they followed the different itineraries of what can be called the Maritime Silk Trade Route that linked the two extreme points of Asia.
The history of these different peoples was therefore bound to have vital consequences for the destiny of the Peninsula. In the local context, we encounter the political entity represented by Srlvijaya, persuasively defined at the beginning of this century as an all-powerful thalassocracy that had managed to dominate the banks of the Malay Peninsula for more than five hundred years, from the end of the seventh century. Here I felt it was important to discuss this political concept in the light of a recent reinterpretation of the texts that gave rise to it. Among other things, a detailed stylistic study of the numerous works of art discovered along these banks should permit an informed opinion on the equally widespread idea of a distinct Srlvijayan artistic style, a concept which may be as much open to question as the previous one.
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