An Empire Built on Water

Srivijaya (“Glorious Victory” in Sanskrit) sprang to prominence in an article published in 1918.¹ Coedes concluded that the word Srivijaya in a seventh-century inscription referred not to a king, but to an empire based on the Musi River, in southeast Sumatra, founded in the late seventh century and persisting for 600 years.

Archaeologists searching for tangible remains of this glory, however, have ex­perienced frustration and doubt. A Dutch scholar, after surveying Palembang, in south Sumatra, where the kingdom's major inscriptions have been found, stated, “The Palembang lowlands district belongs to the areas poorest in antiquities from Sumatra... Because of our personal experience that the center of the town contained almost no remains that could commemorate the existence of the glorious kingdom of Srivijaya, the question must be raised with emphasis, whether anything is known that would establish the capital ofthat kingdom in the location ofpresent- day Palembang.”³ However, he also recorded that ancient brick structures had been quarried. As re­cently as 1960, a Buddhist stupa may have been dismantled for building material.⁴

Clarity began to emerge after 1990, as scholars freed themselves from precon­ceived notions of the archaeological traces which should have been left by a royal center from which lines of communication and control radiated through a network of estuarine communities separated by vast mangrove swamps and ocean water. Srivijayas sphere of control lay within the equatorial zone of Southeast Asia, which experiences an ever-wet climate, but mountain ranges create enormous biological diversity.⁵ An empire in such an environment would have looked profoundly dif­ferent from empires in the midst of extensive dry land with seasonal climatic var­iation.

¹ Coedes 1918, 1992.

² Van Naerssen and de longh 1977, 30.

³ Bosch 1930, 155; author's translation from Dutch.

⁴ Bronson, Basoeki, and Wisseman ca. 1974, 7.

⁵ Miksic 1991.

John N. Miksic, Sr ivijaya In: The Oxford World History of Empire. Edited by: Peter Fibiger Bang, C.A. Bayly, Walter Scheidel, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197532768.003.0014. contents fell into the river out of reach of archaeologists (but not looters, who make a decent living by probing the beds of the Musi and other rivers in east Sumatra). This adaptation still typified Palembang in the nineteenth century.^[1114]

Early scholars expected Srivijaya’s center to resemble imperial capitals in other parts of Southeast Asia, such as Angkor or Java. Srivijaya’s settlements were trading ports where the major architectural forms would have been warehouses and dwellings of perishable material, whereas centers in agrarian hinterlands typically build monuments of stone or brick.^[1115] The study of Srivijaya poses unique problems requiring ecological, historical, and archaeological data, and a re-evaluation of theoretical models for classifying complex sociopolitical entities, including empires.