Srivijaya’s Northern Poles: Historical Data

Barus

The Xin Tang shu says that “Srivijaya is a double kingdom and the two parts have separate administrations.”^[1166] The northern pole, Barus, lies on the northwest coast of Sumatra, almost 2,000 kilometers from Palembang by sea.

Barus was not among the Srivijayan ports raided in 1025. It may have been spared due to its possibly sizable community of Indian traders. In 1088 an inscription in Old Tamil recorded the presence of a major South Indian trading guild.^[1169] Chinese sources on Barus are rare. The kingdom does not seem to have sent missions. The Chinese sought “Barus camphor” but usually obtained it from San foqi. Lack of communication with China was probably due not to Srivijayan monopolization of the sea route, but to Barus’s location on the Indian Ocean. This made communica­tion with China difficult, but facilitated contact with India and lands further west. A Jewish trader died in Barus in the early thirteenth century.^[1170] Barus was still an important port when the Portuguese arrived in 1509.

Wolters came to feel that his earlier writings had overemphasized the importance of Srivijaya’s link to China in comparison to the Indian Ocean.^[1171] Arabo-Persian and Indian sources pay more attention to Barus and Kedah than Srivijaya. Chinese sources for the study of Srivijaya far outweigh those in other languages, but they imply that Srivijaya and Malayu were heavily involved in trade with countries on the Indian Ocean; both shipped large quantities of commodities of West Asian or­igin to China.