Srivijaya

Srivijaya was a Buddhist maritime empire, or thalassocracy, that dominated the seas and trade routes of insular Southeast Asia for several centuries from its base at Palembang on the island of Sumatra.

Its origins are obscure and are inferred from scattered inscriptions and Chinese records, but it had emerged as a significant power by the later seventh century: the earliest firm evidence is the Kedukan Bukit inscription of 682 CE, naming the ruler Dapunta Hyang Sri Jayanasa, while the Chinese monk Yijing recorded a visit around 671 CE, placing the polity's founding in the mid-seventh century. Rather than a contiguous land empire, Srivijaya was a network of ports and vassal harbours whose power rested on its control of the Strait of Malacca and the Sunda Strait, the maritime chokepoints through which the lucrative trade between China, India, and the Middle East had to pass. By taxing and protecting this commerce, and at times by raiding rivals, Srivijaya became immensely wealthy and a dominant naval and commercial intermediary. It was also a renowned centre of Mahayana Buddhist learning, attracting scholars such as Yijing, who studied there, and maintaining close ties with the great Indian monastery of Nalanda and with the Shailendra dynasty of Java. The empire flourished from roughly the seventh to the eleventh centuries. Its decline was gradual rather than sudden: a devastating naval raid by the Chola ruler Rajendra I around 1025 sacked Palembang and captured its king, after which power shifted to the rival centre of Malayu (Jambi). The much-reduced state lingered as a minor power until it fell to the Javanese kingdom of Singhasari in 1288, and its remaining territories were absorbed by the Majapahit empire by the 1290s. Because it left few monuments, Srivijaya was largely forgotten until rediscovered by modern scholarship in the twentieth century.

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