teohjitkhiam’s Reviews > A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Societal Development, 100–1500 > Status Update

The myth of a Malaccan standing "army" or "navy" remains such. Malacca's chief source of prosperity would prove its Achilles' Heel. Totally dependent on foreign trade for revenues, its security was largely subject to the provision of men & ships during war from 'syahbandars' of foreign trade communities. And failing to establish a connection with the commoners, Malacca's fate was tied to the trade winds of fortune.

"To combat the divisive tendencies of the past, Majapahit’s monarchs substantiated their legitimacy by fabricating links to eras of past glory. For example, the Nagarakertagama claimed that Majapahit’s rulers were the legitimate successors to a line of monarchs who had ruled Java since the origin of the Javanese polity in the sixth century..."

The trickle-down of East & South Asian maritime technologies - multiple hulls, watertight compartments, iron nailed plankings - of the time to Southeast Asia, thus enabling their polities to finally build far larger ships capable of moving much greater tonnage & people, represented a significant shift that finally rendered negligible the portage trade through the Isthmus of Kra & Indo-China highlands.

"Though support of Buddhism enhanced..legitimacy of [Burmese] Pagan’s kings, the merit-making style of kingship had..pitfalls that weakened the state..traditional tax-free status of the Sangha’s economic resources, generosity toward the [monks] gradually made it the major..owner..of the state’s land and labor resources..Thus..purifications became..means of regaining state wealth and returning manpower..to the state."

Interesting. The Kalirungan Sanskrit inscription dated 883 CE, from Kedu in central Java, list merchants & tax farmers of Champa, lower Burma, Khmer, Kalinga, west-coast India, Karnataka, and Cina but no mention of any from the polities of, if there were any, the Malay Peninsular of the time.

"..[Sejarah Melayu]..chronicle of the Melaka sultantate’s history, purposely connected the genealogies of Melaka’s rulers to Srivijaya in its description of the rise of Melaka to prominence..This substantiates the legacy of Srivijaya in Malay history, as well as the success of the early Palembang-based monarchs in establishing a localized Indic polity that was compatible with preexisting Malay-Sumatran culture."

"Legends like the Kaundinya story [the founding of Funan] cannot be taken too literally, but as symbolic if not metaphoric references. Early societies did not compose oral or the earliest written history as ‘‘fact’’ in our modern sense, but as mythical references that were attuned to their audience, or what their audiences were preconditioned to hear relative to their own lifetime experiences."

"Southeast Asia’s early history is full of references to maritime raids, among these the south India Chola raids on Srivijaya’s ports in 1024–1025, the retaliatory 1292 maritime expedition of the Mongols against Java after the local ruler beheaded China’s court envoys, and the early fifteenth-century maritime interventions of the Chinese fleet led by the eunuch general Zheng He in the Straits of Melaka region..."