SOURCE: SUNGAI BATU 788 BC: THE GREAT KINGDOM OF KEDAH TUA
In the previous posting, this Page have rewrite the contents of past posting pertaining to Malay trade vessel or better known as Kunlun Bo in Chinese accounts. The same posting was sent to an Archaeological page that followed by more than half a million readers and received a good response.
Meanwhile, in local Page, I found some baseless critic.
Let see what the expert, Prof Pierre Yves Manguin (sounds : Piergh-Eve-Monggia) says regarding Kunlun, Kunlun Bo and Malay maritime. Firstly we examine the Chinese accounts that quoted in his research.
Chinese sources of the 1st millennium A.D. provide us with other excellent descriptions of what Chinese authors of the time called the kunlun bo (i.e. "South-East Asian ships") that visited Chinese harbours and took Buddhist pilgrims on board en route to Sriwijaya (on Sumatra) and India.. The earliest such source dates from the 3rd century A.D.; it is most comprehensive and the passage on multiple masts and sails has a surprisingly modern resonance to it:
" The people of foreign parts call ships bo. The large ones are more than fifty meters in length and stand out of the water four to five meters (...). They carry from six to seven hundred persons, with 10,000 bushels of cargo [c. 600 tons deadweight].
The people beyond the barriers, according to the size of their ships, sometimes rig [as many as] four sails, which they carry in row from bow to stern. (...) The four sails do not face directly forward, but are set obli quely and so arranged that they can all be fixed in the same direction, to receive the wind and to spill it. The pressure [of the wind] swells [the sails] from behind and is thrown from one to the other, so that they all profit from its force. If it is violent, they diminish or augment [the sur face of the sails] according to conditions. This oblique [rig], which per mits the sails to receive from one another the breath of the wind, obviates the anxiety attendant upon having high masts. Therefore [these ships] sail without avoiding strong winds and dashing waves, by the aide of which they can make great speed.
A second such text, from the eighth century, was written by a Chinese monk, in a commentary to the Buddhist Canon:
The bo are sea-going ships. They lie six or seven feet deep in the water. They are fast and can transport more than 1,000 men, apart from cargo. They are also called kunlun bo. Many of those who form the crews and technicians of these ships are kunlun [Southeast Asian] people.
With the fibrous bark of the coconut tree, they make cords which bind the parts of the ship together (..). Nails and clamps are not used, for fear that the heating of the iron would give rise to fires. [The ships] are constructed by assembling [several] thicknesses of side-planks, for the boards are thin and they fear they would break. Their length is over sixty meters (..). Sails are hoisted to make use of the winds, and [these ships] cannot be propelled by the strength of men [alone] .
Read carefully what the Chinese said about the build up of the ships. Now, lets read what what Prof Manguin have analyse based on the accounts.
Some plank and frame remains dating from the early 2nd millen nium A.D. recovered at the harbour-site of Paya Pasir, the sturdiest found so far that were part of sewn-plank ships, would have belonged to fairly large vessels (a very rough estimate would put them at some 30m in length; their planks are 37cm wide and 7,5cm thick).
This is not quite as large as the 50m long kunlun bo, carrying hundreds of passengers, described by the Chinese. For the time being, we thus have to rely on the two corroborating Chinese texts of the 3rd and 8th century A.D. quoted above. Considering the technical precision of these descriptions, and their general agreement with what we know of Southeast Asian vessels, I see no intrinsic reason to doubt their accuracy.
Moreover, as will be seen below, such large vessels were common in later centuries, at a time when written sources and archaeological evidence are abundant enough to be fully trusted.
Finally, the various states that dominated the late first millennium A.D. historical scene in Insular South-East Asia, prominent among which was the Malay maritime polity of Sriwijaya, were no doubt complex enough polities to provide sufficient financial means, man power and organisational capacities to succeed in building commer cial fleets of such large vessels.
If the 3rd century A.D. Chinese text quoted above is to be fully trusted, then one has to conclude that the successful implementation of such skills could only have been the out come of a long technical evolution; and that, consequently, late 1st millennium B.C. incipient states must have started dominating these sophisticated seafaring techniques quite early in their history, if they were to build such giants of the sea in the first few centuries A.D. It would therefore make sense to credit the building of these early ships to incipient coastal states such as those that appeared on the Malay Peninsula coast around the beginning of the Christian era.
Take note on the last sentence.
Prof Manguin further explained :
Most of these Portuguese sources refer to a widely represented trading ship which they called junco, an obvious and regular Portuguese transcription of Malay or Javanese jong. Malay classical texts such as the Sejarah Melayu, that are approximately contemporary with 16th century Portuguese descriptions, often mention the existence of these trading jong However, to the best of my knowledge, no technical information may be gathered on ship design from such local sources.
As soon as they arrived in South-East Asian waters, the Portuguese were confronted with these jong which, to their surprise, were more often than not larger than their own largest ships.
When they first entered the Straits of Melaka, they battled against a Sumatran trading jong, the deck of which was higher than the tall aft-castle of Albuquerque's admiral ship, the famous "Flor de la Mar". Very soon, they were to gain first hand knowledge of these seaworthy craft by making extensive use of them in their own trading ventures in the area. This in turn provided us with quite a number of reliable testimonies on these jong.
Here is a list of their basic features:
1. Their tonnage was considerable, at least by European standards of the time. There are sufficient indications in the texts to allow us to ascertain an average burthen of 350 to 500 tons deadweight; the largest occasionally reached 1,000 tons and carried a thousand men aboard
For further reading, search ; Pierre Yves Manguin, Trading Ships of the South China Sea. Shipbuilding Techniques and Their Role in the History of the Development of Asian Trade Networks, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 1993.
Some of the critics, insist to find the word "Malay" in Chinese accounts. Its only showed their lack of intelligent in understanding the ancient manuscript. There were no nation state then, no nationality like present time where peoples were identified by country of origin.
Ancient Chinese do not called Roman as Roman, so did the Roman or Persian do not call Chinese as Chinese or Cina.
Therefore, kunlun is a general name for the Southeast Asia population located in South Sea (Nanhai) or present South China Sea and further west, namely from Java to Straits of Malacca and up north to Andaman Sea region but once kunlun associated with Kunlun Bo, it directed to the specific kunlun demography.
Apart of what Prof Manguin explained, as Page Admin, I also found some undeniable facts :
- Yi-Jing have clearly indicate the locality of kunlun when he said he sailed to Tamralipti from Chieh Cha (Kedah) on kunlun ship. Kedah was almost at the edge north- west of Kunlun territory.
- It was said by a scholars that a Persian used to sailed to kunlun country called Chih-Tu. Chih-Tu was a pre-Srivijayan country in Malay Peninsula.
- Kunlun men was appointed by Chinese Tang Dynasty as port agent during Srivijaya time in Guangzhou.
- Prof Waruno Mahdi, an Indonesian origin lived in German says, Kunlun derived from Hulun.
Hulun was named in Srivijaya's social structure that found in Kota Kapur inscription. Srivijaya was a Malay maritime kingdom. Anyone who challenge the fact that the kingdom and inscription was not Malay, should come with concrete rock solid argument.
Prof Manguin also explained why the Chinese and Indian maritime have no convincing narrative during the stardom of Malay maritime.
We just present a solid evidence by Prof Manguin pertaining to Malay - Kunlun, Malay gigantic vessel (or giant as Prof Manguin quote) and the Kunlun Bo. There are several prominent researchers who also mentioned about the Malay maritime supremacy, like Seland, Adelaar, Waruno and Hoovergorst, maybe we will present in future posting.
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22/12/2024: 11.15 p.m
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