The Ship from Juddah

The Ship from Juddah

The ruler of Malacca, either Parameswara the founder, or his own son, was converted to Islam through influence from Pasai. A Pasai princess was given to the Sultan in marriage, and this led to commercial expansion and increased Muslim influence. The first Muslim ruler of Malacca took the fashionable Persian title “Shah”, and called himself Iskandar Shah. (Iskandar is the Malay equivalent for Alexander). But the fact that the ruler of Malacca became a Muslim did not mean that the entire royal house of Malacca had been finally won over to Islam, with its inhabitants. His immediate successor, Raja Tengah, took a Hindu title – Sri Maharaja – and the ruler after him, Raja Ibrahim, took the tile Sri Parameswara Dewa Shah.

The Coming of Islam

The Coming of Islam

The period of Islamic influence in Southeast Asia was, in actual fact, a period of Arabic influence modified by Indian ideas. This was so because Islam came to Malaysia through India and the same type of people who introduced Hinduism to Malaysia at the beginning of the Christian era also introduced Islam to this part of the world.

Like its predecessor, Hindu religion and culture, Islam was also synonymous with the Indian trade. Like its predecessor too, the spread of Islam was not the result of any organised missionary movement; rather, it was a gradual and perhaps unconscious assimilation of an Asian religion by Asian peoples who were impressed by the introduction of the first monotheistic religion.

The preceding religions, primitive paganism and Hinduism, had been polytheistic. Hindu culture and religion had come from the Coromandel coast of India, notably from the Port of Amaravathi, at the mouth of the river Kistna. With the spread of Islam from about the 13th century A.D., the centre of radiation moved to the Malabar coast, especially to Gujerat in the West and Bengal in the East. By virtue of their financial standing, the Gujerat and Bengali merchants drew large numbers of converts in the ports in which they traded. As in the case of the Hindu religion, the first converts were from the aristocratic class. Once Islam had set a foot-hold among the rulers and chiefs of the coastal commercial areas and these rulers had set their seal of authority on the new faith, immediately it became acceptable to the common people. 

Suvarnabhumi

Suvarnabhumi

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The Influence of India on Malay Culture

Hindu influence in the Malay Peninsula was initially limited more or less rigidly to the upper class of old Malay society – the royalty. Malay royalty was essentially Hindu royalty descended, according to the Malay Annals, “Sejarah Melayu”, from a legendary half-Indian and half-Greek monarch, Raja Suran, whose sons all bearing Indian proper names, Sang Nila Utama, Krishna Pandita, Nila Pahlawan, then descended on Bukit Siguntang in Sumatra from whence Malay royalty spread. The spread of Hinduism was not the result of any organised missionary movement. Indian merchants by virtue merely of their feconomic standing, drew converts from the ruling and trading classes of the races with which they traded. If Hinduism was accepted, it was because of a desire for a better standard of living rather than because of an understanding and appreciation of a superior religious system.

Hinduism spread also through marriage. The small princes of the Malaysian coastal trading centres were glad to marry off their sons and daughters to the prosperous Indian merchants or their children. For those who lived on the outskirts of the trading centre, the Hindu influence was to come much later and in gradual stages. While the common people often followed the religious faith of their rulers, there was always an undercurrent of fear of evoking the wrath of their earlier animistic deities. Hinduism was assimilated only with a lot of local theological “spice” retained.

Early Malay literature is almost completely derived from Hindu epics, from the Ramayana and the Mahabaratha. Even today, a major portion of Malay vocabulary is made up of Sanskrit words. Today, when a Malay speaks a sentence of ten words, probably five of them will be Sanskrit words, three Arabic and the remaining either of English, Chinese, Persian or of some other origin. One expert even made the sweeping claim that there are only four words in the Malay vocabulary which are genuinely Malay – “api” or fire, “besi” or iron. “padi” or rice, and “nasi” or cooked rice.

Words such as putera, son; puteri, daughter; asmara, love; samudra, ocean; belantra, jungle; kenchana, gold; sukma, soul; and literally thousands of other words are all Sanscrit words, either in original or in modified form.

What of the influence of India on the religious developments of the Malaysian peoples? Malay folk-lore and Malay literature show that during the period before the coming of Islam, about the 14th century A.D., the greater gods of the Malay pantheon were really borrowed Hindu divinities. They were, in some respect, modified by Malay ideas, but only the lesser gods and spirits were actually native to the Malay religious system. It is true these native gods and spirits can be identified with the great powers of nature, such as the spirit of the Wind (Mambang Angin), the spirit of the Waters (Hantu Ayer) and the spirit of the Sun (Mambang Kuning). But none of them appears to have the status of the chief gods of the Hindu system. Both by land and water, the terrible Shiva and Batara Guru or Kala, are supreme.

In Malay folk-lore we find Vishnu, the preserver, Brahma the creator, Batara Guru (Kala) and S’ri all invoked by Malays, especially by Malay magicians. Of all the greater deities of the Hindu system, Batara Guru is unquestionably the greatest. In Hikayat Sang Sembah , the tales of Sang Sembah, Batara Guru appears as a supreme god with Brahma and Vishnu and some subordinate deities. It is Batara Guru who alone has the “water of life”, the elixir of life, which can restore life to dead humans and animals. To the Malays of old, then, and to the Malay bomohs even of the present day in whom are preserved these notions, “tok Batara Guru” or any one of the corruptions which his name now bears, was the all-powerful god who held the place of Allah before the advent of Islam, and was a spirit so powerful that he could restore the dead to life. All prayers were addressed to him.

Of the lesser deities of Hinduism, the most notable who have remained in Malay superstition and folklore are the “gergasi”, half-human forest spirits of Hindu mythology represented in Malay folk-lore as tusked orgres that feed on human flesh. Then there is the raksaksa, a race of cannibal giants ruled, according to the Indian Puranas, by Ravana. A tribe of raksaksa is mentioned in the Kedah annals, Hikayat Marong Mahawangsa, which tell of a giant king, Maroung Maha Wangsa, who led a tribe of giants and founded the present state of Kedah which they called Langkasuka.

All in all, that a form of Hinduism was the accepted religion of the Malays prior to the advent of Islam is certain, and it is a fact amply proved by Malay folk-lore and superstition, Malay literature, Malay customs and various archaeological inscriptions.

Muslim religious teachers in Malaysia today still preach the Islamic concept of heaven in a terminology which is neither Malay nor Arabic, but Hindu. The sanskrit word “shurga” is always used in connection with the Islamic concept of paradise. The proper Arabic word for this is actually “al-jannah”. In the same way, the Hindu religious term “neraka” or hell is used by Muslim Malays to explain the Islamic concept of hell. The Arabic word for hell is “al-nar: or the place of fire. Then the Muslim fast, the annual religious abstention from food and drink, is known by the Sanskrit term “puasa”. A Muslim religious teacher is often called “guru, another Hindu religious term , in fact the name of a Hindu deity, Batara Guru. The Muslim prayer is among the Malays, called “sembahyang”. “Sembah” in Sanskrit means to pray, and “yang” is a Sanskrit term meaning divinity or conjuring respect, as in Sang Yang Tunggal”, the most divine one, and “Yang Dipertuan “.

There are many other Hindu religious terms that have lost their original meaning and are being freely and unconsciously used by Muslim Malays in connection with the religion of Islam. This shows that Hinduism exerted a profound influence on Malay culture before the coming of Islam to Malaysia. And this influence has survived, despite the strict monotheistic restrictions of the Islamic faith, to the present day. So, in religion as well as in other aspects of Malaysian culture, we cannot treat the influence of India as something belonging to the past. The political influence of old India which was climaxed by the great Empires of “Sri Vijaya” and “Majapahit” is today at an end, but the cultural influence of India which began at the beginning of the Christian era is still very much alive, and it will be alive for many, many centuries to come because it has become part of the life of the Malaysian peoples.

Source: http://www.sabrizain.demon.co.uk/malaya/hindu2.htm

The Cholas

The Cholas

The Cholas initially occupied present Tanjore and Trincnopoly districts with of South India and, up to the eight century A.D. the Chola kingdom was very small.However, the Cholas rose to prominence when in 850 their ruler Vijayalaya defeated the Pallavas and snatched Tanjore from them, making it the capital of the Chola kingdom. Aditya Chola dynasty defeated the last Pallava ruler in 987 A.D.and the Cholas later captured Madurai from the Pandyas who had controlled the lower tip of the peninsula from early times. Rajaraja (985-1014) extended Chola domination throughout South India and Sri Lanka, and challenged the Chalukyas who had controlled the north-eastern Deccan. His son Rajendra Chola conquered the Andaman and Nicobar islands and advanced past the Ganges up to Bengal, assuming the title of “Gangaikonda” (the victor of Ganges). The powerful Chola state was now prepared to contest the maritime supremacy of Sri Vijaya Saliendras.

At the dawn of the eleventh century, inscriptions indicate that ties of friendship still existed between the two empires, but it was only to be expected that the Chola kings should resent, and eventually seek to break, the commercial monopoly claimed by the Maharajas of the Straits. What finally precipitated the conflict between them is unknown. Possibly Sri Vijaya was restricting Indian trade with the Archipelago and China, or possibly the Cholas simply felt themselves strong enough to assert their undoubted maritime strength in a digvijayaydtra through foreign territory. Whatever the cause, in c. 1025 Rajendra I mounted a great raid against the Sri Vijaya empire, a record of which is preserved in a praiasti inscribed on the south wall of the Rajarajesvara temple in Tanjore:

Buddhist Empires

Buddhist Empires

The greatest of Malay empires, Sri Vijaya, had its beginning at Palembang which lying at the south of Sumatra dominated the Straits of Sunda. With its capital at Bukit Seguntang, the Buddhist pilgrim I-Tsing in 671 A.D. described it as an important centre of Buddhist learning, with more than a thousand monks devoting their days to study and good works. Four inscriptions in old Malay throw light on this Buddhist Sri Vijaya. The oldest from the foot of Bukit Seguntang records that on I 3 April 683 a king went by sea to acquire magic power and on May 8th left the estuary with 20,000 men, as a result of which he conferred on Sri Vijaya victory, power and riches. That king was probably Jayanasa who, in the following year, founded a public garden at Talang Tua some four miles from Bukit Seguntang and had an inscription carved expressing the hope that this and other good works would help him on the road to illumination. Inscriptions elsewhere invoked curses upon their inhabitants if they contemplate rebellion against the king or his officials.

Langkasuka

Langkasuka

The most detailed description of the early Malay kingdom of Langkasuka is found in the Liang-shu, a Chinese history written in the early seventh century. Referred to as Lang-ya-hsiu, Langkasuka’s frontiers were described as thirty days’ journey from east to west, and twenty from north to south. Its capital was said to be surrounded by walls to form a city with double gates, towers and pavilions.

Kadaram and Kataha

Kadaram and Kataha

If we were to look for proof of the existence of the earliest Malay kingdoms on the peninsula, it is inevitably Kedah that has yielded the most ancient archaeological evidence so far discovered. In the mid-nineteenth century, Captain James Low found “undoubted relics of a Hindoo colony, with ruins of temples …’ and ‘… mutilated images. ..’ extending ‘along the talus of the Kedda mountain Jerrei.’ Among his later finds were fragments of a Sanskrit inscription of the fourth century A.D. written in the oldest Pallava alphabet as well as a slab found in the estuary of the Muda River bearing a Sanskrit prayer in fifth-century Pallava script for the success of a voyage about to be undertaken by a sailing-master (mahdndvika), indicating the estuary was a home port for Indian traders during the fifth century A.D. Later excavations in the valley of the Bujang River (an tributary of the Merbok River further north) uncovered various sanctuaries, palace halls of audience, temples, stapas, forts, as well as a number of other unidentified buildings. The shrines in the Bujang Valley were later abandoned in favour of sites nearer the Merbok estuary.

Early Malay Kingdoms

Early Malay Kingdoms

Small Malay kingdoms appeared in the 2nd or 3rd century AD. The peninsula lacked broad, extensive, fertile plains and were unable to support the pattern of densely populated classical Southeast Asian civilizations that flourished in Cambodia and Java. Nevertheless, Chinese written sources do indicate that perhaps 30 small Indianised states rose and fell in the Malay Peninsula, mostly along the east and northwestern coasts.

This was a time when Indian traders and priests began traveling the maritime routes and brought with them Indian concepts of religion, government, and the arts. Over many centuries the peoples of the region, especially the royal courts, synthesised Indian and indigenous ideas – including Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism – that shaped their political and cultural patterns.

The most important of these states, Langkasuka, controlled much of northern Malaya. The Peninsula developed an international reputation as a source of gold – hence ithe name given to it by Ptolemy, Golden Chersonese. It also became an important source of tin and was populated by renowned seafarers. While scholars still debate over the precise location of the famed Langkasuka, archaeological evidence leaves no doubt that the modern state of Kedah (referred to in ancient Indian texts as Kadaram or Kataha) in the northwest of the Peninsula was an important centre of early Indian influence and trade.

Between the 7th and 13th centuries many of these small, often prosperous peninsular maritime trading states came under the loose control of Sri Vijaya, the great Sumatra-based empire. At various times the Cambodian Angkor and Javanese Majapahit empires and the Tai Ayutthaya (Ayudhia) kingdom also claimed suzerainty in the region. There was even an military expedition by the Cholas of South India some time in the beginning of the elevent century A.D., when Rajendra Chola attacked parts of the peninsula and Sumatra.

However, Hindu influence was not spread by the sword but by Indian trade. Initially, it came from traders from India, particularly the Coromandel coast in South India. This trade was maritime and riverine, that is, confined to the coastal and riverine areas the Malay Peninsula. The centres of Indian trade were places such as Pasai, Indragiri, Melayu and Jambi in Sumatra; Kuala Muda in Kedah; and Surabaya in Java. Later, the centres of trade became powerful centres of political influence and expansion. First, there was the great Malay Buddhist Empire of Srivijaya in Sumatra, followed in the 14th century A.D. by its conqueror and successor, the Hindu Empire of Majapahit in Java. The military and political expansion of these two Empires meant also the theological expansion of Buddhism and Hinduism in the peninsula. These early states left a living legacy, traces of which can still be found in the political ideas, social structures, rituals, language, arts, and cultural practices of the Malays.

Source: http://www.sabrizain.demon.co.uk/malaya/early.htm