Agustijanto
Pusat Arkeologi Nasional
Pusat Arkeologi Nasional
During the early centuries A.D., the growing maritime trade
between China and India resulted in the emergence of trading
postsand entrepôts in Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia,
according to archaeological data amassed in the past few
years.1Recentexcavations and surveys in southern Sumatra,
western Java, Bali,Kalimantan (Borneo), and Bima have yielded
new material related to the emergence of early polities influenced
by India, such as theTārumānagara kingdom in western Java
and Kutai in eastern Kalimantan, and the spread of Indic
religions in the archipelagobeginning around the fifth or sixth
century.
postsand entrepôts in Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia,
according to archaeological data amassed in the past few
years.1Recentexcavations and surveys in southern Sumatra,
western Java, Bali,Kalimantan (Borneo), and Bima have yielded
new material related to the emergence of early polities influenced
by India, such as theTārumānagara kingdom in western Java
and Kutai in eastern Kalimantan, and the spread of Indic
religions in the archipelagobeginning around the fifth or sixth
century.
Indian beads and intaglios excavated at Air Sugihan, near
Palembang in southern Sumatra, indicate that goods imported
from lands immediately west, such as Sri Lanka, were available in
Sumatran markets during the early centuries A.D. Shards of Indian
rouletted ware found in the villages of Sembiran and Pacung in
northern Bali, as well as at Kobak Kendal and Batujaya in western
Java, constitute material evidence that Java and Bali were also part
of this international network.2 The site of Pangkung Paruk in
Seririt, northern Bali, has yielded four sarcophagi containing
human remains and burial goods, including a miniature kettledrum
and two bronze mirrors. On the basis of their style and the presence
of TLV decoration, these mirrors can safely be identified as origi-
nating in Han-dynasty China (206 B.C.–A.D. 25).3
Although these early sites clearly attest to trade links with
India and China, there are still no obvious traces of religious influ-
ence from India, which, according to archaeological records, became
dominant in subsequent periods. However, there is mounting
archaeological evidence of the implantation of Hindu-Buddhist tra-
ditions in the Indonesian archipelago during the fifth and sixth cen-
turies. The oldest Brahmanical sculptures found in the region are of
Similar sculptures, all datable to about the fifth or sixth century, have
been uncovered on the Malay Peninsula and in mainland Southeast
Asia. 4The style also appears in western Indonesia in Visnus from
that period discovered in Cibuaya, western Java, and Kota Kapur on
the island of Bangka. Until recently, central Java was considered the
easternmost boundary of early Vaisnava worship in Southeast Asia.
However, in 2010, a statue of Visnu wearing his typical headdress
was found in Patapan, Bali (fig. 82), suggesting that the pan–
Southeast Asian Vaisnava network extended from Vietnam to Bali.
The most substantial recent contributions to the history of
early Buddhism in the archipelago are the excavations at Batujaya
and at Uma Anyar, Bali—both sites that existed at the same time as
the Vaisnava Tārumānagara kingdom in western Java. Thirty-nine
brick structures within a radius of about three miles (1.6 km) have
been discovered at Batujaya since 1985. 5One of the most important
structures, Candi Blandongan (fig. 83), bears similarities with Wat
Na Phra Men, a Dvāravatī-period temple in Ayutthaya province,
central Thailand.
6It has yielded several inscriptions on clay and on
gold leaf,7 three of which are legible, written in Sanskrit and con-
taining the Buddhist mantra ajñānāc cīyate karma.8 This Mahāyāna
mantra is already known in the region from several inscriptions on
sealings and votive tablets in Malaysia and Java.9 In addition, later
excavations have yielded many votive tablets, some bearing inscrip-
tions but all confirming the Buddhist character of Batujaya. On the
most common type of tablet, the center is occupied by a Buddha
sitting with legs pendant in bhadrāsana, holding his right hand in
the exposition gesture (vitarkamudrā), and flanked by two standing
bodhisattvas (fig. 84). The tablets are dated on stylistic grounds to
the seventh century.
Southeast Asia—for instance, in central Thailand (Nakhon Pathom
and In Buri districts), peninsular Thailand (Phatthalung village and
the Khao Khanab Nam islets), Myanmar, Vietnam, and recently at
Uma Anyar. 11 The appearance around the seventh century of a
pan–Southeast Asian type of votive tablet is closely related to the
development of the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition in the region and
beyond. 12According to Nicolas Revire, Buddhas in bhadrāsana, as
figured on the Batujaya votive tablets, were part of a new Southeast
Asian iconographic trend affiliated with some early Tang-dynasty
(ca. 7th–8th-century) Chinese models.13 An exceptional discovery
of two hundred and fifty Buddhist votive tablets, some similar to
those at Batujaya, was made at Uma Anyar in 2008. The tablets can
be divided into eleven types. In one especially interesting iteration,
a rectangular votive relief depicts a large stupa adorned within a
nimbus (prabhāmandala; fig. 85). Surrounding the large stupa are
forty miniature stupas placed in four rows that fill the entire surface
of the relief.
Unlike in Java and Sumatra, information regarding the devel-
opment of Buddhism in Kalimantan is scarce. The oldest Buddhist
vestige is the inscription that accompanies a rock-cut relief of seven
slender caityas (stupas) with multiple umbrellas at Batu Pahat. It
bears traces of a Śaka date but so far has defied a secure reading.14
Buddha statues have been found at a number of locations, such as
Muara Kaman, eastern Kalimantan, where a gold statue was found
in 1840 and where a hoard of metal statues dating to the mid- to
late first millennium was unearthed sporadically from 1990 to 1992
by locals. 15A 2012 survey of the area yielded a fragment of the rect-
angular pedestal of a statue; a pripih (Javanese, amulet) stone, a
casket for sacred deposits; and a stone fragment, most likely of a
meditating Buddha. In addition, based on the findings of seven
yūpa (sacrificial post) inscriptions, it was established that the Kutai
kingdom in eastern Kalimantan was influenced by India as well.
Traces of Buddhism have also been identified farther east,
on the island of Bima. At Wadu Pa’a, caityas with an inscription
dated to the seventh century have been discovered carved in the
rock. The similarities to the Batu Pahat inscription in Kalimantan
suggest that this site represents the extreme eastern end of the early
Buddhist cultural wave.
By the end of the seventh century, the pan–Southeast Asian
Vaisnava culture had lost ground to the dispersion of Buddhism
that by then spanned most of Asia. In Indonesia, the foundations of
a new era were now being laid. Henceforth, two Buddhist polities
would dominate the political and economic landscape of the archi-
pelago and leave a unique heritage: the seventh-century Śrīvijaya
empire in Sumatra and, slightly later, the central Javanese kingdom
under the eighth-century Śailendra dynasty.
1. Wolters 1967; Glover 1990.
2. Ardika 2008; Manguin and Indradjaya
2006. Often dishes with curved or beaked
rims, rouletted wares are so named for
the two to three concentric bands
featured on the inner part of the base.
3. TLV decoration is named for its
engraved auspicious symbols, which
resemble the letters T, L, and V. This
type of bronze mirror was popular
during the Han dynasty.
4. Dalsheimer and Manguin 1998.
5. Djafar 2010, p. 35.
6. Revire 2010, p. 79.
7. Manguin and Indradjaya 2011,
p. 121, fig. 5.6.
8. Suhadi 2005; Djafar 2010, pp. 92–93;
Skilling forthcoming. The complete
mantra is ajñānāc ciyate karma /
janmanah karma kāranah / jñānān na
cīyate karma / karmābhāvān na jāyante
(From ignorance acts accumulate /
Of birth, acts are the cause / From
knowledge no acts accumulate /
Through absence of acts, they are not
reborn). De Casparis 1956, p. 140.
An alternative reading appears in
Skilling, “Precious Deposits,” p. 61,
in this volume.
9. De Casparis 1956, pp. 57–58;
Suhadi 1989.
10. Ferdinandus 2002.
11. Coedès 1926–27; Pattaratorn
Chirapravati 1997; Moore 2007; Guy
2011c, p. 312, fig. 11.
12. Skilling 2009a, p. 112; Revire
2010, p. 79.
13. Revire 2012b, p. 137.
14. Atmojo 1994, p. 2, has suggested
the year 578 Śaka (a.d. 656), but this
has not been corroborated to date.
Besides Hinduism and Buddhism, one
important Indian influence in Indonesia
is the Śaka calendar, which differs from
the Christian calendar by seventy-eight
years. While the Śaka calendar begins
with the vernal equinox, it, too, has leap
years. Dates on inscriptions found in
Indonesia use the Śaka calendar.
15. For the gold Buddha, see Guy 2011a,
p. 171, fig. 3.9. For the recent hoard,
see Edwards McKinnon forthcoming.
16. Sukatno 1990; de Casparis 1998.
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