Majapahit Empire

9 Key excerpts on "Majapahit Empire"

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  Southeast Asia, Student Economy Edition

  Past and Present

  • D R SarDesai(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  The Nagarkertagama perhaps gives him more credit than was due as an empire builder. Thus, it speaks of the Majapahit hegemony extending not only over the entire archipelago (except western Sunda) but also over Champa, Thailand, and Cambodia, comparing its domain with China’s. Most modern historians discount the premise that an extended Majapahit Empire could include territories on mainland Southeast Asia. In their view, the Majapahit Empire was limited to the Indonesian archipelago except western Sunda, which retained its independence until early in the sixteenth century. During the nationalist movement in the twentieth century, some of the Indonesian leaders, including Sukarno, argued that Indonesia had historically been a united state under Gajah Mada, thus refuting Dutch claims that Western colonial rule had brought the people of the archipelago together for the first time. Independent Indonesia has honored Gajah Mada’s memory by naming the main street of Djakarta and the university at Jogjakarta after this much-admired administrator of the fourteenth century.

  The period politically dominated by Gajah Mada and King Rajasanagara marked the golden age of Javanese history, known for literary and cultural efflorescence. Most notable of the literary works produced under extensive royal patronage were The Nagarkertagama, by the poet Prapanca, and Arjunavivaha and Purushadasanta (or Sutasoma), by the poet Tantular. The fourteenth century also brought major construction, including that of many religious edifices dedicated to the syncretic cult of Shiva-Buddhism, noted for their bas-reliefs depicting scenes from The Ramayana and The Krishnayana. These monuments represent an advanced stage in the evolution of Indo-Javanese art, in which the Indian forms became more completely assimilated and the Indonesian elements and attitudes asserted themselves most clearly.

  The Majapahit glory lasted only about seventy-five years, although the state lingered on until it was slowly liquidated by the advance of Islam in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The Majapahit was the last great Hindu kingdom of Southeast Asia. A war of succession between 1401 and 1406 weakened it at a time when a new state, Malacca, which would eventually be the most responsible for its decline, emerged. After the establishment of Malacca in 1402, the trader-rulers of many small states converted to Islam in the hope of better promoting their trade prospects, thereby severing their ties with Hindu Majapahit. Majapahit’s central position in international commerce then passed increasingly to Malacca. The Thais also showed an urge to expand in the Malay Peninsula and to secure for themselves a more important commercial role, thereby making the contest for supremacy triangular. By the early sixteenth century, Majapahit had sunk to being just one of a number of small Javanese states whose glory had become only a distant memory.

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  Middle Power Statecraft

  Indonesia, Malaysia and the Asia-Pacific

  • Jonathan H. Ping(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  The Republic of Indonesia remembers most fondly the second Hindu-Buddhist Indonesian empire of Majapahit. It is often taken as a precedent for the political and geographic boundaries of the contemporary Republic. Starting on Java, the Majapahit Empire expanded from a wet rice economy base and developed naval power, which together established it as the dominant state of the archipelago from the late thirteenth century until the late fifteenth century. Majapahit’s naval power enabled it to attack the Srivijayan capital Palembang in 1377 and to hold authority over vassal states in Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Kalimantan and eastern Indonesia. As a trading state it developed diplomatic relations with Champa, Cambodia, Siam, Burma, Vietnam and China (Ricklefs 1993). Majapahit can be recognised as the first state controlling the archipelago, which successfully hybridised Hindu-Buddhist statecraft and PP to sustain a wet rice and trading economy.

  Knowledge of Majapahit comes from two Javanese inscriptions, Nagarakertagama and Pararaton , both of which have come to us from derived sources. The inscriptions list eight kings and two queens as rulers of the empire from 1294 to 1478. They discuss a civil war and disputed successions, as well as the general procedures and structure of the empire. Chinese records also supplement these. As with Srivijaya, there are sceptics who doubt the existence of Majapahit and its claims. In particular, Professor C. C. Berg argues that supporting documents should be understood as supernatural religious and political myth, which when written, were intended to establish future events. The inscriptions, however, are taken by the majority of scholars as legitimate sources of information about Majapahit (Ricklefs 1993).

  Hindu-Buddhist influences on the statecraft and PP of contemporary Indonesia and Malaysia should not be over-stated because those of Islam subsumed these more than four hundred years ago (just as Hindu-Buddhist influences did to Animism). However, to overlook such strong and enduring hybridised influences undermines any analysis of Indonesian and Malaysian statecraft and PP. Country-based scholars, particularly ‘Indonesianists’ like Kingsbury (1998), Lowry (1996), Geertz (1993), Moertono (1963) and Anderson (1972), often employ hybridised PP norms from the Hindu-Buddhist period to either interpret statements by government officials or to explain behaviour patterns within foreign and domestic policy. Similar scholarship can be followed to develop the MP concept.

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  Historical Atlas of Indonesia

  • Robert Cribb(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  claimed for Majapahit an empire of 98 tributaries, stretching from Sumatra to New Guinea, but some scholars have seen this claim as representing only a sphere of limited influence or even as being no more than a statement of geographical knowledge. There is no doubt, however, that Majapahit fleets periodically visited many parts of the archipelago to obtain formal submission, or that the splendour of the Majapahit court led many regional rulers to send it tribute, in much the same way as they sent tribute to China, without any intention of submitting to orders from eastern Java. The trading power of Majapahit gave it a powerful sanction against defiant rulers. The eastern Java kingdom established especially close trading links with pepper suppliers in Sumatra and with other spice-producing regions in eastern Indonesia. It is probably best, therefore, to see Majapahit’s claims of empire as representing real authority, with the proviso that such authority never gave Majapahit significant administrative power outside Java, Bali and Madura.

  Majapahit reached the pinnacle of its power under the rule of Rajasanagara (r. 1350–89), better known as Hayam Wuruk, and his prime minister, Gajah Mada, who held office from about 1331 until his death in 1364. Under their joint rule, Majapahit seems to have been particularly successful in establishing closer royal rule in the Brantas valley, by means of royal charters on land and other productive resources such as ferries. These charters diverted taxation income from local elites to the royal treasury and enabled the king to pay for a network of roads which made communication within the region easier. The capital city itself reflected the ruler’s wealth, with high, thick walls of brick, spacious pavilions and abundant flowers.

  After the death of Hayam Wuruk in 1389, Majapahit went into decline. Its influence abroad contracted and it was wracked by civil war and succession disputes at home. Little is known of Javanese history in the 15th century. Majapahit is traditionally said to have fallen in 1478, but the state seems to have survived in attenuated form until about the 1530s. Hindu–Buddhist states such as Pengging, Kediri and Balambangan emerged within the former territory of Majapahit, but none was able to recreate its dominion, even in eastern Java.

  Instead power shifted to trading city-states of the north coast, notably Demak, which had converted to Islam in the late 15th century. The struggle of Muslim Demak and its coastal allies with the Hindu-Buddhist states of the interior possibly had some elements of religious war, but at stake was also the question of whether Java’s growing role in international trade could pull the centre of Javanese power away from the interior and to the coast.

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  Maritime Southeast Asia to 500

  • Lynda Norene Shaffer(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Java's own marketing network bene- fited from the growth in international demand, the internal peace and security provided by Majapahit's hegemony, the growing concentra- tion of nonagrarian populations (merchants, artisans, and government officials) in urban centers and towns, and from royal efforts to remove 90 MARITIME SOUTHEAST ASIA TO 1500 obstacles between hinterland producers and ports. The relationship be- tween Majapahit's kings and its merchants grew so close that some sources, both local and foreign, considered Java's spice merchants to be little more than the monarch's agents oftrade. Although this was an exaggeration, it was certainly true that the kings received a share of the port's revenues, controlled the bullion and luxury goods that flowed in, and received a share of the profits made from the exchange and trans- portation oflocal and international products. The Realm and Its Ceremony By 1331 the kings at Majapahit had secured all of eastern Java as well as the island of Madura, placing their own relatives at the head of each of the kingdom's divisions. By 1343 Bali had been secured and was thereafter ruled by Javanese princes. In 1347 the kings began subordi- nating ports to their north and east, a process that culminated with their ritual hegemony over places as far away as the southern Philippines and New Guinea. Although Majapahit had on occasion punished local rulers in the straits region who became too ambitious--as did one ruler in the Sunda Strait in 1357-it apparently felt no need to establish a regular presence there until 1377. This change of attitude may have been prompted by a Sumatran response to yet another shift in China's heavenly mandate. In 1368 Chinese rebels expelled the Mongol Yuan dynasty and established a new dynasty, the Ming. China's new rulers immediately invited Palembang to send a tribute mission to their capi- tal at Nanjing, and the Sumatrans duly arrived in 1371.

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  'Greater India' and the Indian Expansionist Imagination, c. 1885–1965

  The Rise and Decline of the Idea of a Lost Hindu Empire

  • Jolita Zabarskaitė(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Oldenbourg

    (Publisher)

  The Srivijaya kingdom, which was established in Sumatra, was considered as a particularly powerful driver of expansion of trade and commerce, reaching India and China among others. The Srivijaya empire, which was “essentially a great naval power, based on trade and commerce”, had reached its power and glory in the eleventh century by established a “hegemony over the western half of Java, Malaya, Kalimantan (Borneo), Sulawesi (Celebes), the Philippines, parts of Indo-China and Cambodia, half of Formosa, parts of Southern China round about Canton, Ceylon and some parts of India facing Ceylon, and probably the territory on the south-east coast of India including Negapatam”.177 This empire was known not only as a trading centre but also as “a centre of culture and learn- ing where pilgrims from China, on their way to India, used to stop”.178 Hence, this kingdom was known to India, and it even had support and upkeep from some vil- lages in Bihar to maintain “a Shrivijaya House at the famous Buddhist University of Nalanda”.179 Notwithstanding the reputation and prestige of Srivijaya, it was the empire of Majapahit which was framed as the foundation of an Indonesian unity under a single Indonesian government. Having been established on the island of Java, the Majapahit Empire “grew rapidly at the expense of the neighbouring states” under the leadership of its prime minister Gajah Mada. According to the author, “Gajah Mada became Premier in 1331 and retained his office till his death in 1364. The Empire grew so powerful that it defeated the once most powerful Shrivijaya in 1377. Ultimately the entire Indonesian islands fell into the mighty 176 “An Indonesian History”, 395. 177 “An Indonesian History”, 395. 178 “An Indonesian History”, 395. 179 “An Indonesian History”, 395.

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  The Politics of Heritage in Indonesia

  A Cultural History

  • Marieke Bloembergen, Martijn Eickhoff(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Typically, one does not see this in his scholarly publications, except for his discussion with Bosch, where the local interest was his rhetorical weapon. Meanwhile, another ‘local’ group – Indonesian elites based in Batavia, Yogyakarta, and Solo – had become deeply interested in the great Majapahit Empire as well, though perhaps less so in the site. Majapahit in and outside Nationalist Imaginations, 1920s–1950s In November 1934, the Solo-based Islamic journal Adil announced the play ‘Mojopahit and Islam’, to be staged in the town of Demak and performed by its inhabitants. The journal explained that Demak was the site where Raden Patah founded the first Islamic kingdom on Java. In three acts, the play would recount (Act 1) the meeting of the nine wali in Ampel (Surabaya). This led to (Act 2) the mission of their representatives to the king of Majapahit, Brawijaya, to ask permission to convert the people of Majapahit to Islam. Finally (Act 3), the Hindu king Giriwandojo renounces his royal power, and Raden Patah becomes king of Demak. 81 By depicting the Islamisation of Java as peaceful and 79 Ibid., 12. 80 Ibid., 12. 81 Adil, 15 November 1934, summarised in Overzicht van de Inlandsche en Maleisch-Chineesche pers 45 (1934), 736. This colonial weekly overview of the Chinese and Malay press in the Netherlands Indies does not mention the author. Unfortunately we have not yet traced the original issue of Adil. 148 Greater Majapahit uncontested, these inhabitants of Demak portrayed a pre-colonial Java in which Islam was endemic and a source of national pride and in which Majapahit played merely a preparatory role. They thereby took a stance against nationalist intellectuals who in the 1920s and 1930s came to see Majapahit as the fore- runner of the Javanese culture and nation and, later, as a powerful unifying force for the Indonesian nation.

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  A History of Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1400–1830

  • Barbara Watson Andaya, Leonard Y. Andaya(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  But these accounts emphasize continuities with the past, and a later chronicle claims that Demak’s founder was the last ruler of Majapahit and his mother a Chinese princess. Demak’s inception was said to have been signaled by a volcanic eruption, and the transition to a new regime was marked by “a sign of greatness looking like a streak of lightning and accompanied by the frightening sound of thunder,” which emerged from the Majapahit palace and fell near the site of this new Muslim center. 33 According to the Babad Tanah Jawi, after Majapahit’s defeat several of the Wali Sanga held a joint meeting in Demak. Furthermore, although the late fifteenth century witnessed a new supremacy of coastal states, memories of Majapa- hit’s greatness survived well beyond Java, and in distant areas of island Southeast Asia royal genealogies and origin myths continued to invoke its name and incorporate its heroes into local histories. The Northern Archipelago As elsewhere in Southeast Asia, geography played a fundamental role in shaping the history of the Northern Archipelago. From early times demographic growth in these islands was constrained because arable land was limited, and fishing and swidden agricul- ture could not support large populations. Islands and forested interior uplands were 33 Cited in Somarsaid Moertono, State and Statecraft in Old Java (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program 198), 56. the beginning of the early modern era, 1400–1511 107 settled by small communities that shared many cultural features even as their physical separation fostered distinct identities based on differences in language and customs. Despite the dearth of written sources, archaeological finds and judicious use of later material enable us to make general comments about the social and economic basis of these early communities prior to the Spanish arrival in the Philippines in the sixteenth century.

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  Nanyang

  Essays on Heritage

  • Gungwu Wang(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • ISEAS Publishing

    (Publisher)

  12 It was not a coincidence that we both concentrated on maritime Southeast Asia. This was the easternmost part of the British Asia that Nick focused on. I, of course, was born and grew up in the middle of that Malay world. You may have noticed that I have used the word empire for very different kinds of states and that I was careful not to use its twin, the word imperialism. In fact, the definitions of empire are many because there have been so many empires in history but many of them could not be said to have been imperialist. Historians and political scientists have argued endlessly about what is common to all of them. For example, what do the ancient empires of India, China and Persia have in common with the modern British, Dutch and Japanese empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? I shall come to that later. What about End of Empire 167 those empires in premodern Southeast Asia? The word empire has been used readily in our history texts today for the Angkor (or Zhenla-Khmer) and the Siamese empires on the mainland and Sri Vijaya, Majapahit and Malacca empires in the archipelago. One might add Vietnam moving south towards Cambodia if only because it is a reminder how elastic the term empire can be. There were empires to which other states paid tribute that also offered tribute to the larger Chinese empire. I must admit I knew little about the local imperial polities before I went to university. I should have known more about Malacca. It was the closest both in geography and in spirit to the state of Perak where I went to school, but most non-Malays of my generation knew less about that empire than about the Portuguese capture of its capital in 1511. It took me years to understand the significance of Malacca’s links with the empire of Sri Vijaya and its relations with the imperial states of Java, Siam and Ming China, and even longer to realize that, as empires, all these were very different from one another.

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  Power Politics and the Indonesian Military

  • Damien Kingsbury(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  There has been considerable debate over the definition of the Indonesian state: on one side, a somewhat off-hand perspective identifies it as a ‘Javanese empire’; and on the other, an almost diametrically opposite response, coming invariably from Javanese and supporters of ‘nationalism’, claims that it is, rather, a ‘nation’. Pro-‘nationalists’ – especially those in official capacities – and their supporters, will usually cite as part of their claim to nationhood the presence of non-Javanese in powerful or decision-making state positions (for example, senior positions in the army of the late 1990s and early 2000s), the flow of migration into Java (though more usually out of it) and the government’s pan-Indonesian policies and philosophies, summed up by one of the five principles of state, ‘unity in diversity’ (which, used in Indonesia, is a Javanese term, as was noted earlier). Furthermore, they point out that if Java has a dominant role in aspects of Indonesian life then it is because it overwhelmingly has the largest population. And, to a lesser extent, an allusion is sometimes made to Java’s relatively highly developed cultural history, as opposed to what are portrayed as the usually less developed cultural histories of the rest of the archipelago.

  One significant error that often occurs in such debate is that the idea of empire is understood to be monolithic, implying total Javanese domination. This misinterprets the meaning of the word and ignores the most successful historical examples of empire. The term ‘empire’ means an area or group of areas ruled by a single authority and consisting of the central or imperial state in a dominant relationship with other ‘states’, colonies or dependencies. These ‘states’ will have been joined or acquired by the imperial state other than by voluntary means. In most cases, empires are made up of different ethnic groups, with distinct histories, languages and cultures. ‘Thus the imperial power will have relied upon notions of an imperial religion, linguistic dominance, an imposed legal code, settlement by members of the imperial nation, etc., to unify and integrate their domains’ (Roberts 1971: 74).

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