Hindu-Buddhist Kingdoms - 200 AD

In the three thousand or so years that the neolithic Austronesians had spent settling and populating the Indo-Malayan archipelago, on the Asian mainland sophisticated, metal-working, literate, stratified, state civilizations had developed in China behind them and in India ahead of them. Once the east to west movement of the Austronesian cultures met the high civilization of southern India, a cultural movement of Hindic-Buddhist influences reflected back through the archipelago from west to east. The Philippines are situated at the far northeastern end of the archipelago. They were involved in the very earliest stages of the Austronesian expansion. By the same geography, they were the last to receive the civilizational influences emanating from mainland Asia. In the hazy transition from prehistory to recorded history, it is not absolutely clear whether it was the Austronesian seafarers who first went to India or Indian merchants who came to the Malay peninsula. In its trade with China and Rome, India imported gold. Due to Rome's economic troubles, the Emperor Vespasian (69-79 AD) decreed a ban on the export of bullion. At the same time, the Chinese Han dynasty, in its decline, was losing control of the Silk Road to marauding Huns. India needed new sources of gold and found them across the Bay of Bengal on the Malay Peninsula. Around 100 AD, Kedah was founded on the export of Malayan gold to India. The court records from the Chinese Kingdom of Wu (222-280 AD) report that there were 100 kingdoms on the Southern Seas. These were small kingdoms in Malaya, Sumatra and Java engaged in trade with the Coramandel coast of southern India. They styled their kingdoms in conscious imitation of the Hindic-Buddhist states with whom they traded. The local sovereigns retained Brahman scholars at their courts so that their Sanskrit writings and Buddhist rites would add to the authority and prestige of their kingdoms. Importantly, the Hindu and Buddhist influences from India were not imposed by conquest or foreign domination. The influence was also more apparent than real. Beneath the surface, the Indian religious symbols and rites were freely adapted to express the animist beliefs and ancestor worship of Austronesian culture. Nor did the influence of Indian civilization extend far beyond the royal courts. Outside the nobility, life went on for the general population much as it had for thousands of years. The Sanskrit script, for instance, does not appear to have been applied as an aid for commerce. Nor, with the notable exception of Bali, was the Indian caste system imported. The social organization continued to follow the traditional kinship system of Austronesian society. Of much greater significance, it was during these early centuries of the first millennium AD that metal working, water buffalo, irrigation and wet rice field agriculture spread through the archipelago. Whether from India or mainland Indo-China, the source of these agricultural and technical innovations is not known.

Sri Vijaya 650-1377:
The first evidence for the opening of the sea route between India and China comes from the report of a Chinese traveller, Fa Hsien, in 413 AD that he had taken a ship from Sri Lanka directly to China. The beginning of the T'ang dynasty in 618 AD brought renewed stability to China and greatly stimulated the trade and traffic on the India-China sea route through the Indo-Malayan archipelago. For the kingdoms along the Sunda and Malacca Straits, their goal was no longer merely to participate in the China-India trade but to control it as it passed by their territories. For more than 600 years, the Buddhist kingdom of Sri Vijaya was the strongest of the Straits kingdoms. Sri Vijaya was located at Palembang in southern Sumatra facing out on the Sunda Straits. The kingdom is first recorded in 650 AD as having conquered the west Java kingdom of Taruma. A passing Chinese monk in 671, I-Tsing, comments favourably on Sri Vijaya as a fine centre of Buddhist learning. The kingdom was in regular communication and exchange with Nalanda; the centre of Buddhist scholarship in the Ganges delta of northern India. By 686, Sri Vijaya had asserted its hegemony over the Sunda Straits and the adjacent Javanese kingdoms. A century later, in 775, it had similarly dominated the Straits of Malacca and commanded tribute from all the kingdoms along its shores. Attaining monopoly control over the trade through the Straits and then keeping it demands a special ruthlessness in suppressing rivals and discouraging interlopers. Sri Vijaya was equal to the task. While Sri Vijaya was establishing its predominance, three generations of Sailendra kings in central Java, between 770 and 825, built the magnificent Buddhist temple complex of Borobudur. By the late 10th century, the Javanese kingdoms were mounting a serious challenge to Sri Vijaya's hegemony; so much so that in 992 it sent a mission to China seeking protection from its enemies. No doubt the Chinese appreciated the importance of order and stability for the security of traffic through the Straits. In the 11th century, Sri Vijaya's Malayan tributaries sought help from India in throwing off its dominance. The Indian Chola states attacked Sri Vijaya in 1017, 1025 and again 1068. By 1200, Sri Vijaya had lost control over several of its principal tributaries on the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. From about this time in the Philippines comes the historical legend of the Ten Datus from Sabah who settled in the Visayas sometime around 1212. The Ten Datus were clearly escaping from an overbearing presence on Borneo rather than appropriating new domains in the name of their sovereign. That the legend calls them "datus", not Rajas or Sultans, indicates they were Austronesian chiefs and not the heads of politically organized states. With Sri Vijaya under attack and weakened, the rival Javanese kindoms of Kediri and Singhasari grew in power. Finally in 1290, Singhasari drove Sri Vijaya out of Java altogether. The rising power of Singhasari attracted the attention of China's Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan who in 1289 had demanded a payment of tribute. Kublai Khan's ambassadors returned to China without their noses. A Mongol fleet arrived in the Java Sea in 1293.

Majapahit 1292-1478:
The successor state to Sri Vijaya, Majapahit, was founded in a bold string of treacheries. The son-in-law of the Singhasari king broke with his father-in-law to found the Hindu Majapahit kingdom in 1292. When Kublai Khan's punitive expedition arrived the next year, he allied his kingdom with the Mongols. On destroying his father-in-law with Mongol help, he immediately turned and slaughtered the Mongols. Despite its promising start, the Javanese Majapahit empire would be relatively short-lived. It was founded just as the penetration of Muslim traders and proselytizers into the archipelago was gaining in strength. Majapahit was fortunate in having the services of Gajah Madah; an ambitious and determined Prime Minister and Regent. In his long career from 1331 to 1364, Gajah Madah brought Bali, Java and Sumatra effectively under Majapahit control. A few years after his death, the Majapahit navy took Palembang, the Sri Vijayan capital, and thus put the former empire to a definitive end in 1377; or so it seemed. Majapahit was divided by a war of succession in 1401 that went on for four years. Weakened by internal dissension it could not stop the rising power of the Sultanate of Malacca. Majapahit continued to disintegrate and finally collapsed in 1478. The imperial ambitions of the Indianized kingdoms of Java, Malaya and Sumatra concentrated mainly on gaining from their rivals a larger share of the commercial traffic that passed through the archipelago and the Straits. Territorial aggrandizement does not seem to have been the object of their rivalries. From time to time new settlements from Java (985, 1280 and 1387) were founded on Borneo. They have more the sporadic character of exiles forced to flee the vicissitudes of Javanese politics than a deliberate policy of imperial expansion. Unlike the rapid and ubiquitous spread of Islam that was to follow, the influence of Hindic-Buddhist culture in the archipelago remained localized in the vicinity of the Straits.

Source: A Centennial History of Philippine Independence, 1898-1998 by Fraser Weir