Customer Reviews

Early Kingdoms of The Indonesi

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The history of certain regions and certain countries in the world are very well known in the West. Others, however, seem to be terra incognita. The kingdoms of the Indonesian archipelago, like the Majapahit Kingdom, is a case in point and this book helps to fill the void. To be sure, like many scholarly works, there are dull passages, but this is not a novel.

So much of Western concepts have been imposed on the rest of the world today, such as sovereign nation-states, that books that try to discuss earlier cultures often suffer from misunderstood titles. Perhaps a better title could be 'Pre-Western Civilisations of Southeast Asia'. Other than specialists, Indonesian Archipelago and Malay Peninsular are locations most are probably not familiar with. Geographically, the book covers more than Southeast Asia, the focus is on, in modern times, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and (some) Philippines.

Munoz is French, but this is a bold attempt at getting to the heart of Southeast Asian history from the perspective of an Asian. Drawing on an impressive range of economic and cultural historiography, the author tries to narrate the early history (from AD 1st till 16th century) of this region in its proper context, before Eurocentric views were imposed onto this region.

An earlier critic compared this book with `The Indianized States of Souhteast Asia' by George Coedes, and I think the review may be missing the point. This book is not targeted at specialists or anthropologists but to the general reader. I suspect most readers will not care much of the specific inaccuracies. More importantly, from a cultural perspective Munoz has attempted, on some level, to explain the importance of environmental management, heritage management and conservation of the region.

Timely, because in recent years archaeologists have made significant finds in the region, such as H. Florienses in 2003 (Indonesia), dwarfism in 2006 (Palau Islands Micronesia). The section on Austronesian migration does not touch on these developments but it is still exciting to think that so much is being discovered so late in the evolution of mankind.

Insightful, because many of the issues raised are still pertinent in this region today - economic, religious and political. For instance, moderate Muslims has practised Islam in Malaysia for centuries and although Indonesia and Malaysia are Islamic countries today, it was not always so. This book provides some reasons why.

Finally, though not in the style of Jared Diamond's `Guns, Germs and Steel', it is still a good narrative. I find it useful as a companion to James Hobson's `The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation'.

For what is surely a niche subject area this work appears to tackle the difficult remit of being a serious reference work and something an ambitious layman may also like to read. And I have to say that it manages to walk this tight rope well. Paul Michel Munoz was a name known to me from his contribution to a book on Borobodur that I already owned and I found his style to be clear, concise and readable despite the somewhat heavy going induced by his subject matter. And that subject matter is to trace the known history of the area that today makes up the nations of Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia. And to tell that story he also has to cover parts of modern day Vietnam, Thailand and Burma due to the interconnected nature of the polities concerned, not to mention he also touches every so slightly on areas even farther afield such as China and India and this is due to the huge cultural and economic influences both these behemoths had on the area.

For all the intertwining history and the paucity of information in regards to certain matters the entire work hangs together rather well and the author is to be congratulated for being able to weave the chronological ordering of things sufficiently well to make the whole thing comprehensible. This is aided by a number of maps of the areas being discusses as well as some line drawings of artefacts and temple designs etc. A handy glossary and appendices also help the reader get to grips with the subject.

Not being a scholar of the area I can't attest to the utter accuracy of every word herein but I can say that it certainly gave me a vastly greater understanding of the history of the area and a thirst for more knowledge about it in the future. The author strikes me as the sort of historian who isn't afraid to say something - rather than pound the reader with a myriad of possibilities in an effort to cover all bases. However he is also happy to point out areas of contention and cites differing points of view on occasion.

All up I would say however that this is not a basic primer aimed at the tourist (even if I scored my copy at Denpasar airport!) as it is too meaty, too detailed for such casual consumption. This is more the book for a history buff who has cut their teeth on more `mainstream' history first and so perhaps has some affinity for this almost text-book style work. But a very good book if this is the sort of thing you are after.

Dear reader! If you want to know about early Southeast Asia, let your first choice be the famous and peerless monograph by George Coedes "The Indianized States of Southeast Asia". You can find it on www.Amazon.com .
On the contrary, the monograph by Paul Michel Munoz appears to be very problematic for any reader. First, it's a compilation with many mistakes and faults. For example, Munoz asserts that the inscription of Kalasan is written in Sanskrit and Old Malay (p. 132)! This record is truly written in Sanskrit but there are no parts in Old Malay (see Sarkar, Corpus of the Inscriptions of Java, vol. 1, 1971, p. 35-36). Munoz writes about Brahmans in the inscriptions of the king Mulavarman from East Borneo (p. 95) whereas these records refer only to viprah `priests'. Munoz believes that Srivijaya and Tarumanagara (on West Java) left "many/numerous" inscriptions (pp. 117, 104) whereas it's a well-known fact that the corpus of these records is very limited. Munoz asserts that "no officers or Brahmans were mentioned in Purnavarman's inscriptions" (p. 206) but only two pages above he cited the Tugu inscription of the king where you can read brahmanair "by the Brahmans". That the area of Bukit Seguntang near modern Palembang formed the `city thriving between economic activity between the 7th and 13th centuries" (p. 117), is not completely wrong but we knows nothing about its functioning in the second half of the 8th - first half of the 9th centuries as Prof. Manguin has shown in his papers concerning the archaeology of Sumatra. Munoz translates the Kedukan Bukit inscription of Srivijaya as "On April 682 AD, a king left the city with vessels..." ( p. 124). But in the original there is another calendar based on the Saka era (78 AD as the initial year) and the Old Malay text tells us only "our divine Lord embarked to carry out a successful expedition" (dapunta hiyang nayik di samvau manalap siddhayatra) [See Coedes, 1964, p. 25]. Munoz explains the Old Malay word kadatuan as a compound of two substantives kada and tuhan "the place of the tuhan - lord" (p. 125, n. 23) but in fact it is formed by prefix ka- and suffix -an with the root datu `chief'. I can enlarge the list of Munoz's faults but I think that's enough.
Second, Munoz even fabricates the facts. The most obvious example of such undertaking is his references to Fa Hsien. Munoz says that this Chinese pilgrim mentions three rulers of East Borneo including Mulavarman - a king who left us 7 inscriptions on the sacrificial posts (p. 95). He also refers to the Records of Fa Hsien discussing Java in the times of Purnavarman (p. 206). But in reality, Fa-Hsien mentions the land of "Java" interpretation of which is the point at issue among the scholars. It can mean Java itself, Western Borneo or Sumatra. The most important fact is that the pilgrim never mentions the rulers of Southeast Asia by their names.
Third, Munoz often repeats one and the same text with minor distinctions: The text about Kutei on pp. 95 and 303-304 as well as the text about Tarumanagara on pp. 104-105 and 204-206 is almost identical. I wonder why the author gives his reader so repetitious book.
Fourth, Munoz omits very important papers from his bibliography. One cannot find the valuable monograph by Roy Jordaan on the historiography of Sailendra dynasty, the state-of-the-art review of early statehood by Jan Wisseman Christie, even the Corpus of the Inscriptions of Java by H.B. Sarkar. One can only wonder why.
To my mind, the monograph of Munoz may be used only by specialists as an incomplete compilation of modern historiography.

This is a must-have book for readers with a keen interest in the history of Indonesia, Malaysia and the surrounding region. 'Early kingdoms' is a tour de force in its minute detailing of Indonesia's kingdoms, their rulers and the political and religious forces which shaped them. This profusion of information makes the book more useful as a reference than something you would read from back to cover.