Archipel

À propos de “The Problem of the Ancient Name Java and the

Role of Satyavarman in Southeast Asian International Relations
Around the Turn of the Ninth Century CE”
Waruno Mahdi

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Mahdi Waruno. À propos de “The Problem of the Ancient Name Java and the Role of Satyavarman in Southeast Asian
International Relations Around the Turn of the Ninth Century CE”. In: Archipel, volume 86, 2013. pp. 229-234;

https://www.persee.fr/doc/arch_0044-8613_2013_num_86_1_4440

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 À propos de
“The Problem of the Ancient Name Java and the Role of Satyavarman
in Southeast Asian International Relations Around the Turn of the
Ninth Century CE”

La publication dans le numéro 85 (2013) d’Archipel par A. Griffiths d’un

article intitulé The Problem of the Ancient Name Java and the Role of
Satyavarman in Southeast Asian International Relations Around the Turn of
the Ninth Century CE a suscité une réaction de Waruno Mahdi, un
chercheur critiqué par A. Griffiths dans cet article. La Rédaction a jugé bon
de porter à la connaissance des lecteurs la réponse de Waruno Mahdi aux
critiques de A. Griffiths.
Cette réponse clôt le débat en ce qui concerne Archipel.

La Rédaction

Arlo Griffiths baselessly proceeds with repeated uncivil and libelous

contentions against me. I am sorry he could fool the reviewers to let his
article appear uncorrected in this respectable journal, which compels me to
use my right of reply (droit de réponse) to defend my and the journal’s good
name.
He begins by groundlessly accusing (on p. 55):
‘... Mahdi engages too freely in associating facts that are not clearly connected, to build
complicated historical revisionism on the assumption of connections that remain
unproven: that he feels too little constrained by the results of preceeding scholars and
hence proposes novel hypotheses without addressing the question why existing communes
opiniones would be wrong; that his revisionism is in fact based on an incomplete
knowledge of the relevant primary and secondary sources ...’

Griffiths insists that yava[dvīpa] and javā referred to the island of Java or a
part of it since the very beginning, denying a possible earlier location of a
place of that name in Sumatra. That is his good right, but there are other
opinions, so his views are not “communes opiniones”. For locating the javā
of Old Khmer inscriptions that is not significant, because the latter all date
from after the rise of Sañjaya to paramountcy, when the center of the Yava
realm in my opinion too was in Central Java.
But he continues by falsely insinuating against me:
‘... he cherry-picks from the sources he uses, ignoring elements which do not fit into the
“unitary picture” that he aims to present (pp. 112, 136).’

Mahdi (2008: 112) located Faxian’s Yēpótí, identified as Yava[dvīpa], in the

basin of the Batang Hari in Sumatra. Others had already located a Yava or

Archipel 86, Paris, 2013, pp. 229-234

230 Waruno Mahdi

Jaba in the south of Sumatra (Griffiths keeps quiet on this, the cherries being
perhaps too sour), and my only “revisionism” was placing it in the river
basin. I did not deny the possibility of other locations, but explained why I
considered the one I chose to be most likely. I also painstakingly cited
deviant opinions when I located Hēlíng, though attributed to Shépó, not in
Java, but on the Peninsula based on two independent Chinese texts (Mahdi
2008: 127).
Important for locating Yēpótí is Faxian’s notation that on leaving the port,
the ship headed northeast to fetch Guangzhou. Sailing in that direction from
West Java would have led it to the southwestern coast of Kalimantan.
Griffiths offers no coherent arguments for rejecting my location of Yēpótí
in Sumatra, other than the speculation that the source text ‘may be in error’.
He names no reason why it may be in error, except that it indeed does not ‘fit
into the “unitary picture” that he aims to present’. Perhaps for this reason
too, he ignores references to Sumatra as ‘the island of Java minor’ (l’isle de
Javva la meneur) by Marco Polo (Pauthier 1865: 565), or as ‘island of Java’
(jazīrah al-Jāwa) by Ibn-Battuta (1964: 617; see Mahdi 2007: 73). Instead,
he again falsely accuses me of ignoring relevant data (pp. 55–56):
‘... although the author rightly observes that it is strange to find the apparently Malay (or
Batak) name Merapi applied to the important volcano at the heart of Java, he ignores the
fact that the pre-modern sources are not unanimous in naming it Merapi: ... ..., some
manuscript sources call the mountain Mandaragni [sic], which suggests (because agni is a
synonym of api) that, at least in popular etymology, the element mar- was associated with
the mythical mountain Mandara, rather than with any Malay/Batak prefix.’

Implying that Merapi in Java could result from folk-etymological association

with his “Mandaragni” (no source cited; expected: mandara + agni >
*mandarāgni) is not realistic. A putative replacement by mar- is imaginable
for Sumatra, not Java. Here it seems likelier that manuscript writers replaced
the prefix by a for them more familiar Sanskritism — if this really was folk
etymology. But such a monosyllable / trisyllable exchange seems farfetched.
An attribute follows the head in Malay (and Javanese), but precedes it in
Sanskrit (like in English), cf. agniparvata ‘fire mountain, volcano’ (Monier-
Williams 1899: 609; parvata ‘mountain’). A Sanskrit *mandarāgni (not in
Monier-Williams) would mean ‘mountain fire’ (not ‘fire mountain’), not a
likely original name for a mountain. Griffiths’ “Mandaragni” may have been
a mechanical calque of gunung Merapi by officials with limited mastery of
Sanskrit — not unusual, compare the word order (and spelling variation) in
the following references to Mount Mandara (with Sanskrit giri ‘mountain’):
mandāragiri on a copper plate at Trowulan (Stutterheim 1940: 49);
giri manḍara in the Deśavarṇana [a.k.a. Nāgarakṛtāgama] (Pigeaud 1960: 50);
gunuŋ mandara in the Arjunawijaya (Zoetmulder 1982: 1100)

Archipel 86, Paris, 2013

 À propos de 231

Thus, should one of the names [gunung] Merapi and “Mandaragni” indeed
have been derived from the other, the former must have been the precursor.
Having failed to recognise the direction of change, confused a possible
calque with folk etymology, and ignored Sanskrit syntax, he now accuses me
of unprofessionally ignoring relative dating of mountain names (p. 56):
‘...the only pre-Islamic indigenous source known to me that seems to refer to the Merapi
in West Sumatra is an Old Malay inscription from around the time of Ādityavarman,
which names it not Marapi but Mahāmeru. ... ...
Mahdi seems not to have considered the question when these mountains started to bear
their modern names, ... ’

I did consider that, but it perhaps again overstrained his linguistic capacities.
Sanskritisms like Mahāmeru and Mandar[ā]gni could only have appeared
after Hinduisation. Mountains subjected to earlier veneration typically have
indigenous names (Iyang, Dieng, Tangkuban Perahu, a.o.). Natural
landmarks existed, and had common names, long before scribes took notice,
compare river names in Europe reflecting words for ‘river, water/moisture,
etc.’ such as the Danube, Elbe, Volga, a.o. In North Sumatra, [gunung]
marapi ‘fiery [mountain]’ would have been a common descriptive term for
‘volcano’.
Don’t get me wrong: like most fellow readers, I too do not doubt in Arlo
Griffiths’ highly qualified expertise. But this would imply that he is fooling
uninformed readers on purpose so as to discredit me. I merely respect the
judicial fairness principle of in dubio pro reo, because being ignorant is not a
crime. Then, however, Griffiths himself provides a solution to the dilemma,
when he really goes on rampage against me (pp. 56–57):
‘... Mahdi makes egregious use of the first indigenous document to use the term
Yavadvīpa, namely the Sanskrit inscription of Canggal dating to 732 CE, which against
all common sense is forcibly read as documenting a transplantation of a polity of that
name from Sumatra to Java. To this end, he insists on an idiosyncratic literal
interpretation of the preterite form āsīt at the start of the narrative portion of this
inscription. ...’
... About the use of the past tense here, Waruno Mahdi affirms that it is “only
understandable if not Java, but a Yavadvipa in Sumatra […] is implied”. The author is
evidently unaware that this is an entirely commonplace way for any Sanskrit story to be
opened,...’

By ‘common sense’ he means that Yava[dvīpa] had always been in Java —

he seems unaware of early navigation around the Malayan Peninsula, when
ships sailing around the Peninsula had to wait for the turn of the monsoon in
a convenient haven south of the tip, e.g. on the Batang Hari or Musi. Why
common sense would locate such a haven (noted by Faxian as Yēpótí) on the
upper Bengawan Solo (closest to Canggal) remains Arlo Griffiths’ secret.
But besides erasing my words ‘vanquished almost 50 years earlier by Sri
Vijaya’ (replaced by three dots between brackets), Griffiths embarks on a

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232 Waruno Mahdi

complex manipulation of facts. I cited the text of the Canggal inscription

from the readings by two internationally recognised experts, Hendrik Kern
and Himansu Bhusan Sarkar, representing common opinion (also conform
with B. Ch. Chhabra) on the subject (Mahdi 2008: 127):
‘There was an excellent island named Yava, most splendid, with grain in abundance,
provided with gold mines, the immortals have taken possession of it, ...’

I had not, but other authors had found the preterite form ‘(there) was’ to
be unusual and, considering it a scribal error, re-edited it to ‘(there) is’.
Griffiths had to reverse that to let me seem ignorant. In reality, I explained
why the preterite must not be an error: first, the indication that immortals
had taken possession of it implied that it was an abandoned former base
(citing an analogical instance in an inscription of King Sindok). Griffiths
thinks he can avoid mentioning this, and cover up his derogating reversal of
the actual past / present tense interpretations, by producing a new reading as
if by sleight of hand, replacing the last above-cited phrase with:
‘..., as though procured by the immortals from heaven, ...’

Regardless of which reading will prove to be correct, Griffiths has no right to

misquote me to make my arguments seem ignorant or irrational. The same
with my note that Yava’s being ‘provided with gold mines’ suggests it was in
Sumatra rather than in Java, to which Griffith remarks that conventions of
Sanskrit literature required describing sites as ‘rich in gold and precious
gems’. The Canggal inscription refers not to poetic gold, but to gold mines
and abundance of grain (not gems). I explicitly compared that with
analogous reference to Iabadíou by Ptolemy, and to Yavadvīpa in the
Rāmāyana.
Second, most importantly, the subsequent lines mention two kings, Sanna
and Sañjaya. The former ruled on ‘that island named Yava’, and ‘ascended ...
into heaven’, leaving the realm behind, ‘bereft of its protector’. The other
‘subjugated a surrounding circle of kings’ to attain the rank of sovereign. So
Yava once already had a ruler before Sañjaya achieved sovereignty. Griffiths
simply leaves all that out, to then state (p. 58):
‘When Mahdi affirms that “the central message of the Canggal inscription is evidently
that Sanjaya had [...] attained the formal rank that allowed him to challenge Sri Vijaya”,
one cannot help wonder how this scholar manages to read so much into a text which says
not an iota about Śrīvijaya.
..., that Sañjaya has installed a liṅga of Śiva in the year 654 Śaka, and that this king
intended to declare with this installation as much as with the inscription itself his
sovereignty over Yavadvīpa.’

The passage which he replaced by three dots beween brackets this time is
‘now gained the status of sovereign and has now’. He needed to obscure the

Archipel 86, Paris, 2013

 À propos de 233

point I made, that the previous paramount king of Yava, Sanna, had been
defeated by Sri Vijaya, and that Sañjaya in Central Java had to subjugate a
circle of kings first to gain the formal status of sovereign. Only after that
could Sañjaya proceed to wrest back Yava’s paramountcy from Sri Vijaya.
If Yava[dvīpa] had always been in Central Java, then Sañjaya was not the
first king, but could succeed Sanna without defeating a circle of kings (le roi
est mort, vive le roi!). If he was the first king in Central Java, then Sanna’s
Yava must have been somewhere else, and fallen, hence, literally: ‘(there)
was’. The Canggal inscription announces achievement of Sañjaya’s first
step, becoming sovereign, not yet the second, to defeat the conqueror of
Sanna’s Yava. He is declared king (narapati), not explicitly of Yava[dvīpa]
(!), but not yet paramount (śrī mahārāja) which required the second step.
I had not read anything into the text. It is Griffiths who had to remove all
mention of Sanna ruling Yava, and of Sañjaya’s subjugating a circle of kings,
out of the text. For the same reason, he ignored the pause in Chinese reports
about Shépó prior to Sañjaya’s rule, and that no significant archaeological
sites in Central Java date from before Sañjaya (see Mahdi 2008: 127 fn. 52
quoting van der Meulen, and 132 fn. 67 quoting John Miksic).
Griffiths is no longer cherry-picking here, this is deliberate falsification
of history by censoring data, a grave and unforgivable violation of basic
principles of research. His baseless accusations and derogating insults
against me are evidently part of his scheme to remove deviant facts from the
record by making them seem untrustworthy.
Nobody is perfect, and at the end of my 2008 article I explicitly noted
that it was nothing final, just ‘hopefully ... another step forward’.
Nonetheless, it was apparently better than I thought, if somebody as highly
qualified as Arlo Griffiths had to resort to so many falsehoods to contradict
me. This is all the more reason for me now to express my sincere gratitude to
the editors of that time for having placed my article in this journal.

REfERENCES

Battuta, [Muhammad Ibn-Abdallah] Ibn-, 1964, Riḥlat Ibn-Baṭūṭa. Bairūt: Dār Ṣādr & Dār
Bairūt [in Arabic script].
Mahdi, Waruno, 2007, Malay Words and Malay Things, Frankfurter Forschungen zu
Südostasien 3. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
––, 2008, Yavadvipa and the Merapi Volcano in West Sumatra. Archipel 75: 111–143.
Monier-Williams, Monier, 1899, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. New edition, greatly
enlarged and improved with the collaboration of E. Leumann, C. Cappeller and other.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Pauthier, G., 1865, (ed.) Le livre de Marco Polo, citoyen de Venise, conseiller privé et
commissaire impérial de Khoubilai-Khaân : rédigé en français sous sa dictée en 1298 par
Rusticien de Pise: [...]. Paris : Librairie de Firmin Didot Frères, Fils et Cie.

Archipel 86, Paris, 2013

234 Waruno Mahdi

Pigeaud, Theodore G. Th. 1960, Java in the 14th Century: A Study in Cultural History. The
Nāgara-Kĕrtāgama by Rakawi Prapañca of Majapahit, 1365 A.D. I. Javanese Texts in
Transcription, 3rd edition, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
Translation Series 4, 1. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Stutterheim, W.F., 1940, editorial comment. In: Inscripties van Nederlandsch-Indië,
aflevering 1, p. 49. Batavia: Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en
Wetenschappen.
Zoetmulder, P. J., 1982, Old Javanese-English Dictionary, with the collaboration of
S. O. Robson. ’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff.

Archipel 86, Paris, 2013