A bronze Buddha with two bodhisattvas, 8th century
Buddha Attended by Bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara and Maitreya, second half of the 8th century
Marked Palembang

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Srivijaya, the sea kingdom

From Sumatra, the kings of Srivijaya controlled the straits between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, taxing the ships that passed. It was a great centre of Buddhist learning.

Place
Palembang · The Strait of Malacca · Jambi · Borobudur, JavaAsia
Laid out as
A routeA road, a sea lane or a trade network, followed stop by stop.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. Palembang
  2. The Strait of Malacca
  3. Jambi
  4. Borobudur, Java
  1. IMasters of the straits
  2. IIThe Kedukan Bukit inscription
  3. IIIYijing studies Buddhism
  4. IVShipwrecks and cargoes
  5. VBorobudur nearby
  6. VIDecline

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Dapunta Hyang
  • Yijing
  • Atisha

Objects

  • The Belitung shipwreck cargo
  • Kedukan Bukit inscription

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

AD 650 to 1300. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?