Un exemple de civilisation de ports-entrepôts des Mers du Sud : le Sud Kedah (Malaysia) Ve-XIVe siècles

Abstract

The civilization of South Kedah (Malaysia) was closely linked, from the 5th to the 14th centuries A.D. to international sea trade between several parts of Asia: China, the Middle East and India. Entrepôt ports arose, which were more or less controlled by the Sumatran thalassocracy of Srivijaya. The archaeological remains consist, on the one hand, of large amounts of sherds of ceramic (mostly Chinese), sherds of glass vessels from the Middle East, and beads, and, on the other hand, of the ruins of temples devoted to Buddhism or Hinduism. After the 10th century, these two religions were probably practised together with predominating Hinduism. These temples were the local pragmatic adaptation of classic Indian structures. They are not evidence of an Indian colonization or of a small Indianized Malay state but were only ordered by the Indian traders and built in the neighbourhood of the entrepôt ports with the permission of the local Malay potentates. It is very probable that the other communities of foreign merchants also had their temples and their mosques but that these were built with perishable materials.

Beads, social change and interaction between India and South-east Asia

“…They are considered to be the evidence of a traders' network sharing the same cult (Wisseman Christie 1995;Das 1968: 57-59). Indianised statues of the Hindu god Visnu, of the mitred type, appear in the Malay peninsula at Chaiya (Jacq-Hergoualc'h 1992;O'Connor 1972), in the Mekong delta (Dupont 1955) and in Indonesia in West Java and in south Sumatra at much the same time. Again these are considered by some scholars as an expression of a pan-regional network of artistic exchange (Dalsheimer & Manguin 1998).…”

State formation in early maritime Southeast Asia; A consideration of the theories and the data

“…The numerous archaeological remains of the Merbok and Muda River valleys in Kedah, on the west coast of the Malay peninsula, have been the subject of several surveys and excavations over the past fifty years and more (Quaritch Wales 1940;Lamb 1963;Peacock 1980;Nik Hassan 1984Allen 1988;Jacq-Hergoualc'h 1992). Two major settlement sites have been found in the region to date: one along the Bujang River, which runs into the Merbok, and another, which has come to light quite recently, at Kampong Sungei Mas, between the Muda and Merbok rivers (Allen 1988;Nik Hassan 1984;Jacq-Hergoualc'h 1992). These two sites are apparently the remains of port settlements dating to the late first and early second millennia, the Kampong Sungei Mas site having apparently been abandoned by the twelfth century (perhaps because of silting problems) in favour of the Bujang River site about five kilometres to the north.…”

Volume 16 : 2018

“…Data obtained from the subsequent brick analysis will be compared with the composition data of clay material around the Bujang Valley area, Kedah. It is important to carry out material composition analysis of the ancient bricks of this site because the analysis can determine the raw materials used to produce the bricks whether it locally made or not, because there are scholars who think that the candis found in Old Kedah was built by the Indian traders (Jacq-Hergoualc'h, 1992;Treloar, 1978;Wheatley, 1964). Besides that, the bricks that were found at this site also have different sizes and shapes (refer figure 1 until 4 below).…”