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Tarumanagara: What's in a name?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2011

Robert Wessing

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Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 2011, pp. 325 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2011

Introduction

Probably since the publication of Nicolaas J. Krom's Hindoe-Javaansche Geschiedenis,Footnote 1 based on an observation by C.M. Pleyte, the name of the fourth- to seventh-centuries CE West Javanese kingdom of Tarumanagara has often been associated with the word tarum, the Sundanese name of the indigo plant.Footnote 2 This plant, which is native among others to both Java and much of Southeast Asia and Southern China,Footnote 3 is also thought to have given its name to a major river of West Java, the Citarum.Footnote 4

Krom does not support his assumption with concrete data, but merely states that ‘there are numerous names of places and states known that are derived from the plant kingdom [so] that in theory there cannot be any objection to also consider this name to have such an origin’Footnote 5 — without, furthermore, giving specific examples of the other states that he had in mind.Footnote 6 While it is certainly true that some states have been named after plants or animals, it must be observed that this often had to do with the conditions of their founding rather than with an alleged primary commodity. Majapahit, for instance, gained its name from the prophecy that its founder, Raden Susuruh, would find a maja tree with one bitter (pahit) fruit at the location where he was to found his kingdom.Footnote 7 Similarly, Tawang Alun, the founder of the East Javanese kingdom Macan Putih (White Tiger), heard a supernatural voice telling him to ride a white tiger he met on the road to the place where he was to clear the forest for his kingdom of Macan Putih.Footnote 8

Krom's assumption was supported by, among others, Willemine Fruin-Mees, to whom the connection was certain (Dutch: zeker), and Hermanus de Graaf who was less convinced.Footnote 9 De Graaf considered the word taruma only reminiscent of the names of the river and the plant, noting that in the past indigo was often used in batik, but wondering whether this craft was practised as far back as the fifth century. Others have claimed, however, that West Javanese tarum-leaves were a major crop and export product.Footnote 10 This last is curious because while Chinese inventories of Javanese produce between the fifth and the fifteenth centuries detail many products, indigo leaf is never mentioned among them.Footnote 11 Furthermore, if we may rely on much later reports, the product was in any case of indifferent quality.Footnote 12 It does, therefore, not seem likely that the plant or its product would have served as a standard for a glorious kingdom, which is how the inscriptions of its fifth century ruler, Purnavarman, typify this realm.

Toponyms

Attention must also be paid to a discussion concerning toponyms connected with the name Taruma. In view of the Hindu orientation of the kingdom, to be discussed below, early writers, who often assumed an Indian colonisation of Java and Southeast Asia,Footnote 13 proposed that the name might have been an Indian place name used by ‘colonists’ in their new homeland. The basis for this argument lies in the fact that the place name Taruma occurs in several places in South India. Commonly mentioned is an inscription at Cholapuram in which a village called Tarumapuram seemingly forms the boundary of another village.Footnote 14 The name also occurs further south ‘in the vicinity of Cape Comorin’.Footnote 15 J.L. MoensFootnote 16 observes that with cultural expansion it is common for sacred toponyms to be transplanted to the new location (assuming Indian colonisation), even though there is no discussion of either the sacrality of these places in South India, or of other reasons why either of them would be significant enough to lend its name to the West Javanese state.

Paul Wheatley and othersFootnote 17 go on to link the occurrence of these place names with the fact that two waterways mentioned in the West Javanese inscriptions (see below) also have their counterparts in India and Ceylon. WheatleyFootnote 18 concludes that ‘it would seem likely that the name Tārumā was also probably adopted from the subcontinent’ although, he continues, there may have been influence from a local toponym, for example, the river Citarum. The two waterways will be discussed later, and, as will be seen, the occurrences of tarum in place names both in India and West Java, rather than being a direct transplant, are underlain by the same logic. In this brief article, then, I challenge Krom's assumption, and propose an alternative source for the kingdom's name, one more in line with the Hindu orientation of its mode of kingship and the South Indian contacts it maintained.Footnote 19

The kingdom

Tarumanagara, which existed between the fourth and the seventh centuries CE, and seems to have had its ‘golden age’ in the fifth century,Footnote 20 is known primarily from a number of Sanskrit inscriptions in the South Indian PallavaFootnote 21 script attributed to its fifth-century ruler, Purnavarman, and from a mention in the Chinese monk Faxian's account of his travels.Footnote 22 If we take the locations of these inscribed stones as an indicator, Tarumanagara covered much of West Java west of present-day Jakarta, with the inscription found near Munjul in the Kabupaten Pandeglang, the farthest southwest.Footnote 23 Several inscriptions are clustered around present-day Bogor, and one, the Tugu inscription, is located east of the present harbour of Tanjung Priok near Jakarta, where the centre of the state may have been located.Footnote 24 Krom,Footnote 25 based on his association between the name of the river Citarum and that of the kingdom, wonders whether the kingdom might not have extended east to this river. Willem Frederik Stutterheim writes that some of the inscriptions were found near the Tarum river, making for a natural conclusion ‘that the capital of that kingdom had lain somewhere at this river, perhaps near its estuary’.Footnote 26 More recently, Kenneth R. Hall wrote that King Purnavarman ‘ruled the Tarum River basin just east of present-day Jakarta’.Footnote 27 This idea, however, is quite conjectural since a location ‘near the Tarum river’ and ‘just east’ are matters of judgement: the Tugu inscription (see below), for instance, lies near Jakarta while the mouth of the river Citarum lies an estimated 22.5 kilometres overland from Tanjung Priok, south of which the Tugu inscription was found.Footnote 28 To travel from Tanjung Priok to the mouth of the Citarum, furthermore, one has to cross another river, the Bekasi — along the banks of which Poerbatjaraka located the capital of Tarumanagara.Footnote 29

Unlike the Tugu inscription, the ones in the interior refer to King Purnavarman's footprints, associating them with the footprints of the god Vishnu (the Ciaruteun inscription)Footnote 30 as well as with those of the god Indra's elephant (the Kebon Kopi inscription).Footnote 31 They also mention his conquests, and the fact that he was magnanimous and generous toward his allies, but that his enemies should fear him. Thus, for example, the Jambu inscription found on the hill Pasir Koleangkak near Jambu, which has a pair of footprints inscribed in it, reads:

This is the pair of foot-prints of the glorious king of Tārumā, the illustrious Pūrnavarman by name, who used to be liberal in giving gifts, who was ever grateful for and appreciative of the services rendered to him, whose armor was famed to be impregnable by the arrows of the hosts of foes, [and] who [thus] enjoyed the unique position – the pair of foot-prints, that was ever capable of extirpating the cities of [his] enemies, [and] that was always as great a source of joy to his faithful allies as it was a veritable thorn in the side of his adversaries.Footnote 32

The religious orientation of Tarumanagara and its ruler, Purnavarman, was ‘roughly Hindu … encompassing reverence not only for Vishnu and Indra but also, apparently, for Siva’.Footnote 33 The footprints mentioned in the inscriptions are in any case likened to those of Vishnu.Footnote 34 In two of the inscriptions Purnavarman is also associated with the god IndraFootnote 35 of whom Vishnu is sometimes portrayed as a counterpart.Footnote 36

This identification with Indra is significant because, as Robert Heine-GeldernFootnote 37 has pointed out, the idea behind state organisation in states founded on a Hindu cosmological model was that the state should be a microcosmic reflection of the larger cosmos, and that the organisation of the state must parallel that of the cosmos. The centre of the cosmos was thought to be Mount Meru, the home and palace of Indra, king of the gods.Footnote 38 If the alignment between the cosmos and the state were successful, the ruler's palace at the (symbolic) centre of the realm, and Indra's palace at the centre of the cosmos would, necessarily, be in the same place; they would be identical, giving the ruler possession of Indra's throne.Footnote 39 Indeed, the present-day palaces (kraton) of Yogyakarta and Surakarta are styled Kendran, Indra's palace.Footnote 40

Rivers

Like Indra, the Vedic god of rain and fertility,Footnote 41 the Hindu ruler at the centre of his realm and the cosmos embodied creative energy. The ruler had to be pure and maintain order and tranquility, which would lead to general welfare in his realm.Footnote 42 The condition of the realm reflected the state of the ruler; a tranquil and proper king on the throne would naturally lead to tranquility and welfare in the realm. One indicator of this condition was fertility, achieved primarily through the provision and management of water.Footnote 43 This kingly function again reflects that of the god Indra, whose heaven is the source of India's sacred rivers, the Ganges, the Jumna and the Saraswati. The Tugu inscription, which is specifically about the management of water, must be seen in the context of these beliefs:

The Candrabhāgā [canal], formerly dug by the great king of kings, Pīnabāhu, passing along the famous city, flowed into the sea. The beautiful Gomatī [canal] with clean water, dug within 21 days – beginning from the 8th day of the dark fortnight of the month Phālguna to the 13th day of the bright fortnight of the month of Caitra – in the 22nd year of the prosperous reign of the illustrious Pūrnavarman, glorious, virtuous and powerful as also most excellent among kings, - measuring in length 6122 dhanus [bows],Footnote 44 cutting across the cantonment of the grandfather, the saintly king, and having caused a great gift of 1000 cows to the Brāhmanas, is [now] flowing forth.Footnote 45

This inscription, located at the centre of the realm, was not concerned with impressing either conquered or possibly rebellious subjects in the outlying areas, which is the tone of the inscriptions mentioned earlier.Footnote 46 Rather, it illustrates that Purnavarman was indeed a proper ruler who added to his people's welfare by creating a watercourse.

To my knowledge, the specific mention of these two canals is the first reference in Java to an aspect of construction that aligned the ruler's palace (kraton) with that of the god Indra, namely that the palace or the city had to lie between two rivers or in the oxbow of one.Footnote 47 In this it reflected Indra's heaven where the river Ganges encloses the city of Brahma on Mount Meru in an oxbow,Footnote 48 and, after dividing into the four sacred rivers, embraces various cities and temples.Footnote 49

In Tarumanagara, the first, the Candrabhāgā canal is said to flow past the city, presumably Taruma, while the second, the Gomatī canal, was dug across the cantonment of the ruler's grandfather.Footnote 50 Given the difficulty of inscribing these things in stone, it can be assumed that this fact had some symbolic significance, and was not just a passing observation. As has been noted elsewhere,Footnote 51 having the watercourse pass through an ancestral location, usually a graveyard but here the ancestral ‘compound’, imbues the water with ancestral blessings, making it even more efficacious.Footnote 52 The Gomatī canal does not seem to have had its source in the earlier Candrabhāgā one, which would have created an artificial oxbow, but this is not crucial, as is illustrated by present-day Yogyakarta.Footnote 53 The fact that these were canals rather than natural rivers is also not unusual, either in Java or in Southeast Asia generally.Footnote 54

Dharma

The canals will, of course, have had other, practical uses, such as irrigation and drainage,Footnote 55 but that their primary function was symbolic is clear from their names, Candrabhāgā and Gomatī.Footnote 56 In the literature it has been noted that these are the names of well-known rivers in both North and South India,Footnote 57 leading Jean Ph. VogelFootnote 58 to wonder why a Punjab (North-Indian) river would be mentioned in West Java. Vogel found it most plausible that these were names familiar to the Hindu immigrants, who then applied them locally — an argument similar to the one made for the name Taruma.Footnote 59

Leaving the question of an alleged Hindu colonisation aside, the geographical origin of these rivers is less significant than their symbolic meaning.Footnote 60 Of the seven sacred rivers of India, the most commonly named ones are the Gangā (Ganges), the Yamunā (Jumna) and the Sarsuti (Saraswati).Footnote 61 Other great rivers, however, include the Candrabhāgā and the Gomatī, of which it is said that ‘these rivers are transcendental’ and ‘one can be purified by remembering them, touching them or bathing in them’.Footnote 62 Of the Candrabhāgā it is furthermore said that it is ‘the best of rivers’ which is ‘always holy everywhere’.Footnote 63 The Gomatī, on the other hand, is a tributary of the Ganges and is one of the most sacred rivers of North India.Footnote 64 Its name means rich in cattle,Footnote 65 which would explain the thousand cows that the Tugu inscription mentions as having been donated to the Brahmanas.Footnote 66

By having these canals with symbolically charged namesFootnote 67 flow by or flank his palace, therefore, Purnavarman was making a claim to being a proper ruler, a representation of Vishnu or Indra who had added to the welfare of his realm and created order in the hinterland — a claim that is at least implicit in the other inscriptions. Of course, establishing order and morality was no more than the ruler's duty, his dharma, through which ‘the community, the gods and the universe were held together’.Footnote 68

The South Indian connection

As was mentioned earlier, Purnavarman's inscriptions are written in a version of the Pallava script of South India. This is an area with which Southeast Asia maintained trade connections as far back as perhaps the second century CE,Footnote 69 mostly by sea, this being the shortest and most obvious way to travel between the Coromandel Coast and Southeast Asia; even the monk Faxian returned to China on an Indian ship rather than on a Chinese one.Footnote 70

Hendrik KernFootnote 71 observes that in Java early contact would have been with Indian sailors and traders, accounting for the prakrt name of Java, YavadīvuFootnote 72 rather than for example, a Sanskrit one. This, however, ignores the trade and exploration carried out by indigenous sailors, sometimes all just called ‘Malay’.Footnote 73 Indeed, John MiksicFootnote 74 notes that it is likely that these sailors were primarily Indonesian, and that no archaeological evidence has as yet been found for long-distance Indian sailing vessels. This in turn does not, of course, exclude the possibility of South Indian Tamils being part of the ships' crews.

However this may be, over the centuries Tamils were increasingly present in Java, occupying important positions.Footnote 75 Over the same span of time Tamil loan words in Indonesian languages increased significantly as well,Footnote 76 probably reflecting not just an increase in the importance of trade but also in the transmission of ideas. Given the Indian ‘gentrification’ of the local culture that Jan Wisseman ChristieFootnote 77 sees as occurring, this would almost certainly have included notions about the duties of a proper ruler, his dharma, which in Tamil is pronounced tarumam.Footnote 78 I.M. Tieken of Leiden UniversityFootnote 79 further observes that if tarumam were to be combined with nagara, the double consonant in the resulting tarumamnagara would tend to simplify into a single one, thus giving us Tarumanagara. There are indeed parallels to this in the Tamil area itself. Richard A. Frasca,Footnote 80 for instance, mentions Tarumaraja (King of Dharma) and Tarumaputtiran (Son of Dharma), among others. The name Tarumanagara, then, proclaims Purnavarman's kingdom to be a State of Dharma, a realm where law and virtue reigned, a fertile place of prosperity and welfare — a nice place to live. The name of Tarumapuram, the supposed namesake village in South India, may well have a similar origin: a place where dharma was maintained.

Citarum

There is still the question of the river Citarum. If Purnavarman's authority indeed reached east as far as that, it would be tempting to read this name as River of Dharma, but this remains speculative. Stutterheim'sFootnote 81 linking of the Citarum and its source on West Java's Mount Malabar with Tarumapura and Mount Malabar in South India is tenuous, to say the least, especially considering the temporal discrepancy of several centuries between the fourth and fifth centuries and the eleventh century CE. Yet, the Citarum seems to nevertheless have been an important place for meditation, at least in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries when the hermit Bujangga Manik is said to have meditated at its source.Footnote 82 Whether it already was a spiritually significant place in the fourth and fifth centuries remains a question, though the name of the river does seem to point in that direction, especially since it twice was the boundary between two West Javanese states, namely between the kingdom of Galuh and the kingdom of Sunda, and between the Sultanate of Cirebon and the Sultanate of BantenFootnote 83 — though these last two are unlikely to have been concerned with dharma.

It could also be that we have a happy, though confusing, coincidence here, namely that Pleyte's observation concerning the link between the Sundanese name of the indigo plantFootnote 84 and the river's name is right, especially since indigo is said to have grown along its length.Footnote 85 Thus, while Wheatley'sFootnote 86 observation that the name Tārumā originated in the Indian sub-continent is correct – eleventh-century Tarumapuram – his observation that in West Java it ‘may not have been uninfluenced by the existence of a local toponym’ can also be reversed, leading to the extension of the Tamil meaning of tarumam to the pre-existing name of the river: this would fit the Sundanese sense of humour, and their delight in playing with their language.Footnote 87

The question of Sanskrit

There remains a small problem. It will have been noticed that throughout this article I have written Taruma and Tarumanagara without the Sanskrit diacritical marks indicating a lengthening of the vowels, except where I cited an author who used these marks. In this I was not just following modern usage, which tends to drop them. The problem is that tārumā is not a Sanskrit word.Footnote 88 As we have seen, the word does occur in Tamil, but then without the diacritical marks. The question then is why were Purnavarman's inscriptions written using these marks, as they were.Footnote 89 As Wisseman Christie points out, ‘spelling of indigenous terms in early Sanskrit inscriptions in Java tended to be a bit variable, reflecting personal choices of the composer of the texts’.Footnote 90 This arbitrary use of diacriticals, she continues, did not apply only to indigenous words. ‘It must have depended in part upon the level of competence in Sanskrit of the author and inscriber of each inscription’, especially since the difference between the long and short ‘a’ is not recognised in Indonesian languages. This level of competence, as KernFootnote 91 observed, was the purview of Brahmans and perhaps some Ksatrias, but hardly that of sailors and traders who used ‘whatever Indian script [was] … currently available to local scribes’.Footnote 92 Purnavarman's court, as we have seen, based itself on Indian religious ideas, and thus needed scribes who were competent in Sanskrit. This does not mean, however, that the best among these immediately set sail for West Java, as is clear from Wisseman Christie's remarks. Rather, Purnavarman must have used such skill as was available, accounting for the sanskritification of non-Sanskrit words through the use of the diacritical marks.

Competence in Sanskrit varied over time and space. Thus as late as the thirteenth century, the Sumatran Batu Bapahat inscription uses a mixture of the local Malay dialect and the local version of Sanskrit of that time, as well as the Tamil language.Footnote 93 The courts in East Java, on the other hand, seem to have had greater access to learned South Indians competent in Sanskrit, at least by the fourteenth century.Footnote 94 Yet, one should be cautious because, as Raechelle RubinsteinFootnote 95 points out for present-day Bali, priests may recite their texts relatively fluently without fully understanding them.

This brings up the question of who the presumed readers of these and similar inscriptions were. If, as was true of Bali centuries later,Footnote 96 Sanskrit was used by priests for religious purposes, and the ruler's subjects (or the common people beyond the realm's boundaries) were unlikely to be competent in the language, it is possible that the inscriptions are addressed to the realm's tutelary spirits and deitiesFootnote 97 upon whose goodwill the welfare of the realm was thought to depend. In that case the inscriptions can be seen as ritual narrations of a desired outcome, a plea to the tutelary spirits that may be seen as performative in the sense of John Austin.Footnote 98 Their utterance-through-inscription, perhaps aided by their composition in a sacred language and placement in liminal locations like border areas and the centre, brings about the desired state.

Conclusion

Thus, rather than being a reference to an at best mediocre agricultural product, the name Tarumanagara alluded to the philosophical underpinnings of the state, the cosmic rules, including dharma, through which welfare and tranquility were brought about for the benefit of the populace. These rules spelled out the place of the ruler in the cosmic totality as well as his tasks and the way that these were to be performed.

These ideas derived from South India and were brought to Java and elsewhere in Southeast Asia through trade connections that may date back to the second century CE and were certainly present in West Java by the fifth century CE. Without positing an Indian colonisation of the area, contacts between Southeast Asia and India were intensive enough to attract small settlements of merchants in, for example, Sumatra and Burma, which were important enough to the local economy to leave significant traces. Through these as well as direct contacts in India itself, Indian cosmological notions about the nature of the state came to be introduced in Southeast Asia generally, including Tarumanagara. This can be seen in the use of the names of sacred Indian rivers in order to symbolically access their holiness for local use. The detailed references to Indian gods in the inscriptions served the same purpose. The fact that at times the Sanskrit used in these efforts was somewhat defective did not negate this effort.

Footnotes

Ibid

References

1 Krom, Nicolaas J., Hindoe-Javaansche Geschiedenis (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931), p. 78Google Scholar.

2 Especially Indigofera sp. though many other plants also bear the name tarum, yielding a deep-blue dye (indigo; Sund. nila). See Hardjadibrata, R. Rabindranat, Sundanese English dictionary (Jakarta: Dunia Pustaka Jaya, 2003), p. 801Google Scholar; and Coolsma, Sierk, Soendaneesch-Hollandsch Woordenboek (Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff, 1911), p. 245Google Scholar. The Sundanese are the indigenous people of West Java.

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6 Dr Thomaz (personal communication, 11 Nov. 2009) suggests Manila in the Philippines as an example. However, it was a small Muslim trading port rather than a state or a capital city; see http://www.philippines.hvu.nl/Luzon4.htm and http://www.aenet.org/philip/manila.htm (both last accessed 13 April 2010).

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13 For instance, Kern, ‘Over den Invloed’, p. 16; J.L. Moens, ‘Was Pūrnavarman van Tārumā Saura?’, een, Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 80 (1940): 78–109Google Scholar. Elsewhere, however, Kern, Hendrik, ‘De Invloed der Indische Beschaving op Java en Omliggende Eilanden’, in Verspreide Geschriften, vol. 15, ed. Kern, H. (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1928), p. 187Google Scholar, writes that there was no proof whatsoever of an Indian conquest, pointing instead to a lively trade. Jan Wisseman Christie further notes that it is probable that the population and its leaders were local people, perhaps under the tutelage of imported Brahmins. See Christie, Jan Wisseman, ‘State formation in early maritime Southeast Asia: A consideration of the theories and the data’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 151(1995): 258Google Scholar. This would, as Miksic, John N., ‘The classical cultures of Indonesia’, in Southeast Asia from prehistory to history, ed. Glover, Ian and Bellwood, Peter (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004), p. 237Google Scholar, observes, make the adoption of cultural elements from South Asia a ‘conscious intellectual exercise’ by Indonesian elites.

14 Hultzsch, Eugen, South-Indian inscriptions, vol. 3: Miscellaneous inscriptions from the Tamil country, parts I and II (Madras: Government of India, Central Publication Branch, Calcutta, 1929), p. 159Google Scholar; Chhabra, B.Ch., Expansion of Indo-Aryan culture during Pallava rule (as evidenced by inscriptions) (New Delhi: Munshi Ram Manohar Lal, 1965)Google Scholar.

15 Wheatley, Paul, Nāgara and commandery: Origins of Southeast Asian urban traditions (Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Geography, 1983), p. 250, note 13Google Scholar. Nothing more is said about the Cape Comorin location and the two places might be identical, as Schnitger, Frederic M., ‘Tārumanāgara’, Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 74 (1934): 187Google Scholar, writes that the village Tarumapura is located about 10 miles north of Cape Comorin. This place, however, dates to the eleventh century CE (Stutterheim, Willem Frederik, ‘Note on the cultural relations between South-India and Java’, Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 79 (1939): 82Google Scholar; Dr Yellava Subbarayalu, personal communication, 11 Nov. 2009). Given this date and the rarity of the occurrence of the name, Dr Subbarayalu is not convinced that the name Tarumanagara was chosen using Tarumapuram as a model.

16 Moens, ‘Was Pūrnavarman’, pp. 86–7.

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21 Stutterheim, ‘Note’, p. 74 considers the script used in these inscriptions ‘so closely related to that of the Pallava charters of the fourth and fifth centuries, that one could assume a direct connection’, although, as Sarkar, Himansu B., ‘South-India in Old-Javanese and Sanskrit inscriptions’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 125, 2 (1969): 193CrossRefGoogle Scholar, notes, the script was not necessarily introduced by the Pallavas. Indeed, it has not been shown that the Pallava empire extended into West Java; see Stutterheim, ‘Note’, p. 82.

22 Also written Fahien or Fahsien. Lombard, Denys, Nusa Jawa: Silang Budaya, vol. 3: Warisan Kerajaan-kerajaan Konsentris (Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama; Forum Jakarta-Paris, École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 2008), p. 13Google Scholar; Groeneveldt, ‘Notes’, p. 131.

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24 Chhabra, Expansion, p. 40; Wisseman Christie, ‘State formation’, p. 257. See the maps in Noorduyn, Jacobus and Verstappen, Herman Th., ‘Pūrnavarman's river-works near Tugu’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 128, 2 and 3 (1972): 301, 303CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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28 Along the River Cakung, at the village Tuga, the location where a canal was dug to divert some of the Cakung's water.

29 Tim Penyunting, Tarumanagara, p. 2. By sea the distance between the mouth of the Citarum and Tanjung Priok is about 15 kilometres. These estimates are based on measurements made on page 20 (West Java) of the Atlas van Tropisch Nederland.

30 The footprints symbolise ‘the three conquering and victorious footprints of Vishnu’; see Hall, Kenneth R., Maritime trade and state development in early Southeast Asia (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1985), p. 104Google Scholar. Vishnu, a minor deity in Vedic times, was said to stride through the universe in three steps; see Dowson, John, A classical dictionary of Hindu mythology and religion, geography, history, and literature (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 360Google Scholar; and Stutley, Margaret and Stutley, James, Harper's dictionary of Hinduism: Its mythology, folklore, philosophy, literature, and history (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), p. 336Google Scholar.

31 Wisseman Christie, ‘State formation', p. 257. For the texts of the various inscriptions, see Chhabra, Expansion, pp. 93–7; Sumadio, Bambang, Sejarah Nasional Indonesia II, Jaman Kuno (N.P.: Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 1975), pp. 39–43Google Scholar; Kern, ‘De Invloed’, pp. 183–4; Vogel, Jean Ph., ‘The earliest Sanskrit inscriptions of Java’, in Publicaties van den Oudheidkundigen Dienst in Nederlandsch-Indië – 1 (Batavia: Koninklijk Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, 1925), pp. 15–35Google Scholar.

32 Chhabra, Expansion, p. 94. The other inscriptions in the interior are shorter, referring primarily to Purnavarman's footprints.

33 Wisseman Christie, ‘State formation’, p. 259. See also Ekadjati, Edi S., ‘Sejarah Sunda’, in Masyarakat Sunda dan Kebudayaannya, ed. Ekadjati, E.S. (Jakarta: PT Girimukti Pasaka, 1984), p. 81Google Scholar; Lombard, Nusa Jawa, p. 13; Kern, ‘Over den Invloed’, p. 16.

34 Vogel, ‘The earliest’, p. 22; de Casparis, J.G. and Mabbett, Ian W., ‘Religion and popular beliefs of Southeast Asia before c. 1500’, in The Cambridge history of Southeast Asia, vol. 1, part 1: From early times to c. 1500, ed. Tarling, Nicholas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 306Google Scholar note that the worship of footprints, especially Vishnu's, is found in India and Sri Lanka but that human and animal footprints are not worshipped there. The latter does exist in Indonesia, they continue, making it therefore likely that the emphasis on footprints in Pūrnavarman's inscriptions is the continuation of a traditional Austronesian practice. It is not clear, however, what the basis is for their statement that the footprints mentioned in the inscriptions were worshipped in Tarumanagara.

35 Moens, ‘Was Pūrnavarman’, p. 85.

36 Gonda, Jan, The dual deities in the religion of the Veda (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1974)Google Scholar [Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandsche Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks 81].

37 Heine-Geldern, Robert, ‘Conceptions of state and kingship in Southeast Asia’, Far Eastern Quarterly, 2 (1942): 15–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Dowson, A classical dictionary, pp. 125, 208.

39 Heine-Geldern, Robert, ‘Weltbild und Bauform in Südostasien’, Wiener Beiträge zur Kunst- und Kuturgeschichte Asiens, 4 (1930): 58Google Scholar.

40 Timothy E. Behrend, ‘Kraton and cosmos in traditional Java’ (M.A. Thesis, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1982), pp. 11, 177; Zoetmulder, Petrus J., Old Javanese-English dictionary, vol. 1 (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), p. 683Google Scholar.

41 Dowson, A classical dictionary, p. 124.

42 Moertono, Soemarsaid, State and statecraft in Old Java: A study of the Later Mataram Period, 16th to 19th century (Ithaca: Cornell University, Modern Indonesia Project, Southeast Asia Program, 1974), pp. 3–4Google Scholar [Monograph Series 43].

43 Wessing, Robert, ‘A princess from Sunda: Some aspects of Nyai Roro Kidul’, Asian Folklore Studies, 56, 2 (1997): 331–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roxas-Lim, Aurora, ‘Caves and bathing places in Java as evidence of cultural accommodation’, Asian Studies, 21 (1983): 132Google Scholar; Berg, Cornelis C., ‘Javaansche Geschiedschrijving’, in Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indië, vol. 2, ed. Stapel, Frederik W. (Amsterdam: Joost van den Vondel, 1938), p. 106Google Scholar.

44 Eleven kilometers (Tim Penyunting, Tarumanagara, p. 2). This claim is part of a larger Indonesian tradition in which rulers and holy-men cause canals and waterworks to miraculously come into existence (Bosch, Frederik D.K., ‘Guru, trident and spring’, in Selected Studies in Indonesian Archaeology, ed. Bosch, F.D.K. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), pp. 153–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar [Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Translation Series 5]. Actually digging 11 kilometers of canal in only 21 days would be an incredible feat of engineering, and some have speculated whether this was actually done (see Noorduyn and Verstappen, ‘Pūrnavarman's river-works’, p. 299). It is possible that the ruler ceremonially traced out the course of the canal, which was then to be completed at a later time.

45 Chhabra, Expansion, pp. 96–7.

46 See Kulke, Hermann, ‘Epigraphical references to the “city” and the “state” in early Indonesia’, Indonesia, 52 (1991): 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wisseman Christie, ‘State formation’, p. 258.

47 Wessing, Robert, ‘The Kraton-city and the realm: Sources and movement of power in Java’, in Framing Indonesian realities: Essays in symbolic anthropology in honour of Reimar Schefold, ed. Nas, Peter, Persoon, Gerard and Jaffe, Rivke (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2003), pp. 209–11Google Scholar [Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 209].

48 Stutley and Stutley, Harper's dictionary, p. 93.

49 See Kinsley, David, Hindu goddesses; Visions of the divine feminine in the Hindu religious tradition (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987), p. 191Google Scholar; Zimmer, Heinrich, Myths and symbols in Indian art and civilization (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 109Google Scholar [Bollingen Series 6]; Stutterheim, ‘Note’, p. 79.

50 Similarly, the river Cipakancilan, ‘flowed through the length of the royal residence’ of Pakuan Pajajaran (Jacobus Noorduyn, ‘Bujangga Manik's journeys through Java: Topographical data from an Old Sundanese source’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 138, 4 (1982): 419–20)Google Scholar.

51 Wessing, Robert, ‘The shape of home: Spatial ordering in Sundanese kampung’, in Indonesian houses: Tradition and transformation in vernacular architecture, ed. Schefold, Reimar, Domenig, Gaudenz and Nas, Peter (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2003), pp. 447–8Google Scholar [Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 207].

52 Christie, Jan W., ‘Water from the ancestors: Irrigation in early Java and Bali’, in The gift of water: Water management, cosmology and the state in Southeast Asia, ed. Rigg, Jonathan (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1992), p. 22Google Scholar.

53 Wessing, ‘The Kraton-city and the realm’, p. 209.

54 Wessing, ‘The shape of home’, p. 445, note 38.

55 D.G. Hall, A history, p. 37; K.R. Hall, Maritime, p. 105; Noorduyn and Verstappen, ‘Pūrnavarman's river works’, p. 305. K.R. Hall, ‘Indonesia's evolving’, p. 16 claims that Purnavarman was concerned with developing local agriculture and improving his port, without, however, building up a naval force to protect it.

56 Noorduyn and Verstappen, ‘Pūrnavarman's river works’, p. 299 cite Vlekke as speculating that the canal's water may have stood for separation, though it is not made clear what things were separated from each other.

57 Chhabra, Expansion, p. 42; Wheatley, Nāgara, p. 250, note 13.

58 Vogel, ‘The earliest’, p. 29.

59 Vogel further wonders why immigrants from South India would use the names of North Indian rivers, but since these same names are also found in South India and Sri Langka, this ceases to be a problem.

60 Similarly, Stutterheim, ‘Note’, p. 79, 81 discusses the symbolic use of the name Gangā in Java in an effort to create ‘a replica of the Holy Land of India’, which did not need to be 100 per cent correct geographically but did establish a supernatural connection.

61 The others are the Satlej (Sutudri), the Parushni, the Marud-vridhā and the Ārjikīyā (Dowson, A classical dictionary, p. 281).

62 See http://vedabase.net/sb/5/19/17-18 (last accessed 7 Oct. 2009).

63 See http://www.koausa.org/Purana/Verses101-200.html (last accessed 7 Oct. 2009).

64 See http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/238160/Gomati-River and http://www.india9.com/i9show/-Uttar-Pradesh/Gomati-River-49577.htm (both last accessed 7 Oct. 2009).

65 See http://suggestbabynames.com/meaning_of_hindu_girlname_gomati.html (last accessed 7 Oct. 2009).

66 Wisseman Christie, ‘State formation’, p. 257.

67 Such borrowing of symbolically charged names, especially those of the Ganges and the Yumna, occurred elsewhere in Java as well (Stutterheim, ‘Note’, p. 80).

68 Stutley and Stutley, Harper's dictionary, p. 76.

69 Continuing well into the seventeenth century (Guillot, Banten, pp. 54, 221, 224; see Andaya, Leonard Y., ‘Interactions with the outside world and adaptation in Southeast Asian society, 1500–1800’, in The Cambridge history of Southeast Asia, vol. 1, part 2: From c. 1500 to c. 1800, ed. Tarling, Nicholas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 8Google Scholar.

70 Basham, Arthur L., The wonder that was India (New York: Hawthorn, 1963), pp. 63–4, 228–9Google Scholar; Groeneveldt, ‘Notes’, p. 127; Hall, A history, p. 23.

71 Kern, ‘De Invloed’, p. 187.

72 Javadvipa (see Wessing, ‘The Kraton-city and the realm’, p. 210). Prakrt or prakrit means vernacular non-Sanskrit Indic language; http://www.yourdictionary.com/prakrit (last accessed 7 Oct. 2009). Kern was referring here to usage among common folk such as sailors and traders rather than among those learned in Sanskrit who used the name Yavadvipa in e.g. the Ramayana, as Dr Thomaz points out (personal communication, 11 Nov. 2009).

73 Kenneth R. Hall, ‘Economic history of early Southeast Asia’, in Tarling, The Cambridge history of Southeast Asia, vol. 1, part 1, pp. 185–6, 194–5; K.W. Taylor, ‘The early kingdoms’, in Tarling, The Cambridge history of Southeast Asia, vol. 1, part 1, p. 173.

74 Personal communication, 21 Oct. 2009.

75 See Guillot, Banten, pp. 124, 221, 242–3. These connections were not restricted to West Java. In the eleventh century CE, Tamils seem to have either settled in Sumatra or to have worked with the local people, while a thirteenth-century CE Tamil inscription from Burma documents the presence of a Vaisnava temple there (Sastri Nilakanta, K.A., ‘A Tamil merchant-guild in Sumatra’, Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 72 (1932): 314, 325Google Scholar; compare Oudheidkundige Dienst in Nederlandsch-Indië, Oudheidkundig Verslag 1912 ('s-Gravenhage, Martinus Nijhoff, 1912), p. 46 [Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen]; Suhadi, Machi, ‘Silsilah Adityawarman’, Kalpataru Majalah Arkeologi, 9 (1990): 227–8)Google Scholar.

76 Sarkar, ‘South-India’, p. 201.

77 Wisseman Christie, ‘State formation’, p. 255.

78 The Tamil is த௫மம் which is pronounced tarumam. Lifco, , The Lifco dictionary: Tamil-Tamil and English (Madras: Nagaraj and Co., 1966), p. 335Google Scholar glosses tarumam with law, sacred law, usage, practice and justice, which is also the meaning of the Sanskrit dharma: ‘that which is established or firm, law, usage, customary observance, duty, right, justice, virtue, morality, religion, good works’ etc (Zoetmulder, Old Javanese-English dictionary, p. 367). I must here note Dr Subbarayalu's reservation that the word tarumam as a gloss for the Sanskrit dharma ‘is met with only rarely either in Tamil literature or inscriptions at such an early date as the 4th or 5th century CE’ (personal communication, 11 Nov. 2009).

79 Personal communication, 2009.

80 Frasca, Richard A., ‘The dice game and the disrobing (Pakatai Tuyil): A Terukkuttu performance’, Asian Theatre Journal, 15, 1 (1998): 43, note 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Stutterheim, ‘Note’, p. 83.

82 Noorduyn, Jacobus and Teeuw, Andries, ‘A panorama of the world from Sundanese perspective’, Archipel, 57 (1999): 212CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Rosidi, Édi S. Ékadjati, Dodong Djiwaprada, Embas Suhérman, Ayatrohaédi, Abdurrachman, Nano S., Atik Soepandi, and Komaruddin Sastradipoera, ‘Citarum’, p. 168.

84 This name of the plant is in any case not Tamil or Sanskrit where the words for the indigo plant are averi and vishashodami, respectively (Encyclopædie van Nederlandsch-Indië, vol. 2, ed. Graaff, Simon de and Stibbe, David G. (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1918), p. 138Google Scholar; Gonda, Jan, Sanskrit in Indonesia (Nagpur: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1952), p. 206)Google Scholar.

85 Krom, Hindoe-Javaansche, p. 78; Rosidi, Édi S. Ékadjati, Dodong Djiwaprada, Embas Suhérman, Ayatrohaédi, Abdurrachman, Nano S., Atik Soepandi, and Komaruddin Sastradipoera, ‘Citarum’, p. 168.

86 Wheatley, Nāgara, p. 250, note 13.

87 Rosidi, Ajip, ‘Ciri-ciri Manusia dan Kebudayaan Sunda’, in Masyarakat Sunda dan Kebudayaannya, ed. Ekadjati, Edi S. (Jakarta: Girimukti Pasaka, 1984), pp. 157–9Google Scholar; Benjamin G. Zimmer, ‘Unpacking the word: The ethnolexicological art of Sundanese Kirata’ (M.A. Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1998).

88 See, for instance, Monier Williams's dictionary: http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/monier (last accessed 14 April 2010).

89 See Sarkar, ‘South-India’, p. 196.

90 Personal communication, 15 and 16 Oct. 2009.

91 Kern, ‘De Invloed’, p. 187.

92 Christie, Anthony, ‘The provenance and chronology of the early Indian cultural influence in South-East Asia’, in H.C. Majumdar Felicitation Volume, ed. Sarkar, Himansu Bhusan (Calcutta: K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1970), p. 11Google Scholar. Indeed, this being the language of ‘ritual and magical activity’, competence in Sanskrit may well have been purposely restricted (Rubinstein, Raechelle, Beyond the realm of the senses: The Balinese ritual of Kekawin composition (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2000), p. 26Google Scholar [Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 181]).

93 Oudheidkundige Dienst, Oudheidkundig Verslag, p. 46.

94 Thomas M. Hunter, ‘Thematic correspondences between the Sumanasāntaka of Monaguna and Raghuvamśa of Kālidāsa’, unpublished study guide for students of Sanskrit and Old Javanese literature, pp. 27–8.

95 Rubinstein, Beyond the realm of the senses, pp. 29–30.

96 Rubinstein, Beyond the realm of the senses, pp. 26, 29.

97 Much like today's Old Javanese texts in wayang (puppet presentation) are (Becker, Anton L., ‘Text-building, epistemology, and aesthetics in Javanese shadow theatre’, in The imagination of reality: Essays in Southeast Asian coherence systems, ed. Becker, Anton L. and Yengoyan, Aram A. (Norwood: Ablex Publishing Co., 1979), pp. 230–1)Google Scholar.

98 Austin, John L., How to do things with words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.