About My Hometown

The Kingdom of Langkasuka : The essence of Peninsular Malay culture.
Wrtten by NormalMJ (2009) Universiti Teknologi Malaysia for The Culture Partnership Initiative, Seoul, Korea from several sources of publication.


The discussion regarding the kingdom of Langkasuka, the ancient kingdom of the Malay Isthmus (Malayo-Polynesian, Austronesian), known as Langkasuka, 2000 years go will cover aleast from three difference views or aspects.
First view is from the early 7th century kingdom of Lang Ya Shu described in Chinese annals, second view is from series of kingdoms beginning with Lang Ya Shu and lasting until the fall of Majapahit II in 1502. Third view come from Langkasuka as abroad sense favoured by artists and traditional folklore, refers to traditional Isthmian culture in general. In this view, the Langkasuka is the legend and art, a series of Malay kingdoms ruled the Isthmus more or less independently from the 1st century, surviving through the hegemony of Funan, Sri Wijaya, Chola, Majapahit, Siam, and the advent of Islam. This Kingdom of Langkasuka disappeared with the fall of Pattani in 1902.
First view of Langkasuka
Langkasuka (which the Chinese called Lang Ya Shu) was the largest and most prosperous of these early kingdoms, and may have covered the full width of Isthmus, lying to the south of Ligor and to the north of the present Malay Peninsula.
There is no doubt that a series of distinct kingdoms ruled the Isthmus from at least the first century, and by the 3rd century Chinese records give the names of about a dozen small states. From the 3rd until the 6th century, the Isthmus fell under the sway of Funan, an empire extending along the lower Mekong River in what is now Vietnam. Funan was the word the Chinese used to refer to the proto-Khmer Kingdom unified in the third century. This Hinduized empire imposed authority on the whole of the Isthmian section of the Malay Peninsula and the overland trade route, lasting for three hundred years.
Notable among Chinese records is the Chi Tu Guo Ji, “Record of the Kingdom of Red Earth”, written by the Sui Dynasty envoys after a visit to the peninsula in 607-610. This is the most important documentary evidence of an inland kingdom known as Chi Tu “Red Earth”. There are a number of good arguments giving credence to the theory that the kingdom was situated in Kelantan. Upriver of the Kelantan area, Gua Cha is known for its early settlement some 8000 years ago. The Dabong-Pergau rivers are known for their clay deposits and witnessed the making of old black pottery; Tanah Merah (Red Earth) is the name of a place upriver of Kelantan.
Chinese records written by Chang Chun during the reign of the 7th century Sui Emperor Yang Di, spoke of a kingdom called Lang Ya Shu in Chinese, identifiable as Langkasuka in Malay. Chang Chun described Langkasuka as one of the earliest individual states in South East Asia, a Malay Kingdom. Slightly earlier, the History of the Liang Dynasty 502-566 seems to support a Malay tradition that Langkasuka was founded at the end of the first century in the neighbourhood of what was later called Pattani. Lang Ya Shu proved to be of great economic importance, partly due to the existence of an overland trade route or portage across the Isthmus.
Second View of Langkasuka
The glory of the Pattani Kingdom dates from the rule of Sultan Ismail Shah (1500-1530), who founded the Malay Muslim kingdom known as Pattani Darul Salam after he converted to Islam. It was believed that Islam in Pattani came way before Melaka (1412) and Trengganu (1303/1368), as Pattani was a seaport through which traders came and went, the source of Islamic teaching and cultural forms.
Islamic culture later spread out among Malay scholars and nobles. Prophet Mohamad’s famous sayings like “Do travel even to China to learn”, “Trading is good in Islam” and Hijrah Lah “Do Move” [from one place to another for better life] adapted well to the traditional life-style of the Malays — travellers and adventurers who colonised all the thousands of islands of the Indonesian and Philippine archipelago and far into the vastness of the Pacific ocean. These Islamic ideas became important principles of Malay-Muslim life. With those concepts we can understand why there was freer movement in trading in the parts of Southeast Asia known in Malay as Nusantara or the Malay Archipelago.
Third View of Langkasuka
The essence of Malay traditional culture, both before and after the advent of Islam, it would seem that the energies of common people, artists, and the ruling elite did not pour into building enduring monuments. Rather they went into ephemeral arts such as ritual, dance, music, pantun poetry, or wood carving in a sensitive response to the numinous forest and ocean environment in which the Malays lived. The belief that nothing is permanent is expressed in the 2-verse pantun:
Sekali air bah, Sekali pantai berubah
Once flooded, The shored is changed.
It could be said that not building enduring monuments was a trait of the Malay-Indo world in general. Java’s great temples are in that sense something of an anomaly, by no means typical or representative of Malay culture in the rest of the archipelago, the peninsula, or the Philippines. Malays, as a rule, did not seek immortality in stones, brick, plaster, or gold and silver pavilions towering to the sky. They were above such trifling.
References
Yuan Shih (1295), Mali-yu-erh. Chinese’s Historian
Teeuw dan Wyatt, W.K Che , Martinus Nijhoff( 1970). Patani Become Islamics Country at 1457.
Zulkifli Mohamad, Alex Kerr (2008) . “Evanescent Kingdoms, Everlasting Spirit, Seeking Langcekasuka “