ofthe SAME TREE

Sometime between the fifth and the seventh century CE there was a shift
in the relative importance of the maritime trade networks. Up to the fifth
century China had received goods from the lands to the west, as well as exotic
products from Southeast Asia. They would have come via the Sea of Malayu
network, with its eastern termini at one of the Lower Mekong ports belonging
to the Oc Eo culture complex and at some dominant Cham port in central
Vietnam. Upheaval in northern China and the resulting shift in political
power to the south encouraged the development of China’s maritime trade.
In seeking a safer passage for goods that had previously come by land via
central Asia, the kingdoms in southern China began to use a maritime route
employing foreign oceangoing vessels. Although the Chinese had large boats,
they were mainly intended for riverine and lake transport. The principal
vessels carrying goods to and from China were termed by the Chinese kunlun
bo or “kunlun ships.” 3 Manguin has shown that some of the features of
the kunlun bo described in a Chinese account from the third century and
another from the eighth century are still maintained by shipbuilders in insular
Southeast Asia. It is very likely, therefore, that the people along the Straits
of Melaka, including Sriwijaya and its predecessors, participated as carriers in
their kunlun bo. 4
In the seventh century the so-called kunlun ships were coming annually
to Guanzhou and Tonking. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Yijing, who visited
Sriwijaya and Malayu in the late seventh century, made a distinction between
the kunlun, whom he described as dark and curly-headed, from the fairer
inhabitants of the other countries in Southeast Asia. 5 This description appears
to refer to the inhabitants of the islands and more specifically to the Orang
Laut, or sea people. In fifteenth-century Chinese sources, kunlun were hired
to guide Chinese ships through the region and out into the Indian Ocean,
a practice also followed by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century. 6 While
these tasks were usually performed by the Orang Laut populations, kunlun
was used more generally in the seventh century to refer to the people in the
islands and the inhabitants along the Straits of Melaka, with whom the Chinese
had most contact in this early period.
Increasing use of the all-sea route favored the southern ports in the straits
because the southern entrance was the “end point” of the northeast monsoon,
which provided a powerful tailwind for traders coming from China and elsewhere
in East Asia. The landfall somewhere in southeast Sumatra made it a
“favored coast” and encouraged the rise of settlements that aspired to entrepot
status. 7 The early archaeological sites mentioned above are indications that
the inhabitants of this area in Sumatra were familiar with and receptive to the
economic opportunities offered by international commerce.
Emergence of Malayu 51