The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

252 I\EVIEW ARTICLES
most regrettable of all that my imagination does not soar to such•heights
as to see in Professor Coedes' Sri Vijaya Empire in South Sumatra
anything more than a story of pirates, pirates and pirates.
In Malay history
The first part to the title of Wolters' book, The Fall of Srivijaya,
is a misnomer because the Sri Vijaya story bad en,ded over a century
before; and I rather think the second part of the title, In Malay History,
is also inaccurate. The title of Paranavitana's book, Ceylon and Malaysia,
seems a little loose too, but be gives a definition of exactly what he
means in the first paragraph of his preface : "the name 'Malaysia' in
this work has the significance in which it bas been used normally by
historians, that is, to indicate all those wide regions that are, or have
been, inhabited by peoples of the Malay race".
Wolters does not give such a definition. He separates the Javanese
and the Thai from the Malays, but he d_pes not separate the Malays
from the Sumatrans. Were the pirates of Palem bang, who became princes of
. Malacca, Malays or Sumatrans ? And were the people of Malaya,
before the foundation of Malacca, Malays or of some other race? But
the race that played the most important part in the Sri Vijaya story in
the Malay Peninsula was the Javaka. Who were they?
Ethnic groups is a subject I know nothing about, and to me
present-day political boundaries in the Western sense have no reality in
the context of ancient history. The reason is simply because there. were
no political boundaries in the European sense before the European
period. For instance, I am a Thai, possibly a fairly respectable citizen
of the land today called Thailand. But the Thai. Derm (original Thai)
the Thai Dum and Thai Daeng (the black and red Thai), living in South
China and North VietNam, as well as the Shans in Burma and Laos in
Laoland, would not be Thai in this reckoning. Instead there are Thai
Muslims, Thai Christians, Thai Animists, Tbai atheists and even Thai
hilltribes (Thai Meo, Thai Yao, Thai Karens, etc). It may seem