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

306 REVIEW ARTICLES
of South Sumatra were really Malays and not Sumatrans, or of the
Javaka race, or Chinese pirates, then research on their early civilization,
or the equivalent, can probably be carried out more comfortably in some
backward community of Malays in Malaysia. Again, the subject,
compared to straight history, is hardly a worthwhile one for a historian
of Wolters• calibre.
But I hope I am wrong. I hope Wolters is not really giving up
history because the History of Sri Vijaya seems to have arrived at a
most interesting stage, what with about half a dozen ".pew inscriptions"
from Central Java and three or four from Ceylon that have been recently
published or are about to be published, including one from Boroburdur.
These pieces will have to be properly analysed and set into the structure
of the Sri Vijaya Story. And some of Paranavitana's sources of
interlinear writing will have to be used as plaster to cement the whole
story together. Ceylonese epigraphists accept these sources of
Paranavitana but second rate historians find the whole exercise too
difficult to handle, so they say, though not necessarily think, that
Paranavitana invented the whole thing out of thin air. But a historian
of real calibre, even an orthodox but a meticulous one, should have no
difficulty in picking out what should be retained and what discarded.
The whole racket is a historical challenge of some dimension. I hope
Wolters will accept it. I hope be will not give up the unholy ghost of
history simply because the capital of Sri Vijaya can no longer be located
in South Sumatra. Goodness knows, his toriaus wor king on this period
are few enough. And now we will return to that most vexing of
problems-San-fo-ch'i.
The early history of Southeast Asia before the European period is
more a joke than a history. In proto-historic times before the various
states and districts produced inscriptions of their own, the Chinese
records were the most important single individual source. In due course
this external evidence must be equated to some internal evidence when
that evidence comes into being. Some Chinese names have been
identified with virtual certainty: some have not been identified but fit the
loc~l evidence and can l;le accepted i b1,1t sop.1e identific;~tions leav~ ~