The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXXI, Part 1-2, 1983 - Khamkoo

M.C. Subhadradis Disku1, ed., the Art of Srlvijaya (Paris: ~NESCO; Kuala Lumpur :
· Oxford ·University Press, 1980), pp. xiii, 68 .
. Carol Stratton and Miriam McNair Scott~ The Art of Sukhothai : Thailand's Golden
Age.(Kuala Lumpur: .Oxford University Press, 1981),.pp. xxxiv,.l63.
In both The Art of Srivijaya and The Art of Sukhothai ~he authors have
p~ovid~ ooncis~ s.tu~ies .Qf compte~ ~nd still far-from-understood subjects which less
jptr~pid· scholars wo.uld :.not have attempted .. Both editor-in-chief M.C. Subha~adis
Diskul and co-authors Stratton and Scott .are· to be commended for making availablQ
compendiums of information, derived from both primary and secondary sources, otherwise
unavailable in single volumes. If the rich and important field of Southeast Asian
art history is· to receive the wide public and scholarly attention it deserves, then it will
be necessary for some time to publish books such as these, prior to the times when
definitive answers may be found.
M.C. Subhadradis Diskul is especially to be thanked for his thoughtful and
cautious approach to the difficult subject of Srivijaya. Characterized_ by Dr. Piriya
Krairiksh as "a~ empire without a geography and an art history in search of a style,"l
Srivijaya poses many problems, not only of interpretation, but of simple definition.
As understood in the wake of recent research,2 Srivijaya was a thalassocracy
which appears to have dominated maritime commerce in Southeast Asia from the seventh
to the eleventh centuries. Having emerged from the states competing for trade
routes between India and China, it was composed of ·a number of seaports which served
as both entrepots and suppliers of commercial goods. Inscriptional evidence points to
Palembang in southeast Sumatra as Srlvijaya's political center, an important seaport
which appears to have expanded to include vassal regions and a wide range of subordinates
with varying degrees of political autonomy throughout the "southern seas."
I
Although the Kra Isthmus in Peninsular Siam had provided sites essential to the
India-China trade as early as the third century, it has been suggested that by the time
Srlvijaya had emerged, ports in this area were of secondary importance and only
loosely connected with Srivijaya rule.
1. Piriya Krairiksh, Art Styles in Thailand (Bangkok: Department of Fine Arts, 1977), p. 45.
2. See especially Kenneth R. Hall, "State and Statecraft in Early Srivijaya" and Kenneth R. Hall
and John K. Whitmore, "Southeast Asian Trade and the Isthmian Struggle, 1000-1200 A.D."
In Explorations in Early Southeast Asian History: The Origins of Southeast Asian Statecraft.
Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, no. ll (Ann Arbor, Center for South and
Southeast Asian Studies, 1976), pp. 61-105; 303-40.
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