Boni in Chinese Sources - Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre - iseas

Kurz: Boni in Chinese Sources NSC Working Paper No. 4Boni in Chinese Sources:Translations of Relevant Texts from the Song to the Qing DynastiesJohannes L. KurzI. INTRODUCTIONFor many states in Southeast Asia, Chinese sources allegedly present the earliest historicalevidence of their existence. 1 The case of Boni is quite special, in that it not only serves toillustrate the interpretative problems of sources, but also the ongoing process ofappropriating the writing on Boni for the national history of Brunei.Since the studies undertaken by Robert Nicholl especially in the 1980’s, the followinghistorical account has been largely accepted by official history institutions in Brunei, whichinclude among others, the Brunei History Centre, and the Academy of Brunei Studies.Nicholl placed ancient Brunei along the northwestern coast of Borneo which nowadayscomprises two states of the Malaysian Federation, namely Sarawak and Sabah, and theSultanate of Brunei. His reading of the sources which came to him through translations only,led him to conclude that the country of Poli 婆 利 mentioned in Chinese sources of the Tangdynasty (618‐907) was the precursor of the country of Boni 2 described in the Taipinghuanyuji 太 平 環 宇 記 (hereafter TPHYJ) of the tenth century. He was thus able toreconstruct a history of constant settlement of Brunei from the early first millennium1 For a general discussion of the problematic use of Chinese sources for the identification of places inSoutheast Asia see Tjan Tjoe Som, “Chinese Historical Sources and Historiography”, in Soedjatmoko.Mohammad Ali, G.J. Resink and G. McT. Kahin (eds), An Introduction to Indonesian Historiography(Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1965), 194‐205.2 Throughout his writings (1975‐1990) Nicholl transcribes the characters 渤 泥 , 渤 尼 and 勃 泥 with P'o‐nifollowing an older Western transcription system. However, his transcription of the characters is incorrectbecause the characters should be represented correctly by Po‐ni, or Boni, according to the Chinese Hanyupinyin transcription system.1