The Chinese account of about 1225 says the pepper of the Sin-t'o country has small but heavy corns and is better than the pepper of Tuban (en.wikipedia, Sunda Kingdom, quoting the Zhu Fan Zhi).
The campaign board puts the growing in the mountains of the interior, the Priangan, and calls it the one thing the west of the island sells that the east cannot match, grown on slopes nobody administers closely. The text we read does not name the Priangan and does not say which Sunda port it ships from (Banten or Kalapa); the pepper reaches the coast by the river roads. The report is of about 1225, a quarter century after the date, so the record uses it as a late witness to the trade of 1200.
Who holds it
- Title
- Highland chiefs of the Sundanese interior
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not known
- Confidence
- low
No chief is named. The Chinese report of about 1225 says the country has no government.
Overlord
the king of Sunda, if any court answered
What it holds
- Pepper gardens on the highland slopes
- The river roads down to the Cimanuk, the Citarum and the Ciliwung
How things stand that morning
Pepper country in the Sunda sphere; no ruler or officer shown.
Wealth
Black pepper; no figures.
Military
None attested.
Places of note
- Priangan (board point): The campaign board point in the highlands near Garut.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: One report written about 25 years after the date plus the campaign board's note.
"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.
On the map: A rough outline of the highlands; the real pepper districts are not located by the source.
Primary sources for Sunda
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- Old Javanese Charters (the Brandes and Krom corpus), including the Kediri inscriptions of Kamesvara and Srngga, Various (the Kediri kings and their officers), edited by J. L. A. Brandes and N. J. Krom (inscriptions of the 8th to 15th centuries; edited 1913). Kediri (Panjalu) in 1200 is known from a few royal charters on stone and copper, which this corpus first printed: the records of Kamesvara (about 1182 to 1194) and of Srngga, that is Kertajaya (from about 1194 to 1222), among them the Kamulan charter of 1194 and the Palah (Panataran) record of 1197, with the king's titles, his seal, the officials of the court and the villages freed from tax.
- A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date. Read online
- The Description of the Country, called the Nagarakretagama, Mpu Prapanca (1365 at the Majapahit court). A Majapahit court poem of 1365 listed here only for its retrospect. Read online
Sources and studies
- Wikipedia (en), Sunda Kingdom (read in this pass): Sanghyang Tapak 952 Saka (1030), Kebon Kopi 932, Horren, Carita Parahyangan caveats, Zhu Fan Zhi on Sin-t'o, Bujangga Manik boundary
- Wikipedia (en), Zhu Fan Zhi (read in this pass): Zhao Rukuo, about 1225, Hirth and Rockhill 1911
- Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-kua: his work on the Chinese and Arab trade (1911), chapters Sin-t'o (p. 70) and Shê-p'o (p. 75); the full text would not open in this pass, so every statement from it is recalled and marked
- OMNIA board notes for the place (a lead, not a source)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.