Banten Girang ('Banten up the river') is the one Sundanese town that has been dug.
It stands on the Cibanten, about ten kilometres above the roadstead where the sea goes into Banten bay (coordinates 6.131 S, 106.158 E). Guillot's work shows the settlement thriving from the tenth century to about the fourteenth; the campaign board speaks of a ditch and bank, Chinese ceramics, glass beads and Hindu images cut in the central Javanese manner, while en.wikipedia lists tombs, a stepped pyramid and niches cut in the stone cliffs. The ten Caringin statues of Shiva Mahadeva, Durga, Agastya, Ganesha and Brahma, of early tenth-century Central Javanese style, now in the National Museum in Jakarta, were found near Cipanas at Mount Pulosari, not at the site.
About 1225 the Chinese call the Sunda harbour (probably Old Banten) the pepper port of a country without government. Its lord is not named; the town is the working centre of the north-west.
Who he is
- Title
- Lord of Banten Girang
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not known
- Confidence
- low
No ruler is named. The town is known from Guillot's excavations of 1988 to 1992 and from the Carita Parahyangan's late name Wahanten Girang.
Overlord
the king of Sunda, if any court answered
What it holds
- The town and its fort works above the river
- The river road to the Banten roadstead
- The pepper and forest produce brought down from the Banten hills and the Kendeng forest (inference)
How things stand that morning
A working town. Nothing dated for the winter; the occupation layers do not fix a ruler.
Wealth
Pepper, forest produce and the traffic with Chinese ships (ceramics); no figures.
Military
Defended by ditch and bank (the campaign board's reading of the dig).
Threats
- Coastal robbers (the Chinese report of about 1225)
Places of note
- Banten Girang: Excavated town.
- Banten roadstead: Outport of the upriver town.
Where the sources disagree
- The campaign board entry banten-girang puts the town 'on the Ciujung ten miles above the sea'; en.wikipedia puts it on the Cibanten, about 10 km from the Banten port. We follow en.wikipedia.
Evidence: Excavated and reported (Guillot) but the secondary pages we read give little detail, and no text names a lord.
"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.
On the map: Two seeds; the town's real reach is not known.
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), Banten Girang (read in this pass): coordinates, Guillot's 1988-1992 work, Caringin statues, Zhu Fan Zhi on Sin-t'o
- 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
- C. Guillot (ed.), Banten avant l'Islam: etude archeologique de Banten Girang (1994); recalled, not re-read
- 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.