The man, or the council, that holds the first landfall out of the Bay of Bengal: a shallow estuary under Gunung Jerai, the wharf at Pengkalan Bujang with its Chinese and West Asian sherds, the iron smelters at Sungai Batu, tin in the hills behind, and the rice plain of the Kedah coast.
The English Wikipedia article on Srivijaya says Kedah had already fallen outside Sanfoqi's influence in the eleventh century, and the Zhufan zhi list of fifteen dependencies does not include it.
Who he is
- Title
- Ruler of Kedah (Kadaram, Kataha, Kalah)
- Since
- not known
- Born
- not known
- Family
- not known
- Confidence
- low
No ruler of Kedah is named for any date in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The Cholas struck Kadaram in 1025 and again in the 1060s or about 1120 (accounts differ), after which Kedah disappears from Indian sources. The Kedah Annals (eighteenth century) are not evidence.
Overlord
None named.
What it holds
- Pengkalan Bujang, the wharf
- Sungai Batu, the iron smelting
- Gunung Jerai as the seamark
- The rice plain and tin hills behind
How things stand that morning
Not recorded. The port works; who rules it is not known.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Thin: no source names the holder or dates a fact near 1 January 1200.
On the map: Core only.
Primary sources for Malay ports
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.
- The Leiden grants of Rajaraja I and Kulottunga I concerning the Srivijaya vihara at Nagapattinam, The Chola chancery (Rajaraja I, Rajendra I, Kulottunga I) (the Larger plates about 1005 to 1014 (completed under Rajendra I); the Smaller plates 1090). Background documents for the relations between the Cholas and the Malay world. Read online
- The Grahi (Chaiya) Buddha inscription and the Tambralinga records, Various (the officers of Grahi and the kings of Tambralinga), edited by George Coedes (the Chaiya bronze Buddha inscription 1183; the Nakhon Si Thammarat records 13th century; edited 1929, revised 1961). The peninsula in 1200 has one near-contemporary dated text: the Old Khmer inscription on the base of a bronze Buddha from Wat Hua Wiang at Chaiya, dated 1183, which records the image's casting by order of the mahasenapati Galanai, governor of Grahi, under the king Srimat Trailokyaraja Maulibhusanavarmadeva, a name that is argued to be either a Malayu (Srivijaya) overlord or a local king.
- 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 (English): Bujang Valley
- Wikipedia (English): Srivijaya
- Tanjore (Thanjavur) inscription of Rajendra Chola, 1030/31, as reported in the brief and the English Wikipedia article on the Chola invasion
- M. Jacq-Hergoualc'h, The Malay Peninsula: Crossroads of the Maritime Silk Road (2002), read from memory, not rechecked
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.