Dahanapura

Who holds it

Name

Kertajaya (Srengga)

Title

King of Kediri, with his court at Daha

Since

by Saka 1116 (1194)

Born

not known

Confidence

high

The king and the capital; no governor of the city separate from the court is named.

Lord in 1200

Kertajaya, with the rakryan mahamantri, the dharmadhyaksa of the two faiths and the senapati; the elders of the freed villages in the district.

What the town holds

• The court district and the middle Brantas rice country
• The ferries and tolls of the middle river
• The royal temples and hermitages of the district

How things stand that morning

The court of a secure king. Nothing is dated for the winter.

Threats

• Ash falls from Kelud
• Court faction (nothing dated)

Charter

None: Daha is the king's seat. Villages near it hold plates of freedom (sima).

Council

The king's court: the chief minister, the four great officers, the judges, the generals and the officers of revenue. No municipal body is known.

Communities

Brahmins and priests of both faiths, court poets and hermitages, merchants, villagers on freed land.

Fairs and markets

Market days on the five-day cycle of the Javanese plains (recalled from Wisseman Christie); no named fair.

Militia

The guard and the levies of the districts; no numbers.

Walls and castle

No palace, wall or gate found; the city is a district in the sources.

Trade and crafts

Rice, cloth, metalwork, the river trade down to the delta; the workshops of the court and temples. No figures.

Places of note

• Kelud ash country: The slopes whose ash makes the rice; the Palah sanctuary's mountain.
• Tondowongso: Temple complex of the Kediri period buried under ash.

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board entry dahanapura-kediri marks the city 'secure'. It is secure as a name and a district; no excavation has located the palace. en.wikipedia: location 'believed', identification 'suggested'.
• The campaign board entry kelud-ash-country: the ash that makes the middle Brantas the best rice ground also buries it in eruptions. No eruption of Kelud is dated near 1200 in what we read.

Evidence: Thick for the kingdom, thin for the city itself: no palace, no excavated court; the plates name it.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

Primary sources for Kediri

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.

• History of Song, chapters 488 and 489: Jiaozhi, Dali, Champa, Zhenla, Pagan, Srivijaya, Java, Brunei, Chola and Tambralinga, Toqto'a (Tuotuo) and the Yuan history office, from the Song court records (1343 to 1345, from Song veritable records and court diaries). The Chinese court's record of its southern neighbours, compiled from Song archives. Read online
• History of the Song, the chapters on Xia and on foreign states, Toqto'a (脫脫) and the Yuan history office (1343 to 1345). The Song court's accounts of its neighbours, each arranged as an annal of embassies and wars. Read online
• 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
• Notes in Answer to Questions about the Lands beyond the Passes, Zhou Qufei (周去非) (1178, after service in Guangxi). A Guangxi official's notes, written twenty years before 1200, on the south-western frontier of the Song and the countries beyond. Read online
• Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. 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