Kediri (Panjalu) under Kertajaya

Who rules

Name

Kertajaya (Srengga; the Pararaton calls him Dandhang Gendis)

Title

Maharaja (haji) of Kediri, the kingdom the plates call Panjalu

Since

by Saka 1116 (1194), the date of his Kamulan plate; the accession year is not pinned (1185, 1190 or 1194 in different lists)

Born

not known

Family

Airlangga's Panjalu line. No plate that we could read names his wives or children. The Pararaton (about 1481) gives him a son Jayasabha and a kinsman Mahisa Walungan, but that is literature, not a record of 1200.

Confidence

high

Reigns at Dahanapura (Daha). His plates: Kamulan, Saka 1116 (1194); Palah, Saka 1119 (1197), which founds the Palah sanctuary; Wates Kulon, Saka 1127 (1205), the last. Saka 1121 covers 1 January 1200 and Saka 1122 begins in spring 1200. Accession: en.wikipedia and the campaign board give 1194, some lists 1190, fr.wikipedia 1185. The plates fix only that he is king by 1194.

Overlord

none: the Chinese notices rank Java above Sanfoqi, and no foreign court answers for Kediri

What the realm holds

• Dahanapura (Daha) and the middle Brantas, the ash-soil rice country under Kelud
• The Malang basin: Tumapel under its akuwu, and Hantang (Ngantang)
• The Brantas delta and its port Hujung Galuh (the old Janggala), with the Waringin Sapta dam above it
• The Blitar, Tulungagung and Trenggalek hills: Palah (Penataran), Jaring, Kamulan
• Ponorogo (Sirah Keting) and the Madiun plain (thin)
• The north-coast harbours Tuban and Gresik and the lower Solo teak hills (thin)
• Madura: the Padelegan villages (charters of 1117 and 1159); the rest by claim
• By claim only: Kedu and Prambanan, the Oosthoek (Blambangan), the Serayu country, and the tribute in the Chinese lists

How it was acquired

Airlangga divided his realm about 1045 into Panjalu (Kediri) and Janggala; King Jayabhaya (about 1135 to 1159) beat Janggala, and his Hantang plate (Saka 1057, 1135) carries the motto Panjalu Jayati, 'Kediri is victorious'. The kings after him in the plates: Sarweswara (Padelegan II, 1159; Kahyunan, 1161), Aryeswara (Angin, 1171), Gandra (Jaring, 1181), Kameswara (Ceker, 1185 on en.wikipedia, 1182 on fr.wikipedia), then Kertajaya.

Allies and rivals

Bali is a separate crown that issues its own plates; the two courts are tied by Airlangga's Balinese father (the usual reading) but Bali is not Kediri's. Sunda in the west is a separate Sundanese kingdom; an eleventh-century Javanese plate (Horren) names a 'Sunda enemy' raiding East Javanese villages. Tumapel in the Malang basin is a district under an akuwu and nothing more in 1200. Sanfoqi (Jambi or Palembang) competes for the strait trade by report only; no clash is dated.

Arab, Chinese, Tamil, Cham, Khmer, Mon and Sinhalese merchants use the ports.

The realm that morning

Kertajaya has reigned at least since 1194 (Kamulan plate). One war is on record in his reign: the Kamulan plate of 1194 rewards a village for loyalty, and the campaign board reads it as a time when enemies drove him from his palace and he took it back (we could not read the plate; the enemy and the year of the war are not pinned). In 1197 he founded the Palah sanctuary, which suggests a settled court. No plate or foreign notice is dated between 1197 and 1205, so on the morning of 1 January 1200 he is secure as far as any record shows, and that is an absence of news, not a report.

The whole story of his fall (the quarrel with the brahmins, their flight to Tumapel, Ganter in 1222) comes from the Pararaton (about 1481) and the Nagarakretagama (1365) and has not happened.

Wealth

Rice (two and three crops a year on ash soil, the campaign board's phrase; no figures), the Brantas road and river tolls and the delta port, Madura salt and fish, teak from the Solo hills, pepper and cloth at Tuban, the transit trade in cloves, nutmeg and sandalwood carried in by eastern boats, sappanwood, sulphur and the small gold washings of the Progo. The charters reckon fines and grants in weights of gold and silver (masa, tahil); Chinese copper cash circulates (recalled, not rechecked).

Military

The king's guard and the senapati (generals) of the plates, and a fleet: the title senapati sarwwajala, 'commander of the waters', is in the Jaring plate of 1181. The only war of the reign on record is the one behind the Kamulan plate of 1194. No source gives a strength.

Threats

• A rebellious district head or kinsman (nothing dated for 1200)
• Ash falls from Kelud, which bury rice land and break roads
• The brahmins' privileges and the king's own claim to divine rank (a quarrel the Pararaton dates to 1222)
• The shifting Brantas channels at the delta

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

1. 1205 (Saka 1127)The Wates Kulon plate, the last dated plate of the reign and of the kingdom.Depends on: Kertajaya still reigning and still issuing charters. Stopped by: His death, deposition or a rising before 1205.
2. 1222Battle of Ganter (Genter): in the Pararaton and Nagarakretagama story the brahmins flee to Tumapel, Ken Arok takes the title Bhatara Guru and beats Kertajaya, and Kediri passes to Singhasari.Depends on: Kertajaya attacking brahmin privileges, the brahmins fleeing to Tumapel and Tumapel's akuwu rebelling. The chroniclers are 143 to 259 years later and partly legend. Stopped by: Kertajaya leaves the brahmins alone, or Tumapel stays loyal. Nothing is in train on 1 January 1200.
3. About September 1257The Samalas eruption on Lombok: ash fall and cold across the archipelago. Its effect on Java is not recorded.Depends on: The volcano; fixed by ice cores and radiocarbon. Stopped by: Nothing in play can stop it.
4. 1292 to 1293Jayakatwang of Kediri kills Kertanagara of Singhasari, the Mongol fleet lands, and Majapahit is founded.Depends on: Singhasari still standing and Jayakatwang still holding Kediri. Stopped by: Any earlier fall of Kediri or Singhasari.

Places of note

• Dahanapura (Daha): The court. No palace has been found; the point stands for a district.
• Hujung Galuh: The delta port, the Chinese Jung-ya-lu.
• Tuban (Ta-pan): The pepper harbour of the Chinese lists.
• Palah (Penataran): The state sanctuary Kertajaya founded in 1197.
• Tumapel: District under an akuwu.

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board entry dahanapura-kediri calls Kertajaya 'paramount king of Java' and says everything the island sells passes through hands that answer at Daha: that is the campaign board's inference. The charters show a Brantas kingdom; the paramountcy over Java and the sea is a claim.
• The campaign board entry kamulan-charter says the plate dates from 'his first year'. We could not confirm that: the plate shows him king by Saka 1116 (1194) and no earlier plate of his is known to me.
• Accession: en.wikipedia and the campaign board 1194; the brief notes lists starting 1190; fr.wikipedia gives 1185. Only 'by 1194' is firm.
• Ceker plate: en.wikipedia Saka 1107 (1185), fr.wikipedia 1182.
• en.wikipedia's Kediri article dates the Bharatayuddha to 1135 and lists Mpu Tanakung's Wrtasancaya among Kediri works. The poem's own chronogram is usually read as Saka 1079 (1157), as fr.wikipedia says and as the campaign board has it, and Tanakung is generally set much later, in Majapahit; both points are from memory and not rechecked.
• en.wikipedia says Ternate was a vassal under Jayabhaya and that tributaries included southern Kalimantan and the Maluku Islands. No contemporary source shows it; the Maluku and Borneo lists are Javanese and Chinese claims of 1225 and 1365. Treat as claim.
• fr.wikipedia's Kediri list includes a 'Galunggung' plate of 1194 among Kertajaya's: that is a Javanese plate of Kertajaya, not the Sundanese Galunggung place; we could not read it.

Evidence: Thick for the charters inside the Brantas basin (a dated plate every few years from 1104 to 1205, and the poets of 1157); fair for the Chinese notices of 1178 and about 1225, which give rank and reputation; thin for everything outside the Brantas country; and nothing at all is dated to the winter of 1199 to 1200. The plate dates here come from en.wikipedia and fr.wikipedia and the campaign board; the texts of the plates did not open.

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

On the map: The core and the four claimed parts are drawn along modern regency lines and so are rough. The east Javanese core is firm only where the dated plates are; everything marked claimed is the brief's and the campaign board's claim, not shown by a plate.

Primary sources for this realm

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