The empire of Kertanagara

Changed economic circumstances in the archipelago had an important impact on Java beginning in the 13th century. Long before the 12th century, Chinese shipping had become capable of distant voyages, and Chinese merchants sailed directly to the numerous producing centres in the archipelago. The eastern Javanese ports became more prosperous than ever before. A smaller entrepôt trade developed on the coasts of Sumatra and Borneo and in the offshore islands at the southern entrance to the Strait of Malacca. Heaps of Chinese ceramics from the 12th to the 14th century attest to the existence of an important trading centre at Kota Cina, near present-day Medan on the northeast coast of Sumatra. As a result of these shifts in the trade pattern, the Minangkabau princes in the hinterland of central Sumatra, heirs to the pretensions of the great overlords of Srivijaya-Palembang, were unable to develop their port of Jambi as a rich and powerful mercantile centre. A power vacuum thus opened in the seas of western Indonesia, and the Javanese kings aspired to fill it.

Java had probably long been regarded as the centre of a brilliant civilization, and Old Javanese (Kawi) became the language of the inscriptions of the island of Bali in the 11th century. The grafting of Tantric ritual onto a megalithic shrine at Bongkisam in Sarawak (part of Malaysian Borneo), sometime after the 9th century, is indicative of Javanese cultural diffusion to the maritime fringes of Indonesia. Javanese cultural influence in other islands almost certainly preceded political domination.

Disunity in the Malay world and the cultural fame of Java are not sufficient to explain why the Javanese king Kertanagara (reigned 1268–92) chose to impose his authority on Malayu in southern Sumatra in 1275. It has been suggested that the king’s concern was to protect the archipelago from the threat of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan by organizing a religious alliance. But Kertanagara probably imposed his political authority as well, though his demands would have been limited to expressions of homage and tribute.

The king’s activities overseas were almost certainly intended to enhance his prestige in Java itself, where he was never free from enemies. His political priorities are reflected in a Sanskrit inscription of 1289, attached to an image of the king in the guise of the wrathful Aksobhya Buddha (a self-born Dhyani-Buddha), claiming that he had restored unity to Java; his overseas exploits are not mentioned.

The precise doctrinal contents of Kertanagara’s Tantric cult are unknown. In his lifetime and after his death, his supporters revered him as a Shiva-Buddha. They believed that he had tapped within himself demonic forces that enabled him to destroy the demons that sought to divide Java. The 14th-century poet Prapancha, author of the Nagarakertagama and a worshipper of Kertanagara, on one occasion referred to the king as the “Vairocana Buddha” and associated him with a ritual consort who was, however, the consort of Aksobhya Buddha. Prapancha also admired the king’s scholarly zeal and especially his assiduous performance of religious exercises for the good of mankind.

The role of the royal ascetic had long been a familiar feature of Javanese kingship. The king who had been buried in the 9th-century mausoleum of Prambanan was identified with Shiva, the teacher of asceticism. Early in the 13th century King Angrok, according to a later chronicle, regarded himself as the Bhatara Guru, the divine teacher who was equated with Shiva. Shaivite and Mahayana priests had been under royal supervision from at least as early as the 10th century. Consequently, the Tantric concept of a Shiva-Buddha, taught by Kertanagara, was not regarded as extraordinary. Javanese religious speculation had come to interpret Shaivism and the Mahayana as identical programs for personal salvation, with complementary gods. Union with divinity, to be achieved here and now, was the goal of all ascetics, including the king, who was regarded as the paragon of ascetic skill.

Kertanagara’s religious status, as well as his political problems and policies, were in 13th-century Java by no means eccentric or contradictory features. Indeed, such religious and political authority enabled Kertanagara to take advantage of circumstances stemming from Chinese trade in the archipelago to extend his divine power beyond Java itself. By the 14th century the homage of overseas rulers to the Javanese king was taken for granted.