Talk:Salakanagara

Salaka negara

The Salakanagara Kingdom is the first historically recorded Indianised kingdom in Western Java. The kingdom existed between 130-362 AD.[1][2] Claudius Ptolemaeus (160 AD) wrote about Java in his book, Geographie Hypogenesis. He mentions the name of Argyre Chora (meaning: Silver Nation) in Labadio. According to the historian, Labadio means Dwipa-Javaka, Dwipa-Javaka or Java Dwipa, which is the ancient name of Java Island. There was one kingdom which rule west coast Java in 160 AD, Salakanagara. Salakanagara means “Silver Nation”. It reinforces the theory that Ptolemaeus may have visited Java in 160 AD.[3][4] A relatively modern literature in the 17th century Pustaka Rajya Rajya i Bhumi Nusantara describes Salakanagara as being founded by an Indian merchant from Pallava Kingdom.[3] 114.79.4.155 (talk) 01:15, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Assertion that this is a hoax

Here, @Verosaurus: asserted: Salakanagara is a hoax, the source for this kingdom was Wangsakerta / Pustaka Rajyarajya i Bhumi Nusantara, which is a pseudohistory / fabrication made between 1910-1960s., removing a wikilinked mention of this article from the List of sovereign states by date of formation artcle. This is a heads-up that discussion might be needed re this either here or on the talk page there. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 06:05, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

The existence of Salakanagara is mentioned in Pustaka Rajya Rajya i Bhumi Nusantara, a manuscript in the larger Wangsakerta manuscript collection. It was said to be the oldest kingdom of Indonesian archipelago, founded in 130 AD by Indians of the Pallava kingdom that merged with locals. The larger story is that a group of Indian knights helped a village in the Sunda Strait in repelling a pirate attack. The Indians then settled in the village and founded an Indianized kingdom, with Dewawarman, the knight’s leader, as the king. This claim, however, is disputed:

1. No primary source (inscriptions, archaeological findings) mentioned Salakanagara or refer to Salakanagara, let alone mention the Indian expedition to Java.

2. There is no correlation between Ptolemy’s Argyre Chora (Land of Silver) with Salakanagara (Salaka=Silver, Nagara=Country). Ptolemy never visited Southeast Asia, and the location and characteristics of that place were never mentioned. To attribute the place is far-fetched without evidence.

3. Salakanagara kingdom was said to be defeated by the Tarumanagara kingdom. But there’s no Tarumanagara inscription that mentioned Salakanagara. This is strange because it is said that Dewawarman’s son-in-law was the one who founded Tarumanagara.

4. Dewawarman's son, Aswawarman, was said to have gone to Borneo and became Kundungga’s son-in-law and founded the Kutai Kingdom. This is illogical because the Muara Kaman inscription mentioned that Aswawarman is the biological son of Kundungga, not his son-in-law.

The only source for Salakanagara is the Wangsakerta manuscript (or rather, manuscripts). This ms was said to be made in the 17^th century, which means more than 1500 years after the supposed existence of Salakanagara (a very, very weak source because of its time discrepancy). It is written that the Prince Wangsakerta of Cirebon made a great effort to compile the entire history of Nusantara by inviting 70 scholars from every region in Indonesia, to gather in Cirebon from 1677 to 1698 to make the Wangsakerta Committee, working together to make a colossal historical work. The authenticity of the ms is very dubious:

1.     The age of the manuscript. The language used in the ms was identified as Old Javanese, not the real Old Javanese (Kawi) but Javanese that was purposely “olded”. And the ms was written on manila paper (modern). M. C. Ricklefs thinks that the ms is not old, because the writing is rough, unlike a scribe’s writing. Indonesian National Archives has tested the paper, the result is that the paper was about 100 years old.

2.     The existence of the Wangsakerta Committee doesn’t make sense. According to the ms, the Committee originates from the whole Indonesian archipelago, and every region sent 70 delegates. This indicates hundreds, even thousands, people gathered together in Cirebon for 21 years to make the ms. Interestingly this colossal effort was not recorded in any of the VOC records. The VOC should be aware of this gathering, since they’re still suspicious about the natives after the Trunajaya rebellion.

3.     The content is too detailed. The ms was too detailed in recording Indonesian history, from the creation of the world, the history of classical kingdoms, to 17th-century kingdoms, like a modern history book. Even prehistory ages that contained ape-men were discussed. It’s not logical to think 17th-century people knew this, even the scribe of Babad Tanah Jawi (written about 45 years before Wangsakerta ms), was unable to remember the history of Majapahit. The Javanese people in the 17th century only knew legends and oral history, not synchronized with modern historiography.

4.     The manuscript was pro-Western scholars and/or scholarly approach, and has a conflicted chronology. Several Dutch historians’ arguments and theories are included in the ms, including their mistakes that have been cleared in the newer findings. For example, the narrative that the wife of king Airlangga originated from Srivijaya, and was named Sanggramawijaya. This is in reality C.C. Berg’s theory of 1938. What’s more strange is that the ms described Srivijaya kingdom IN GREAT DETAIL. In fact, the primary source for Srivijaya is very scarce for a kingdom of such size. Srivijaya was unknown to the Malays or any inhabitants of Indonesia, until it was argued as a kingdom (not a king’s name) by George Coedes in his Le Royaume de Çrīvijaya (1918). Srivijaya was absent in Classical Malay (1200–1900) texts. The word “Srivijaya” would only appear in the modern Malay language Saudara newspaper of 1932 and 1937, clearly by this time following Coedes’ argument that the word was not referring to a king’s name. The Committee even knew about the existence of the Kutai Kingdom, a kingdom that was only identified by the discovery of the Muara Kaman inscription in 1879. What’s intriguing is that the Committee’s colossal effort only resulted in work that HAS NEVER BEEN ACCESSED by anyone for 200+ years.

5.     The manuscript contains no new findings (archaeological sites, inscriptions) newer than 1970. So the ms could only reconstruct history BASED on findings before the year 1970. With the existence of C.C. Berg’s theory of 1938, the ms couldn’t be written before 1938. So the more detailed range of the ms’ creation would be between 1938 and 1970.

6.     The discovery of the ms was suspicious. A museum head bought the ms from an intermediary. Wangsakerta manuscripts are grouped into 5 books, which consisted of many smaller ms, numbering about 1700, each was priced at about 1–1.25 million IDR. In the 1970s, this was very expensive: To buy it, one need to use the state budget — people’s money; as a head of a museum couldn’t buy it using his/her own money. When historians finally identified the ms as fraud, the identity of the supplier can’t be traced anymore, even now.

In all, I’ve mentioned 6 main problems, and about 17 detailed problems that indicated that the source used for Salakanagara is a hoax or modern fabrication.

These problems are mainly discussed in Polemik Naskah Pangeran Wangsakerta (book) , Kontroversi Tentang Naskah Wangsakerta (Pdf journal) , and this video.

Post-analysis:

1.     The Pustaka Rajya Rajya i Bhumi Nusantara lists Salakanagara rulers with NUMERAL. Local rulers usually do not use numerals, which indicated modern influence. Among the earliest rulers that used numerals would be Amangkurat I and II of Mataram Sultanate. This showed that the ms is fabricated by younger generations.

2.     The Argyre Chora of Ptolemy has been argued as the primary source supporting the existence of Salakanagara because both of the words translated to something like “Silver Country”. However, after the facts I mentioned above, it is more likely that the fabricator of Wangsakerta ms based the name “Salakanagara” using Argyre Chora of Ptolemy, since his work has been known in the 20th-century curriculum.

3.     It is also argued that Salakanagara also has one more primary source, which is a Chinese chronicle of the Han dynasty that mentioned a place called Ye Diao and its king named Diao Bian. Ye Diao is equated with Yawadwipa and Diao Bian is equated with Dewawarman. In reality, Diao Bian shouldn’t be equated with Dewawarman, since the name Dewawarman comes from a very weak secondary source, that is Wangsakerta ms, which was (supposedly) written much later in the 1600s. The name is not based on primary source findings (local inscriptions).

4.     During the 1600s, the Javanese no longer used the Old Javanese language, the Babad Tanah Jawi for example, used more modern Javanese. So the existence of a Javanese ms using this language in the 1670s–1690s must be questioned.

Verosaurus (talk) 20:16, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Possible source

Polemik Salakanagara: Meninjau Kebenaran Bukti Historis Salakanagara dalam Pentas Sejarah Kuno di Indonesia, Wildhan Ichzha Maulana, 2023, doi:10.24036/diakronika/vol23-iss1/334 (open-access)

The article is in Bahasa Indonesia but it has an English abstract that says (roughly) that Salakanagara is mythical, but it traces the origins of the myth.

Note about reliability: I had no prior knowledge of Diakronika. I have decent confidence that they are a respectable, if niche, journal, based on the following clues: (1) their page about the peer review process indicates a rather long review process (and not a "publish within two weeks!" ad typical of predatory journals); (2) their article processing charge (2m IDR = $130) is somewhat on the low side; (3) the journal has been operating since 2017 and is not on predatory journal lists such as this one. Tigraan^{Click here for my talk page ("private" contact)} 09:37, 18 August 2023 (UTC)