11-13-2003, 02:15 AM
[url="http://www.infitt.org/tscii/archives/msg00443.html"]http://www.infitt.org/tscii/archives/msg00443.html[/url]
Nearly 40 years after the Cambridge University archaeological
expedition led by Stewart Wavell, when had then just retired from
Radio Malaya, found evidence of an underground city in Lake Chini,
the Pahang government is to mount a search for that city. That the
statement was made by the state culture, arts and tourism
chairman, Dato' Shahiruddin Abdul Moin, necessarily points to why
this is now mooted. It would bring tourists in droves, not
because we want to found out about our past. "Who knows, one day
we may have an underwater museum similar to the one being planned
in Egypt and this will greatly boost our efforts to promote Pahang
as a leading tourist destination." Indeed.
And, of course, Mr Wavell and others only made claims after
they went to the site. Depend on Bolehland experts to come up with
the answers without going there. The point about Lake Chini --
where, according to Mr Wavell, in his "Naga King's Daughter", a
record of the expedition, which eventually found the general area
of the Langkasuka capital in southern Thailand, a fact confirmed
by a subsequent archaelogocial expedition mounted by another
archeologist much involved in Malaysian excavations since the
mid-1920s, Mr H.G. Quaritch Wales, he who, with Mr K. Nilakanta
Sastri of India, excavated the Chandi Bukit in the Bujang Valley in
the 1920a -- is that there is evidence of a kingdom, but the
suggestion had not been taken up until tourism beckoned. But Dato'
Shahiruddin does not realise that the excavation would not be a
Sunday school picnic, but would require massive resources in which
the federal government must be actively involved, and the federal
government representative should not be the culture arts and
tourist minister but the national museum and archeological
department.
Despite Dato' Shahiruddin's claim, that the Khmer Empire had
established themselves in the general area of Lake Chini is
accepted. There are many words spoken by the aborigines in the
area which are also spoken in Khmer but not in Malay. And it is
not only the Khmer Empire that once existed in the area.
Tembiling is said to be a corruption of Tambralinga, the name of
another Hindu-Buddhist empire in the area. Bujang, as in Bujang
River, is a corruption of Bhujjangga, in Malay Sanskrit parlance a
snake but more likely, as one Sang Kancillian pointed out after an
earlier post of mine, a dragon.
The Naga King is a snake but could also mean a dragon, if one
extrapolates the earlier corruption of meaning. That it is the
Naga King's daughter who is worshipped in Lake Chini in times past
could mean the worship of the female principle in Hinduism, Sakhti,
or, as is possible, the female principle of Saivism, which held
much sway in those times, and could well be Parvati, the daughter
of Parvatham, the Himalaya Mountain. But since Hindu-Bhuddhist --
actually Saivite Hindu-Buddhist, since Vishnuvaist Hindu made little
headway outside India -- syncretism after their export, there was a
mixing of myths and legends and practices -- something one finds
aplenty in Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos though not in
Myanmar -- the Naga King's daughter could well be a Khmer
syncretism.
The rich tradition in Malaysia's past is deliberately ignored.
But a newer generation of Malaysians, insisting that one must know
the past to look to the future, quietly changes the national
perception that anything pre-Islamic should be ignored. This
necessarily has meant that we shudder at having to come to terms
with archaelogical evidence that suggests it. Not too long ago, a
Hindu temple which some claim existed, in several reincarnations,
since at least the 7th century was desecrated and destroyed in Gunong
Jerai in Kedah. It is to the credit of its mentri besar that he
ordered the temple rebuilt with government help. That temple also
provided a beacon for travellers from the Coromandel coast for more
than two millennia, which Claudius Ptolemy noted in the AD 3rd
century when he talked of the greating trading centre at the mouth of
what is today the Merbok River, somewhat like the Takkola Emporium
further up the Myanmar coast.
And there is another rich source to be excavated in the area
near Bruas, where remnants of a pre-Christian Hindu empire called
Ganganegara -- the Kingdom of Ganga -- have been found, but the
national inhibition at the existence of a pre-Islamic past hinders
further exploration. Apart from filling about 12 inches of
newspaper space, little would come out of Dato' Shahiruddin's claim
that the Pahang government "is to undertake the enormous task of
unravelling the mystery of the legendary lost city."
M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my
Nearly 40 years after the Cambridge University archaeological
expedition led by Stewart Wavell, when had then just retired from
Radio Malaya, found evidence of an underground city in Lake Chini,
the Pahang government is to mount a search for that city. That the
statement was made by the state culture, arts and tourism
chairman, Dato' Shahiruddin Abdul Moin, necessarily points to why
this is now mooted. It would bring tourists in droves, not
because we want to found out about our past. "Who knows, one day
we may have an underwater museum similar to the one being planned
in Egypt and this will greatly boost our efforts to promote Pahang
as a leading tourist destination." Indeed.
And, of course, Mr Wavell and others only made claims after
they went to the site. Depend on Bolehland experts to come up with
the answers without going there. The point about Lake Chini --
where, according to Mr Wavell, in his "Naga King's Daughter", a
record of the expedition, which eventually found the general area
of the Langkasuka capital in southern Thailand, a fact confirmed
by a subsequent archaelogocial expedition mounted by another
archeologist much involved in Malaysian excavations since the
mid-1920s, Mr H.G. Quaritch Wales, he who, with Mr K. Nilakanta
Sastri of India, excavated the Chandi Bukit in the Bujang Valley in
the 1920a -- is that there is evidence of a kingdom, but the
suggestion had not been taken up until tourism beckoned. But Dato'
Shahiruddin does not realise that the excavation would not be a
Sunday school picnic, but would require massive resources in which
the federal government must be actively involved, and the federal
government representative should not be the culture arts and
tourist minister but the national museum and archeological
department.
Despite Dato' Shahiruddin's claim, that the Khmer Empire had
established themselves in the general area of Lake Chini is
accepted. There are many words spoken by the aborigines in the
area which are also spoken in Khmer but not in Malay. And it is
not only the Khmer Empire that once existed in the area.
Tembiling is said to be a corruption of Tambralinga, the name of
another Hindu-Buddhist empire in the area. Bujang, as in Bujang
River, is a corruption of Bhujjangga, in Malay Sanskrit parlance a
snake but more likely, as one Sang Kancillian pointed out after an
earlier post of mine, a dragon.
The Naga King is a snake but could also mean a dragon, if one
extrapolates the earlier corruption of meaning. That it is the
Naga King's daughter who is worshipped in Lake Chini in times past
could mean the worship of the female principle in Hinduism, Sakhti,
or, as is possible, the female principle of Saivism, which held
much sway in those times, and could well be Parvati, the daughter
of Parvatham, the Himalaya Mountain. But since Hindu-Bhuddhist --
actually Saivite Hindu-Buddhist, since Vishnuvaist Hindu made little
headway outside India -- syncretism after their export, there was a
mixing of myths and legends and practices -- something one finds
aplenty in Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos though not in
Myanmar -- the Naga King's daughter could well be a Khmer
syncretism.
The rich tradition in Malaysia's past is deliberately ignored.
But a newer generation of Malaysians, insisting that one must know
the past to look to the future, quietly changes the national
perception that anything pre-Islamic should be ignored. This
necessarily has meant that we shudder at having to come to terms
with archaelogical evidence that suggests it. Not too long ago, a
Hindu temple which some claim existed, in several reincarnations,
since at least the 7th century was desecrated and destroyed in Gunong
Jerai in Kedah. It is to the credit of its mentri besar that he
ordered the temple rebuilt with government help. That temple also
provided a beacon for travellers from the Coromandel coast for more
than two millennia, which Claudius Ptolemy noted in the AD 3rd
century when he talked of the greating trading centre at the mouth of
what is today the Merbok River, somewhat like the Takkola Emporium
further up the Myanmar coast.
And there is another rich source to be excavated in the area
near Bruas, where remnants of a pre-Christian Hindu empire called
Ganganegara -- the Kingdom of Ganga -- have been found, but the
national inhibition at the existence of a pre-Islamic past hinders
further exploration. Apart from filling about 12 inches of
newspaper space, little would come out of Dato' Shahiruddin's claim
that the Pahang government "is to undertake the enormous task of
unravelling the mystery of the legendary lost city."
M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my