Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c8.56

c8.56

After this general survey of the Hindu colonies in the mainland we may now pass on to the islands of the Malay Archipelago. Among these Java seems to have been known to the Indians from a very early period. The Sanskrit form of its name is referred to in the *Rāmāyaṇa* and mentioned by Ptolemy. Reference has already been made to the possible foundation of a Hindu kingdom in Java towards the end of the first or the beginning of the second century A.D. The account of Fa-hien, who visited the island in A.D. 414-5, leaves no doubt that the Hindus were settled there for a very long time. But the first positive evidence of a Hindu kingdom in Java is furnished by four rock inscriptions found within the boundaries of the Residency of Batavia *i.e.*, in the western part of the island. These inscriptions refer to a king Pūrṇa-varman whose capital was the city of Tārumā. His grandfather is called *rājarṣi* (royal sage) and another ancestor, probably his father, is given the epithet *rājādhirāja*. The latter is said to have dug Chandrabhāgā, evidently a canal, which reached the ocean after passing by the capital city. In the twenty-second year of his reign, Pūrṇa-varman himself dug another canal called the Gomatī river. On palaeographic considerations Pūrṇa-varman may be placed in the fifth or sixth century A.D.