Page 11 - Hikayat-Patani-The-Story-Of-Patani 1

2 HIKAYAT PATANI

Patani. Like its northern neighbours, it was a stronghold of Buddhism
as early as the seventh century.2 Langkasuka was sufficiently important
in the trade of the early eleventh century to figure among the major
targets of the naval expeditions of the Cholas of South India.3 Like
other small states in the middle reaches of the Malay Peninsula it was
strongest when major powers to the north and south were least active.
When the thalassocracy of Srivijaya effectively dominated the Straits of
Malacca in the eighth and ninth centuries, promoting trade and sup­
pressing piracy, Langkasuka as an alternative port for the trans-shipment
of goods across the peninsula came under its influence.4 Langkasuka’s
fate in the subsequent period is uncertain. The isthmian region generally
was under pressure from all directions, as the Cambodian Empire of
Angkor, the Burmese/Mon Empire of Pagan, the Cholas, Ceylon, Java,
and Srivijaya all intervened in peninsular affairs and small states
struggled to keep their independence, either to maintain a precarious
existence or to disappear from sight.5
The main significance of Langkasuka’s history prior to the thirteenth
century is the inescapable conclusion that a state in the vicinity of
modern Patani, like its nearby neighbours, consistently played an im­
portant economic and political role in the affairs of the isthmian region.
This is particularly true of periods of localized trade, when either lack
of unified control to facilitate trade in the Straits of Malacca, or com­
petition between several powers over the trade of the Straits, encouraged
the commercial and political rise of smaller powers to the north and
south of the straits. Navigationally it was necessary for sailors coming
from China to wait for the change in the monsoons somewhere in the
vicinity of the Malay Peninsula. Moreover, there was a strong and active
South China Sea trade, more local in nature, for the distribution and
exchange of products such as the rice surplus of the major mainland
monarchies, the iron of Borneo, and the various spices which grew in
different places scattered throughout the region. Patani itself was
renowned as the source of a particularly high grade of eaglewood (also
known as aloeswood and gharu); and the cloth and porcelain it might
have received in exchange would have been distributed along the coasts
and up the streams of localities nearby.6 This probably was not a major
trade, but it was a sustaining one for such a state as Langkasuka.
2 Wheatley, 1961, p. 256.
3 Coedes, 1968, pp. 141—44.
4 Wheatley, 1961, pp. 263—64.
5 Wyatt and Bastin, 1968.
0 Wheatley, 1961, pp. 264—65.