Srivijaya
▶ Explore on the mapSrivijaya was a maritime empire based at Palembang on Sumatra that controlled the Strait of Malacca and the sea lanes between China and India from the seventh to the thirteenth century. It began as a collection of river ports, and under rulers who took the title maharaja it used a fleet to collect toll from passing ships rather than to conquer territory far inland. Chinese pilgrims such as I-Tsing studied Sanskrit at its monasteries in the seventh century and reported that more than a thousand monks lived there. The empire was Buddhist: the monks Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra passed through on their way to China, and stone statues found at Palembang show the sumatran style. Its wealth came from pepper, camphor, gold and tin, and its ships carried them to Guangzhou and Coromandel. The Javanese Sailendra and later the Khmer kings challenged it, and in 1025 the Chola admiral Rajendra Chola raided the ports and carried off the king; Srivijaya never fully recovered. By the fourteenth century the strait was controlled by Malacca, and Srivijaya's cities were swallowed by the mangrove. Chinese and Arabic sources both describe its harbours, and its kings claimed authority over the strait for three long centuries.