Early Mapping of Southeast Asia. Thomas Suarez

through the Malacca Strait and along the coasts of Sumatra and Java from about 800-1300 A.D.− were most likely to have a more sophisticated understanding of the world. At a later date, those regions which accepted Islam might have inherited the Arabic cosmographical tradition, and by the seventeenth century some Islamic courts-notably Makassar- had already solicited and zealously studied European geographical texts and other scientific works. Conversely, other hand island civilizations, such as the Balinese, preserved a very introspective world view.

      Extant Buddhist literature from Lan Na illustrates how the world view of peoples of the inland regions was geographically narrow. The authors of these records were primarily interested in the events of their own region, their own village, and their own monastery. Distant places entered into the archives only when specifically relevant to an event at home, for example if the inspiration for the founding of a local school or temple originated elsewhere. Lan Na records- the oldest of which are Mon inscriptions on stone dating from the early 1200s- do not record the history of the local Lawa people, nor any neighboring Burmese kingdom, nor China, nor the Thai kingdoms of Sukhothai or, later, Ayuthaya.²⁵ On the other hand, Wat Jet Yot, the temple of the seven spires in Chiang Mai, symbolically maps seven places in distant India, because these locations are holy sites that relate directly to the life of Buddha and Buddhist doctrines. Similarly, a map from Lan Na (fig. 9) shows the temple of Bodh Gaya, the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment (represented here by a temple within a box, with several roads branching out from it) and the location of other important Buddhist sites in relation to it. It is both a cosmography and an itinerary rolled into one, with distances marked in either travel time or linear measurements.

      In early Southeast Asia, there was no absolute distinction between the physical, the metaphysical, and the religious; although something might be either predominantly sacred or predominantly profane, essentially abstract or primarily physical, such concepts blurred together at the edges. Southeast Asian geographic thought, like Southeast Asian life, could be at once, both empirical and transcendental. However, as in the case of other seemingly exotic characteristics of pre-modern Southeast Asian cosmographic thought, this oneness of the mundane and the fantastic was typical, not extraordinary, in the medieval world.

      Astrology, along with its necessary ingredients, astronomy and mathematics, flourished in ancient Southeast Asia, just as it did in Europe. In turn, the study of mathematics and astrology connected with celestial and cosmographic ideas. For example, in parts of Southeast Asia, the numbers four, eight, sixteen, and thirty-two were considered to be attributes of Sumeru and thus to have special meaning (the sequence of numbers corresponds to increasing powers of two, and to the numbers 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, and 100,000 in a binary system). This idea is developed, for example, in the Thai map in figure 14, which depicts sixteen heavens.

      Cosmological and mathematical geography had repercussions in the actual political geography of some kingdoms: in the Malay courts of Kedah and Pahang there were four great chiefs, eight major chiefs, and sixteen minor chiefs; Perak and Malacca once added thirty-two territorial chiefs. During the enthronement ceremonies in Cambodia and Thailand, the new king was surrounded by eight Brahmans, representing the Lokapalas (world protectors in Hindu mythology) guarding the eight points of the Brahman cosmos. In ninth-century Java, the kingdom of Hi-Ling was ruled by thirty-two high officials.²⁶

      Allegories were naturally well-suited to many Southeast Asian cosmographies. The people of volcanically active islands of Banda, for example, believed their archipelago to lie on the horns of a great ox, which caused earthquakes when shaking its head. Bali was said to lie on the back of a turtle, Bedawang, who floated on the ocean.²⁷ In seventeenth-century Mataram (Java), troops were sometimes envisioned as being arranged in the form of a crayfish.²⁸

      Although Western mapmaking philosophies have now largely supplanted native cartographical traditions, it would be misleading to see the history of Southeast Asian cartography as a gradual incorporation of European values. The modern Western ethic of mapmaking- namely that maps should present geographic data in the most 'accurate', clear and analytical fashion possible- was not the principal aim of Southeast Asian cartographers, just as it was doubtfully a major concern of medieval mapmakers in Europe.

      That the assimilation of Western mapmaking and cosmography was not an even process is colorfully illustrated in mid-nineteenth century Siam. Western cosmological principles were by that time already accepted by some members of the Siamese court, yet local mapmakers within its doors evidently felt no need to 'look' Western. Excerpts from an account by Frederick Neale, an Englishman who visited Siam in the 1840s and who was shown a map by the king paint a vivid image of this. The visitor, who found the court to be eclectic and even surreal in its taste, was brought to the palace by a "gorgeously gilded state canoe," and then carried on the boatmen's shoulders to dry land, where he found the palace's courtyard "filled with a strange conglomeration of beautiful Italian statues... and of uncouth and unseemly figures of Siamese deities and many-armed gods." Once within the king's chambers, a "self-performing little organ" played music of Mozart as a curtain slowly drew aside to reveal "the corpulent and half-naked body of the mighty and despotic king of Siam."

      The king, to illustrate a territorial dispute with Burma, produced "a chart of the two kingdoms which had been drawn by his prime minister. " As the canvas map was carefully unrolled on the floor in front of the visitors, the king studied the their faces

      as though he expected that the brilliance of the painting, and the exquisite display of Siamese geographical talent, would have caused us to faint away on the spot, or to go into rapturous fits of delight.

      Instead, they thought it such gibberish that they were

      very nearly outraging all propriety by bursting into fits of laughter, and very painful was the curb we were obliged to wear to constrain our merriment.

      The map (see fig. 10), indeed, was hardly a 'map' in their eyes:

      [It] was about three feet by two; in the center was a patch of red, about eighteen inches long by ten broad; above it was a parch of green, about ten inches long by three wide. On the whole space occupied by the red was pasted a singular looking figure [the Siamese king], cut out of silver paper, with a pitch-fork in one hand and an orange in the other; there was a crown on the head, and spurs on the heels... His Majesty [explained that] such portion of the chart as was painted red indicated the Siamese possessions, whereas the green signified the Burmese territory.

      Within the Burmese domain, an ill-formed black figure represented Tharawaddy, the Burmese king, and many disoriented small figures represented his subjects, the whole symbolizing

      what a troubled and disturbed state the Burmese empire was, and what an insignificant personage, in his own dominions, was the Burman King.

      Although the European observer mocked the map for its geographic worthlessness, he also understood that its actual purpose was to 'chart' the relative virtue and strength of the Siamese and Burmese sovereigns. This was a map of kingly omnipotence and kingdomly integrity, a propaganda map, with no intended value to a traveler.

      Travel, Trade and Statehood

      Travel, trade, and statehood promote geographic concepts and are natural precursors to mapmaking. While it is true that the common folk of Southeast Asia stayed, for the most part, within their villages, travel far from home figured naturally in the collective psyche of most societies. A youth might wander about for a few years in search of adventure and profit, and then, having gained at least a patina of glamour, if not riches, return to his natal village. Buddhists and Muslims alike undertook religious pilgrimages and sought teachers of their faith; in the case of Buddhism, the respectability of a life of travel was perhaps set by the religion's foundations, for the life of Buddha was itself largely a series of wanderings. Other traditional (if less respectable) travelers common in Southeast Asia were the troubadours and actors, who led a nomadic existence, meandering from one village to the next. Chinese texts, for example, record a group of Funanese musicians whose sojourn in China resulted in the establishment of a music institute near Nanking.

      Fig. 10 Caricature of a