Early Mapping of Southeast Asia. Thomas Suarez

which were no longer current. This practice, known as chamra, may have become especially common when Siamese authorities adopted Western surveying techniques during the nineteenth century, their new mapping 'language' making the entirety of their past cartographic archives no longer relevant.

      Secrecy

      Secrecy may also have played an instrumental role in limiting the survival of indigenous maps, just as it did in Renaissance Spain and Portugal, and also in Japan. La Loubère speculated about secrecy in Siam in the seventeenth century, observing that "the Siamese have not made a Map of their Country", or if they had, that they "know how to keep it a secret. " But while the experiences of La Loubère does not afford any direct evidence of Thai cartographic secrecy, those of a British ambassador in the early nineteenth century most certainly do. John Crawfurd, who was sent as Britain's ambassador to Bangkok in the early 1820s, actually described his acquisition of geographic data from a Thai mariner. His account of the embassy, published in 1828, included a "Map of the Kingdoms of Siam and Cochin China'' by John Walker, compiled from the embassy's own surveys and older sources, as well as from new information obtained (we learn from the book's final appendix) from "a Mohammedan mariner, a native of Siam," whose owns ports-of-call occasionally coincided with those of the British mission.

      Crawfurd, it seems, was only able to gather information from his Thai source when far away from Siamese soil and he records how the Thai sailor grew increasingly apprehensive about divulging information the closer they got to Siam. When the embassy met the "Mohammedan mariner" and his colleagues in Penang, the details they revealed in respect of their country "supplied more useful and practical knowledge than all we had before obtained from printed sources." However, as Crawfurd's party "approached Siam they became much more shy and reserved, and now communicated nothing without a strict injunction to secrecy," indicating with gestures that the king would execute them if they were caught divulging such information.³⁶ Figure 12 illustrates a simple map of Bangkok which was included in the published account of the embassy and which is identified as having been acquired from a native source.

      Fig. 12 Plan of Bangkok, taken from a native sketch. Crawfurd, 1828. [Private collection]

      The power structure in Dutch-held Indonesia may also have promoted secrecy regarding the population of the archipelago and its land divisions. The Dutch authorities, in the interest of corporate efficiency, preferred to delegate some administrative responsibilities to local chiefs rather than burden the Dutch East India Company with direct responsibility for the indigenous infrastructure. These chiefs, in turn, would have benefited from keeping confidential particular information about their domain and the size and distribution of its population. Furthermore, traditional seafarers like the Bugis of Sulawesi and the maritime merchants of Java and Sumatra may have been particularly keen to keep their maps and other pilot aids confidential once they witnessed the aggressive commercial spirit of their European visitors.

      Map making Media

      Although there is only scant record of maps or mapmaking in early Southeast Asia, there is ample reference to writing materials and methods. With the obvious exception of stone edifices, the media used were often volatile, and the climates with which they had to contend promoted decay. Maps for day-to-day affairs may have been drawn on leaves, a common medium for writing in Southeast Asia. Ralph Fitch, a visitor to Burma in the late sixteenth century, witnessed written appeals being presented to the king:

      "supplications [to the king of Burma are] written in the leaves of a tree with the point of an iron bigger than a bodkin. These leaves are an ell long and about two inches broad; they are also double."

      This was a description of palm leaves, which maximally measure about 6-7 cm wide by about 55-60 cm long, being used as a writing material. The 'iron bigger than a bodkin' was the stylus which was used to incise the characters. A thick paper, made from the bark of mulberry and other trees, was another common writing medium, and was more durable than leaves. This khoi paper was brown or black, but could also be bleached white.

      Writing on palm leaves may not always have been immediately obvious to European eyes, unaccustomed to the use of such a medium. The initial 'bruising' of the leaf with the stylus did not always produce a readily apparent image− to heigh ten the image, the leaf would first be rubbed with a sooty substance and then wiped clean, leaving a black imprint on the rubbed areas of the yellowish leaf.

      These leaves were quite practical, as they could be rolled up and carried without concern for their getting wet, which in the torrential downpours of the rainy season and when traveling by river must have been a common occurrence. Although water might wash off the image, leaving the leaf 'blank', the messenger or recipient had only to apply some soot (even from a dirty finger) to restore the image. Thus the writing on a leaf being couriered through the elements might, in such circumstances, not be visible to another person.³⁷ Our Chinese ambassador in Angkor in 1296-97 was struck by this, writing that when the leaves are "rubbed with something moist, [the characters] disappear."

      A more durable medium than palm leaves was described by the same Chinese observer. Chou noted that "for ordinary correspondence, as well as official documents, deer skin is used, which is dyed black" and written on with a type of white chalk. The Thai word for 'book', nangsü, derives from nang (meaning, 'skin, hide, or bark') and sü ('written character').³⁸ Cloth and cowhide were also used as writing media.

      Transient Maps

      Maps of an inherently transient nature are documented in the Caroline Islands, also known in the eighteenth century as the 'New Philippines'. The Philosophical Transactions from the Year MDCC included a map of the Carolines (fig. 13) copied from an indigenous map consisting of stones arranged to represent islands. The Transactions explains that

      the map was not made by Europeans, for none have yet been upon these islands, but by the islanders themselves, after this manner. Some of the most skilful of them arranged upon a table as many little stones as there are islands belonging to their country; and marked out, as well as they could, the name of each, its extent and distance from the others: And this is the map, thus traced out by the Indians, that is here engraved.

      The Body as a Map

      Peripheral evidence suggests that the human body might have served as a cartographic medium in Southeast Asia, although this is only speculation. There are two forms this might have taken, one 'permanent', the other temporal: tattooing, and the positioning of the hand and fingers into a map. Tattooing was prevalent in much of Southeast Asia before the dictates of Confucianism, Islam, and Christianity suppressed such body art. A batik map from Java, tentatively dated at about 1800, is known to exist, and tattooing and batik may have a common past.³⁹ There is no record of tattooed maps in Southeast Asia proper, but what appear to be tattooed cartographic motifs are described in some detail by a Frenchman traveling in the Caroline Islands in the early nineteenth century. According to the visitor, the islanders'

      legs and chest are covered with long straight lines which at first look like striped stockings. They trace the outline of several small fish on their hands, each of about an inch long. It is strange to note that these figures bear the names of various islands. Peseng [one of the islanders], on his left thigh, above the knee, had a certain number of these fish as well as hooks, which represented Lougounor and the neighboring island groups; in addition, each line on his legs and hands was identified with the name of an island, from Faounoupei as far as Pelly. Having accounted for all these islands, there were still a few lines left which he called Manila, Ouon [Guam], Saipan, etc.; and as there were still a few lines left, he named them, chuckling as he went, lngres [England], Roussia, etc. Perhaps this practice had been introduced to more easily recall the islands of their archipelago. It is a type of geographic rosary...⁴⁰

      The positioning of the hand and fingers in the form of a map was codified by João de Barros, Lisbon's official historian of Portuguese adventures in the Indies (see page 123, below). Writing in the mid-sixteenth century, Barros told his readers how to 'make' a map of Southeast Asia by placing the fingers of the left hand in certain prescribed positions. Not only were the coastal contours of mainland