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THE ŚAILENDRAS OF JAVA iS

Sarkar (1985:3291 says that if the Arya-land of the OJ inscriplions can be identificd wilh the Krishna - Guntur districts of Andhra Pradesh, “where Iksvakus ruled in the third century A. D. as iords of the hill, with Srivijayapuri

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as their Capital, so we have here a Sailendra dynasty (lord of Srt Parvata/

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Srl Saila), whose kings were great patrons of the Buddhist religion, ruling from their Capital SrTvijayapurT in the third century A.D. If this view is correct, the SrTvijayan monarchs of Sumatra will tum out to have been Sailendras from the start.’* A Buddhist sutra translated into Chinese in A.D. 392 refers

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to Chó-ye / Jaya which is Snvijaya. The scions of a dynasty ruling at Srivijayapurl in Andhra Pradesh must have lcft for golden pastures in the Islands between A. D. 300 and 392, founded the Srivijaya kingdom, couple of centuries earlier than the Sailendras. The name of the dynasty of Srivijaya is not known. HTnayftna was the main religion, with the Vinaya of Mula-sarvfistiv3da in Sanskrit. Sanskrit studies were in the ascendant. Chinese Buddhist scholars did their

Sanskrit grammar here and also leamt to translate Sanskrit into Chinese.

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Srivijaya must have bcen an important acadcmic centre for the Chinese, particularly in vicw of the possibililies of comparative studies of Sanskrit and Chinese. Due to constant and cxtcnsive commcrical relalions of Srlvijaya and China, the Chinese prescnce musi have bcen conspicuous, with Chinese

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communilics scllled at Palcmbang, the Chinese language spoken by Srivijayan traders and scholars, Chinese food being served at kiosks. That is why I-tsing who had problcms of board and lodging in India, and even escaped being piereed by the swords of robber bands in India, ultunately went to Srivijaya with the Sanskrit texts he had colleclcd and stayed on to translate them into Chinese. He wanted the Chinese emperor to make a vih&ra for Chinese

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pilgrims in India: "I, I-tsing, met Ta-ls’in in Srivijaya (where he came A. D. 683). I requcstcd him to return hoine to ask an imperial favour in building a tempie in the West.” (= India, Takakusu 1986: xxxvi). Ta-tśin retumed on a merchant ship to the Chinese Capital Ch'ang-an, with new translations of various Su tras and SSslras, the Record and the Memoirs of 60 Chinese

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pilgrims to India— all written by I-tsing in SrTvijaya, with the help of Srlvijayan scholars proficient both in Sanskrit and Chinese.

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The Sailendras came later on the scene, and they were limited to Java. They constructed the magnificent Vajrayana sanctuaries of Sevu, Barabudur,

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and the like. If the Java of Sailendras is Kabrajradharan, then Snvijaya is kavinayadharan. King Saftjaya of another contemporary royal house in Java installcd a Lińga on a mountain in A. D. 732, as recorded in his Cańgal Inscription (Sarkar 1971:1.17). Both the VajrayHna and Śaiva traditions go back to Śrlśailam in South India. It is Śr!parvata of the Tibetan traditions, Vajraparvata in Śrflańka, and the Diamond Mountain in Korea. Vajray&na developed here and hence is termed Vajraparvata-v2sT-nikSya in the SrHańkan work NikSya - sańgraha. For the Saivas this mountain was the seat of the holiest Mallik&rjuna Lińga, one of the twelve most sacred Jyotirlińgas. This