The Canggal inscription: Sanjaya and the rise of Mataram
In 732 King Sanjaya set up a linga of Shiva on the hill of Wukir in Central Java and commemorated it in a Sanskrit inscription. It praises the island of Java, ‘rich in grain and gold mines’, and tells how after the death of King Sanna the land fell into disorder until Sanjaya, son of Sanna’s sister Sannaha, took the throne. The earliest dated inscription from Central Java, it marks the rise of the kingdom later remembered as Mataram.
- Date
- 6 October 732exact dateDate in the Julian calendar
- Place
- Gunung Wukir sanctuary, where the inscription was foundtoday: Kadiluwih, Magelang Regency, Central Java, Indonesia · Southeast Asia and Oceania
- Participants
- Sanjaya of Mataram, Mataram kingdom
- Threads
- Southeast Asia and Oceania (1st–10th c.)
- Also known as
- Canggal inscription; Changal inscription; Sanjaya; Gunung Wukir; Kunjarakunja; Mataram; Кангальская надпись; Надпись из Чангала; Гунунг-Вукир; Санджайя
The stone, found among the ruins of a Shaiva sanctuary on the hill of Wukir, south-east of Borobudur, and now kept in the National Museum of Indonesia in Jakarta, bears Sanskrit verses in the South Indian Pallava script, dated Monday, the 13th day of the bright half of the month Karttika in Shaka 654 — 6 October 732. It records the erection of a linga in the country of Kunjarakunja: an early misreading took this for a place in South India from which the linga had been brought, but the corrected reading shows that it is the name of the district where Sanjaya built his sanctuary. The poem praises Java and its former king Sanna and describes Sanjaya, son of Sanna’s sister Sannaha, as learned in the scriptures and valiant in war. According to George Coedès, apart from the undated Tuk Mas inscription, it is the first written record from Java since the inscriptions of Purnavarman in the 5th century.
Later tradition made Sanjaya a founder. A charter of King Balitung of 907, the Mantyasih inscription, names him as the first of a line of kings of Mataram — a name first attested in inscriptions of the late 9th century and applied to Sanjaya’s kingdom in retrospect — and King Daksha in the early 10th century introduced a ‘Sanjaya era’ counted from 716/717, perhaps the year of Sanjaya’s accession. A late Sundanese text, the Carita Parahyangan, credits him with fabulous conquests. Historians disagree on whether Sanjaya’s Shaivite line and the Buddhist Shailendras, whose inscriptions appear in Central Java from 778, were two rival dynasties, as F. D. K. Bosch held, or one family whose religious patronage shifted, as R. M. Ng. Poerbatjaraka argued.
Connections
Related events
- The inscriptions of Purnavarman, king of Taruma in western Javabetween 400 and 600 · Southeast Asia and Oceaniaafter Purnavarman’s inscriptions of the 5th century Java has almost no written records until Canggal
- Srivijaya’s first conquests and its Old Malay inscriptionsbetween 682 and 683 – 686 · Southeast Asia and OceaniaSrivijaya’s Kota Kapur inscription of 686 speaks of an army sent against ‘the land of Java’
- The Kalasan inscription: a temple of Tara under the Shailendras778 · Southeast Asia and Oceaniathe Mantyasih charter of 907 names Panangkaran as the successor of Sanjaya
Same place
- Building of Borobudurc. 780 – c. 833 · Southeast Asia and Oceania
Adjacent events in the thread
- Mai Thúc Loan’s rising against the Tang722 · Southeast Asia and Oceania
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within a year of this event
Western and Central Europe
- Battle of Tours10 October 732
- Bede completes the Ecclesiastical History of the English People731
- Mission of Boniface in Germany15 May 719 – 5 June 754
Eastern Europe
- Second Arab–Khazar War: from Balanjar to Marwan’s campaign to the Volga722–737
- Volyntsevo culture: the Slavs of the Dnieper Left Bank in the Khazar agebetween 700 and 750 – between 813 and 833
Balkans and Anatolia
- The Ecloga: law code of Leo III and Constantine Vbetween 726 and 741
- Byzantine Iconoclasmbetween 726 and 730 – 11 March 843
Central and Northern Asia
- The Orkhon inscriptions: memorial stelae of Kül Tegin and Bilge Qaghan1 August 732 – 735
South Asia
- Indian kings repel the Arab raids from Sind: Nagabhata I and the battle of Navsari723 – between 738 and 739
- Lalitaditya Muktapida rules Kashmir: the Sun temple of Martandbetween 724 and 725 – between 760 and 761
East Asia
- Reign of Emperor Xuanzong: the Kaiyuan and Tianbao eras8 September 712 – 12 August 756
North America
- The Late Woodland period in eastern North Americac. 500 – c. 1000
- Basketmaker III: pottery, beans and the bow on the Colorado Plateauc. 500 – c. 750
- Plum Bayou Mounds: a planned ceremonial centre in the Arkansas valleyc. 650 – c. 1050
Latin America
- Wari culture and the Middle Horizon state in the Central Andesc. 600 – c. 1000
- Tiwanaku culture at its height by Lake Titicacac. 600 – c. 1000
- Nazca culture and the Nazca Linesbetween 200 and 100 BC – between 500 and 800
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Canggal inscription
- Wikipedia (English): Sanjaya of Mataram
- Wikipedia (English): Mataram kingdom
- Wikipedia (Russian): Надпись из Чангала
- Wikipedia (Russian): Санджайя
- Coedès G. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia / Ed. W. F. Vella; transl. S. B. Cowing. — Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1968. — P. 87–88, 126–127.