Srivijaya in the Indian Ocean Trade:We know for certain that for at least four hundred years, between the seventh and eleventh centuries CE, the Kingdom of Srivijaya prospered from the rich Indian Ocean trade. Srivijaya controlled the key Melaka Straits, between the Malay Peninsula and the islands of Indonesia, through which passed all sorts of luxury items such as spices, tortoise shell, silk, jewels, camphor, and tropical woods. The kings of Srivijaya used their wealth, gained from transit taxes on these goods, to extend their domain as far north as what is now Thailand and Cambodia on the Southeast Asian mainland, and as far east as Borneo.
The first historical source that mentions Srivijaya is the memoir of a Chinese Buddhist monk, I-Tsing, who visited the kingdom for six months in 671 CE. He describes a rich and well-organized society, which presumably had been in existence for some time. A number of inscriptions in Old Malay from the Palembang area, which are dated from as early as 682, also mention the Srivijayan Kingdom. The earliest of these inscriptions, the Kedukan Bukit Inscription, tells the story of Dapunta Hyang Sri Jayanasa, who founded Srivijaya with the help of 20,000 troops. King Jayanasa went on to conquer other local kingdoms such as Malayu, which fell in 684, incorporating them in to his growing Srivijayan Empire.
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