Kingdoms of Sunda refers to the monarchies of the Sundanese region prior to the establishment of

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

in 1945 AD. The history includes several eras: #

Salakanagara The Salakanagara Kingdom is the first historically recorded Indianised kingdom in Western Java. The kingdom existed between 130-362 AD. Claudius Ptolemaeus (160 AD) wrote about Java in his book, ''Geographie Hypogenesis''. He mentions the name o ...

Tarumanagara Tarumanagara or Taruma Kingdom or just Taruma is an early Sundanese Indianised kingdom, located in western Java, whose 5th-century ruler, Purnawarman, produced the earliest known inscriptions in Java, which are estimated to date from arou ...

(Capital at Chandrabhaga/Bekasi & Sundapura) # The Sunda Kingdom and

Galuh Kingdom The Galuh Kingdom was an ancient Sundanese kingdom located in the eastern part of ''Tatar Pasundan'' (now West Java province and Banyumasan region of Central Java province), present-day Indonesia. It was established following the end of the ...

(or Sunda-Galuh with capital at Pakuan Pajajaran; Saunggalah and Kawali) # Kingdom of Sumedang Larang,

The Sultanate of Banten The Banten Sultanate (كسلطانن بنتن) was a Bantenese Islamic trading kingdom founded in the 16th century and centred in Banten, a port city on the northwest coast of Java; the contemporary English name of both was Bantam. It is said ...

& The Sultanate of Cirebon

Salakanagara

According to the manuscript “Pustaka Rayja-rayja I Bhumi Nusantara”, the first kingdom in Javadwipa (

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

island) is Salakanagara (lit: country of silver). Salakanagara was established in Year 52 Saka (130/131 AD). The location of the kingdom is believed to be in Teluk Lada,

Pandeglang Pandeglang Regency ( Sundanese: ) is a regency of Banten province, Indonesia. It is mainly located on the west and south coasts of the island of Java, and is the most westerly regency on Java Island, but it also includes a number of offshore island ...

city, the city which is famous for metal works. (Pandeglang, or pande gelang is Sundanese words for the maker of metal bracelets or armlets). Dr. Edi S. Ekajati, Sundanese historian, conjectured that the location of the capital city of the kingdom was in current Merak City (lit: silvery city). Some people also conjectured that the kingdom was situated around

Mount Salak Mount Salak ( id, Gunung Salak, su, Gunung Salak) is an eroded volcano in West Java, Indonesia. It has several satellite cones on its southeast flank and the northern foot, along with two additional craters at the summit. Mount Salak has been ev ...

, based on the pronunciation of the words Salaka and Salak which are almost the same. It is very probable that Argyre or Argyros at the west end of Iabadiou mentioned by Claudius Ptolemaeus Pelusiniensis (

Ptolemy Claudius Ptolemy (; grc-gre, Πτολεμαῖος, ; la, Claudius Ptolemaeus; AD) was a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importance ...

) of Alexandria (87-150 AD), in his work “Geographike Hypergesis” is Salakanagara. A report from China in 132 said that Pien, the king of Ye-tiau, lent gold stamp and violet ribbon to Tiao-Pien. The word Ye-tiau is interpreted by G. Ferrand, a French historian, as Javadwipa and Tiao-pien referred to Dewawarman. The Salakanagara Kingdom was then replaced by the Tarumanagara Kingdom.

Tarumanagara

The heyday of the Tarumanagara Kingdom was between the fourth and seventh centuries. The historical record of the kingdom is a sketchy account by a Chinese traveler and several rock inscriptions discovered in the western part of

Java island Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's most ...

. These sources agree that the most powerful king of Tarumanegara was Purnavarman, who conquered neighbouring countries.

Sunda Kingdom (United Kingdom of Sunda and Galuh)

The United Kingdom of Sunda and Galuh was a kingdom in

West Java West Java ( id, Jawa Barat, su, ᮏᮝ ᮊᮥᮜᮧᮔ᮪, romanized ''Jawa Kulon'') is a province of Indonesia on the western part of the island of Java, with its provincial capital in Bandung. West Java is bordered by the province of Banten ...

and western part of Central Java territory which emerged as a unification of the

Sunda kingdom The Sunda Kingdom ( su, , Karajaan Sunda, ) was a Sundanese Hindu kingdom located in the western portion of the island of Java from 669 to around 1579, covering the area of present-day Banten, Jakarta, West Java, and the western part of Centr ...

and the

Galuh kingdom The Galuh Kingdom was an ancient Sundanese kingdom located in the eastern part of ''Tatar Pasundan'' (now West Java province and Banyumasan region of Central Java province), present-day Indonesia. It was established following the end of the ...

. The two kingdoms themselves were a result of the division of the former

kingdom. This kingdom was often just called the Sunda Kingdom based on historical primary resources such as stone inscriptions and old literature. The area covered by the Sunda kingdom until early in the 16th century Based on the travel records of Prince

Bujangga Manik Bujangga Manik is one of the precious remnants of Old Sundanese literature. It is told in octosyllabic lines — the metrical form of Old Sundanese narrative poetry — in palm-leaf manuscript kept in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University in ...

, a Hindu Sundanese monk who visited all of the holy Hindu sites in Java and Bali islands at the beginning of the sixteenth century AD, in his lontar manuscripts, which are saved in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University of England since the 16th century, the border of the Sunda kingdom in the west is the Sunda Strait and in the east is the Cipamali River (present day Brebes River) and

Serayu River The Serayu River is a river in Central Java, Indonesia, about 300 km southeast of the capital Jakarta. Hydrology The river spanned from northeast to southwest with length around 181 km, and crossring five ''kabupaten'' (regency) in Central ...

in Central Java Province. Historical record The earliest time of a reference to the name Sunda being used to identify a kingdom, is written on the Prasasti Kebon Kopi II stone inscription of 458 Saka (536 AD) and copperplate letters of the fifteenth century with royal instructions telling the existence of the Sunda kingdom. Another reference to the kingdom is the Sanghiyang Tapak inscriptions. There are also certain Chinese sources concerning the Sunda kingdom; the first source is a report from

Chu-fan-chi ''Zhu Fan Zhi'' (), variously translated as '' A Description of Barbarian Nations'', ''Records of Foreign People'', or other similar titles, is a 13th-century Song Dynasty work by Zhao Rukuo. The work is a collection of descriptions of countrie ...

from 1225 AD and the second source is the Chinese book "''shun-feng hsiang-sung''" from about 1430 AD. European explorers also report the existence of the Sunda kingdom. One of the explorers was

Tomé Pires Tomé Pires (1465?–1524 or 1540)Madureira, 150–151. was a Portuguese apothecary from Lisbon who spent 1512 to 1515 in Malacca immediately after the Portuguese conquest, at a time when Europeans were only first arriving in Southeast As ...

from Portugal. Tomé Pires, in his report “Summa Oriental (1513–1515)”, wrote about his journey to the Sunda kingdom. Diogo do Couto also wrote that the Sunda kingdom is thriving and abundant; it lies between Java and Sumatra, having between it and the latter the Straits of Sunda. Besides that, the Portuguese made a peace treaty with the Sunda kingdom in 1522 AD. This treaty is better known as the Luso Sundanese Treaty of Sunda Kalapa. Henrique Leme erected a

padrão A ''padrão'' is a stone pillar left by Portuguese maritime explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries to record significant landfalls and thereby establish primacy and possession. They were often placed on promontories and capes or at the mouths o ...

to memorialize the treaty. In the early sixteenth century AD, the kingdom was divided into three smaller kingdoms, including the

Sultanate of Banten The Banten Sultanate (كسلطانن بنتن) was a Bantenese Islamic trading kingdom founded in the 16th century and centred in Banten, a port city on the northwest coast of Java; the contemporary English name of both was Bantam. It is said ...

and the Sultanate of Cirebon. But many historical resources tell the existence of the third kingdom in south east of West Java, i.e. the Sumedanglarang Kingdom.

Sultanate of Banten

In 1524/1525,

Sunan Gunung Jati Sunan Gunungjati (1448–1568) was one of the Wali Songo, or nine saints of Islam revered in Indonesia. He founded the Sultanate of Banten, as well as the Sultanate of Cirebon on the north coast of Java. Gunungjati was born Syarif Hidayatulla ...

from

Cirebon Cirebon (, formerly rendered Cheribon or Chirebon in English) is a port city on the northern coast of the Indonesian island of Java. It is the only coastal city of West Java, located about 40 km west of the provincial border with Central J ...

together with

Demak Sultanate The Demak Sultanate (کسلطانن دمق) was a Javanese Muslim state located on Java's north coast in Indonesia, at the site of the present-day city of Demak. A port fief to the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit kingdom thought to have been founded ...

armies seized the port of Banten from the control of the

, and established

affiliating with the

. Islam preachers have penetrated and introduced people to the peaceful way of life of Islam, and as a result many people in the region embraced Islam as their belief. During 1552-1570, Maulana

Hasanudin Maulana Hasanuddin (also spelled Hasanuddin) was a ruler of the Banten Sultanate from c. 1552 to 1570. Hasanuddin was a Azmatkhani Ba 'Alawi Sayyid, the son of Sunan Gunungjati and Nyai Ratu Kawunganten. He extended the domains of Banten to t ...

ruled as the first Sultan of Banten. Reaching its golden age during the first half of the seventeenth century, the Sultanate of Banten lasted for 300 years (1526–1813 AD). The grandeur of this Sultanate has left us with a plethora of archeological remains and historical records. It is for this reason that there will never be a lack of sources in retracing the history of the Sultanate of Banten.

Sultanate of Cirebon

Sultanate of Cirebon The Sultanate of Cirebon ( id, Kesultanan Cirebon, Pegon: كسلطانن چيربون, su, Kasultanan Cirebon) was an Islamic sultanate in West Java founded in the 15th century. It is said to have been founded by Sunan Gunungjati, as m ...

(Indonesian: ''Kesultanan Cirebon'', Sundanese: ''Kasultanan Cirebon'') was a sultanate in Sunda land, founded in the sixteenth century. It is said to have been founded by

Sunan Gunungjati Sunan Gunungjati (1448–1568) was one of the Wali Songo, or nine saints of Islam revered in Indonesia. He founded the Sultanate of Banten, as well as the Sultanate of Cirebon on the north coast of Java. Gunungjati was born Syarif Hidayatulla ...

, who also established the

References

* “Maharadja Cri Djajabhoepathi, Soenda’s Oudst Bekende Vorst”, TBG, 57. Batavia: BGKW, page 201-219, 1915) * Sumber-sumber asli sejarah Jakarta, Jilid I: Dokumen-dokumen sejarah Jakarta sampai dengan akhir abad ke-16 * Kebudayaan Sunda Zaman Pajajaran, Jilid 2, Edi S. Ekajati, Pustaka Jaya, 2005 * The Sunda Kingdom of West Java From Tarumanagara to Pakuan Pajajaran with the Royal Center of Bogor, Herwig Zahorka, Yayasan Cipta Loka Caraka, Jakarta, 2007-05-20 {{DEFAULTSORT:Kingdoms Of Sunda Precolonial states of Indonesia History of West Java Sundanese culture

Salakanagara

Tarumanagara

Sunda Kingdom (United Kingdom of Sunda and Galuh)

Sultanate of Banten

Sultanate of Cirebon

See also

References