Maritime in Textual Data during the Majapahit Period

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-394-8_23How to use a DOI?

Keywords

maritime; agrarian; Majapahit Kingdom; textual data

Abstract

The Majapahit Kingdom (14th to early 16th centuries CE), which was considered the superpower state of its time, was both maritime and agrarian. Although state officials who controlled the sea had existed since the Kaḍiri period (12th century CE), it was only Majapahit that was considered a maritime kingdom. The kingdom, which politically became an equal partner with the kingdoms in the archipelago, certainly controlled the waters throughout the archipelago. Apparently, Majapahit as a maritime kingdom is not supported by textual data. Although many inscriptions and manuscripts write about things related to the maritime world, in the text of Nāgarakṛtāgama, which is the story of King Hayam Wuruk’s journey (1350-1389 CE), there are only a few words related to maritime affairs, namely the words sagara (ocean) and potra (ship). These were written when describing natural scenery. Similarly, other literary works generally mention the sea only as part of a character’s journey or as a metaphor. The question therefore arises, why as a maritime kingdom, Kakawin Nāgarakṛtāgama and other literary works from the Majapahit period do not write more about maritime affairs. The method used in this study is descriptive analysis with a qualitative approach. The results of this study show that although Majapahit is better known as agrarian, there are many things that characterize it as a maritime state.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Lisda Meyanti
AU  - Titi Surti Nastiti
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/05/19
TI  - Maritime in Textual Data during the Majapahit Period
BT  - Proceedings of The 5th International Conference on Linguistics and Cultural Studies 5 (ICLC-5 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 191
EP  - 200
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-394-8_23
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-394-8_23
ID  - Meyanti2025
ER  -