It does not appear that any prince ever claimed to be king of all Sumatra.  For the Hindu period we have no indigenous literature and our scanty knowledge is derived from a few statues and inscriptions and from notices in Chinese writings.  The latter do not refer to the island as a whole but to several states such as Indragiri near the Equator and Kandali (afterwards called San-bo-tsai, the Sabaza of the Arabs) near Palembang.  The annals of the Liang dynasty say that the customs of Kandali were much the same as those of Camboja and apparently we are to understand that the country was Buddhist, for one king visited the Emperor Wu-ti in a dream, and his son addressed a letter to His Majesty eulogizing his devotion to Buddhism.  Kandali is said to have sent three envoys to China between 454 and 519.

The Chinese pilgrim I-Ching[401] visited Sumatra twice, once for two months in 672 and subsequently for some years (about 688-695).  He tells us that in the islands of the Southern Sea, “which are more than ten countries,” Buddhism flourishes, the school almost universally followed being the Mulasarvastivada, though the Sammitiyas and other schools have a few adherents.  He calls the country where he sojourned and to which these statements primarily refer, Bhoja or Sribhoja (Fo-shih or Shih-li-fo-shih), adding that its former name was Malayu.  It is conjectured that Shih-li-fo-shih is the place later known as San-bo-tsai[402] and Chinese authors seem to consider that both this place and the earlier Kandali were roughly speaking identical with Palembang.  I-Ching tells us that the king of Bhoja favoured Buddhism and that there were more than a thousand priests in the city.  Gold was abundant and golden flowers were offered to the Buddha.  There was communication by ship with both India and China.  The Hinayana, he says, was the form of Buddhism adopted “except in Malayu, where there are a few who belong to the Mahayana.”  This is a surprising statement, but it is impossible to suppose that an expert like I-Ching can have been wrong about what he actually saw in Sribhoja.  So far as his remarks apply to Java they must be based on hearsay and have less authority, but the sculptures of Boroboedoer appear to show the influence of Mulasarvastivadin literature.  It must be remembered that this school, though nominally belonging to the Hinayana, came to be something very different from the Theravada of Ceylon.

The Sung annals and subsequent Chinese writers know the same district (the modern Palembang) as San-bo-tsai (which may indicate either mere change of name or the rise of a new city) and say that it sent twenty-one envoys between 960 and 1178.  The real object of these missions was to foster trade and there was evidently frequent intercourse between eastern Sumatra, Champa and China.  Ultimately the Chinese seem to have thought that the entertainment of Sumatran diplomatists cost more than they were worth, for in 1178 the emperor