| Abstract: |
Introduction: The modern village of Kampung Sungai Mas, on the west bank of the Sungai (river) Terus in Kedah, has built up over several previously unreported early historic period sites. Both the kampung (village) and the sites beneath it are situated on an old permatang, or beach ridge, which provided relatively high, dry ground for settlement in an area dominated by low-lying coastal floodplain. This ridge is one in a series, anchored at the north end by Bukit Meriam-an isolated outcrop of sedimentary rocks 2.4 km north of the village-and extending well into the state of Seberang Perai at the southern end. Early historic period sites also occupy <i>permatang</i> land immediately across the Sungai Terus from Kampung Sungai Mas
an additional site was recorded by Sullivan (1957
1958) approximately 1.5 km south of the Sungai Mda, in Seberang Perai, on a sand ridge that appears to be part of the same series. The early historic period in Malaysia includes the centuries between 1950 and 450 B.P., i.e., from A.D. 0 to 1500. Although most of the materials recovered from the Kampung Sungai Mas sites date, tentatively, to the tenth through fourteenth centuries A.D., a stone tablet discovered in the neighborhood of Site 53 (Fig. 1) could be considerably older. The find is particularly significant because two similar tablets had been found nearby in the nineteenth century: one, lost years ago, at Bukit Meriam, and the other just south of the Sungai Muda, at an unclear location in Seberang Perai. The new tablet and the Kampung Sungai Mas sites were recorded during Ph.D. dissertation fieldwork conducted in Kedah during 1979 and 1980. Fieldwork resulted in the discovery or relocation of more than 80 early historic period sites in the Sungai Muda and Sungai Merbok estuaries and coastal drainages of south-central Kedah, and emphasized the mapping and interpretation of these sites within their environmental contexts. Eleven sites were located through on-foot and boat surveys in Kampund Sungai Mas, and five more in Kampund Seberang Terus, immediately across the Sungai Terus, on the east bank. During the mapping in Kampung Sungai Mas, Encik Ariffin bin Ibrahim, a resident of the village, asked us to examine a stone tablet he had recovered some time previously and had stored for safekeeping. At our request, Jan Wisseman Christie, at that time an instructor at the Universiti Sains Malaysia in Pulau Pinang, and a historian experienced in epigraphic interpretation, visited the site and was able to identify the text of the inscription on the tablet as a stanza concerned with karma. The stanza is often associated with the Buddhist credo, "Ye dharmma." Wisseman Christie believes the inscription may date from the fifth century A.D. The language is Sanskrit (Wisseman 1980
Allen-Wheeler 1980). The tablet is now stored at the Muzium Lembah Bujang in Merbok.
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