Evil Alien Conquerors/Earthstorm [With Tin Lunch Box]

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Srivijaya or Sriwijaya was a powerful ancient Malay kingdom on the island of Sumatra, modern day Indonesia, which influenced much of Southeast Asia. The earliest solid proof of its existence dates from the 7th century; a Chinese monk, I-Tsing, wrote that he visited Srivijaya in 671 for 6 months. The first inscription in which the name Srivijaya appears also dates from the 7th century, namely the Kedukan Bukit Inscription around Palembang in Sumatra, dated 683. The kingdom ceased to exist in the 13th century due to various factors, including the expansion of the Javanese Majapahit empire. Srivijaya was an important center for Buddhist expansion in the 8th to 12th centuries. In Sanskrit, sri () means "shining" or "radiant" and vijaya () means "victory" or "excellence". After Srivijaya fell, it was largely forgotten and so historians had never considered that a large united kingdom could have been present in Southeast Asia. The existence of Srivijaya was only formally suspected in 1918 when French historian George Coedès of the École française d'Extrême-Orient postulated the existence of the empire. By 1993, Pierre-Yves Manguin proved that the centre of Srivijaya was along the Musi River between Bukit Seguntang and Sabokingking (situated in what is now the province of South Sumatra, Indonesia). There was no continuous knowledge of Srivijaya in Indonesian histories; its forgotten past has been recreated by foreign scholars. No modern Indonesians, not even those of the Palembang area around which the kingdom was based, had heard of Srivijaya until the 1920s, when French scholar George Coedès published his discoveries and interpretations in Dutch and Indonesian-language newspapers. Coedès noted that the Chinese references to "Sanfoqi", previously r... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=398585