good for farming. And so we believe the Binangun complex of sites to be an ancient trading port. It is the first to be located anywhere in Java that can be dated to the early or middle first millenium, ( p . 112d). Binangun, which is located on a defensible hilltop and an area of flatland on the eastern and northern side of a small bay west of Gunung Lasem (Rembang report 1975: 112d), was reported by Orsoy de Flines (1941-1947 ) to be poor in foreign ceramic sherds. The Rembang team also took into consideration the presence of numerous sherds of local ceramics as evidence of settlements.
The area surveyed by De Flines, including Rembang, is indeed an interesting part of Central Java. There are toponyms, which remind us of Chinese and local records. Waru is a name similar to that transcribed as Po-lu-kia-se36 which was the place towards which the ancestor of the king of Ho-ling moved his capital, situated in the east, it was read as Waruh Yasik while Pelliot thought it to be Waruh Gresik or beach of sand.
Loram Kulon37 in Kudus is the same name as Luaram in the incription of Airlangga of 1041, in which it was stated that the Palace of King Dharmawangsa was attacked by the enemy king of Wurawari who came out from Luaram. This attack, which destroyed the palace, could have been sponsored by Sriwijaya through a local King of Java (Coedes 1968: 144) Wurawari is a place in the Pekalongan area (Schrieke 1957 a: 211ef)
- Does the absence of early Chinese ceramics imply the absence of ancient trade ports before the 10th century?
- The problem o f Java and Sriwijaya.
1. The authors o f the Rembang report wondered whether Indonesia was lagging behind, for there was no such port as Oc- eo and because there was no evidence of commercial contacts with India and China (Rembang 1975: 112c). We indeed may wonder why in general the foreign ceramic sherds, particularly those from China, appear so late. Was there no trade with China? But the Chinese annals report embassies from the Indonesian Archipelago, unless of course all the famous toponyms such as She-li- fo -she, Ho-lotan, Ho-ling, She - p’o, etc, were outside Indonesia and perhaps on the Malay Peninsula. But evidence of some kind of contact with India since the 5th century is in the shape of the 5th century inscriptions of Kutai and West Java, early statuary and, later on, the fine architecture and sculpture of Central Java and the inscriptions of the 8- 9th centuries, which some times mention foreigners from India or Mainland Southeast Asia.
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