300's The kingdom of Kutai [pron. 'coo-tay'] in Eastern Kalimantan (an island whose size is comparable to the whole France) is usually said as the first page of Indonesian history - though of course there was no such a thing as 'Indonesia' then.

From existing records it is known that India had a relation with some Indonesian kingdoms since the first century, and Hinduism was to be there still for at least one and a half millennium.

'Hindu', originally the name of the people that came from the assimilation of the native Dravida of India and the Aryan (Indo-German) immigrants from the Caucasia (they're really everywhere, weren't they), was the first imported belief for Indonesians.

Kutai organized its polity just like the Indians. Its heyday was believed to be attained under King Mulawarman; at least he's the only one who left some tracks behind.

Meanwhile, in Japan, there was no trace yet of any historic stuff. Japan was much lagging behind the already robust Chinese kingdoms of Han, Wu and Wei (not yet such a thing as a united empire) which unfortunately were busy maiming each other in this period of time.

As far as the Netherlands was concerned, itself didn't exist yet. The august Romans were everywhere, so the little patch of 'low countries' were naturally within their disposal. Aside from the writing system introduced by the Romans to the would-be Hollanders very early in the first centuries, and the foundation they laid for future Dutch cities like Maastricht and Utrecht, no political clot worth mentioning was to be dug from the area.

But this hundred years were historically significant in other places: in 313 the Edict of Milan (officializing Christianity) was adopted, followed by the reign of Constantine the Great (Roman Emperor, 305-337). That, and the birth of the ambivalent architectural splendor named Constantinople (previously called Byzantium, and later Istanbul), happened around the same time as the equatorial archipelago later named 'Indonesia' made up its mind to adopt the first organized and systematic religion (Hinduism), pushing indigenous animism to the shadows -- and this thing would live there unchallenged for the next 1704 years.

In 21st century the kind of belief in the spirits is, having been smuggled into the plural organised religions through the previous hundreds of years, anything but dead, although by necessity buried. All you have to do is turn on the TV and catch any of Indonesian channels in the act of pleasing both couch-potatoes and major advertisers via endless reality shows involving the entire menagerie of 'those we don't speak of'. Throwing in a few volunteers that look exactly like your neighbors, a playful sprite, a couple of vengeful ghosts, some 'Eastern Gothic' ruins, a night as jet-black as ink, extensively smokey incense, and a Japanese infra-red camera, such shows never fail to snatch the highest rating in 2004, in any appearance a nationwide craze.

400's While St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (got the office in 396), released his eternal Confessions and City of God to the paralyzed believers whose horizon was turning into macabre vistas impressionistically painted by the sword of Atilla (c. 406-453), king of the Huns, far away eastward the kingdom of Tarumanegara [pron. 'tah-room-ah-nah-gah-rah'] under King Purnawarman was busy governing virtually the whole modern West Java. The size of Java is approximately the same as the State of New York, and the western part of it is a third of that -- not much, compared to 21st century Indonesia of around 13,000 islands, but impressive enough by the standards of the age of kings. Tarumanegara, about which history was rather silent beyond the record about Purnawarman, would disappear entirely in the seventh century; sending West Java into the 'dark ages' where no substantial power in managerial hands was known for several centuries ahead.

571 Buddhism was introduced to the Japanese during the reign of Emperor Kimmei. Of course the 5th century Japan wasn't like today's; of the whole modern Japan -- whose size is no larger than Montana -- only a fraction was under the imperial sway.

Click here for everything about the origins of Japanese Buddhism | Zen Buddhism That Shaped the Samurai Soul | Japanese Warrior-Monks

593 This is the time known as the Asuka period (593-710) that is seen as the transitional phase from protohistorical to historic Japan. The first known ruler to commit Japan irreversibly to history was a woman, Empress Suiko (593-628), whose throne was set in southern Nara (the city itself wasn't yet existing). Suiko's imperial decrees had built foundation for the subsequent course Japan was to take; she imported the Chinese ideography, officiated imperial line imitating and modifying that of the Chinese, and figured out some basic laws dug from Japan's own ancient past and juxtaposed with that learnt from China, which was under the Sui dynasty at this time. In the year 600 Suiko's islands would start to be known as 'Nihon', that means 'the land of the rising sun'.

Click here for all Japanese emperors, empresses, Shoguns, Chancellor, Chief Ministers, Regents, and one real-life ruler that went around untitledly. | Click here for Japanese names & their meanings. | How those names came to be, and what are Japanese titles, jobs, and just words, that have been mistaken as names by non-Japanese until today.

632 The Prophet Muhammad passed away in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. Abu Bakr became the first Caliph -- the caliphate system was started with the Prophet's closest companies and relatives, taking as its ultimate and urgent tasks conversion into the new religion and administration of the territory. Islam was to spread worldwide afterwards, including, significantly, around Persia, a good chunk of which was firmly in the hands of the Zoroastrian Sassanid clan until their tragic defeat at the war of Nahavand, 641 -- from that year on, Arabian power was to mold the region. In 21st century, a very large part of the planet's Muslims would be Indonesians, more than two-third of whose population of around 250 million are Muslims.

711 The Arabian caliphate Ummayah extended its realm to include Spain. In the sunniest of all sunny days of Islam in this thousand of years, Spanish cities like Cordoba, Toledo, and Granada were centers of everything intellectual, everything beautiful, and, though perhaps not so greatly praised, everything useful; Arabian culture was far more superior than European at the time. Upon arrival of the conquerors, the formerly dropsical interior of Europe was to get busy with industrial enterprises, scientific experiments, extensive pedagogic activities and intensive agricultural attempts, most of which had never even been as little as imagined by the locals.

Meanwhile, the Japanese were even busier in its steady preoccupation in borrowing all sorts of things from China (which at the time was under the Tang dynasty). Copying the Tangs' capital city Chang'an, the center of government, arts, and learning that would be today's Nara was built, starting the Nara period (710-794).

732 The Old Mataram [pron. 'mah-tah-ram'] kingdom of Central Java was ruled by the Sanjaya dynasty, its first king's descendants. This was a Hindu country, clearly agrarian and definitely landbound. So they had time to leave the Dieng temples (built from 778 to 850) to be inherited by modern Indonesia, and the most famous of the Sanjayanese kings, Rakai Pikatan, had built, among various fine monuments, the Prambanan temple in Yogyakarta, finished by king Daksa in the year 915. The glory days of the Sanjayas were rivalled by the Syailendra dynasty which claimed direct legacy of Sriwijayan rulers; at the end of 700's this Buddhist monarchy built the largest temple of the religion on Planet Earth, the Borobudur temple in Magelang, Central Java.

RELATED PAGES: Pictures of the temples - How the Javanese people looked like in this period

794 Emperor Kuammu decided to move his capital to the city we now know as Kyoto, that would be traditional seat of all Japanese emperors forever. Thence the Heian period of Japanese history, remembered as the Golden Age of its life under direct rule of emperors (this particular Golden Age lasted until 1185), when Chinese cultural bits had been almost fully Japanized, and the Emperors, believed as descendants of the gods, as was those before them, enjoyed full authoritative grip of the act of governing. This was enabled by the fact that most inland warlords were still in infancy. Yet, nearing the end of this period, certain warrior clans had towered above everybody else and sent unmistakable signals of castrating the sovereignty of the emperors. Soon the Fujiwara clan exposed themselves as de facto rulers of the realm, craftily using the deification of emperors to relegate them to 'spiritual throne' that had nothing to do with reality, as sons of the gods should be thus more properly placed, away from the dirty works of the rich, strong, happy mortals vying with each other for absolute power. The irony would last for a very long time until the start of 20th century.

Click here for everything about the Golden Age of Japan: the Heian era | Japanese greatest samurai clans: Fujiwara, Taira, Minamoto, Hojo, how they made the rules of the game, and who were their best descendants in the subsequent Warring States Period ('Sengoku')

856 The Treaty of Verdun (843) sliced the great empire of Charlemagne (Charles the Great, 742-814), king of the Franks, into series of chaotic civil wars after his son Louis (ruling between 814-840) died. Charlemagne's grandsons, actually, were already on each other's throats even before their father expired. At the end of this outrage, when the choking smoke dispersed, what would be the kingdoms of France and Germany were seen wobbling towards history.

The Netherlands still remained inexistent. It was offhandedly attached to the properties of the 'Holy Roman Empire' -- which was to be that Germany mentioned before. For a very long time, nobody would say just 'Holland', either; it was always a mere part of whitewashed 'Holland and Belgium' or 'Benelux' (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) or whatever other mixed political and territorial entities, one of which was under the very French Duke of Burgundy and very Spanish Spain. On the other hand, just nearby, king Alfred (849-899) of Wessex was at his peak of personal development and consequently this brought what was to be called England to a secure place at the political horizon.

At approximately this time, Balaputera Dewa took the reign of Sriwijaya [pron. 'sah-ree-wee-jah-yah'], a mighty maritime kingdom in Southern Sumatera -- the Indonesian island a little larger than California. This kingdom was to be one of the constant references for modern Indonesians for 'glory days in the past'. Sriwijaya was a Buddhist country, and in its years of roses was very active in regional trade and foreign affairs. Its men seemed to have sailed everywhere. This was the source of the modern Indonesian insistence that "our ancestors were seafarers", reinforced by the Sulawesinese Makassar naval force later. Apart from the maritime business, Sriwijaya was said to be the greatest center of Buddhism outside India.

But not every Sriwijayanese was into Buddhism; in the seventh century there were already Arab villages along the shoreline, perhaps the first encounter of Indonesians with Islam. Its territory was vast enough, including parts of Java; the location just between China and India gave it life. It would see the last days after 1275 by the invasion of the Javanese king of Singasari, Kertanegara; and Sriwijaya was to perish under attack by the Javanese kingdom Majapahit that wished to conquer almost the entire Indonesia in 1300's.

Although it was always mentioned in foreign journals, Sriwijaya left virtually nothing in the line of cultural legacy - its people were too busy sailing and trading. But it had, with other seafaring empires later, established the Malayan language beyond its original boundary. The modern Indonesian language came from this prototype of lingua franca, shared by Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam - with enough modifications unique to each nation to warrant frequent misunderstanding and once in a while mutual incomprehension.

947 King Airlangga was to be the last great king of Old Mataram. After his death, the kingdom was cut in two. The Kediri [pron. 'kah-deer-ee'] kingdom was to continue Old Mataram (the other half made the short-lived Jenggala kingdom), but its capital was moved to East Java and it stopped using the name 'Mataram' altogether. Old Mataram was lastly heard of this year, and until after the year 1000 East Java was largely in a vacuum.

1128 Arabian numeric system (the numbers I am using on this page, namely 1-9, plus 'zero' that was said to be imported from India) was introduced to Europeans in the year 1000. Obviously the godsent practical way to make life a bit smoother, probably this event helped ascertaining the European economic awakening. The post-Roman Europe really started to get up at the turn of this century, adopting the so-called monetary outlook in trade and industry. It slowly closed the chapter of inertia blanketing the region until after the year was written as '1000' instead of 'M'.

Until then, the continent was characterized by conspiratorial slumber, made fitful by the great chance that a neighboring landlord would suddenly get grotesque ideas such as that it would be fun to burn one's manor upon petty quarrels that never went farther on the scale of sophistication than around crops and booze and rural romance. Drowsy but bloody manorial life that was lived by France, Prussia, Russia, England, and so on was a unique product of the time, whose only concern was agrarian.

A similar atmosphere was perhaps to be found in the interior of Indonesian islands at the time. But the coastal areas never napped. This year, Samudera Pasai [pron. 'sah-moo-dar-ah-pass-ay'], a kingdom in modern-day Aceh, Northern Sumatera, was born. Its official religion was Islam. It all started when an Egyptian Admiral named Nazimuddin al-Kamil built the kingdom to facilitate the trade, managing it like the polities in his homeland. Samudera Pasai was to be a vassal of the Javanese kingdom Majapahit later. Marco Polo was probably the very first renown European who set foot in Indonesia - he stayed awhile in Sumatera on his way back to Italy from China - and wrote about the Islamic kingdom he saw there, very plausibly Samudera Pasai. The Javanese coastal areas were to take in the new religion, too, mainly brought via traders.

The spread in Indonesia was influenced by the Afghanistan kingdom's Mahmud Ghazna's acquisition of Punjab (India) and North Pakistan, to be continued by Muhammad Ghori's success in the Islamization of Hindustan, bringing forth strong Islamic trading places of Gujarat, Cambay, Bangladesh and Bengala - from where Indonesians came to know the religion.

RELATED PAGE: History & pictures of 'wayang' (Javanese puppet theater), how everybody used it to spread every religion, and why

1135 The greatest of the Eastern Javanese kings, Jayabaya of Kediri, ascended. The state scholars Mpu Sedah and Mpu Panuluh ('Mpu' is a Sanskrit word meaning 'great scholar' or past master in something 'intellectual'; the Javanese version of it is 'empu') wrote about the king's victory in a battle in the celebrated book Bharatayudha. Jayabaya was to be revered by the Javanese for centuries, blanketed by some mystic halo of prophetic sayings.

1185 Feudal Japan was confirmed by the coup committed by future Shogun Minamoto Yoritomo, starting the Kamakura period of history (until 1333). Here started the unpardonable miscomprehension of the Japanese traditional politics -- which was the sin of early caucasian historians, as usual -- that had been causing a worlwide misreading of Japanese powergame for ages. The correct reading would yield this: no matter what, a Japanese Emperor had always been the supreme head of state. Even when he was given nothing but a shred of power in real politics, nobody -- and, mind you, not even any of the worst and power-hungry and bloodthirsty warlords -- ever contemplated to dispose of an emperor and become one himself. Call it peculiarly Japanese, it wouldn't change the fact that it had been so. Coup d'etat tended to use emperors -- literally by taking possession of their persons, namely giving them the best place in one's tent -- as if they were sacred objects that emitted legitimacy on whosoever won the exceedingly bloody battle among warlords; the coup itself was only a death-blow or alternately reaffirmation of a fellow warlord hitherto in power.

The title 'Shogun' itself in Tokugawa times means nothing but 'His Majesty's General', with job description similar to Oliver Cromwell's self-styled 'Lord Protector's in 1635 England, minus usurpation or abolition of the place of monarchs. Yet sometimes emperors were too much humanized than godlike; these rare majesties craved real power for their own. So was the case when Emperor Go-Daigo overthrew the Kamakura Shogunate in 1333 as the culmination of hush-hush coalition-building he conducted from behind the bamboo veil of sanctity (click here for pictures and full story).

But this retroactive business of governance by an emperor was easily crushed in three years by the manowar Takauji from the Ashikaga clan. This Ashikaga Shogunate, active in what is known as the Muromachi period, was strong and crafty enough to stay in power until 1568. Their realm, however, was nothing but some seemingly everlasting agrarian skirmishes among landlords, which was as fiercely committed as before. That the Shoguns anyhow kept their seats was a result of the fact that none among the cutthroat provincial warlords had enough manpower and arsenal to pull down the de facto rulers. Feudal Japan was always a matter of survival of the most heavily armed, unless there was some genius around.

Shoguns for Dummies: Get Real About the Japanese Feudal Powergame | All Rulers of Japan Since 660 BCE Until This Minute | The Japanese Sociopolitical Ranks | Why Did the Rest of the Japanese Accepted the Hegemony of the Warrior Class?

1222 Kediri's twilight and eventual end in a battle against the illustrious Ken Arok of Tumapel - he had just taken over the low-ranking nobleman's estate after killing the Tumapel Regent, Tunggul Ametung. Traditionally this unprecedented feat was prompted by forbidden love; one day, so the story goes, the young Ken Arok met Ametung's wife Ken Dedes, who happened to be the regency's beauty queen, at the sight of whose legs he vowed to blast anyone and anything in his way to make her his.

For a small-village bully, Ken Arok nurtured impossibly grand political dreams. He turned his blade against the king of Kediri when the latter quarreled with some priests of his own court, and these priests appealed for help to the Tumapelian warrior. Easily conquering Kediri, it was now relegated to the status of a vassal's estate (held by a duke) under the newly erected kingdom of Singasari [pron. 'sing-ah-saree'], Ken Arok its king.

Later he would be the future Indonesians' inspiration - his masculine, treacherous, bloody and adventurous life was the raw material of countless literary ventures. Legends and facts were then mixed-up, unsurprisingly because love and lust and vendetta were also wreathed in Ken Arok's history. He baptised his dynasty Girindrawanca (Sanskrit for 'Shiva's Descendants' - Shiva is a Hindu god) to delete past files related to his actual pedigree (or, rather, his lack of any) and covered the unseemly track to power.

Anusapati, Ametung's son, had the king murdered in 1227 to avenge his father. In 1248 Ken Arok's son Tohjaya took his revenge, killed Anusapati in turn and became king.

1248 Wishnu Wardhana, Anusapati's son, snatched the power over Singasari by killing Ken Arok's son Tohjaya. He was the only king of the realm who died naturally.

1268 Wardhana's son Kertanegara brought the Buddhist Singasari onto the world map; he was its greatest ruler ever. It was in his years that the Mongolian Khublai Khan invaded more and more territories in the east after taking China into his hands. The Khan sent his emissary to Singasari with a single mission to get Kertanegara's unconditional surrender to the Mongolian lordship; he was refused and legend has it that Kertanegara sent the emissary back to Mongolia without his ears, that was Singasari's answer to the Khan. The Mongolians promptly prepared a war to eradicate the daring Javanese kingdom - but Kertanegara had taken the precaution by taking over the Malayan kingdom (which the Khan's armada had to cross to get to Java) in 1275 so the inevitable war against Mongolia wouldn't take place within his own realm.

As always, the nearest neighbor saw the chance to topple Singasari down when its eyes and energy were directed outward. Duke Jayakatwang of Kediri attacked the kingdom suddenly and Kertanegara died in the midst of the clash. This was the end of days for Singasari. Once more Kediri proclaimed itself a sovereign kingdom.

1292 Lord Wijaya, Kertanegara's son in-law, escaped the wholesome killings, and was eventually pardoned by the king of Kediri. He waited until the Mongolian and Chinese soldiers landed - initially to teach Singasari the range of the Khan's superiority - they came too late and Singasari didn't even exist anymore. Wijaya tricked them into helping him to attack Kediri instead. After victory Wijaya turned back on the Sino-Mongolian soldiers and had them destroyed.

1350 The sixteen year-old Hayam Wuruk, greatest king of Majapahit [pron. 'mah-jah-pah-hit'], was coronated after the resignation of Queen Tribhuwana Tunggadewi. In Majapahit, Hinduism and Buddhism formed the state foundation side by side.

The king's name and achievements were to get inseparable from that of his Prime Minister, Gajah Mada. Both dreamed of expanding the kingdom to cover almost the whole modern Indonesia. Gajah Mada's Palapa Oath of 1331 was to be cited endlessly later in modern Indonesia, "I will not rest and enjoy life until the kingdom is united".

The inimitable Prime Minister died in 1364, the king's mother Tribhuwana Tunggadewi died in 1379; Majapahit lost the unmatched pair of advisors and tacticians. Hayam Wuruk's next ministers were his constant disappointment. He died in 1389 and the glory of Majapahit was to get shut down from the year on. Majapahit left scores of everlasting monuments and more than that a stack of literature; among which were Negarakertagama written by Mpu Prapanca (1365) and Sutasoma by Mpu Tantular.

From the Majapahitan literary legacy the modern Republic of Indonesia was said to get its choice of national banner (red and white) and a distinct Sanskrit lexicon. The aforementioned names would be used to call streets, buildings, universities and the like, four to five hundred years later. According to the Javanese folktale, the last king of Majapahit was Brawijaya V. In 16th century it perished under the attack of the Islamic kingdom Demak.

1406 The Paregreg civil war of Majapahit ended, Prince Paramisora, Duke of Blambangan (East Java), the loser in this war, fled for Tumasik (now Singapore) and then to the Malaka Peninsula. There he built the kingdom of Malaka [pron. 'mah-lah-kah'], a glorious port for the day's trade and traffic. For commercial reasons, since some Muslim traders were reluctant to do business otherwise, the Hindu Prince made himself a Muslim king, assuming the title of Sultan Iskandar Syah ('Iskandar' is the Muslim synonym for 'Alexander'). He gained security warrant from the Chinese Emperor (of the Ming dynasty) that enabled the new kingdom to grow unhindered by unnecessary armed conflicts in its formatting years.

1453 Constantinople (now Turkey's Istanbul) fell into Muslim hands; the start of the Ottoman dynasty's grip.

1458 This year Athens fell into the hands of the Turks. The Parthenon was turned into a mosque. Islam seemed to shine everywhere else, too; Sultan Mansyur Syah took the kingdom of Malaka to its heyday. It had grown into a very rich kingdom with the busiest port around the area. This was the time when, according to Malayan tradition, lived the greatest Malayan Admiral ever, Hang Tuah.

1492 Christopher Columbus accidentally reached America. While this might not have anything to do with Indonesia, it would nonetheless serve as a mighty booster to colonialism. While the Dutch were magnificently successful in acquiring scientific inertia, and notoriously immune to adventures, their single preoccupation with trade and fortune-making would take them to Indonesia -- and take Indonesia to the unenviable experience of being constantly shot at.

Late in this century, the Netherlands was in fact still inexistent as such; it was put into the parcel handed to the mighty Habsburgs of Austria. This gift-wrapping was done for Emperor Charles V (the fifth), as some sort of 'dowry' among other lands the family had been getting via politically-motivated nuptials. Christian Reformists recorded massive conversion all over the Habsburgian domain. From now on, the would-be Holland was a Protestant country.

1500 Demak [pron. 'dah-mac'], a Muslim duchy in the territory of the Hindu-Buddhist Majapahit, wrestled itself free and ended the Majapahitan history. This was the first Islamic kingdom in Java, a sort of a theocracy.

The Majapahitian people who loathed conversion to Islam fled eastward to the small island nearby, Bali - where Hinduism thrives as the major system of belief until today.

Balinese Hinduism is distinctly Balinese; it differs greatly from India's. It was made of a synchretism of Indian Hinduism, Buddhism, and indigenous animism. The various Hindu gods are synthesized in one God the Almighty (Sang Hyang Widhi). Hinduism was perfectly mixed with indigenous culture that Bali could afford to show a solid and nearly homogenous community. Four centuries later, these modifications allowed a smooth passage into modern monotheist Indonesia.

Balinese Hinduism doesn't adopt the Indian social system, and the caste of the pariah is never known there. But exactly because Indonesian Hinduism is so Balinese, this organized religion would attract almost no convert from other ethnicities in Indonesia.

RELATED PAGE: Pictures of Indonesian ethnicities, traditional dresses & architecture.

Indonesian History since 1501 to 1825