370 empires and dynasties: Asia and the Pacific eng Plateau in north-central Java Sanjaya was succeeded by a series of Sailendra monarchs into the mid-ninth century, all of whom followed his lead and built several major Mahayana Buddhist temples in central Java near modern-day Yogyakarta, including the early ninth-century temple complex at Borobudur In the late ninth century Hindu kings based in central Java defeated the Buddhist Sailendras and proclaimed their sovereignty over what they called the Mataram state (ca 760–1000) These kings constructed their own equally impressive central temple complex dedicated to Lord Shiva at Prambanan, north of Yogyakarta near Mount Merapi, an active volcano After a devastating eruption of Mount Merapi in the 10th century temporarily made the plains of central Java uninhabitable, the center of Javanese civilization shifted to eastern Java Temples assumed less importance as statements of royal authority Instead, the kings of Java through the reign of Airlangga (r 1019–45) encouraged the spread of wet-rice agriculture in eastern Java and exploited the region’s’ strategic position close to the international maritime trade route to eastern Indonesia’s Spice Islands Following Airlangga’s death, the Java monarchy split into competing factions, with kings identified by their association with two rival courts, one at Kediri on the southwestern edge of the Brantas River plain and the other at Singhasari to the southeast on the Malang Plateau The Majapahit Empire (1293–1525), based near present-day Surabaya, was the high point in the development of the Hindu-Buddhist civilizations on the islands of Southeast Asia It controlled all the islands that are now part of Indonesia, which they called Nusantara Local societies appropriated Majapahit’s refined culture The most notable of these societies was neighboring Bali, which still practices the Hindu religious traditions it inherited from the Majapahit Empire During the 15th century the Majapahit Empire faced aggressive competition from the newly Islamic ports on Java’s northern coast In 1528 the empire finally fell to a military coalition led by the Demak Sultanate Melaka The Melaka (Malacca) maritime state was founded by the Sumatra-based Malay prince Parameswara (d 1414), who claimed to be the heir to the earlier network of ports along the straits that the Chinese and Indians called Srivijaya Parameswara moved his court there from what is now Singapore in about 1390 Within 50 years Malacca had become the wealthiest commercial port in Asia It served as both the connecting hub in the trade between India and China and as the international source of Indonesian spices The initial success of Melaka was the result of special diplomatic ties with the Ming Dynasty of China Merchants wishing to trade in Chinese ports were given special treatment if they first made stopovers in Malacca In return, the state was obligated to keep the straits free of piracy, thereby assuring the regular flow of Western luxuries, Indian textiles, and Southeast Asian spices into China When the Ming court ended their aggressive diplomatic relationships with the region in the 1430s and subsequently began to restrict China’s overseas contacts, the ruler of Malacca, Sultan Muhammad Shah (r 1424–44) converted to Islam in order to encourage the Muslim merchants who dominated trade in the Indian Ocean to use his port and to legitimize Malacca’s control over other ports in the straits region Vietnam Northern Vietnam remained under Chinese sovereignty until the fall of the Tang Dynasty, when Vietnamese armies prevented the restoration of Chinese rule under the new Song Dynasty The leadership of the newly independent Vietnam Lý state (1009–1225) partnered with Mahayana Buddhist monks trained in China to establish and administer the new government institutions Minor officials were chosen by examination for the first time in 1075, and a civil service training institute and an imperial academy, which provided a mixed Buddhist and Confucian education, were set up in 1076 In 1089 a fixed hierarchy of Buddhist and secular state officials was established with nine degrees of civil and military scholar officials By the 13th century, however, the Buddhist religious institutions had become a threat to Vietnamese secular leadership The Trân Dynasty (1225–1400) as well as the subsequent Lê Dynasty (1428–1527) began to recruit newly trained Confucian scholars from among the Vietnamese landed aristocracy to replace the Buddhist monks as state bureaucrats Vietnam’s emperors implemented their own version of the Chinese Confucian examination system Unlike the Chinese examinations, however, which were open to all qualified male applicants, the Vietnamese system admitted only the sons of the Vietnamese landed elite From the 13th to the 15th centuries, the Vietnamese rulers repelled repeated Chinese attempts to annex their territory and fended off periodic raids by their Champa Hindu neighbors in central Vietnam The multiple wars between the Vietnamese and the Champa eventually resulted in the fall of the Champa Kingdom to victorious Vietnamese forces in 1471 In 1527, however, the Lê state fragmented into regional courts ruled by rival factions of the royal family After that, Vietnam had no effective central authority until the 19th century