'George Coedès' (
1886-
1969)was a
20th century scholar of
southeast Asian
archaeology and
history. He became director of the
National Library of Thailand in
1918, and in
1929 became director of
L'École française d'Extrême-Orient, where he remained until
1946. Thereafter he lived in
Paris until he died in
1969. He wrote two seminal texts in the field, ''The Indianized States of Southeast Asia'' (1968, 1975) and ''The Making of South East Asia'' (1966), as well as innumerable articles, in which he developed the concept of the
Indianized kingdom. However, the modern consensus is that the Indianization was less complete than Coedès had believed, with many indigenous practices surviving underneath the Indian surface.
George Coedès is credited with rediscovering the former kingdom of
Srivijaya, centred around the modern-day Indonesian city of
Palembang, but with influence extending from
Sumatra through to the
Malay Peninsula and
Java. No modern Indonesians, including those of the Palembang area, had heard of Srivijaya until the 1920s, when Coedès published his discoveries and interpretations in Dutch and Indonesian-language newspapers.
[1]
References
1. Indonesia: Peoples and Histories, , Jean Gelman, Taylor, Yale University Press, , ISBN 0-300-10518-5
★ Higham, Charles (
2001). ''The Civilization of Angkor''. Phoenix. ISBN 1842125842.
★ National Library of Australia.
Asia's French Connection : George Coedes and the Coedes Collection