Sanskrit at the head, Malay at the hands

Claim (verbatim)

The Telaga Batu oath stone (Sabokingking, Palembang; late seventh century), the great imprecation text of early Srivijaya carved with naga heads and a channel for the oath-water, enumerates everyone positioned to betray the ruler, from princes at the head of the list down to washermen and the king's bondsmen at its foot. The list is an X-ray of a young thalassocracy's state formation: imported Indic statecraft supplies the commanding offices, the Austronesian world supplies the working ranks, and Sanskritization runs top-down. Etymology should therefore track rank. Prediction: in the enumeration as edited by de Casparis, at least four of the first five titles will be Sanskrit loans (the head opens with rajaputra, princes), at least three of the last five will be Austronesian (the tail holds the likes of the hulun haji, the king's bondsmen), and the Sanskrit share will decline monotonically across the list read in thirds (primary clause: the head-versus-tail contrast as stated; the verdict follows it). Kill: de Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia II (1956), the editio princeps of the Telaga Batu stone (Museum Nasional Jakarta) with its title-by-title commentary, controlled against Coedes, Les inscriptions malaises de Crivijaya (BEFEO 30, 1930) and the etymologies in Zoetmulder's Old Javanese-English Dictionary and standard Malay etymological lexica.

Prediction clause (verbatim)

Prediction: in the enumeration as edited by de Casparis, at least four of the first five titles will be Sanskrit loans (the head opens with rajaputra, princes), at least three of the last five will be Austronesian (the tail holds the likes of the hulun haji, the king's bondsmen), and the Sanskrit share will decline monotonically across the list read in thirds (primary clause: the head-versus-tail contrast as stated; the verdict follows it).

Kill-dataset (verbatim)

Kill: de Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia II (1956), the editio princeps of the Telaga Batu stone (Museum Nasional Jakarta) with its title-by-title commentary, controlled against Coedes, Les inscriptions malaises de Crivijaya (BEFEO 30, 1930) and the etymologies in Zoetmulder's Old Javanese-English Dictionary and standard Malay etymological lexica.

Novelty / leakage triage

anticipated in the literature — this exact test has never been run

De Casparis's editio princeps comments on the enumeration title by title, and the list's state-formation reading is developed by Kulke, with the clustering of Sanskrit titles in the commanding offices noted qualitatively; but an etymology-by-rank gradient test (Sanskrit share declining monotonically down the list) has not been run.

• J.G. de Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia II: Selected Inscriptions from the 7th to the 9th Century A.D. (Bandung, 1956)
• H. Kulke, '"Kadatuan Srivijaya" — Empire or Kraton of Srivijaya? A Reassessment of the Epigraphical Evidence', BEFEO 80 (1993)

Predictions

No prediction registered yet.