"Lembah Bujang~Bujang V ..." a Kampong Bujang Travel Page by Audrey118

Lembah Bujang is situated between Gunung Jerai to the north and the Sungei Muda to the south. It is ablut 20 km from Sungei Petani passing through many smaller rubber estates towns like Bedong, Sembeling, Merbok where you will see a huge factory Sri Merbok owned by your former Finance Minister Tun Daim.

The highlight of Lembah Bujang its archeological discoveries in the 1950s.

However it is sad to say that the ruins is not as magnificent as the findings in Ayutthaya which pales to Cambodia!!!

Well the least said, the findings of the temple ruins magnifest the Hinduism and now Buddhism religions in early Malaya.

The site has a small musuem and a wonderfully landscaped park to wonder around despite of the heat.

Lembah Bujang with its hundreds of temples and shrines, conceals the remains of the lost civilisation of Srivijaya Hindu Kingdom which dates back from the first few centuries to the 11-12th century.

Srivijaya was a super maritime power, setting lots of small naval bases at strategic places to control the trade of the Straits of Malacca and the Sunda Straits, the two passages between India and China.

From these naval bases and the revenue they levied, Srivijaya became very powerful, and was overthrown only when its fleets became quarrelling packs of pirates in the 13th century.

'Bujang' is a Sanskrit word which means serpent. Indians began coming to the Malay Peninsula primarily because they were sailing to the rich, cultured civilisation of China. They traded pepper and cotton, silk, porcelain and precious objects.

To the travellers and seamen who crossed the vast Indian Ocean, Gunung Jerai must have appeared to them like the seat of the Gods, which provided them with land, safety, food and fresh water.

More than 50 individual temple sites have been excavated and to date, nine of them have been painstakingly reconstructed.

They may have been more than just a religious centre where sailors, grateful for having crossed the Bay of Bengal, and guided over the last of it by the towering landfall of Gunung Jerai, came ashore in the sheltered Sungai Merbok and paid tribute to the Gods before venturing further south.

Becos the site is still infant stage, and excavations probably still on, there is only limited sites to visit; they have a small but well presented museum which exhibits some of the smaller artifacts.