Historiography
There was no continuous knowledge of Srivijaya even in Indonesian histories; its forgotten past has been recreated by foreign scholars. No modern Indonesians, not even those of the Palembang area around which the kingdom was based, had heard of Srivijaya until the 1920s, when French scholar George Coedès published his discoveries and interpretations in Dutch and Indonesian-language newspapers. Coedès noted that the Chinese references to "Sanfoqi", previously read as "Sribhoja", and the inscriptions in Old Malay refer to the same empire.
The historical records of Srivijaya were reconstructed from numbers of stone inscriptions, most of them are written in Old Malay, such as Kedukan Bukit, Talang Tuwo, Telaga Batu and Kota Kapur inscription. Srivijaya has become a symbol of early Sumatran importance as a great empire to balance Java's Majapahit in the east. In the 20th century, both empires were referred to by nationalist intellectuals to argue for an Indonesian identity within an Indonesian state prior to the Dutch colonial state.
Srivijaya and by extension Sumatra had been known by different names to different peoples. The Chinese called it Sanfotsi or San Fo Qi, and there was an even older kingdom of Kantoli that could be considered the predecessor of Srivijaya. Sanskrit and Pali referred to it as Yavadesh and Javadeh, respectively. The Arabs called it Zabag and the Khmer called it Melayu. This is another reason why the discovery of Srivijaya was so difficult. While some of these names are strongly reminiscent of the name of Java, there is a distinct possibility that they may have referred to Sumatra instead.
The first part "Sri" comes from Sanskrit and is an honourific place name, similar to Sri Lanka. "Vijaya" can mean "victory", a similarly named empire in India was called Vijayanagara. The name of the empire can therefore also be written "Sri Vijaya".
Read more about this topic: Srivijaya