The Hunt for a Location: Narratives on the Foundation of Cities in South and Southeast Asia

Abstract

In the period of the establishment and expansion of sultanates in South and Southeast Asia, the hunt was a central narrative event during which an observed omen was instrumental to found a new city. Such narratives were new and replaced or co-opted the older tropes of epiphanies that explained the foundations of cities and temples. This article examines several later stories about the beginnings of cities that were founded between 1200 and 1600-curiously, all of these accounts were written between 1400 and 1800.