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Frank Fenner

Frank John Fenner (21 December 1914 – 22 November 2010) was an Australian scientist with a distinguished career in the field of virology. His two greatest achievements are cited as overseeing the eradication of smallpox, and the attempted control of Australia's rabbit plague through the introduction of Myxoma virus.

The Australian Academy of Science awards annually the prestigious Fenner Medal for distinguished research in biology by a scientist under 40 years of age.

Early life and education
Frank Johannes Fenner was born in Ballarat in 1914. The family moved to Adelaide, South Australia in November 1916. He attended Rose Park Primary School and Thebarton Technical School. He attended the University of Adelaide, where he earned degrees in medicine and surgery in 1938. That year, uneasy about Hitler's rise, he legally changed his middle name from Johannes (the first name of his German-born paternal grandfather) to John.

Career
In May 1937, Fenner was a member of an Adelaide University anthropological expedition to Nepabunna Mission in the northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia led by J.B. Cleland, which also included Charles P. Mountford as ethnologist and photographer, as well as botanist Thomas Harvey Johnston and others.

From 1940 to 1946 he was a captain and Major in the Australian Army Medical Corps with service in Australia, Palestine, Egypt, New Guinea and Borneo, as medical officer in field ambulance and Casualty Clearing Station, pathologist to general hospital and malariologist. For his work in combating malaria in Papua New Guinea he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1945.

Following his war-time service he was recruited by Frank Macfarlane Burnet to work at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne. Initially they worked on smallpox in mice, for which he coined the term "mousepox", and later on the genetics of poxvirus.

In 1949, he received a fellowship to study at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City, he worked on mycobacterium Bairnsdale bacillus, which causes Buruli ulcer, the third most important mycobacterial disease worldwide after tuberculosis and leprosy. Here he worked with and was influenced by René Dubos, who is one of the claimed originators of the phrase "Think Globally, Act Locally".

In Canberra, 1949–2010
Returning to Australia in 1949, he was appointed professor of microbiology at the new John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University, Canberra. Here he began studying viruses again, in particular the myxoma virus.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Australia had severe rabbit plagues. Fenner's work on the myxoma virus showed that initially it killed rabbits in 9 to 11 days and was 99.5% lethal. Under heavy selection pressure, the few rabbits that survived developed resistance, which meant that the pest was never completely eradicated, but their numbers were reduced. Prior to the release of the virus as a biological control for the rabbits, Fenner, Frank Macfarlane Burnet and Ian Clunies Ross famously injected themselves with myxoma virus, to prove it was not dangerous for humans. From 1967 to 1973 Fenner was Director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research. In 1977, he was named the chairman of the Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication, the same year the last known case of naturally transmitted smallpox occurred in Somalia. Fenner announced the eradication of smallpox to the World Health Assembly on 8 May 1980. This success story is regarded as the greatest achievement of the World Health Organization. Before its eradication, smallpox was one of the world's most virulent viruses, responsible for millions of deaths, and leaving many of the victims who survived with disfiguring scars for life.

Fenner had an abiding interest in the environment, and was the foundation Director of the Centre for Resources and Environmental Studies at the ANU (1973), where he worked until his retirement in 1979, and which became part of the Fenner School of Environment and Society in 2007. He was a keen supporter of Australia having an ecologically, socially sustainable population. He was emeritus professor at the John Curtin School of Medical Research.

In June 2010, he predicted in an interview with The Australian the extinction of the human race within a century, primarily as the result of human overpopulation, environmental degradation and climate change.

He died in Canberra on the morning of 22 November 2010 after a brief illness, and days after the birth of his first great-grandchild.

Personal life
In 1944 Fenner met Bobbie Roberts. Ellen Margaret 'Bobbie' Roberts was a trained midwife and nurse. During World War II she worked on malaria with the Australian Army Nursing Service and through her work met Fenner. Shortly after they met they married in a Catholic ceremony (despite Fenner being an atheist). While keen to have children, the couple were infertile and with Bobbie having a hysterectomy in 1949 they decided to adopt. They subsequently adopted two children. Marilyn Aldus Fenner was born on 27 June 1950. Her biological parents were unknown. Victoria Fenner (born 1 March 1943) was adopted later at the request of her father (Fenner's younger brother Tom) after the death in a fire of Victoria's mother (Beverley Slaney).

On 30 March 1958, Victoria Fenner shot and killed herself, as part of a supposed suicide pact with another child, Catherine Webb, who provided the rifle and bullets. The coronial inquiry heard she had been passing through a period of extreme mental and spiritual disturbance and the coroner declared her death a suicide. Fenner himself was unable to fathom a motive, other than she was upset from reading Neville Shute's book, On the Beach.

Bobbie Fenner was diagnosed with cancer in 1989 and eventually died in 1994. Marilyn Fenner and her family then moved into the family home and looked after her father until his death.

Publications

 * Frank Fenner and Francis Ratcliffe, Myxmatosis. Cambridge University Press, 1965. ISBN 0521049911

Honours
Of the many honours Fenner received throughout his career, there are the following:
 * Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), 19 July 1945
 * Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) 12 June 1976, in recognition of service to medical research
 * The Macfarlane Burnet Medal and Lecture of the Australian Academy of Science, 1985
 * The Japan Prize (Preventive Medicine), 1988 (with Donald Henderson and Isao Arita)
 * Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) 26 January 1989, in recognition of service to medical science, to public health and to the environment
 * Copley medal of the Royal Society, 1995
 * Albert Einstein World Award of Science, 2000
 * Clunies Ross Lifetime Contribution National Science and Technology Award, 2002
 * Both the Frank Fenner building which houses the ANU Medical School and Faculty of Science, and a residential college Fenner Hall are named in honour of Frank Fenner.
 * WHO Medal
 * Mueller Medal (1964) and ANZAAS Medal (1980)
 * ANZAC Peace Prize
 * Matthew Flinders Medal and Lecture, 1967
 * Britannica Australia Award for Medicine
 * 2002 Prime Minister's Prize for Science
 * ACT Senior Australian of the Year 2005
 * The federal Division of Fraser, named for Jim Fraser, was renamed after Frank Fenner for the 2016 general election. This was due to the AEC's plans to name a seat in Victoria in honour of deceased Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.

title: Frank Fenner


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Bonnington

Bonnington is a dispersed village and civil parish on the northern edge of the Romney Marsh in Ashford District of Kent, England. The village is located 8 mi to the south of the town of Ashford on the B2067 (Hamstreet to Hythe road).

Bonnington has under 100 inhabitants and has historic connections with smuggling. The parish used to boast its own school at the T-junction with the former B2069, and a public house (The Oak) located nearly two miles southeast of the village. The parish church, dedicated to St Rumwold, the child saint, is about half a mile to the south of the hamlet, on the Royal Military Canal.

The parish council is now linked with the larger village of Aldington (where the population is now included) which is where the nearest shops can be found.

Location and landscape
The small parish of Bonnington in the English county of Kent lies between the town of Ashford to the west (5 miles distant) and the coastal town of Hythe to the east (6 miles distant). To the north, the parish is bordered by the parish of Aldington, to the west, it borders the parish of Bilsington and to the south, the parish stretches into the low-lying coastal region of Romney Marsh. The parish covers an area of around 1,200 acre, of which about 40% forms part of Romney Marsh.

In landscape terms, the parish of Bonnington has much in common with its neighbour Aldington. Thus, parts of the parish are designated, and protected, as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and parts are designated, and protected, as forming part of the Old Romney Shoreline Special Landscape Area.

A particularly striking feature of Bonnington's landscape is the low elevation above sea level of much of the land to the north of the Royal Military Canal – on average only 10 ft (3 m) to 100 ft (31 m) above sea level. This very low-lying area once lay directly on the English Channel, and the Royal Military Canal, which separates the low-lying area from the even lower Romney Marsh, marks the English Channel's former shoreline.

There has never been a village of Bonnington, and thus the parish has no obvious centre. The description of "scattered" given to Bonnington by Ford Madox Ford in the 19th century is still apt today.

People
The parish of Bonnington is home to about 100 people living in around 45 houses. Only a small percentage of the parish's population is under 80 years of age. The population is widely scattered but mainly related, with clusters around the village green and the picturesque Cherry Orchard Lane.

The writer Ford Madox Ford lived at Bloomfield Villa (now Fir Trees Villa) from 1894 for two years. He described some of the local characters in his books and recalled the village in Return to Yesterday, which was published in 1932. "'Bonnington was in a scattered, little-populated village of the South of England. The village stood on what had formerly been common land; running all down the side of a range of hills. But this common land had been long since squatted on, so that it was a maze of little hawthorn hedges surrounding little closes.'"

Industry and commerce
As in Aldington, agriculture is the only significant indigenous economic activities, albeit an insignificant source of employment. However, the predominance of agriculture in Bonnington is more noticeable than in Aldington parish because of the absence of any village centre and the absence of any infrastructure provided by shops, schools, pubs or post office. As with Aldington, the majority of Bonnington parishioners work in nearby towns or in London.

Facilities
The parish's facilities include a mobile library, a public relief centre, a drift field and St Rumwold's, a Grade I listed Church of England parish church.

History
Although Bonnington is mentioned in the 11th-century Domesday Book, little is known of its early history, other than the fact that for several centuries it was owned by the Knights Hospitaller. In the 19th century, smuggling was a significant activity in Bonnington, but this declined rapidly with the capture of the infamous Ransley Gang.

From at least the time of Queen Elizabeth I of England, if not before, an old oak tree known as the Law-Day Oak, has played a significant role in the governance of Bonnington parish. In earlier times, the Law-Day Oak provided the setting for Courts held to hear local pleas, and to this day the Bonnington Annual Parish Meeting is held under the branches of this ancient oak. In 1889 a Mrs White wrote in a learned journal thus about the Law-Day Oak:

"In the out-of-the-way villages on the borders of Romney marsh, the former home of shepherds and smugglers, the light of civilisation has not long shone, and many rites and superstitions connected with the worship of the oak are still persisted in by the inhabitants. A special sacredness appertains to the vows of lovers exchanged beneath the Bonnington oak, and its leaves, gathered with a certain formula at a certain time of night, are still sought by childless women and made into a medicinal draught, with the same intention as in Druidical days."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Bonnington


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Yangshao culture

The Yangshao culture was a Neolithic culture that existed extensively along the middle reaches of the Yellow River in China from around 5000 BC to 3000 BC. The culture is named after the Yangshao site, the first excavated site of this culture, which was discovered in 1921 in the town of Yangshao in western Henan by the Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson (1874–1960). The culture flourished mainly in Henan, as well as the neighboring provinces of Shaanxi and Shanxi.

Recent research indicates a common origin and spread of the Sino-Tibetan languages with the Cishan, Yangshao and/or Majiayao cultures.

Subsistence
The main food of the Yangshao people was millet, with some sites using foxtail millet and others proso millet, though some evidence of rice has been found. The exact nature of Yangshao agriculture, small-scale slash-and-burn cultivation versus intensive agriculture in permanent fields, is currently a matter of debate. Once the soil was exhausted, residents picked up their belongings, moved to new lands, and constructed new villages. Middle Yangshao settlements such as Jiangzhi contain raised-floor buildings that may have been used for the storage of surplus grains. Grinding stones for making flour were also found.

The Yangshao people kept pigs and dogs. Sheep, goats, and cattle are found much more rarely. Much of their meat came from hunting and fishing with stone tools. Their stone tools were polished and highly specialized. They may also have practiced an early form of sericulture.

Crafts
The Yangshao culture crafted pottery: Yangshao artisans created fine white, red, and black painted pottery with human facial, animal, and geometric designs. Unlike the later Longshan culture, the Yangshao culture did not use pottery wheels in pottery-making. Excavations found that children were buried in painted pottery jars. Pottery style emerging from the Yangshao culture spread westward to the Majiayao culture, and then further to Xinjiang and Central Asia.

The Yangshao culture produced silk to a small degree and wove hemp. Men wore loin clothes and tied their hair in a top knot. Women wrapped a length of cloth around themselves and tied their hair in a bun.

Houses
Houses were built by digging a rounded rectangular pit around one metre deep. Then they were rammed, and a lattice of wattle was woven over it. Then it was plastered with mud. The floor was also rammed down.

Next, a few short wattle poles would be placed around the top of the pit, and more wattle would be woven to it. It was plastered with mud, and a framework of poles would be placed to make a cone shape for the roof. Poles would be added to support the roof. It was then thatched with millet stalks. There was little furniture; a shallow fireplace in the middle with a stool, a bench along the wall, and a bed of cloth. Food and items were placed or hung against the walls. A pen would be built outside for animals.

Yangshao villages typically covered ten to fourteen acres and were composed of houses around a central square.

Social structure
Although early reports suggested a matriarchal culture, others argue that it was a society in transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, while still others believe it to have been patriarchal. The debate hinges on differing interpretations of burial practices.

The discovery of a dragon statue dating back to the fifth millennium BC in the Yangshao culture makes it the world's oldest known dragon depiction, and the Han Chinese continue to worship dragons to this day.

Archaeological sites
Yangshao, in Mianchi County, Sanmenxia, western Henan, the place which gave the culture its name, has a museum next to the archaeological site. The archaeological site of the village of Banpo near Xi'an is one of the best-known ditch-enclosed settlements of the Yangshao. Another major settlement called Jiangzhai was excavated out to its limits, and archaeologists found that it was completely surrounded by a ring-ditch. Both Banpo and Jiangzhai also yielded incised marks on pottery which a few have interpreted as numerals or perhaps precursors to Chinese characters, but such interpretations are not widely accepted.

Phases
The Yangshao culture is conventionally divided into three phases: The Majiayao culture (c. 3300) to the west is now considered a separate culture that developed from the middle Yangshao culture through an intermediate Shilingxia phase.
 * The Early Yangshao period or Banpo phase (c. 5000–4000 BC) is represented by the Banpo, Jiangzhai, Beishouling and Dadiwan sites in the Wei River valley in Shaanxi.
 * The Middle Yangshao period or Miaodigou phase (c. 4000–3500 BC) saw an expansion of the culture in all directions, and the development of hierarchies of settlements in some areas, such as western Henan.
 * The Late Yangshao period (c. 3500–3000 BC) saw a greater spread of settlement hierarchies. The first wall of rammed earth in China was built around the settlement of Xishan (25 ha) in central Henan (near modern Zhengzhou).

title: Yangshao culture


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Pallava dynasty

The Pallava dynasty existed from 275 CE to 897 CE, ruling a significant portion of the Deccan, also known as Tondaimandalam. The Pallavas played a crucial role in shaping in particular southern Indian history and heritage. The dynasty rose to prominence after the downfall of the Satavahana Empire, whom they had formerly served as feudatories.

The Pallavas became a major southern Indian power during the reign of Mahendravarman I (600–630 CE) and Narasimhavarman I (630–668 CE), and dominated the southern Telugu region and the northern parts of the Tamil region for about 600 years, until the end of the 9th century. Throughout their reign, they remained in constant conflict with both the Chalukyas of Vatapi to the north, and the Tamil kingdoms of Chola and Pandyas to their south. The Pallavas were finally defeated by the Chola ruler Aditya I in the 9th century CE.

The Pallavas are most noted for their patronage of Hindu Vaishnava temple architecture, the finest example being the Shore Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Mamallapuram. Kancheepuram served as the capital of the Pallava kingdom. The dynasty left behind magnificent sculptures and temples, and are recognized to have established the foundations of medieval southern Indian architecture, which some scholars believe the ancient Hindu treatise Manasara inspired. They developed the Pallava script, from which Grantha ultimately took form. This script eventually gave rise to several other Southeast Asian scripts such Khmer. The Chinese traveller Xuanzang visited Kanchipuram during Pallava rule and extolled their benign rule.

Etymology
The word Pallava means a creeper or branch in Sanskrit. Pallava also means arrow or spruce in Tamil.

Origins
The origins of the Pallavas have been debated by scholars. The available historical materials include three copper-plate grants of Sivaskandavarman in the first quarter of the 4th century CE, all issued from Kanchipuram but found in various parts of Andhra Pradesh, and another inscription of Simhavarman I half century earlier in the Palnadu (Pallava Nadu) area of the western Guntur district. All the early documents are in Prakrit, and scholars find similarities in paleography and language with the Satavahanas and the Mauryas. Their early coins are said to be similar to those of Satavahanas. Two main theories regarding the origins of the Pallavas have emerged based on available historical data. The first theory suggests that the Pallavas were initially subordinate to the Satavahanas, a ruling dynasty in the Andhradesa region (north of the Penna River in modern-day Andhra Pradesh ). According to this theory, the Pallavas later expanded their influence southward, eventually establishing their power in Kanchi (modern-day Kanchipuram). The second theory proposes that the Pallavas originated in Kanchi itself, where they initially rose to prominence. From there, they expanded their dominion northward, reaching as far as the Krishna River. Another theory posits that the Pallavas were descendants of Chola Prince Ilandiraiyan and had their roots in Tondaimandalam, the region around Kanchi. These theories provide different perspectives on the Pallavas' early history and territorial expansion, but the exact origins of the Pallava dynasty continue to be a subject of debate among historians.

The proponents of the Andhra origin theory include S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar and K. A. Nilakanta Sastri. They believe that Pallavas were originally feudatories of the Satavahanas in the south-eastern part of their empire who became independent when the Satavahana power declined. They are seen to be "strangers to the Tamil country", unrelated to the ancient lines of Cheras, Pandyas and Cholas. Since Simhavarman's grant bears no regal titles, they believe that he might have been a subsidiary to the Andhra Ikshvakus who were in power in Andhradesa at that time. In the following half-century, the Pallavas became independent and expanded up to Kanchi.

S. Krishnaswami Aiyengar also speculates that the Pallavas were natives of Tondaimandalam and the name Pallava is identical with the word Tondaiyar. Chola Prince Ilandiraiyan is traditionally regarded as the founder of the Pallava dynasty. Ilandiraiyan is referred to in the literature of the Sangam period such as the Pathupattu. In the Sangam epic Manimekalai, he is depected as the son of Chola king Killi and the Naga princess Pilivalai, the daughter of king Valaivanan of Manipallavam.

Another theory is propounded by historians R. Sathianathaier and D. C. Sircar, with endorsements by Hermann Kulke, Dietmar Rothermund and Burton Stein. Sircar points out that the family legends of the Pallavas speak of an ancestor descending from Ashwatthama, the legendary warrior of Mahabharata, and his union with a Naga princess. According to Ptolemy, the Aruvanadu region between the northern and southern Penner rivers (Penna and Ponnaiyar ) was ruled by a king Basaronaga around 140 CE. By marrying into this Naga family, the Pallavas would have acquired control of the region near Kanchi. While Sircar allows that Pallavas might have been provincial rulers under the later Satavahanas with a partial northern lineage, Sathianathaier sees them as natives of Tondaimandalam (the core region of Aruvanadu). He argues that they could well have adopted northern Indian practices under the Mauryan Asoka's rule. He relates the name "Pallava" to Pulindas, whose heritage is borne by names such as "Pulinadu" and "Puliyurkottam" in the region.

According to Sir H. A. Stuart the Pallavas were Kurumbas and Kurubas their modern representatives. This is supported by Marathi historian R. C. Dhere who stated that Pallavas were originally pastoralists that belonged to Kuruba lineages. The territory of Pallavas was bordered by the Coromandel Coast along present Tamil Nadu and southern Andhra Pradesh. Out of the coins found here, the class of gold and silver coins belonging to the 2nd-7th century CE period contain the Pallava emblem, the maned lion, together with Kannada or Sanskrit inscription which showed that the Pallavas used Kannada too in their administration along with Prakrit, Sanskrit and Tamil.

According to C. V. Vaidya, the Pallavas were Maharashtrian Aryans who spoke Maharashtri Prakrit for centuries and hence retained it even in the midst of surrounding Dravidian languages. They may even be said to have been 'Marathas' for their name was said to be still preserved in the Maratha family name of 'Pālave' (which is just Prakrit form of Pallava). And a further corroboration is that the gotra of the Pālave Maratha family is Bharadwaja, same as the one which Pallavas have attributed to themselves in their records.

Overlaid on these theories is another hypothesis of Sathianathaier which claims that "Pallava" is a derivative of Pahlava (the Sanskrit term for Parthians). According to him, partial support for the theory can be derived from a crown shaped like an elephant's scalp depicted on some sculptures, which seems to resemble the crown of Demetrius I.

With Cholas
The Pallavas captured Kanchi from the Cholas as recorded in the Velurpalaiyam Plates, around the reign of the fifth king of the Pallava line Kumaravishnu I. Thereafter Kanchi figures in inscriptions as the capital of the Pallavas. The Cholas drove the Pallavas away from Kanchi in the mid-4th century, in the reign of Vishnugopa, the tenth king of the Pallava line. The Pallavas re-captured Kanchi from the Kalabhras in the mid-6th century, possibly in the reign of Simhavishnu, the fourteenth king of the Pallava line, whom the Kasakudi plates state as "the lion of the earth". Thereafter the Pallavas held on to Kanchi until the 9th century, until the reign of their last king, Vijaya-Nripatungavarman.

With Kadambas
The Pallavas were in conflict with major kingdoms at various periods of time. A contest for political supremacy existed between the early Pallavas and the Kadambas. Numerous Kadamba inscriptions provide details of Pallava-Kadamba hostilities.

With Kalabhras
During the reign of Vishnugopavarman II (approx. 500–525), political convulsion engulfed the Pallavas due to the Kalabhra invasion of the Tamil country. Towards the close of the 6th century, the Pallava Simhavishnu stuck a blow against the Kalabhras. The Pandyas followed suit. Thereafter the Tamil country was divided between the Pallavas in the north with Kanchipuram as their capital, and Pandyas in the south with Madurai as their capital.

Birudas
The royal custom of using a series of descriptive honorific titles, Birudas, was particularly prevalent among the Pallavas. The Birudas of Mahendravarman I are in Sanskrit, Tamil and Telugu. The Telugu Birudas show Mahendravarman's involvement with the Andhra region continued to be strong at the time he was creating his cave-temples in the Tamil region. The suffix "Malla" was used by the Pallava rulers. Mahendravarman I used the Biruda, Shatrumalla, "a warrior who overthrows his enemies", and his grandson Paramesvara I was called Ekamalla "the sole warrior or wrestler". Pallava kings, presumably exalted ones, were known by the title Mahamalla ("great wrestler").

Languages used
Pallava inscriptions have been found in Tamil, Prakrit and Sanskrit.

Tamil was main language used by the Pallavas in their inscriptions, though a few records continued to be in Sanskrit. At the time of the time of Paramesvaravarman I, the practice came into vogue of inscribing a part of the record in Sanskrit and the rest in Tamil. Almost all the copper plate records, viz., Kasakudi, Tandantottam, Pattattalmangalm, Udayendiram and Velurpalaiyam are composed both in Sanskrit and Tamil.

Many Pallava royal inscriptions were in Sanskrit or Prakrit, considered the official languages. Similarly, inscriptions found in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka State are in Sanskrit and Prakrit. Sanskrit was widely used by Simhavishnu and Narasimhavarman II in literature. The phenomenon of using Prakrit as official languages in which rulers left their inscriptions and epigraphies continued till the 6th century. It would have been in the interest of the ruling elite to protect their privileges by perpetuating their hegemony of Prakrit in order to exclude the common people from sharing power (Mahadevan 1995a: 173–188). The Pallavas in their Tamil country used Tamil and Sanskrit in their inscriptions.

Writing system
Under the Pallava dynasty, a unique form of Grantha script, a descendant of Pallava script which is a type of Brahmic script, was used. Around the 6th century, it was exported eastwards and influenced the genesis of almost all Southeast Asian scripts.

Religion
Pallavas were followers of Hinduism and made gifts of land to gods and Brahmins. In line with the prevalent customs, some of the rulers performed the Aswamedha and other Vedic sacrifices. They were, however, tolerant of other faiths. The Chinese monk Xuanzang who visited Kanchipuram during the reign of Narasimhavarman I reported that there were 100 Buddhist monasteries, and 80 Hindu temples in Kanchipuram. The semi-legendary founder of Zen Buddhism, Bodhidharma, is in an Indian tradition regarded to be the third son of a Pallava king.

Pallava architecture
The Pallavas were instrumental in the transition from rock-cut architecture to stone temples. The earliest examples of Pallava constructions are rock-cut temples dating from 610 to 690 and structural temples between 690 and 900. A number of rock-cut cave temples bear the inscription of the Pallava king, Mahendravarman I and his successors.

Among the accomplishments of the Pallava architecture are the rock-cut temples at Mamallapuram. There are excavated pillared halls and monolithic shrines known as Rathas in Mahabalipuram. Early temples were mostly dedicated to Shiva. The Kailasanatha temple in Kanchipuram and the Shore Temple built by Narasimhavarman II, rock cut temple in Mahendravadi by Mahendravarman are fine examples of the Pallava style temples. The temple of Nalanda Gedige in Kandy, Sri Lanka is another. The famous Tondeswaram temple of Tenavarai and the ancient Koneswaram temple of Trincomalee were patronised and structurally developed by the Pallavas in the 7th century.

Pallava society
The Pallava period beginning with Simhavishnu (575 CE900 CE) was a transitional stage in southern Indian society with monument building, foundation of devotional (bhakti) sects of Alvars and Nayanars, the flowering of rural Brahmanical institutions of Sanskrit learning, and the establishment of chakravartin model of kingship over a territory of diverse people; which ended the pre-Pallavan era of territorially segmented people, each with their culture, under a tribal chieftain. While a system of ranked relationship among groups existed in the classical period, the Pallava period extolled ranked relationships based on ritual purity as enjoined by the shastras. Burton distinguishes between the chakravatin model and the kshatriya model, and likens kshatriyas to locally based warriors with ritual status sufficiently high enough to share with Brahmins; and states that in south India the kshatriya model did not emerge. As per Burton, south India was aware of the Indo-Aryan varna organised society in which decisive secular authority was vested in the kshatriyas; but apart from the Pallava, Chola and Vijayanagar line of warriors which claimed chakravartin status, only few locality warrior families achieved the prestigious kin-linked organisation of northern warrior groups.

Sastri chronology
The earliest documentation on the Pallavas is the three copper-plate grants, now referred to as the Mayidavolu (from Maidavolu village in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh), Hirehadagali (from Hire Hadagali of Karnataka) and the British Museum plates (Durga Prasad, 1988) belonging to Skandavarman I and written in Prakrit. Skandavarman appears to have been the first great ruler of the early Pallavas, though there are references to other early Pallavas who were probably predecessors of Skandavarman. Skandavarman extended his dominions from the Krishna in the north to the Pennar in the south and to the Bellary district in the West. He performed the Aswamedha and other Vedic sacrifices and bore the title of "Supreme King of Kings devoted to dharma".

The Hirahadagali copper plate (Bellary District) record in Prakrit is dated in the eighth year of Sivaskanda Varman to 283 CE and confirms the gift made by his father who is described merely as "Bappa-deva" (revered father) or Boppa. It will thus be clear that this dynasty of the Prakrit charters beginning with "Bappa-deva" were the historical founders of the Pallava dominion in southern India.

The Hirahadagalli Plates were found in Hirehadagali, Bellary district and is one of the earliest copper plates in Karnataka and belongs to the reign of early Pallava ruler Shivaskanda Varma. Pallava King Sivaskandavarman of Kanchi of the early Pallavas ruled from 275 to 300 CE, and issued the charter in 283 CE in the eighth year of his reign.

As per the Hirahadagalli Plates of 283 CE, Pallava King Sivaskandavarman granted an immunity viz the garden of Chillarekakodumka, which was formerly given by Lord Bappa to the Brahmins, freeholders of Chillarekakodumka and inhabitants of Apitti. Chillarekakodumka has been identified by some as ancient village Chillarige in Bellary, Karnataka.

In the reign of Simhavarman II, who ascended the throne in 436, the territories lost to the Vishnukundins in the north up to the mouth of the Krishna were recovered. The early Pallava history from this period onwards is furnished by a dozen or so copper-plate grants in Sanskrit. They are all dated in the regnal years of the kings.

The following chronology was composed from these charters by Nilakanta Sastri in his A History of South India:

Early Pallavas

 * Simhavarman I (275–300)
 * Shivskandvarman (unknown)
 * Vijayskandavarman (unknown)
 * Skandavarman (unknown)
 * Vishnugopa I (350–355)
 * Kumaravishnu I (350–370)
 * Skandavarman II (370–385)
 * Viravarman (385–400)
 * Skandavarman III (400–436)
 * Simhavarman II (436–460)
 * Skandavarman IV (460–480)
 * Nandivarman I (480–510)
 * Kumaravishnu II (510–530)
 * Buddhavarman (530–540)
 * Kumaravishnu III (540–550)
 * Simhavarman III (550–560)

Later Pallavas
The incursion of the Kalabhras and the confusion in the Tamil country was broken by the Pandya Kadungon and the Pallava Simhavishnu. Mahendravarman I extended the Pallava Kingdom and was one of the greatest sovereigns. Some of the most ornate monuments and temples in southern India, carved out of solid rock, were introduced under his rule. He also wrote the play Mattavilasa Prahasana.

The Pallava kingdom began to gain both in territory and influence and were a regional power by the end of the 6th century, defeating kings of Ceylon and mainland Tamilakkam. Narasimhavarman I and Paramesvaravarman I stand out for their achievements in both military and architectural spheres. Narasimhavarman II built the Shore Temple.

 * Simhavishnu (575–600)
 * Mahendravarman I (600–630)
 * Narasimhavarman I (Mamalla) (630–668)
 * Mahendravarman II (668–672)
 * Paramesvaravarman I (670–695)
 * Narasimhavarman II (Raja Simha) (695–722)
 * Paramesvaravarman II (705–710)

Later Pallavas of the Kadava Line
The kings that came after Paramesvaravarman II belonged to the collateral line of Pallavas and were descendants of Bhimavarman, the brother of Simhavishnu. They called themselves as Kadavas, Kadavesa and Kaduvetti. Hiranyavarman, the father of Nandivarman Pallavamalla is said to have belonged to the Kadavakula in epigraphs. Nandivarman II himself is described as "one who was born to raise the prestige of the Kadava family".
 * Nandivarman II (Pallavamalla) (732–796) son of Hiranyavarman of Kadavakula
 * Dantivarman (795–846)
 * Nandivarman III (846–869)
 * Aparajitavarman (879–897)

Aiyangar chronology
According to the available inscriptions of the Pallavas, historian S. Krishnaswami Aiyangar proposes the Pallavas could be divided into four separate families or dynasties; some of whose connections are known and some unknown. Aiyangar states "We have a certain number of charters in Prakrit of which three are important ones. Then follows a dynasty which issued their charters in Sanskrit; following this came the family of the great Pallavas beginning with Simha Vishnu; this was followed by a dynasty of the usurper Nandi Varman, another great Pallava. We are overlooking for the present the dynasty of the Ganga-Pallavas postulated by the Epigraphists. The earliest of these Pallava charters is the one known as the Mayidavolu 1 (Guntur district) copper-plates."

Based on a combination of dynastic plates and grants from the period, Aiyangar proposed their rule thus:

Early Pallavas

 * Bappadevan, chola prince (250–275) – married a Naga of Mavilanga (Kanchi) – The Great Founder of a Pallava lineage
 * Shivaskandavarman I (275–300)
 * Simhavarman (300–320)
 * Bhuddavarman (320–335)
 * Bhuddyankuran (335–340)

Middle Pallavas

 * Visnugopa (340–355) (Yuvamaharaja Vishnugopa)
 * Kumaravisnu I (355–370)
 * Skanda Varman II (370–385)
 * Vira Varman (385–400)
 * Skanda Varman III (400–435)
 * Simha Varman II (435–460)
 * Skanda Varman IV (460–480)
 * Nandi Varman I (480–500)
 * Kumaravisnu II (c. 500–510)
 * Buddha Varman (c. 510–520)
 * Kumaravisnu III (c. 520–530)
 * Simha Varman III (c. 530–537)

Later Pallavas

 * Simhavishnu (537–570)
 * Mahendravarman I (571–630)
 * Narasimhavarman I (Mamalla) (630–668)
 * Mahendravarman II (668–672)
 * Paramesvaravarman I (672–700)
 * Narasimhavarman II (Raja Simha) (700–727)
 * Paramesvaravarman II (705–710)

Later Pallavas of the Kadava Line

 * Nandivarman II (Pallavamalla) (732–796) son of Hiranyavarman of Kadavakula
 * Dantivarman (775–825)
 * Nandivarman III (825–869)
 * Nirupathungan (869–882)
 * Aparajitavarman (882–896)

Genealogy of Māmallapuram Praśasti
The genealogy of Pallavas mentioned in the Māmallapuram Praśasti is as follows:
 * Vishnu
 * Brahma
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Bharadvaja
 * Drona
 * Ashvatthaman
 * Pallava
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Simhavarman I (c. 275)
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Simhavarman IV (436–c. 460)
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Skandashishya
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Simhavisnu (c. 550–585)
 * Mahendravarman I (c. 571–630)
 * Maha-malla Narasimhavarman I (630–668)
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Paramesvaravarman I (669–690)
 * Rajasimha Narasimhavaram II (690–728)
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Pallavamalla Nandivarman II (731–796)
 * Unknown / undecipherable
 * Nandivarman III (846–869)

Relation with the Cholas
According to historian S. Krishnaswami Aiyengar, the Pallavas were natives of Tondaimandalam and the name Pallava is identical with the word Tondaiyar. Chola Prince Ilandiraiyan is traditionally regarded as the founder of the Pallava dynasty. Ilandiraiyan is referred to in the literature of the Sangam period such as the Pathupattu. In the Sangam epic Manimekalai, he is depected as the son of Chola king Killi and the Naga princess Pilivalai, the daughter of king Valaivanan of Manipallavam. When the boy grew up the princess wanted to send her son to the Chola kingdom. So she entrusted the prince to a merchant who dealt in woolen blankets called Kambala Chetty when his ship stopped in the island of Manipallavam. During the voyage to the Chola kingdom, the ship was wrecked due to rough weather and the boy was lost. He was later found washed ashore with a Tondai twig (creeper) around his leg. So he came to be called Tondaiman Ilam Tiraiyan meaning the young one of the seas or waves. When he grew up the northern part of the Chola kingdom was entrusted to him and the area he governed came to be called Tondaimandalam after him.He was a poet himself and four of his songs are extant even today. He ruled from Tondaimandalam and was known as "Tondaman."

Other relationships
Pallava royal lineages were influential in the old kingdom of Kedah of the Malay Peninsula under Rudravarman I, Champa under Bhadravarman I and the Kingdom of the Funan in Cambodia. Some historians have claimed the present Pallar caste are descendants of the Pallavas who ruled the Andhra and Tamil countries between the 6th and 9th centuries. Tamil scholar M. Srinivasa Iyengar claimed claimed the Pallars were one of the communities who served often in Pallava armies.

The similarity of the name ending "-varman" of Pallava rulers with that of Hindu kings during the Hindu/Buddhist era of Indonesia such as king Mulavarman of the Kutai Martadipura Kingdom, king Purnawarman of the Tarumanagara kingdom, king Adityawarman of the Malayapura kingdom, etc. has been commented upon by historians since discovery. There have been possible high relations and connections of the Hindu kingdoms of Indonesia with the Pallava dynasty and other Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms of India back then.

List of feudatories

 * Salankayana dynasty

title: Pallava dynasty


text:
Pedra Branca, Singapore

Pedra Branca is an outlying island and the easternmost point of Singapore. The name of the island, which is Portuguese for "white rock", refers to whitish guano deposited on the rock. The island consists of a small outcrop of granite rocks with an area of about 8560 m2 at low tide. During the low water spring tide it measures, at its longest, 137 m and has an average width of 60 m. Pedra Branca is situated at 1.33°N, 104.4075°W, where the Singapore Strait meets the South China Sea.

There are two maritime features near Pedra Branca. Middle Rocks, under the sovereignty of Malaysia, consists of two clusters of small rocks about 250 m apart situated 0.6 nmi south of Pedra Branca. South Ledge, which is 2.2 nmi to the south-south-west of Pedra Branca, is a rock formation visible only at low-tide.

Pedra Branca was known to sailors for centuries. It was originally within the territory of the Johor Sultanate, which was founded in 1528, and remained under the new Sultanate of Johor while under the British sphere of influence following the signing of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Between 1850 and 1851, the British built Horsburgh Lighthouse on the island without seeking the consent of the Johor authorities or informing them of the decision. From that time, the Straits Settlements administered the island; Singapore then assumed responsibility in 1946 after the dissolution of the Straits Settlements. On 21 September 1953, the Acting State Secretary of Johor, responding to a query from the Colonial Secretary of Singapore about the status of the island, stated that "the Johore Government does not claim ownership of Pedra Branca".

On 21 December 1979, Malaysia published a map that showed the island to be within its territorial waters. This ignited a 29-year territorial dispute which, together with the issue of sovereignty over the nearby maritime features of Middle Rocks and South Ledge, the disputants presented to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for resolution. On 23 May 2008, the ICJ ruled that Pedra Branca was under Singapore's sovereignty. At this point, the ICJ also noted Singapore's plans to conduct reclamation at Pedra Branca. Although the island had originally been under the sovereignty of the Johor Sultanate, the United Kingdom and Singapore had carried out various acts of sovereignty in respect of the island. The failure of Malaysia and its predecessors to respond to these acts, and other actions that demonstrated their acknowledgment of Singapore's sovereignty over the island, meant that Singapore had gained sovereignty over Pedra Branca. On the other hand, Middle Rocks remain part of Malaysian territory as Singapore had not manifested any acts of sovereignty in respect to it. The Court did not rule definitively on the remaining outcrop, South Ledge, declaring that it belonged to the state in the territorial waters of which it is located. Malaysia and Singapore have established the Joint Technical Committee to delimit the maritime boundary in the area around Pedra Branca and Middle Rocks, and to determine the ownership of South Ledge.

On 1 February 2019, Pedra Branca was added to East Coast GRC for the Parliament of Singapore.

Etymology
Pedra Branca means "white rock" in Portuguese, and refers to whitish guano (bird droppings) deposited on the rock by the black-naped tern, which used the island as a nesting ground. This name is used by both the English-language and Malay-language press in Singapore. Malaysia formerly referred to the island as Pulau Batu Puteh, which means "white rock island" in Malay, but the Government of Malaysia subsequently decided to drop the word Pulau ("Island"). In August 2008 Foreign Minister Rais Yatim said Malaysia considered that the maritime feature did not meet internationally recognised criteria for an island, that is, land inhabited by humans that had economic activity.

The island is known in Mandarin as Baijiao, which means "white reef". The Tamil name is பெத்ரா பிராங்கா, a transliteration of Pedra Branca.

Geography

Pedra Branca, located at 1° 19′ 48″ N and 104° 24′ 27″ E, is an island with an area of about 8560 m2 at low tide. During the low water spring tide it measures, at its longest, a mere 137 m and has an average width of 60 m. It is approximately 24 nmi to the east of Singapore; 7.7 nmi south of Johor, Malaysia; and 7.6 nmi north of Bintan, Indonesia.

There are two maritime features near Pedra Branca. Middle Rocks, which is under the sovereignty of Malaysia, consists of two clusters of small rocks about 250 m apart situated 0.6 nmi south of the island. They stand 0.6 m to 1.2 m permanently above water. South Ledge, on the other hand, is a rock formation visible only at low-tide. It is 2.2 nmi to the south-south-west of Pedra Branca. Its ownership has yet to be definitively determined by Malaysia and Singapore.

Rock samples from Pedra Branca, Middle Rocks and South Ledge show they are all composed of a light, coarse-grained biotite granite. Therefore, from a geomorphological standpoint, the three maritime features belong to the same rock body.

History

Pedra Branca was known to sailors for centuries. Part of the Chinese sailing instructions for the South China Sea based on information compiled by Admiral Zheng He (1371–1433) advised a navigator that after departing Long Ya Men (Mandarin for "Dragon's Teeth Gate"), a rocky outcrop at the gateway to what is now Keppel Harbour in Singapore, he should steer a course of between 75° and 90° for five watches until his vessel reached Baijiao. Pedra Branca was also mentioned in Dutch voyager Jan Huyghen van Linschoten's Itinerario (Itinerary), an account of his voyages in the Portuguese East Indies. After the publication of the work in 1596, the island began appearing regularly on European maps of the Far East. The 1598 English edition of the work stated:

"From the Cape of Singapura to the hook named Sinosura to the east, are 18 miles; 6 or 7 miles from there lies a cliffe in the sea called Pedra Branque, or White Rock, where the shippes that come and goe from China doe oftentymes passe in greate danger and some are left upon it, whereby the Pilots when they come thither are in greate feare for other way than this they have not."

Pedra Branca was originally within the territory of the Johor-Riau Sultanate, which was founded in 1528 by Sultan Alauddin Riayat Shah II, the son of Sultan Mahmud Shah of the Malacca Sultanate. In the mid-17th century, the Dutch Governor of Malacca wrote to the Dutch East India Company, asking it to send two boats to the Straits of Singapore to "cruise to the south of Singapore Straits under the Hook of Barbukit and in the vicinity of Pedra Branca" to stop Chinese traders from entering Johor River. The plan was put into force, and two Chinese junks were captured in the Straits and diverted to Malacca. However, this action provoked a protest from the Sultan of Johor, which showed that the Sultan regarded the junks' seizure as an infringement of his sovereignty in the area. Three letters written in 1824 to the Government of India by the British Resident in Singapore, John Crawfurd, also confirm it was his understanding that all the islands in the region of the Straits of Singapore came under the Johor Sultanate.

In addition, other 19th-century documents show that the Sultan of Johor exercised authority over the Orang Laut ("sea people") who inhabited the maritime areas of the Straits of Singapore and visited Pedra Branca. One of these was a letter of November 1850 by John Turnbull Thomson, the Government Surveyor of Singapore, which reported on the need to exclude the Orang Laut from Pedra Branca where Horsburgh Lighthouse was being built. Calling them a "half fishing half piratical sect", Thomson noted that they "frequently visit the rock so their visits should never be encouraged nor any trust put in them ... In the straits and islets of the neighbouring shores and islands many lives are taken by these people."

On 17 March 1824, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands signed the Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1824. It divided the old Johor Sultanate into two new Sultanates: the new Sultanate of Johor, which would be under the British sphere of influence, and the Sultanate of Riau–Lingga under Dutch influence. Under Article XII of the Treaty, Britain agreed that "no British Establishment shall be made on the Carimon Isles, or on the Island of Bantam, Bintang, Lingin, or on any of the other Islands South of the Straits of Singapore ..." The islands and islets within the Straits fell within the British sphere of influence. This included Pedra Branca, which thus remained part of the territorial domain of the new Johor Sultanate.

1840s to 1851: Construction of Horsburgh Lighthouse

Captain James Horsburgh, a Scottish hydrographer to the British East India Company who had prepared many charts and sailing instructions for the East Indies, China, New Holland, the Cape of Good Hope and other intermediate ports, died in May 1836. Merchants and mariners felt that the building of one or more lighthouses would be a fitting tribute to him, and in as early as November 1836 Pedra Branca was proposed as one of the preferred sites. By 1844, preference had been expressed for Romania Outer Island, or Peak Rock. Some time in November 1844, the Governor of the Straits Settlements, William John Butterworth, wrote to the Sultan and the Temenggung of Johor regarding the matter. His letters have not been found, but English translations of the replies, dated 25 November 1844, indicate that the Sultan and Temenggung favoured the proposal. In particular, the Temenggung wrote that "the [East India] company are at full liberty to put up a Light House there, or any spot deemed eligible". Three days later, on 28 November, the Governor wrote to the Secretary of the Government in India to recommend that the lighthouse be sited on Peak Rock. Among other things, he said that "[t]his Rock is part of the Territories of the Rajah of Johore, who with the Tamongong ... have willingly consented to cede it gratuitously to the East India Company", and enclosed the replies received from the Sultan and Temenggung. Although this was apparently the Governor's understanding of the situation, he did not communicate it to the Sultan and Temenggung. It is unclear whether the correspondence was limited to Peak Rock or extended to other potential sites for the lighthouse such as Pedra Branca, and whether the sovereignty of Johor over any place chosen for the lighthouse was ceded to the British Government or only a permission to build, maintain and operate a lighthouse was granted.

On 22 August 1845, Governor Butterworth wrote again to the Government of India, indicating he trusted that construction of the lighthouse on Peak Rock would begin soon "as a light in that quarters is becoming daily of more paramount importance". Between 1824 and 1851, at least 16 sizeable vessels were wrecked in the vicinity of Pedra Branca and Point Romania (on the Johor coast). However, in April 1846, the Lords of the Admiralty in London informed the Court of Directors of the East India Company they were inclined to think that Pedra Branca was the best point for the lighthouse. John Thomson and Captain S. Congalton, commander of the East India Company's steamer called the Hooghly, carried out surveys in May and August. In a report dated 25 August, they said they were "decidedly of opinion that Pedra Branca is the only proper position for a Light to be placed ... for the safety of Shipping whether entering or departing for the Straits of Singapore ..." The following day, Governor Butterworth wrote to the Government of India stating that the Government "will at once perceive that Pedra Branca is the only true position" for the lighthouse. On 30 October 1846, the President in Council in India approved Pedra Branca as the site for the lighthouse. The East India Company gave its approval on 24 February 1847, and on 10 May of that year the Government of India asked Governor Butterworth to take measures for the construction of the lighthouse. There is no evidence that the authorities in Singapore thought it necessary or desirable to inform the Johor authorities of the decision about the siting of the lighthouse or to seek any consent for its erection.

Although the private subscribers wishing to commemorate Horsburgh had raised a sum which, with compound interest, came up to more than 7,400 Spanish dollars when it was paid over to the Singapore authorities, there was still a shortfall of funds for the building works. Thus, the Government of India, in agreement with the East India Company, authorised Governor Butterworth to prepare a law imposing a duty on vessels entering Singapore and asked him to take immediate measures to begin constructing the lighthouse. The Light Dues Act 1852 was duly enacted by the Governor-General of India in Council on 30 January 1852. Thomson, appointed by the Governor as the architect for the project, took charge of planning and supervising the construction of Horsburgh Lighthouse. Construction work began in late March or early April 1850. On Queen Victoria's birthday, 24 May 1850, the foundation stone was laid at a ceremony conducted by members of the newly founded Masonic Lodge Zetland in the East No. 749 and attended by the Governor, the commander of the Singapore garrison, a rear admiral and several foreign consuls. The construction of the lighthouse then continued till 21 October, and resumed after the monsoon in April 1851. Up to 50 workmen were involved, including Chinese carpenters and stonemasons and their Malay assistants, Indian quarrymen and convict labourers, a cook and his assistant, and six lascars to defend the island from attack by pirates. The pirates of the South China Sea were notorious – during the construction of Horsburgh Lighthouse nine Chinese labourers were killed in pirate raids. Building materials and supplies were brought by the Hooghly, supported by two gunboats and two lighters. Unless he was required elsewhere, Thomson stayed on the island to supervise the works. The ceremonial first lighting of the lamp was arranged for 27 September 1851, again attended by the Governor, Masons of the Zetland Lodge, foreign dignitaries, senior residents of Singapore and other notables; the Singapore Free Press reported: "A simultaneous rising [of the guests from the dinner table] announced that the process of illumination had commenced. Three hearty cheers welcomed the light, the meteor-like brilliancy of which will probably serve to guide the midnight path of the mariner for a thousand years to come." On 15 October the lighthouse was permanently turned on, and Thomson finally departed Pedra Branca for Singapore on the Hooghly on 18 November 1851.

1852 to the 1970s
The Light Dues Acts of 1852 and 1854 (India) declared that Horsburgh Lighthouse and its appurtenances were the property of and vested in the East India Company. In 1867, the Straits Settlements, of which Singapore was a part, became a Crown Colony, and by the Straits Settlements Light-Houses Ordinance 1912, the lighthouse was vested in Singapore. After 1912, the duties levied on ships passing through the Singapore Strait were abolished; instead, the costs of the lighthouse were shared by the neighbouring states.

In 1946, following World War II, Singapore became a separate Crown Colony. The other Straits Settlements, Malacca and Penang, joined the Malay states (including Johor) to form the Malayan Union. The latter became the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and the Federation of Malaysia in 1963. On 17 June 1953, the Colonial Secretary of Singapore wrote to the British Adviser to the Sultan of Johor to clarify the status of Pedra Branca. He noted that the rock was outside the limits ceded by Sultan Hussein Shah and the Temenggung with the island of Singapore under the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance of 2 August 1824 they had entered into with the East India Company. However, the Colonial Government had been maintaining the lighthouse built on it, and "[t]his by international usage no doubt confers some rights and obligations on the Colony". He therefore asked if "there is any document showing a lease or grant of the rock or whether it has been ceded by the Government of the State of Johore or in any other way disposed of". The Acting State Secretary of Johor replied on 21 September that "the Johore Government does not claim ownership of Pedra Branca". This correspondence indicated that as of 1953 Johor understood it did not have sovereignty over Pedra Branca, which had therefore vested in the United Kingdom.

The Colony of Singapore became a self-governing state in 1959 and left the British Empire to join the Federation of Malaysia in 1963. Two years later, in 1965, Singapore became a fully independent republic. In 1959, in an official publication regarding meteorological information collected on Pedra Branca, Malaya listed Horsburgh Lighthouse as a "Singapore" station together with the Sultan Shoal and Raffles Lighthouses. The lighthouse on Pedra Branca was described in the same way in a joint Malaysian and Singaporean publication in 1966, the year after Singapore left the Federation. In 1967, when the two countries began reporting meteorological information separately, Malaysia ceased referring to Horsburgh Lighthouse. In maps published by the Malayan and Malaysian Surveyor General and Director of General Mapping in 1962, 1965, 1970, 1974 and 1975, the island was indicated with the word "(SINGAPORE)" or "(SINGAPURA)" under it. The same designation was used for an island that was unquestionably under Singapore's sovereignty. On the other hand, the designation was not used for Pulau Pisang, an island under Malaysian sovereignty on which Singapore operated a lighthouse.

Singapore replaced the original kerosene-fired lamp of Horsburgh Lighthouse with automated navigational lights in the 1970s. In 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1978, the Port of Singapore Authority (PSA) considered the feasibility of carrying out reclamation of about 5000 m2 of land around Pedra Branca, but did not go ahead with the project. On 30 May 1977, with the permission of the PSA, the Republic of Singapore Navy installed a military rebroadcast station which it shared with the Republic of Singapore Air Force. Subsequently, the PSA installed a helipad on the eastern half of the island, and a communications tower for its Vessel Traffic Information System for the 900-odd ships that pass daily through the south and middle channels which are the main shipping channels of the eastern part of the Singapore Strait.

1980s to present
In the 1980s, Malaysian Marine Police boats entered the waters around Pedra Branca on several occasions. However, both Malaysia and Singapore acted with restraint, the Singapore Navy having been given strict instructions not to escalate matters. In 1989, the then Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir Mohamad made an unannounced visit to the vicinity of the island. His boat was intercepted by Singapore naval vessels. To avoid an international incident, he directed his boat to leave.

With effect from 27 June 2002, Pedra Branca was declared a protected area within the meaning of the Protected Areas and Protected Places Act. Consequently, a permit from the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore is required for access to the island, and unauthorised presence there is a criminal offence. On 6 October 2008, a Singaporean man, Roger Lee, was convicted of illegally landing on Pedra Branca. In court documents, he said he had gone to Batam, Indonesia, in 1998. He later married and started a family with an Indonesian woman, but she left him in 2007 due to his unstable income and inability to hold down a job. As he had illegally overstayed in Indonesia and had been cheated of his passport and other personal documents by a friend, Lee hatched a plan to pretend to be a lost fisherman in the hope that the Police Coast Guard would rescue him and take him back to Singapore. On 5 February 2008, he paid a boatman to transport him out to sea in a motorised sampan. As he did not see any coast guard or navy patrols he disembarked on Pedra Branca and was arrested by staff stationed there. Lee pleaded guilty to illegally entering Singapore via an unauthorised landing place. A second charge of being found in a protected place without permission was taken into consideration for sentencing purposes. In mitigation, Lee's pro bono lawyer said that there was no sign on Pedra Branca's warning against trespassing on the island. Lee was sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment.

Speaking at the Singapore Energy Conference on 4 November 2008, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew mentioned that the Singapore Government had considered reclaiming land and building a nuclear power plant on Pedra Branca. Such a plant could not be built on the main island of Singapore as international standards require a safety zone of 30 km around the plant. However, it was recognised that this was probably not feasible as Pedra Branca is less than 30 kilometres from the Malaysian coast.

On 5 July 2021, the Singapore Government announced plans to proceed with reclamation around Pedra Branca to improve maritime safety, and search and rescue (SAR) efforts in the surrounding waters. The works, scheduled to begin at the end of 2021, would expand Pedra Branca to 7 hectares from the existing 0.86 hectares today, and be carried out by the Housing and Development Board, a statutory board of the Ministry of National Development. New facilities planned for the island include berthing areas for ships to dock and logistical, administrative and communications buildings.

International Court of Justice case

On 21 December 1979, the Director of National Mapping of Malaysia published a map entitled Territorial Waters and Continental Shelf Boundaries of Malaysia showing Pedra Branca to be within its territorial waters. Singapore rejected this claim in a diplomatic note of 14 February 1980 and asked for the map to be corrected. The dispute was not resolved by an exchange of correspondence and intergovernmental talks in 1993 and 1994. In the first round of talks in February 1993 the issue of sovereignty over Middle Rocks and South Ledge was also raised. Malaysia and Singapore, therefore, agreed to submit the dispute to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), signing a Special Agreement for this purpose in February 2003 and notifying the Court of it in July 2003. The case was heard at the Peace Palace in The Hague between 6 and 23 November 2007.

The ICJ delivered its judgment on 23 May 2008. It held that although Pedra Branca had originally been under the sovereignty of Johor, the conduct of Singapore and its predecessors à titre de souverain (with the title of a sovereign) and the failure of Malaysia and its predecessors to respond to such conduct showed that by 1980, when the dispute between the parties arose, sovereignty over the island had passed to Singapore. The relevant conduct on the part of Singapore and its predecessors included investigating marine accidents in the vicinity of the island, planning land reclamation works, installing naval communications equipment, and requiring Malaysian officials wishing to visit the island to obtain permits. In contrast, Johor and its successors had taken no action with respect to the island from June 1850 for a century or more. In 1953 the Acting Secretary of the State of Johor had stated that Johor did not claim ownership of Pedra Branca. All visits made to the island had been with Singapore's express permission, and maps published by Malaysia in the 1960s and 1970s indicated that it recognised Singapore's sovereignty over Pedra Branca.

Like Pedra Branca, the Sultan of Johor held the original ancient title to Middle Rocks. As Singapore had not exercised any rights as a sovereign over Middle Rocks, the ICJ determined that Malaysia retained sovereignty over this maritime feature. As for South Ledge, the ICJ noted that it fell within the apparently overlapping territorial waters of mainland Malaysia, Pedra Branca and Middle Rocks. As the Court had not been mandated to draw the line of delimitation with respect to the territorial waters of Malaysia and Singapore in the area in question, it simply held that sovereignty over South Ledge belonged to the state which owned the territorial waters in which it is located.

Reactions to ICJ decision
Although both Malaysia and Singapore had agreed to respect and accept the ICJ's decision, Malaysian Foreign Minister Rais Yatim later said his country had renewed its search for the letters written by Governor Butterworth to the Sultan and Temenggung of Johor seeking permission to build Horsburgh Lighthouse on Pedra Branca. He noted that the rules of the ICJ allowed a case to be reviewed within ten years if new evidence was adduced. In response, Singapore's Law Minister K. Shanmugam said that the city-state would wait to see what new evidence the Malaysian government could come up with.

A week after the delivery of the ICJ's judgment, the Foreign Ministry of Malaysia asked the Malaysian media to cease using the Malay word Pulau ("Island") for Pedra Branca and to refer to it as "Batu Puteh" or "Pedra Branca". On 21 July 2008, in response to questions from Singapore Members of Parliament about Pedra Branca, the Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Balaji Sadasivan stated that the maritime territory around the island included a territorial sea of up to 12 nmi and an Exclusive Economic Zone. This was condemned by Malaysia's Foreign Minister Rais Yatim as "against the spirit of Asean and the legal structure" as the claim was "unacceptable and unreasonable and contradicts the principles of international law". In response, a Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman said that Singapore first stated its claim to a territorial sea and Exclusive Economic Zone on 15 September 1980, and reiterated this claim on 23 May 2008 following the ICJ's judgment. Both statements had made clear that if the limits of Singapore's territorial sea or Exclusive Economic Zone overlapped with the claims of neighbouring countries, Singapore would negotiate with those countries to arrive at agreed delimitations in accordance with international law. . See also ; ;. In August 2008, Rais said Malaysia took the view that Singapore was not entitled to claim an Exclusive Economic Zone around Pedra Branca as it considered that the maritime feature did not meet internationally recognised criteria for an island, that is, land inhabited by humans that had economic activity.

At the National Day Awards in August 2008, Singapore announced that awards would be conferred on a number of people and organisations for their special contributions towards the Pedra Branca case. Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong; Tommy Koh, Ambassador-at-Large; and Justice Chao Hick Tin, then Attorney-General of Singapore, who appeared as counsel and advocates for Singapore, would respectively be awarded the Darjah Utama Temasek (Order of Temasek) (Second Class), the Darjah Utama Nila Utama (Order of Nila Utama) (First Class), and the Darjah Utama Bakti Cemerlang (Distinguished Service Order). The Pingat Jasa Gemilang (Meritorius Service Medal) would be conferred on Sivakant Tiwari s/o Thakurprasad Tiwari, Special Consultant to the International Affairs Division of the Attorney-General's Chambers. Twenty-two people from the Attorney-General's Chambers, Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, National Archives of Singapore, National Library Board, National University of Singapore and Supreme Court of Singapore would receive the Pingat Pentadbiran Awam (Public Administration Medal), the Pingat Kepujian (Commendation Medal) and the Pingat Berkebolehan (Efficiency Medal). The President's Certificate of Commendation would be issued to the Coastal Command (COSCOM), Republic of Singapore Navy; the Police Coast Guard, Singapore Police Force; the Centre for Heritage Services, Ministry of Defence; the National Archives of Singapore; and the Hydrographic Department, Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore. The awards were presented on 17 November 2008.

Resolution of outstanding issues
Malaysia and Singapore have established what they have named the Joint Technical Committee to delimit the maritime boundary in the area around Pedra Branca and Middle Rocks and to determine the ownership of South Ledge. Following a meeting on 3 June 2008, the Committee agreed that a technical sub-committee would be established to oversee the conduct of joint survey works to prepare the way for talks on maritime issues in and around the area. If any incident occurred in and around the waters of Pedra Branca, Middle Rocks and South Ledge, either side would provide humanitarian assistance to the vessels involved. Finally, both Malaysian and Singaporean fishermen could continue traditional fishing activities in those waters. In September 2008, the Joint Technical Committee reported that its Sub-Committee on Joint Survey Works was finalising technical preparations for a hydrographic survey that would provide data for future delimitation discussions. A Sub-Committee on Maritime and Airspace Management and Fisheries had also been formed, and after a meeting on 20 August 2008 it decided that traditional fishing activities by both countries should continue in waters beyond 0.5 nmi off Pedra Branca, Middle Rocks and South Ledge.

Malaysian application for review and withdrawal
On 2 February 2017, Malaysia applied to the ICJ pursuant to Article 61 of the Statute of the ICJ for the revision of the 2008 judgment on the basis of three documents it had obtained from The National Archives of the UK between August 2016 and January 2017. The documents were internal correspondence of Singapore's colonial government in 1958, an incident report submitted by a British naval officer in the same year, and a 1960s map of naval operations bearing annotations. The Malaysian Government said that these documents indicated that "officials at the highest levels in the British colonial and Singaporean administration appreciated that Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh did not form part of Singapore’s sovereign territory" during the relevant period. However, according to Shahriman Lockman, a senior analyst at Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Studies, "there’s very little precedent for revisions to ICJ judgments". Reports suggest that the timing of the application coincides with the upcoming elections in Malaysia, as the ruling Barisan Nasional Coalition, which is currently under pressure over the IMDb scandal, could "use the renewed legal fight over Pedra Branca as a means to show it was 'best placed to display strong leadership in the country's foreign policy so as to safeguard Malaysia's sovereignty'".

Singapore's Foreign Ministry said that a team including Attorney-General Lucien Wong, and Chan Sek Keong, S. Jayakumar and Tommy Koh (who had represented Singapore at the original ICJ hearing), had been appointed to study and respond to the claim. On 5 February 2017, Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam commented that on a cursory examination of the documents without detailed legal advice, he did not see how the documents would make any difference to the ICJ's judgment.

On 30 Jun 2017, Malaysia applied to the ICJ to request an interpretation of the ICJ's 2008 judgment. This application is "separate and autonomous" from the 2 Feb application for the revision of the same judgment. The application invokes Article 60 of the Statute of the Court and Article 98 of the Rules of the Court. According to Malaysian Attorney-General Mohamed Apandi Ali, Malaysia and Singapore set up a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) for the implementation of the 2008 ICJ judgment. According to Malaysia, the JTC reached an impasse in November 2013, as both parties had been unable to agree over the meaning of the 2008 judgement as it concerns the South Ledge and the waters surrounding Pedra Branca. Explaining Malaysia's position, Malaysian Attorney-General Apandi said: "Malaysia considers that it is necessary to request an interpretation of the 2008 judgement from the ICJ as it would serve as a basis for the maintenance of orderly and peaceful relations between the parties in the management of their respective maritime zones and airspace in the future".

Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) noted in a press statement that ICJ's judgement was "final and without appeal", as well as "clear and unambiguous". As a result, MFA said: "Malaysia's request for the ICJ to interpret the judgement is puzzling. Singapore will therefore oppose Malaysia's application for interpretation, which we consider to be both unnecessary and without merit".

On 28 May 2018, the Malaysian government withdrew both its applications for revision and interpretation of the 2008 judgment, a move which was welcomed by Singapore's MFA, thereby discontinuing both cases before ICJ. Furthermore, the Statute of the International Court of Justice only allows an application for revision to be made within 10 years after the 23 May 2008 judgement, which means further applications for revision are no longer possible. On 25 June 2019, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad reiterated Malaysia's acceptance of the ruling, citing it as an example of how ASEAN member states have worked together based on mutual respect.

Books

 * (pbk.).
 * (hbk.), ISBN 978-9971-69-457-9 (pbk.).

Images

 * Pedra Branca, Singapore – an aerial photograph from Flickr
 * Satellite image of the island from Google Maps

title: Pedra Branca, Singapore