Ratu Maharani Shima was the

queen regnant A queen regnant (plural: queens regnant) is a female monarch, equivalent in rank and title to a king, who reigns '' suo jure'' (in her own right) over a realm known as a "kingdom"; as opposed to a queen consort, who is the wife of a reigni ...

of the 7th century Kalingga kingdom on the northern coast of Central

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

circa 674 CE. She introduced a law against thievery to encourage her people to be honest and uphold truth. According to tradition, a foreign king placed a bag filled with gold on the intersection in Kalingga to test the famed truthfulness and honesty of Kalingga people. Nobody dared to touch a bag that did not belong to them, until three years later Shima's son, the crown prince accidentally touched the bag with his feet. The queen issued a death sentence to her own son, but was overruled by the minister that appealed to the queen to spare the prince's life. Since it was prince's foot that touched the bag of gold, it was the foot that must be punished through mutilation. Shima's great-grandson is

Sanjaya Sanjaya or Sanjay (Sanskrit: सञ्जय, meaning "victory") or Sanjaya Gavalgana is an advisor from the ancient Indian Hindu war epic ''Mahābhārata''. In ''Mahabharata''—An ancient story of a war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas ...

, who was the king of the Sunda and Galuh kingdoms, and also the founder of the

Mataram Kingdom The Mataram Kingdom (, jv, ꦩꦠꦫꦩ꧀, ) was a Javanese Hindu–Buddhist kingdom that flourished between the 8th and 11th centuries. It was based in Central Java, and later in East Java. Established by King Sanjaya, the kingdom was rule ...

of Central Java.

References

History of Central Java Hindu monarchs Indonesian monarchs Queens regnant 7th-century women rulers Women rulers in Indonesia 7th-century Indonesian women {{asia-royal-stub