There is a major gap in the scholarship on the Cambodian empire of Angkor. That gap concerns Angkor’s access to the sea and international trade. More specifically, scholars don’t really know how Angkor accessed the sea and engaged in international trade, but surely the most populous society in Southeast Asia...
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I am in the [never-ending] process of rebuilding this blog after having moved it to a new server. It is still pretty messed up in some places. . .
However, the goal is to have the latest posts appear below. Further down the page, you will find links to posts on various topics (still working on that section).
At the moment, the easiest way to find old posts is to click on “All Posts” above and then browse through the dates and categories on the left.
Yea, I know, it feels pretty “Internet 1997,” but what can a poor boy do. . .
If you come across a post which has garbled Chinese text, a working version can probably be found on this archive site: https://leminhkhai.wordpress.com/.
The Latest Posts
How Digital-Age Scholarship is Different
All fields are different, but the field I am most active in now (looking at early Southeast Asia through Chinese sources) is very different today than it was just 10 years ago, and it is different because of the digitization of sources. This is something which I think people who...
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The Thai-icization of Zhenlifu (Chen-li-fu) and Southeast Asian History
Zhenlifu 真里富 (Chen-li-fu) is the name of a small kingdom in central Cambodia that briefly interacted with the Song dynasty at the beginning of the thirteenth century. If you search for “Zhenlifu” or “Chen-li-fu” (an older style of Romanization), you will find a Wikipedia page, but it doesn’t go by...
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Zhenlifu (Chen-li-fu) was NOT in Thailand!!
There is a kingdom by the name of Zhenlifu 真里富 (also, Chen-li-fu) that is mentioned in a Song dynasty source known as the Song huiyao jigao 宋會要輯稿 (Draft Institutional History of the Song). In 1960, historian O. W. Wolters wrote an article about this kingdom and claimed that it “lay...
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The Rise of the Pu’s – FINALLY EXPLAINED
Last year I wrote a couple of blog posts on a term, “Pu” 蒲, that appears in Song dynasty sources: “When the Cham Ruled the Seas” and “More Evidence for the Cham Pu/Po in Chinese Historical Sources.” “Pu” appears in Song dynasty era texts as a surname, and there has...
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Zhenla in the Tang and Song
I recently learned/realized that during the Tang dynasty period, there was an overland trade route that went from what is now central Vietnam over to Cambodia and then south to the sea at (I believe) the area around what is now Ha Tien. Now that I am aware of that,...
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Chinese Tributary Names as Geographic Containers
There is something that I have come to realize as I’ve worked with Chinese sources on early Southeast Asian history, and it is that the scholars who have written on this topic do not understand what Chinese tributary names actually were. In general, scholars have equated Chinese tributary names with...
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The Gradual Advance of AI
When technology advances gradually, we tend to not fully appreciate the scale of the transformation that it brings. This is because we adapt to its gradual changes, and lose track of how far those changes have moved us away from the place we were before the technology emerged. I saw...
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Aromatic Bird Droppings and Historical Scholarship in the Digital Age
For years, I have been telling people that we are living in a new age. With the digitization of historical sources, something that has really only developed significantly in the past ten years in the world of scholarship I am involved in, we can produce scholarship that is much, much...
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What the Heck is Happening on Wikipedia?!!
In 2024, the Wikipedia page for Chenla [Zhenla], contained the following sentence: “According to Paul Pelliot, Sambhupura was the capital of Land Chenla [km] (Upper Chenla) and Vyadhapura was the capital of Water Chenla [km] (Lower Chenla).” [2][https://web.archive.org/web/20240823071633/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenla] The “[km]” in this sentence linked to Khmer-language pages on Land Zhenla ...
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Locating Linyi
There is a place name in early Chinese sources called “Linyi” 林邑. For 100+ years, scholars have been trying to figure out where exactly it was, and how it was related to other places like one called “Huanwang” 環王 as well as the term that came to be used for...
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Linyi in the History of the Sui
The History of the Sui (Suishu 隋書) was completed in 636. It has an account of Linyi which is translated below.(隋書／列傳 凡五十卷／卷八十二 列傳第四十七 南蠻／林邑) 林邑之先，因漢末交阯女子徵側之亂，內縣功曹子區連殺縣令，自號為王。無子，其甥范熊代立，死，子逸立。日南人范文因亂為逸僕隸，遂教之築宮室，造器械。逸甚信任，使文將兵，極得眾心。文因間其子弟，或奔或徙。及逸死，國無嗣，文自立為王。其後范佛為晉揚威將軍戴桓所破。宋交州刺史檀和之將兵擊之，深入其境。至梁、陳，亦通使往來。 The origins of Linyi date back to the end of the Han Dynasty. Taking advantage of the rebellion of the woman Zheng Ce [Trưng Trắc]...
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Huanwang in the New History of the Tang
There is no account of the Kingdom of Linyi in the New History of the Tang (Xin Tangshu 新唐書), a work that was completed in 1060 AD. However, there is an account about a place called, Huanwang 環王, which as you will see, is essentially Linyi (thanks something I’ll write...
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Linyi in the Old History of the Tang
The Old History of the Tang (Jiu Tangshu 舊唐書) was compiled in the mid-tenth century and presented to the emperor in 945. It contains two sections that provide information about the history of Linyi. There is an account of Linyi in a section on foreign kingdoms, and there is information...
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Linyi in the Tongdian
The Tongdian 通典 (Comprehensive Institutions) is a kind of encyclopedia that was compiled by scholar-official Du You 杜佑 (735-812) in the second half of the eighth century and completed in 801 AD, during the time of the Tang dynasty This text was compiled during the period of the Tang dynasty,...
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Rolf Stein’s “Le Linyi”
Rolf Alfred Stein, a Sinologist and Tibetologist, published a study of Linyi in 1947 entitled “Le Lin-yi, sa localisation, sa contribution à la formation du Champa et ses liens avec la Chine.” I tried to find it recently to trace a footnote in a paper but could not locate a...
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The Great Transformation (intellectual/social/cultural change in early-20th-century Vietnam)
On this site, I have English-language translations along with the original Hán text of the following texts:
– The Outer Annals (Ngoại kỷ) of the Complete Book of the Historical Records of Đại Việt (Đại Việt sử ký toàn thư)
– The Prefatory Compilation (Tiền biên) of the Imperially Commissioned Itemized Summaries of the Comprehensive Mirror of Việt History (Khâm định Việt sử thông giám cương mục)
– The Arrayed Tales of Selected Oddities from South of the Passes (Lính Nam chích quái liệt truyện)
