Intermarriage in Early Cambodia and Indian Colonies in the East
I recently translated the section on Zhenla, a polity that appears to have existed in the area of what is now Cambodia and southern Vietnam, in the History of the…
Conquest and Religious Change in Early Cambodia
Hey kids!! Let’s draw a picture by connecting the dots!!The Treatise on the Success and Obstructions in the Spread of the Dharma (Fayun tongsai zhi 法運通塞志) in Zhipan’s 志磐 (ca.…
Should Anyone Formally Study History Anymore?
A kind reader asked me if I would recommend pursuing the path of studying history. . . And I don’t have an answer, but I have certain thoughts. So, I’ll…
Zhenla was “Cambodian”????!!!!!
A confession: the history of early maritime Southeast Asia is not my field. I just stumbled into it starting about five years ago.Yes, before that time, I had at times…
The Lost Water Route between Songkhla and Nakhon Si Thammarat
Five years ago, I listened to a colleague at Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Johannes Kurz, give a presentation on how problematic the scholarship on “Srivijaya” is, and in particular, how problematic…
“Men of Head Hunting Tribes Have Left Brunei”
In March of 1881, Charles Cameron Lees, the British governor and consul general of Labuan, a British territory off the northwest coast of Borneo, received a letter from the Sultan…
Did Funan Have a Cham King?
I have recently been examining a fourth-century text Daoist text, the Grand Clarity Scripture of Divine Elixir Made from Liquid Gold (Taiqing jinye shendan jing 太清金液神丹經) attributed to Ge Hong…
The Surat Thani – Phang Nga Crossing in the Third-Fourth Centuries
In the third century, there were a couple of envoys who traveled to Funan and wrote accounts of the area. Namely, the following:Kang Tai 康泰, Account of Foreign Kingdoms in…
On NOT Crossing the Sea from Côn Đảo to Singapore
If you read the extent scholarship on Southeast Asia in the first millennium AD, you will find scholars repeatedly indicating that ships sailed across the seas between the area of…
The Chicken Tongue Aromatic (shejixiang) was NOT Cloves
There is an aromatic that is mentioned in early Chinese sources called the “chicken tongue aromatic” (jishexiang 雞舌香). From what I can tell, everyone who has mentioned it thinks it…