A Translation of George Cœdès’s 1918 Srivijaya Article
In writing about George Cœdès’s 1918 article, “Le royaume de Çrīvijaya,” it dawned on me that it would be difficult for many people to understand what I am talking about…
Three 18th-Century Siam-Related Chinese Maps
In 2012, the National Palace Museum in Taiwan held an exhibition of historical maps in its collection and published a catalog of that exhibition entitled “Mapping the Imperial Realm, an…
Southeast Asia in the Shunfeng Xiangsong
The Shunfeng xiangsong 順風相送 [Voyage with a Tailwind] is an early Chinese nautical navigation manual. It’s not clear when this text was created, however, one manuscript version of this text…
A Translation of the 1304 Dade Nanhai zhi
The Gazetteer of the Southern Seas during the Dade Era (Dade Nanhai zhi 大德南海志), also known simply as the Gazetteer of the Southern Seas (Nanhai zhi 南海志) is a Yuan-dynasty…
Southeast Asia in the Zhufan zhi
The Treatise on the Various Barbarians (Zhufan zhi 諸蕃志), completed in 1225 by Zhao Rukuo 趙汝适 (1170—1231), is a very important work for the study of early Southeast Asian history.An…
Southeast Asia in the “Miscellaneous Records of the Island Barbarians”
The “Miscellaneous Records of the Island Barbarians” (Dao Yi zazhi 島夷雜誌) is the name of a section within a kind of encyclopedia called the Expansive Record of the Forest of…
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…
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…
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…
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…