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…
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…
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…
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…
Linyi in the History of the Jin
Linyi (林邑; Viet, Lâm Ấp) is the name of a kingdom that appears in Chinese sources in the first few centuries AD in the area of what is now central…
Old Harbor in the Ming shilu
For the past five years, I have been arguing that a placename that appears in Chinese historical sources, Sanfoqi, was a reference to Cambodia, rather than to a proposed polity…
Sanfoqi, Old Harbor and the Baolin Polity in the Rekidai Hōan
For the past five years, I have been putting forth the argument that a Chinese place name, Sanfoqi, that scholars believe referred to a polity on Sumatra called “Srivijaya” was…