As I stated at the beginning of this series, there is the name of a kingdom in Chinese sources, Sanfoqi, that scholars have long argued indicates “Srivijaya,” the name of a kingdom that supposedly existed on the island of Sumatra.
As I have demonstrated in this series, prior to the mid-Ming period, Chinese sources repeatedly placed Sanfoqi in the area of what is now Cambodia. Indeed, as late as the 1460s we have an official Ming gazetteer locating Sanfoqi 5 days south of Champa. That is Cambodia, not Sumatra.
However, in the Ming period, Sanfoqi also “disappeared.” It stopped sending tribute missions in the 1370s, and it was not visited by Chinese. It was only at that point, when Sanfoqi had become a “memory,” that some writers started to equate Sanfoqi with a current polity on (the coast of) Sumatra.
Before Sanfoqi “disappeared,” however, it briefly interacted with the Ming dynasty, and those interactions are recorded in a text known as the Ming shilu 明實錄 (Veritable Records of the Ming).
In this post, we will examine the information in the Ming shilu about Sanfoqi. That information is primarily about tributary missions.
The information in the Ming shilu about Southeast Asia has been ably translated by historian Geoff Wade and is available in an online database (http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/). I reproduce the transcriptions that Geoff Wade uses in this database so that readers will be able to make connections between what I write and the information in the database.
However, I do not always agree with how Wade has divided and/or capitalized terms. In other words, I do not always see titles or names divided in the same way that Wade did. Please keep this in mind when you read this and all the other posts.
As I mentioned in discussing Ayutthaya, the information in the Ming shilu about tribute missions from that polity reveals that in addition to tribute sent from
Ayutthaya itself, representatives from the city-states of Lopburi and Suphanburi also sent tribute.
Further, we can also see that some missions were led by envoys with non-Siamese names, such as a certain Ya-la-er Wen-zhi-li 亞剌兒文智利 who presented tribute in 1379, a Chen Zi-ren 陳子仁 who did so in 1381, and a Hu-du-bu-di-mao-na-na 虎都卜的毛那那 in 1406.
Such evidence suggests that either wealthy foreign merchants in Ayutthaya at times delivered tribute, or perhaps foreign men were officially employed by the Ayutthayan court for this purpose.
What is important to note here is that tribute from the “Siamese” “kingdom” of “Ayutthaya” actually came from multiple polities and was represented by envoys of multiple nationalities.
When we turn to examine the information in the Ming shilu about tribute missions from Sanfoqi, we likewise see the presence of men from different nationalities. In this case, however, we see something more significant than the occasional foreign envoy, as is the case in the records about Ayutthaya.
In particular, in the records about Sanfoqi in the Ming shilu, we find evidence of not only envoys of different nationalities, but of kings of different nationalities as well.
The Ming first dispatched an envoy to Sanfoqi in 1370. That envoy returned with a representative from Sanfoqi the following year. Between 1371 and 1377, missions from Sanfoqi representing five (5) different kings arrived at the Ming capital.
The final mission, in 1377, is the one that we began this series by discussing. In that year, an envoy from Sanfoqi requested a seal of office for his king, and the Ming envoy who was sent to deliver that seal was murdered by Javanese.
That constituted the last recorded official interaction between Sanfoqi and the Ming. Never again did a tribute mission arrive at the Ming court from Sanfoqi, and there is no record of any Chinese official or merchant ever visiting Sanfoqi again either.
Let us now take a closer look at the tribute missions that preceded the sudden disappearance of Sanfoqi.
In 1371, the Ming envoy sent the previous year to Sanfoqi returned with Yu-di-li-ma-han-yi-li-ya-si 玉的力馬罕亦里牙思, an envoy from Sanfoqi who represented a king named Ma-ha-la-zha Ba-la-bu 馬哈剌扎八剌卜.
The first four characters of this king’s name unquestionably represent “Maharāja,” or “great king,” and this is a generic expression that we can find in Khmer inscriptions preceding the specific name of a king, much like the generic Ayutthayan title, Somdet Chao Phraya, does in the Siamese context. As for “Ba-la-bu,” scholars have long believed this was “prabhu,” a Sanskrit term that can mean “master,” “lord,” or “king.”
This term does appear in some Cambodian inscriptions, however, not in reference to a king. That being the case, “Maharāja Prabhu” tells us very little, other than that this is a Sanskrit-derived name.
Meanwhile, the envoy who visited the Ming capital on behalf of this king was named Yu-di-li-ma-han-yi-li-ya-si 玉的力馬罕亦里牙思. This is a difficult name to decipher, however, the “yi-li-ya-si” 亦里牙思 at the end is very similar to the Muslim name, Ilyas.
Further, the character, han 罕, was used to transcribe “Khan” in Mongol titles. Indeed, this name looks strikingly Mongol-like. . . What the hell is going on here?
As we will see later when we examine the Ming shilu accounts of tributary missions from Zhenla, the first representative from that polity to visit the Ming court was not from the capital and did not even represent a king.
Therefore, it is possible that we have a similar case here. Given that roughly a century had passed, during the Mongol period, since the last regular tribute missions, it could be that the first Ming envoys to visit the region simply convinced some people with ships to make the journey to China, or that local rulers first entrusted foreign merchants to make the journey on their behalf.
In early 1374, a second tribute mission arrived from Sanfoqi representing Da-ma-lai-sha-a-zhe 怛麻來沙那阿者. As we discussed in a previous post, this name matches the name of the king that the Cambodian chronicles, or what I call the Nong texts, record was in power at that time, Thommeasokareach (Dhammāśokarāja).
This king was represented by an envoy named Ba-ti Zu-han 八蹄足翰. “Ba-ti” is likely the Sanskrit term “pati,” meaning “master.” It is also a term that can be found in the titles of Malay, Javanese, and Cham officials, usually at the end of a compound word.
Later that same year, in December 1374, another envoy arrived at the Ming court from Sanfoqi. This envoy’s name was Mo-na-xia-deng 沒那遐噔 and he represented a king named Ma-na-da Bao-lin-bang 麻那答寶林邦. These names are not Sanskrit, and they do not appear to be Malay, Cham, Javanese, or Muslim. I would argue that they are Khmer.
The Angkorian princes held the title of “Ponhea.” My sense is that the first two characters in these titles (mo-na 沒那 and ma-na 麻那) are an effort to represent that term.
Ponhea is a difficult word to render into Chinese. Its phonetic transcription is “pɲie.” The initial “p” is followed by the voiced velar nasal, “ɲ,” to create a consonant cluster that does not exist in Chinese. The terms “mo-na” and “ma-na” can thus be seen as an effort to transcribe this complex sound.
It can also make sense that both the envoy and the king would have this same title. In all the versions of the Cambodian chronicles and the 2/K.125 Fragment, the ruler who comes after the second Siamese capture of Angkor is referred to as Cau “Ponhea” Yat. With the Siamese controlling Angkor, Cau Ponhea Yat could not be officially crowned as king, and therefore, he remained a “Ponhea.”
The Nong texts and the 2/K.125 Fragment indicate that at some later time there was a ceremony in which Cau Ponhea Yat was granted a royal title, but that appears to have happened at least several years after Angkor was captured in 1373.
In other words, the early 1374 mission appears to have been an official mission sent by Sanfoqi while Angkor was still under Cambodian control (although it would have been under siege at that point), whereas the mission sent later that year may have been an effort by a Cambodian prince to get his brother recognized as king after Angkor had been captured by the Siamese.
In 1375, yet another Sanfoqi king was mentioned in the Ming shilu. In October of that year, an envoy from Sanfoqi by the name of Tan-meng Ma-ha-ma 談蒙馬哈麻 presented a memorial and tribute on behalf of the king, Seng Jia-lie Yu-lan 僧伽烈宇蘭.
Further, this envoy traveled to the Ming court together with a Ming envoy, Pu-la 普剌, who was returning from a mission to the kingdom of Fulin 拂菻. There is a lot to unpack here. Let us begin with the Ming envoy and his mission to Fulin.
Pu-la is not a Han Chinese name, and the place he visited, Fulin, is difficult to identify. Japanese scholar Kurakichi Shiratori closely examined Tang-era records about Fulin and could not conclusively determine its location, noting instead that it could be referring to various places in the Syria-Constantinople region.
During the Ming, this would seemingly refer to someplace in the Muslim world, and the Sanfoqi envoy who journeyed to the Ming court with Pu-la appears to have been Muslim, as the Ma-ha-ma 馬哈麻 in his name could stand for “Muhammad.”
That said, it would not be impossible to also see these three characters as indicating the Malay title of “berhomat,” and the first two characters, Tan-meng 談蒙, lead one to think of another Malay title, “temenggong.” However, none of this is certain.
What is clearer is that the king whom Tan-meng Ma-ha-ma represented, Seng Jia-lie Yu-lan 僧伽烈宇蘭, was Javanese. We will see an envoy below who was named Sheng A-lie Zu-jian 生阿烈足諫. Geoff Wade has correctly identified the first three characters of this name as indicating the Javanese “sang arya,” a title reserved for members of the nobility.
Although the first two characters in Seng Jia-lie Yu-lan are different from those of Sheng A-lie Zu-jian, we can nonetheless see that Seng Jia-lie 僧伽烈 is intended to represent the same Javanese title of “sang arya” (Sheng A-lie 生阿烈).
However, rather than strictly seeking to find characters to represent the sounds of this title, the person who came up with the Chinese characters to transcribe this title deliberately used a set term that closely corresponded in sound.
The first two characters, 僧伽, are the Chinese characters for the term “sangha,” that is, the Buddhist community of monks, nuns, and lay followers. While that term is usually pronounced as “sengqie,” the second character has alternate pronunciations as “jia” and “ga.”
As such, it looks like whoever came up with this Chinese version of the title was playing with words a bit, nonetheless, we can clearly see “sang arya” in this name.
That said, “sang arya” is not a royal title. Therefore, whoever this “king” was, he was not actually a king, and he was not even pretending to be one. Who was this, and why were Javanese suddenly showing up in the tribute missions of Sanfoqi?
Two years later, in 1377, the final tribute mission from Sanfoqi arrived at the Ming court, and here things get really interesting.
This mission was led by an envoy who again had a Javanese title, Sheng A-lie Zu-jian 生阿烈足諫. Sang Arya Zu-jian, as I will refer to him, reported to the Ming emperor the passing of the king, Da-ma-sha-na-a-zhe 怛麻沙那阿者.
This is clearly the same king who sent a mission in early 1374, and who I argue is the very same Thommeasokareach whom the Nong texts record was in power at that time, but who should have died shortly after that point.
As we saw in looking at Ayutthaya, there was a case in which the Suphanburi line only notified the Ming of the passing of one of their kings many years after the fact when another member of the Suphanburi line came to power.
What we have here may very well be something similar, as Sang Arya Zu-jian also requested that Da-ma-sha-na-a-zhe’s son be crowned as king. That son’s name was recorded as Ma-na-zhe Wu-li 麻那者巫里.
Here again, we have the same “ma-na” at the beginning of this title that we saw above, and which I would argue is meant to represent Ponhea.
Shortly after this delegation presented itself at the Ming court, the Ming emperor dispatched an envoy to deliver a seal of office to Ma-na-zhe Wu-li. That envoy was murdered by Javanese, and Sanfoqi was never heard from again.
Let us consider the following points:
1) Given the Song to mid-Ming evidence for locating Sanfoqi in Cambodia that we examined in earlier posts, and
2) given the direct correspondence between the Da-ma-lai-sha-a-zhe 怛麻來沙那阿者 mentioned in the Ming shilu and the Thommeasokareach (Dhammāśokarāja) recorded in the Nong texts, and
3) given the references in the Cambodian and Siamese chronicles to Khaek, Yuan, and phak foreign peoples attacking Phnom Penh and Angkor around the time of the second Siamese capture of Angkor, and
3) given the references to Cau Ponhea Yat allying with some of the phak, and
4) also taking into consideration the fact the fourteenth century was a period when scholars agree that the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit was at the peak of its power and sought to expand its influence overseas,
. . . when we then examine the multinational character of the tribute missions from Sanfoqi to the Ming in the 1370s and
5) understand that those missions ended with the murder of a Ming envoy by Javanese, and
6) that later in the fourteenth century the Ming emperor somehow believed that Siam/Ayutthaya was in a position to communicate with Java about Sanfoqi. . .
I would argue that we have sufficient evidence here to put forth a hypothesis that Javanese were in Cambodia in the second half of the fourteenth century and that the “fall of Angkor” came from two directions: a Siamese intrusion from the west and a Javanese intrusion from the east.
That said, the reality was undoubtedly much more complex than a divided tripartite world of Khmer, Siamese, and Javanese. Indeed, what the Ming shilu reveals to us is a world of cross-ethnic alliances and inter-ethnic rivalries.
As for who killed the Ming envoy, my guess would be that it was the Javanese who were behind the 1375 mission that arrived at the Ming court with Ming envoy Pu-la. These were perhaps Javanese who had staked claim to an area of the Mekong region, and they were undoubtedly not happy to have a rival for Ming recognition.
These people would have also been in a good position to intercept and murder a Ming envoy, and to block any subsequent attempts by others to make contact with the Ming.
Finally, in terms of methodology, many scholars have developed arguments about Cambodian history that require that A be correct first so that B can be possible, and with B possible, we can get C. That is classic Michael Vickery and O. W. Wolters, for instance, and such a methodology immediately breaks down once one points out that A or B is incorrect.
I am looking critically at the information in various sources and am placing that information side-by-side and am trying to determine if that information reinforces each other. There is no A that needs to be correct for B to be possible, and B does not need to be possible for C to be correct. Further, if A is incorrect, then that does not negate B or C.
This is precisely the approach that diplomatic historians have effectively employed to try to understand what was happening in North Vietnam during the war years. With limited access to official government documents, historians have sought out information that was recorded by the various diplomats who were stationed in the North during the war.
As such, they place side-by-side the limited number of official documents that they can obtain with accounts from the Polish embassy, the Soviet embassy, the Canadian embassy, the Indian embassy, etc. and then they also include memoirs, and from these diverse sources, each of which must be read critically, they attempt to develop a picture of what happened. That is precisely what I am doing here as well.
I am also showing how knowledge was constructed over time.
It is blazingly clear that Sanfoqi “moved” in Chinese sources from the area of Cambodia to the coast of Sumatra, and that this move occurred several decades after the events discussed here, that is, several decades after Sanfoqi had “disappeared” from the Chinese world.
I will discuss why and how I think that happened in a future post.
At this point, however, there is absolutely no way that we can place Sanfoqi in the early Ming in any place other than in Cambodia. Further, we have the details of tribute missions from Sanfoqi in the 1370s that need to be accounted for. That is what I am trying to do here.
If we don’t think the information in Cambodian and Siamese sources about foreigners relates to any of this, that’s fine, we still have the evidence from Song-Ming sources that place Sanfoqi in Cambodia, and we still have the information from the Ming shilu that demonstrates a rivalry for power, and that rivalry still corresponds with a period that the Nong texts depict as one when there was a struggle for power in Cambodia.
Relating this to the methodology of diplomatic historians, take away the Polish ambassador’s comments, and we still have the Soviet ambassador’s comments, the Indian ambassador’s comments, the Canadian ambassador’s comments, and the recollections of official X that all paint the same picture.
In other words, pull out any of the details that I have put forward, and there are still multiple other details that remain and that support the picture of the past that I am presenting.
Personally, I think the Ming shilu provides very strong evidence to help explain the mention of foreigners in fourteenth-century Cambodia in Cambodian and Siamese sources, a topic that has long stumped scholars.
