Funan

Funan is the name Chinese historians gave to a power centred on the lower Mekong, in what is now southern Vietnam and Cambodia, between roughly the first and the sixth or seventh centuries CE. It is often called the first known kingdom of Southeast Asia. Funan grew rich on the sea trade between India and China, adopted Indian ideas of kingship and religion, and was eventually absorbed by the Khmer state of Chenla.

No local text uses the name Funan, and what its people called their land is unknown. The fullest descriptions come from two envoys of the Chinese state of Eastern Wu, Kang Tai and Zhu Ying, who stayed there in the mid-third century; their reports survive only as extracts in later dynastic histories. Scholars disagree whether Funan was a single kingdom, as the Chinese presented it, or a looser network of city-states that sometimes fought and sometimes united. The language and ethnic identity of its people are also debated: Michael Vickery argued strongly that the population was Khmer, while many Vietnamese scholars favour an Austronesian population, and others suggest a mixed society.

Archaeology shows dense settlement in the delta from perhaps the fourth century BCE. Chinese sources tell of a foreigner named Huntian who arrived by ship, defeated the local queen Liuye ("Willow Leaf") with a magic bow and married her; many scholars link this to a later Sanskrit inscription in which the Brahmin Kaundinya marries a naga princess, Soma, though the identification is disputed. A version of the story survives in Cambodian folklore as the tale of Preah Thong and Neang Neak.

Funan reached its peak under Fan Shiman in the early third century, who according to Chinese records built large ships, attacked more than ten neighbouring states and greatly extended his territory before dying on campaign. His successors sent missions to India and to China around 243. A Chinese description of about 245 speaks of walled villages and palaces, taxes paid in gold, silver, pearls and perfumes, and collections of books and archives. In the late fourth and fifth centuries Indian influence deepened; a ruler called Kaundinya in Chinese sources was said to have reformed the laws on Indian lines, and the surviving local inscriptions are in Sanskrit in a script derived from that of the Pallava dynasty.

Funan sat on the route that carried goods by sea from India to the Kra isthmus, across it, and on along the coast to China, and its kings extended control over parts of the isthmus. Its port at Óc Eo has yielded Indian, Persian and Chinese goods and Roman gold medallions of the reigns of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, which the French archaeologist Louis Malleret uncovered in the 1940s. Canals linked Óc Eo with the coast and with Angkor Borei in southern Cambodia, perhaps the main centre, and the delta supported rice farming and fishing. Funan sent embassies to southern Chinese courts, and Funanese monks translated Buddhist texts in China in the fifth and sixth centuries.

The last king named in the sources is Rudravarman, who seized the throne after killing his brother and ruled from about 514 to around 545. Chinese histories say that Chenla, once a vassal, then conquered Funan; the Book of Sui credits this to a Chenla king, and the New Book of Tang dates a conquest of Funan to the Zhenguan era (627–649). Some archaeologists, including Miriam Stark, instead see continuity between Funan and the early Khmer states, with power shifting inland rather than a sudden break. Later dynasties in Java and the Malay world claimed descent from Funan's kings, and many Khmer Krom of the Mekong delta regard Funan as part of their heritage.

Our maps for 500 and 600 label the kingdom "Funan", with Champa to the north-east. The 600 map still shows it, although by then its power was passing to Chenla, the forerunner of the Khmer Empire.