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The Politic and History
At a time when Han Dynasty was at its peak and the the Roman Emperor Claudius was conquering Britain, legend has it that an Indian Brahman named Kaundinya was following the instructions he'd received in a dream. In keeping with those instructions, he selected a magic bow from a Hindu temple and set sail for SE Asia. There he defeated a local queen named Soma, whose father was "King of the Cobras", and married her. The royal line of Bnam (Old Khmer from "the mountain" was started. The kingdom became known by the Sinicized form of its name: Funan. The legend captures well the pattern of history in the region. There is a mix of local tradition and Indian ideas. The Cobra was considered by many in SE Asia to be the lord of the earth. The legend of that dynasty - with dual legitimacy from both the Brahman and the snake - was adopted by many kingdoms in the region. Funan was the first to achieve regional and even international importance. The people of Funan were probably austro-asiatic, related to the Mons of Burma and the modern Khmers who eventually displaced them. Funan's capital was at Vyadhapura, near the modern city of Phnom Penh. Funan developed an efficient navy and became prosperous by regulating the sea trade between China and India. In this, Funan became a model for later kingdoms in the region: Sri Vijaya, the Javanese Sailendra kingdom, and Malacca. After the reign of Fan Shih-man, considered the greatest of the Funan kings, his successors sent embassies to both China and India. The kingdom adopted Sanskrit as the court language and encouraged both Hinduism and Buddhism. This probably accelerated the process of Indianization in the region, as vassal courts emulated Funan. A Chinese ambassador, K'ang T'ai, described Funan as having brick-walled cities. He recorded that the people had a knowledge of metalwork and agriculture, but said that they walked about the city "naked and barefoot". K'ang T'ai also described a judicial system, libraries and archives, and taxation in Funan. In typical Chinese fashion, though, he concluded that the Funanese were barbarians. Funan established a tributary relationship with China in 357 AD. At the peak of the kingdom, in the early third century, Funan control what is now southern Vietnam, Cambodia, central Thailand, northern Malaysia, and southern Myanmar. Although Funan collapsed under the pressure of Khmer immigration into the region, Vyadhapura and nearby Angkor remained the most important urban center in the region for perhaps 13 centuries. Funan collapsed in the sixth century and was replaced by the Chenla kingdom of the Khmers. Funan's royal family, however, survived and fled to Java where it lived in obscurity for almost 300 years before re-emerging as the Sailendra Dynasty. The Sailendras, in turn, intermarried with other royal families in Java and Sumatra. Today, many of the nobels and sultans of Malaysia and Indonesia can count the kings of Funan among their ancestors.