Qiān Zhī Fú

Qiān Kingdom
5th century – 980s
Proposed locations of ancient kingdoms in Menam and Mekong Valleys in the 7th century based on the details provided in the Chinese leishu, Cefu Yuangui, and others.
Capital	Ayojjhapura (500s–700s; 800s–980s) Sambuka (700s–800s; as Kolo Kingdom)
Government	Kingdom
• 5th-c.	Chakravantin
• 5th-c.	Prathivindravarman
• ?–550	Bhavavarman
• c. 662	Ramaraja
• c. 980s (last)	Ipoia Sanne Thora Thesma Teperat
Historical era	Post-classical era
• Formation	500s
• First tribute to China	650s
• Seized by Angkor	946
• Disestablished	980s
• Formation of Xiān	1080s
Succeeded by Angkor Kolo Lavo Xiān
Today part of	Thailand

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Qiān Zhī Fú (Chinese: 千支弗)^[1]: 30 or Qiān Zhī Bá (千支跋),^[2] Bàn Zhī Bá (半支跋),^[2] Gàn Zhī Fú (干支弗),^[1]: 30 which can be transliterated as Syamapura, was a medieval political entity located in the Southwest Sea,^[2] centered at Si Thep in the Pasak Basin in central Thailand,^[1]: 30 bordering Duō Mó Cháng (多摩萇) to the north.^{[1]: 30 [2]} It was once a colony of south Indian people and must initially have had a strong ties with the home country in southern India.^{[1]: 34 [3]} Qiān Zhī Fú was an independent polity at the time that its tribute was sent to the Chinese court during the reign of Emperor Gaozong of Tang,^{[1]: 30, 32} and had an army of 20,000 elite soldiers, but had no horses.^[1]: 30 Its territory can be travelled in one month from east to west and 25 days from south to north.^[1]: 30

Qiān Zhī Fú, together with another kingdom in the central Isan region, known as the inland Cham of Zhān Bó, was the foremost among the five states that formed the trans-Mekong confederated states;^{[1]: 34, 42} the other three included Pó Àn (婆岸) at Mueang Phon, Shě Bá Ruò (舍跋若) at Suphanburi, and Mó Là (摩臘) on the coast of Champa, and they differed from the coastal region dominated by Dvaravati.^[1]: 30 However, the ties between Qiān at Si Thep and Zhān Bó as well as other former confederated states in the Chi–Mun basin — who later evolved to Yamanadvipa, also known as Java — broke up following the establishment of Angkor in the Tonlé Sap basin around the 890s. Angkor and Java allied^[4]: 93 and eventually seized Qiān Zhī Fú^[a] in 946.^[5]

Following the fall of Qiān at Si Thep to Angkor, its line of monarchs continued to the 980s then the seat was potentially moved to Lavo's Lavapura, where they were seized again by Angkor in 1001 or 1005; the city was grievously devastated and almost left abandoned. It was retaken by Chandachota (จันทรโชติ) in 1052^[b], and his successor Phra Narai (พระนารายณ์) founded a polity with the homophone Xiān or Ayodhya in the 1080s by overthrowing the local ruler and establishing it as his new seat of power. This newly founded polity continued until the traditional establishment of the Ayutthaya Kingdom in 1351. The conflicts between Qiān or Xiān or later Siam and Angkor lasted until the 15th century when Angkor was abandoned and its monarch moved the seat further south to Longvek, but eventually faced threats from both Siam and Đại Việt until they became a French protectorate of Cambodia in 1863.

Qiān Zhī Fú, later known as Gē Luó Shě Fēn, had two brother states, including Xiū Luó Fēn to the west of Chenla, and Gān Bì at the present day Savannakhet–Mukdahan. Their customs were roughly similar, with rulers and fortifications.^[6] Qiān's remnant population, known as the Nyah Kur people who speak the old Mon dialect of Nyah Kur language, is still present in the highland around the present-day Si Thep, especially in the border area between Chaiyaphum, Phetchabun, and Nakhon Ratchasima provinces. These prove that the native Siamese people were Mon speakers but were later Tainized via cultural assimilation and acculturation after the arrivals of Tai peoples, both Chiang Saen branch from the north and the Lao‑Phuthai from the Annamite Valleys, for the trading benefits with the Southern Chinese dynasties and Đại Việt, who were more familiar with the Tai and Daic dialects.

The suffix fú 弗 seems to correspond to the variants of the Sanskrit term "pūra", meaning town or city,^[1]: 30 whereas some of the meanings of the character zhī 支 are branch, limb, offshoot, and subdivision.^[7] Notably, the prefix qiān 千 sounds a lot like xiān 暹, which the Chinese and Đại Việt used to refer to the people and states in the Chao Phraya River basin in the early second millennium,^[8] causing Tatsuo Hoshino to assume that Qiān Zhī Fú was one of the early Siamese city-states — which were later Tainized — that gained prosperity via the trans-Mekong trade routes from Champa to the east and the Menam Basin to the west.^[1]: 54 Others early Siamese-related polities included Cān Bàn which once allied with Chenla,^{[1]: 39, 68} Xiū Luó Fēn,^[1]: 54 and Wen Dan.^{[1]: 39, 53, 68}

The aforementioned presumption proves the existence of Siamese people since there is a toponym siam or syam discovered in several inscriptions that previous scholars speculated to have referred to people from some location in the Chao Phraya Basin;^[9]: 69 those inscriptions included the K557 (611 CE),^[10]: 21 K127 (683 CE),^[10]: 89 K154 (685 CE),^[10]: 123 K79 (639 CE),^[10]: 69 and K904 (713 CE).^[11]: 54

In addition to the early Siamese city-states mentioned above, further east at the central Mekong Valleys near the east end of the trade routes, several Tai principalities are recorded in the Chinese sources, all dated around the 7th–8th century; those kingdoms included Gān Bì (甘毕) the brother state of Qiān Zhī Fú at the present day Savannakhet–Mukdahan,^[1]: 46 Jūn Nà Lú (君那盧) or gwan1 naa5 lou4 in Cantonese which can be transliterated in Thai as แคว้นนาลาว, meaning "country of Lao's rice fields", located in the Changzhou of the Tang at the modern Sakhon Nakhon–Nakhon Phanom–Khammouane,^{[1]: 60–1} and the last one is an unidentified Gǔ Láng Dòng (古郎洞), whose location was on the route between the first district of Changzhou and the second district at Thakhek.^[1]: 49

As per the description of Qiān Zhī Fú provided in the new Tang annual, which matches that of Canasapura (Jiā Luó Shě Fú, 迦逻舍佛); thus, Tatsuo Hoshino equates these two polities as the same kingdom in the 7th–8th centuries, hypothesizing that Qiān Zhī Fú territory to the east covered the present-day Chaiyaphum province and expanded into the modern Nakhon Ratchasima province, which included the well-known site at Mueang Sema, in the 7th century,^{[1]: 32–4} Local fable says Qiān Zhī Fú at Si Thep possible established royal relation with the coastline polity of Dvaravati at Kamalanka,^[12] making its southern neighbor Tou Yuan at Lopburi faced the two allied monarchs; Dvaravati to the south and Qiān Zhī Fú to the north. However, after the Dvaravati annexation of Tou Yuan, which was refounded as the Lavo Kingdom in 648, Dvaravati began to expand its influence into Qiān Zhī Fú's southeast territory at Mueang Sema the following century, causing Qiān Zhī Fú to relinquish its control over the Nakhon Ratchasima area. Its territory receded to the original core in the northern half of the Menam plain and the Pasak Valley.^{[1]: 33–4} So, based on Tatsuo's theory, Si Thep was the capital of Canasapura, whereas Mueang Sema served as the regional center. As well, Thai historian Athitthan Chanklom (อธิษฐาน จันทร์กลม) included Si Thep in the circle of Canasapura.^[13]

Following the aforementioned conflicts, Lavo Dvaravati as Tou Yuan's successor also fought several battles against Chenla to the southeast. Tatsuo suggests that several kingdoms were involved in the battles,^{[1]: 54–5} such as Cān Bàn and Zhū Jiāng, who allied with Chenla,^[14][15] as well as other petty Siamese–Tai kingdoms, including Si Thep's Qiān Zhī Fú or Gē Luó Shě Fēn which has been identified as the primordial Canasapura, Xiū Luó Fēn, and Gān Bì — all three brothers had about 50,000 elite soldiers combined — that possibly aligned with the faction that offered the greatest advantage.^{[1]: 54–5} Certain battles may have been associated with the wars between Lavo and its northern sister Monic kingdom, Haripuñjaya, occurring in the early 10th century,^{[1]: 36–7} which weakened Dvaravati^[16]: 105 and led to its eastern portion being subjugated by Tambralinga and Angkor in the 10th and 11th centuries, respectively.^{[17][18]: 191}

Qiān Zhī Fú potentially a polity named Tchai pappe Mahanacon in the Du Royaume de Siam. In 756/57, a new dynasty took over the throne.^[c] During this period, Dvaravati's power over the Menam Valleys declined,^[19]: 60 monarchs from Qiān Zhī Fú and other Tai principalities in the upper plain began to move south and leisurely assimilate the remaining Dvaravati entities, as in the Cefu Yuangui cites that Gē Luó Shě Fēn, which is a corrupted toponym of Si Thep's Jiā Luó Shě Fú, has the territory covering the region west of Dvaravati,^{[1]: 38–9} making them be able to access to the sea and made a contact with the Srivijaya through the maritime trade route, as there is a record of Siamese navy led by Passara, son of the king of Syam, sailed to Macassar on Sulawesi but failed the mission due to the storm near Bali, then they instead settled in Java by establishing the city of Passaraan in 800 CE.^[20]: xvi

To the north, the shift of the political center to the western lower plain and the enthronement of Qiān Zhī Fú's new dynasty – potentially the Daic-speaking dynasty – to west end of the trans-Mekong trade route, as well as the wars between northern Champa and the Daic-related Đại Việt to the east end, resulted in the inland Cham kingdom of Zhān Bó and other former confederated states in the Chi–Mun basin unable to access to the sea followed by the dissolution of the alliance with Qiān Zhī Fú at Si Thep. Those Chi-Mun polities, which later became Yamanadvipa or Java, instead founded a new trading polity, Angkor, to the south to access the sea through the Tonlé Sap and lower Mekong. Angkor then became more prominent and overshadowed the inland kingdoms a few decades later.^[4]: 93

In the Pali Ratanabimbavamsa or The Chronicle of the Emerald Buddha mentions another polity named Ayojjhapura, located north of Lavapura.^[21]: 51 Its king later invaded Inthapatnakhon (อินทปัตย์นคร), which has been identified as Angkor, and obtained the Emerald Buddha.^[21]: 51 In another Pali chronicle Jinakalamali, Ayojjhapura is referred to as the big city (mahā-nagara) that was ruled by Rajadhiraj, who was the greatest of all Rāmaññadesa.^[22]: 126 For such details, Thai scholars placed Ayojjhapura at Si Thep, the only one large ancient settlement located north of Lopburi, and the events potentially happened around the early 900s or during the period of the Angkorian internal instability during the reign of Harshavarman I and Ishanavarman II – decades after the establishment of Angkor — and before the fall of Si Thep in 946.^[23] However, Qiān at Si Thep later fell under the Shaivism Angkor,^{[24][25]: 303, 308–309} as there are an inscription mentions the victory of the Angkorian king Rajendravarman II (r.944–968) over Rāmaññadesa (lit. 'country of the Rāmañ or Mon people') to the west.^[26]: 3546 Qiān then began to decline in prosperity, possibly due to the climate crisis or the pandemic or the change in Angkorian trading policies around the 12th–13th century; the remaining population then fled to Lavo's Lavapura^[13] and Xiān's Ayodhya.^[23]

During the late period of Qiān Zhī Fú's Si Thep, there was also the movement of an early Siamese dynasty from Tchai pappe Mahanacon, a polity with unspecified location, to Yassouttora Nacoora Louang or Tasoo Nacora Louang, which has been identified with Lavapura of the Lavo. This dynasty later moved north to Sukhothai/Nakhon Thai for a short period around the 1150s, then moved back to the south in the western Menam Valley, where they formed the Xiān's kingdoms of Suphannabhum and Phrip Phri.^{[27]: 127 [28][29][30]}

An inscription found in Ban Wang Pai, Phetchabun province (K.978), dated 550 CE, mentions the enthronement of the new king, who was another son of Prathivindravarman, father of Bhavavarman I of Chenla, which shows the royal relation between Qiān Zhī Fú and Chenla. Still, the name of such a king was missing.^[31][32] Thai scholar Kangwon Katchima contends that Bhavavarman mentioned in the inscription may not be Bhavavarman I of Chenla because the inscription was potentially transcribed after 627 that is several decades after the reign of Bhavavarman I, and Bhavavarman mentioned in the text could have referred to Bhavavarman II — whose origin is unknown — or another Bhavavarman.^{[33]: 17–19}

According to the regnal name of its kings, who used the South Indian title of varman, Qiān Zhī Fú was regarded as a polity that was once influenced by the south Indian culture,^[32] which conform to the details provided in the Chinese source that says it was once a colony of South Indian but became independent at the time its mission to the Tang Dynasty was sent during the reign of Emperor Gaozong around 656–661.^{[1]: 30, 32, 34}

Moreover, if Qiān Zhī Fú at Si Thep was the primordial Canasapura and Mueang Sema only served as the regional center, as stated by Tatsuo Hoshino,^{[1]: 32–4} it is possible that the name of Canasapura kings that are listed in the Śri Canāśa Inscription K.949, found in the island of Ayutthaya,^[34] might have reigned at Si Thep. Notably, there is an Angkorian inscription dated 946 that mentions the victory of the Angkorian king, Rajendravarman II, over the Rāmaññadesa (lit. 'country of the Mon'),^[5] in which the date corresponds to the period that the regnal title of Si Thep Canasapura's king was shifted from the Buddhism-related "datta" or "krama" to the Hinduism "varman",^[35] and the archaeological evidence found in Si Thep that dates to the mentioned period also strongly shows the Angkorian influence.^{[24][25]: 303, 308–309}

The Pali Jinakalamali, which recounts the story of Camadevi's enthronement at Haripuñjaya in 662 CE, also mentions Ramaraja, Camadevi's spouse. Ramaraja has been regarded as the monarch of another polity, Ramburi (รามบุรี; lit. 'city of Rama'), by numerous Thai scholars.^[36] However, the identification of Ramburi remains disputed, as some believe Ramaraja was a Lavo prince^[36] or Srivijaya prince^[36] or king of Mawlamyine^[37]: 46 or a king of Ayutthaya's predecessor,^[36] that is Ayojjhapura.^[23]

The following is the list of kings of Qiān Zhī Fú's Si Thep; some of them have currently been the subject of debate.