Kingdom of Funan - Sources

Sources

The first modern scholar to reconstruct the history of the ancient polity of Funan was Paul Pelliot, who in his ground-breaking article "Le Fou-nan" of 1903 drew exclusively on Chinese historical records in order to set forth the sequence of documented events connecting the foundation of Funan in approximately the 1st century C.E. with its demise by conquest in the 6th to 7th century. Scholars critical of Pelliot's Chinese sources have expressed skepticism regarding his conclusions.

Chinese records dating from the 3rd century C.E., beginning with the Sānguó zhì 三國志 (Records of Three Kingdoms) completed in AD 289 by Chén Shòu 陳壽 (233–297), record the arrival of two Funanese embassies at the court of Lǚ Dài 呂待, gover­nor in the southern Chinese kingdom of Wú 吳: the first embassy arrived between 225 and 230 AD, the second in the year 243. Later sources such as the Liáng shū 梁書 (Book of Liang) of Yáo Chá 姚察 (533–606) and Yáo Sīlián 姚思廉 (d. 637), completed in 636, discuss the mission of the 3rd century Chinese envoys Kāng Tài 康泰 and Zhū Yīng 朱應 from the Kingdom of Wu to Funan. The writings of these envoys, though no longer extant in their original condition, were excerpted and as such preserved in the later dynastic histories, and form the basis for much of what we know about Funan.

Since the publication of Pelliot's article, archeological excavation in Vietnam and Cambodia, especially excavation of sites related to the Oc Eo culture, have supported and supplemented his conclusions. Local inscriptions found in Vietnam and Cambodia, especially the inscriptions of Thap Muoi in the “Plain of Reeds” and of Mỹ Sơn near Da Nang, have also contributed to the reconstruction of the history of Funan.