ofthe SAME TREE

in the early centuries CE but not later than the beginning of the third century.
It describes the trade between southern India and Kalagam, usually identified
with Kedah. The Mahaniddesa, believed to contain information from the second
and third centuries, mentions Yavadipa, or the island of Java. 28
At the beginning of the Common Era, southern India became a major
focus of Indian–Southeast Asian trade. Tamil culture was flourishing, Brahmanic
Hinduism was displacing Buddhism, new agricultural lands were
opened, and urban settlements were increasing. All of these developments
provided the basis for a lively and lucrative exchange with Southeast Asia in
the second and third centuries from the southern Indian ports of Arikamedu,
Kayal, and Kamara. Both Mantai in Sri Lanka and Arikamedu in southern
India were the most likely sources of Roman and Persian artifacts from the
subcontinent that moved across the Bay of Bengal, across the transisthmian/
transpeninsular route, to Oc Eo in the Lower Mekong. 29
A Greek text titled The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea is a compilation of
knowledge available in the second half of the first century CE. It refers to ships
sailing from the southeast coast of India to “Chryse,” which is believed to be
Southeast Asia or perhaps even the Malay Peninsula. 30 Also mentioned are
land routes of the silk trade, from which Wolters inferred that seaborne commerce
between India and Southeast Asia at the time was very limited. Chinese
sources indicate that sometime between the third and fifth centuries CE the
sea route between India and China came to be used more frequently. In 413
the Chinese pilgrim Faxian returned all the way from Sri Lanka to China by
sea, and a few years later Gunavarman, a Kashmiri prince, went to China via
the same route. Under the Song dynasty in China (960–1279), Chinese overseas
trading activity grew rapidly, particularly to Southeast Asia. The increasing
popularity of this all-sea route had important repercussions for some of
the early polities along the Straits of Melaka. Chinese sources mention the
existence of a western Indonesian polity called Ko-ying or Chia-ying in the
first half of the third century CE. Their source for this information came from
an area in the southern Mekong known to the Chinese as “Funan.” 31
Funan, perhaps a Chinese rendering of the local term bnam/phnom
(mountain), consisted of a number of communities with a shared culture,
whose links to one another varied in nature and intensity at different times. 32
An earlier suggestion that the inhabitants were Austronesian speakers was
apparently based on circumstantial evidence. It could be argued that the port
of Oc Eo, as an international port on a well-established international trade
route, would have been the temporary home of Austronesian speakers involved
in this trade. Chinese descriptions indicate that there was some Austronesian
presence in Funan and along the coast to the south, 33 and an Austronesian
language (Malayu?) could have been a trade lingua franca. Based on recent
26 Chapter 1