over other such centres of power was clearly its position astride the
India–China trade route. Its power, however, is unlikely to have spread
far inland. Further north, on the middle Mekong and on the lower
Chao Phraya River, other power centres were establishing themselves
that in time would challenge and replace Funan.
Six Funanese tributary missions to China are recorded as arriving
during the third century. Then comes a gap of seventy years, a single
embassy in 357 CE, then eighty years before a group of three embassies
arrived between 434 and 438 CE. After a further gap of some fifty
years, ten embassies arrived between 484 and 539, and three more
between 559 and the last embassy in 588, after which Funan gave way
to Zhenla, which itself was replaced by the Khmer kingdom of Angkor
in 802.
What are we to make of this patchy record? Why were embassies
sent so infrequently, and why by some kings and not others? And what
did they mean to both parties? Of course, it may be that embassies did
arrive more frequently and were not recorded, or that the records of
their arrival have been lost. But China was a bureaucratic state, and
records were important. Moreover, embassies from other countries
were just as intermittent. It seems likely, therefore, that the list of
Funanese embassies is relatively complete.
So what conclusions can we draw? The first is that these were not
tribute missions in the sense that applied between the segmentary parts
of Southeast Asian mandalas. Funan was not required to send large
amounts of produce to China, nor were Funanese kings required to
take loyalty oaths to the Son of Heaven. Embassies were sent not in
response to Chinese directives, but for the benefit of Funanese rulers.
For the Chinese, on the other hand, all official missions, even those
solely concerned with trade, were designated as ‘tributary’ in order to
conform to the Chinese sinocentric view of the world. Embassies from
barbarian kingdoms served to reinforce the way in which the Chinese
understood the world and their own place in it. Their purpose, in
Chinese eyes, was as much ideological as economic. The emperor
A Short History of China and Southeast Asia