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UM E-Theses Collection (澳門大學電子學位論文庫)

Title

Indianization, foreign relations, and trade : a preliminary study of the ancient kingdom of Funan together with the disscusion of the changing of international maritime trade route in South China sea in 5th-8th century CE

English Abstract

Due to the insufficient nature of indigenous sources, the research of Funan relied on ancient Chinese sources as a major part. Together with recent archaeological reports, inscriptional source, and studies by previous scholars, this thesis attempts to reconstruct the history of Funan in an interdisciplinary perspective. Funan was a thalassocrat state dominating the Southeast Asian region from the 1st to 6th century CE. It was also a place where Indian or West Asian merchants would first arrive and then made their transit to China or other SEA countries before the Strait of Malacca route was widely used in the 7th century. Although there was strong Indian influence existed in Funan, this thesis argues that Funan was not an Indian creation at the beginning but an indigenous SEA civilization. Moreover, this thesis also stresses on the importance of the hybrid population with both Indian and Southeast Asian lineages on helping to promote Indian culture to various part of SEA. Overall, the process of Indianization, in the case of Funan, did not refer to any kind of forceful imposition of Indian culture to the Funanese society; yet suggests that it was a learning process with which the indigenous population took their own initiative to study and adopt Indian culture for their own interest. Moreover, this thesis also argued that the fall of Funan was not the result of the shifting of maritime trade route from the Malay Peninsula route to the Strait of Malacca starting from the 5th century CE; rather, it suggests that the conquest of Funan by Zhenla was the exact reason for the shifting of maritime trade route in the 7th century CE and an indirect consequence of the rise of Srivijaya and He-ling.

Issue date

2013.

Author

Ho, Sin Hang

Faculty

Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

Department of History

Degree

M.A.

Subject

Funan (Kingdom) -- History

Funan (Kingdom) -- Civilization

Funan (Kingdom) -- Commerce

Supervisor

何偉傑

Files In This Item

TOC & Abstract

Full-text

Location
1/F Zone C
Library URL
991005232849706306