Over the past few months, I have been demonstrating that information in Chinese sources that has been used for the past century to write about the history of an imagined polity called “Srivijaya” is actually about Cambodia.
In particular, there is information in Chinese sources about a place called “Sanfoqi” 三佛齊 that scholars have long argued referred to a polity on the island of Sumatra based at Palembang that they claim was called “Srivijaya.”
However, as I stated in the previous post about information in a Ryukyuan source that supports my argument (indeed, it’s like the smoking gun at a crime scene), I am now 1,000,000% sure that “Sanfoqi” did not refer to a place on the island of Sumatra, but instead, that it referred to “Kambuja,” that is, “Cambodia,” or more precisely, “Angkor.”
Now that I am completely convinced that there is no possible way to argue against the idea that Sanfoqi was Cambodia, there are various related issues that need to be addressed, and one of them has to do with identifying certain place names that are associated with Sanfoqi/Cambodia in Chinese-language sources.
Some of these place names, such as “Old Port” and the “Baolin Polity,” are mentioned in the Ryukyuan source discussed in the previous post, so let us begin there.
In the early 1430s, the Ryukyu Kingdom (on what is today the island of Okinawa) engaged in relations with a place called Old Port (Jiugang 舊港; I’ve been calling this place “Old Harbor,” but most other people call it “Old Port,” so I should probably do the same).
We will try to figure out later where exactly Old Port was. For now, let us just look at what the Ryukuan sources say about Old Port.
The Ryukyuan sources indicate that Old Port was governed over by a Javanese official (Sang Arya Wu 僧亞刺吳). However, those same sources also indicate that Old Port was under the authority of a place called the “Baolin Polity” (Baolin bang 寳林邦), also referred to as the “Bolin Polity.”
Later Chinese sources (from the seventeenth century) state that Baolin/Bolin was another name for Old Port, or that this was how local people referred to Old Port. Therefore, it may be the case that Old Port was the port for the Baolin Polity and that in that sense, they referred to the same place.
Meanwhile, Ryukyuan documents also make it clear that the Baolin Polity was under the authority of Sanfoqi, or what I argue was Cambodia.
Finally, one Ryukyuan document from 1431 indicates that the ruler of Sanfoqi had recently been removed from power by the king of Siam (i.e., Ayutthaya).
This comment clearly refers to the Siamese capture of Angkor in that year, an event that is recorded in Siamese sources. This record is the “smoking gun” that proves that Sanfoqi was “Kambuja,” as I have argued throughout the posts in this series.
As such, what the Ryukyuan sources demonstrate is that in the 1430s there was a chain of authority that connected the following places: Siam – Sanfoqi/Cambodia – Baolin Polity – Old Port.
Ok, so Siam is Siam, and Sanfoqi is Cambodia, but why would there be a Javanese controlling a place (Old Port) that was under Cambodian authority?
As I have argued in this series, there is information in Cambodian and Siamese sources, as well as in the Ming Veritable Records (Ming Shilu 明實錄), which indicates that Cambodia was attacked by Javanese in the late 1360s, and that they controlled some parts of the Cambodian world for many years after that point.
Old Port was clearly one of the places that Javanese controlled.
Now, to complicate matters, another point we can learn from the Ryukyuan as well as other sources is that in the 1430s the people in charge of the Baolin Polity (the place that either controlled Old Port or was where Old Port was located) were Chinese. . .
How did this happen?
From the Ming Veritable Records, we can see that in the early 1400s there were thousands of Chinese who had recently migrated to the area of Old Port, and the Ming established tributary relations with various Chinese “chiefs” (toumu 頭目) of Old Port, one of whom was named Shi Jinqing 施進卿.
In the mid-1400s, Ma Huan, a participate in some of the Zheng He voyages, wrote a book (Yingya shenglan 瀛涯勝覽) in which he noted that after Shi Jinqing died, “his position did not descend to his son, it was his daughter, Shi Er-jie [施二姐, who became ruler.”
“Er-jie” means “second sister,” and in the Ryukyuan records there are letters from two women from the Baolin Polity. One is referred to as the “Madam Deputy Chief” (次本頭娘) and the other is referred to as “Lady Binazhi née Shi” (俾那智施氏大娘仔).
The “Shi” in this second woman’s name is the same Chinese surname as that of Shi Jinqing, the man whom Ming sources record as having earlier served as chief of Old Port.
But what is “Binazhi”? And why is it that Ryukyuan sources have a Javanese in control of Old Port and members of the Chinese Shi family controlling the Bolin Polity? And where exactly were these places?
For the answer to those questions, we can turn to Thomas Stamford Raffles. In 1817, Raffles published a book entitled The History of Java, where he related the following story:
“. . . there was a woman of Kamboja, named Niái Gédi Pináteh, the wife of the patéh, or minister of that country, who on account of her being a great sorceress was banished to Java, where, on her arrival, she went to the king of Majapáhit and implored protection.
“The king taking pity on her, the more so as she was a woman of advanced age without any children, and had been removed from a situation where she had been comfortable and happy, provided for her by making her a kind of shabándar (chief of the port) at Grésik, where there was already a mosque and a considerable population. . .” (124-125).
This story that Raffles recorded about “a woman of Kamboja, named Niái Gédi Pináteh” is clearly about Lady Binazhi née Shi. Yes, she was a “woman of Kamboja” in that she ruled over a polity, the Baolin Polity, that was in the Cambodian world. However, she was the daughter of a Chinese man, so she was most likely at least half Chinese.
As for the minister (patéh) of Kamboja, my guess would be that this was a reference to the Javanese official in charge of Old Port.
But where was Old Port and the Baolin Polity? I think I mentioned in a previous post that one fifteenth-century Chinese source mentions an Old Port at the southern end of the Cham world. If I was going to guess, and that is basically all I can do at this point, I would guess that Old Port and the Baolin Polity were perhaps in the area of the Saigon – Vũng Tàu coast, that is, an area just to the south of the Cham region.
I’ve long found it odd that there is seemingly no ancient history of Saigon. Its location is perfect for trade, and yet “nothing happens” there until roughly the seventeenth century when the Nguyễn clan allowed Chinese Ming loyalists to settle there.
Old Port and the Baolin Polity were clearly in the larger Cambodian world. However, from what I can see in Siamese and Cambodian sources, they do not appear to have been in the area of Phnom Penh.
At the same time, it is clear that they were in a location that was easily accessible by ship. They were visited by traders from China, Siam, and Okinawa, and Old Port was under the authority of Javanese.
They were also in an area where there was available space for thousands of Chinese to settle.
In the early nineteenth century, Vietnamese scholar Trịnh Hoài Đức noted that there were many ancient remains around the Vũng Tàu region. Clearly something substantial had existed in this region in the past. . . Could it have been Old Port/the Baolin Polity?
I do not have a way to prove this hunch (yet), but what I am totally sure of is that Sanfoqi was Cambodia, and Old Port and the Baolin Polity were somewhere in the larger Cambodian world, a world that for a time in the 1300s-1400s was partly controlled by Javanese and settled by Chinese.
Could it be that in the fifteenth century along the Saigon – Vũng Tàu coast was an area controlled by a Javanese man and his (half) Chinese wife?
That is certainly what the historical records suggest to me. . .
This Post Has 5 Comments
Your “hunch” is very exciting because it suggests that the Ming loyalists were not simply taking refugee at whatever random location they could set foot on.
Instead, they might have went to Saigon precisely because it was a place that had a long history of ethnic/cultural Chinese settlement.
Which would also make a lot of sense, right? Instead of the Nguyen lord saying, “Just let the Ming loyalists settle in that wasteland,” he said, “Just let the Ming loyalists settle in the area where those other Chinese are already living.”
I think there are articles pointing out how the identity of the Minh Huong (明鄕) people have in fact been re-organized and reconstructed through the early modern period. Point being that a lot of their origins cannot be traced from actual Ming refugee ancestors.
Can u explain more about this ” there is information in Cambodian and Siamese sources, as well as in the Ming Veritable Records (Ming Shilu 明實錄), which indicates that Cambodia was attacked by Javanese in the late 1360s, and that they controlled some parts of the Cambodian world for many years after that point “
Hello Zaki,
Thank you for the comment. The answer is long and complex, however I have an article that will come out next summer that documents all of that information. I’ll announce that here when it is published.