The scholarship on early Southeast Asian history that relies on Chinese sources is a complete mess.
From the very beginning, scholars got a lot of things wrong, and then they just kept going and kept producing ever more flawed scholarship.
By this point, the extant scholarship is simply unusable. If you want to learn about early Southeast Asia, the only option at this point is to go to the primary sources, and in the case of Chinese sources, you can’t rely on translations for doing that. You have to go to the Chinese language texts.
As an example, let’s take a look at a 13th-century work called the Zhu fan zhi 諸蕃志 (Treatise on the Various Barbarians). This is an important text because it provides somewhat detailed information about places in Southeast Asia.
It was translated into English in 1911 by Friedrich Hirth and W. W. Rockhill (Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Entitled Chu-fan-chi), and there is a recent online translation by Shao-yun Yang (A Chinese Gazetteer of Foreign Lands).
In the image above, I have the table of contents from the above two translations, and then on the right, I have indicated where I think these translations are wrong. As you can see, there are quite a few places, but a couple of them are very significant: Sanfoqi 三佛齊 and Shepo 闍婆.
Sanfoqi has long been understood by scholars to refer to a place on the island of Sumatra, while Shepo has long been believed by many to be an early reference to the island of Java. Both of those claims are wrong. Sanfoqi referred to “Kambuja,” that is, Angkor, while Shepo referred to a maritime “empire” based at what is now Songkhla in southern Thailand.
In what follows, we’ll take Sanfoqi as an example, and will look at the problems one encounters when one reads the Zhu fan zhi while thinking that Sanfoqi indicates a polity on the island of Sumatra.
In 1876, Dutch Sinologist Willem Pieter Groeneveldt published some translations of passages about Southeast Asia in Chinese texts, and in this work, he argued that Sanfoqi was the Chinese name of a kingdom on Sumatra based at Palembang.
In so doing, Groeneveldt decided not to translate information that contradicted his ideas, such as an opening line in the passage on Sanfoqi in the History of the Song that states that it was “neighboring Champa.”
Hirth and Rockhill faithfully followed Groeneveldt’s idea and labeled the section in the Zhu fan zhi on Sanfoqi as “Palembang (Eastern Sumatra) San-fo-ts’i.” They also stated in a footnote that “All Chinese writers have identified [Sanfoqi] with Palembang, the north-eastern [sic] coast of Sumatra.” (63).
Ummm, well, the compilers of the History of the Song did not identify Sanfoqi with Palembang. . . but let’s stick to the topic here.
In the passage in the Zhu fan zhi on Sanfoqi, there is a list of places that were “vassals” of Sanfoqi. One of them is Balinfeng 巴林馮, a name which Hirth and Rockhill state in a footnote is Palembang.
Wait. Let’s stop and think about this. According to Hirth and Rockhill, Sanfoqi was Palembang. But Palembang is also in the list of Sanfoqi’s vassals.
So that means that Palembang was a vassal of itself? How can that possibly make any sense?
Of course, it doesn’t make sense, and that should have led Hirth and Rockhill (and many others) to stop and question how it could be that Sanfoqi was a kingdom on Sumatra at Palembang, but that’s not what happened.
So, by 1911, there were already some serious problems with the way that Western scholars were looking at Chinese sources for Southeast Asia. Groeneveldt had ignored and omitted information that contradicted his claim that Sanfoqi was a kingdom on Sumatra, and Firth and Rockhill had ignored contradictory information that emerged when they tried to view the Zhufan zhi from Groeneveldt’s flawed perspective.
Then in 1918, George Cœdès claimed that Sanfoqi was not only a Chinese name for a polity on the island of Sumatra based at Palembang, but that its real name was “Srivijaya,” and with that, it was full steam ahead, and a century later we are now the heirs of an enormous quantity of fatally-flawed scholarship.
The recent translation by Shao-yun Yang reflects a sincere effort to try to make sense of that century of flawed scholarship. Indeed, Yang makes an admirable effort to try to get the Zhu fan zhi to make sense based on what scholars have written over the past 100+ years, however, that task is ultimately impossible/futile because from the beginning scholars have been wrong.
So, for instance, Yang can see that Palembang was a vassal of Sanfoqi, or what he calls, following Cœdès, “Srivijaya,” and he understands that this is a contradiction. He resolves this contradiction by following an idea that was developed in the scholarship on Sanfoqi/Srivijaya. In particular, over the previous century, other scholars ran into problems trying to get sources to fit the idea that Sanfoqi was based at Palembang, and to resolve these problems they put forth the theory that the capital or center of power of Sanfoqi moved over time.
There is no evidence of the capital or center of power of Sanfoqi, regardless of where we think it was, ever moving. There is no text or inscription anywhere which says “the capital/center was moved” or anything even remotely close to that. Instead, scholars have simply resorted to this explanation when they have tried to view Sanfoqi as a kingdom on the island of Sumatra at Palembang and the information in texts then doesn’t make sense (and that happens a lot).
In other words, rather than recognizing that the sources do not support their view of the past, scholars have simply come up with an undocumented theory to force the sources to fit their preconceived view of the past.
This section in the Zhu fan zhi is one of those places where the information doesn’t make sense if you think that Sanfoqi was a kingdom based at Palembang, as Palembang is listed as one of its vassals. Yang then follows the approach of earlier scholars and states in a note that “By this time, the center of the Srivijaya mandala had most likely shifted from Palembang to Muaro Jambi.”
Ok, so that solves the problem of Palembang being a vassal of Sanfoqi because at this point, according to Yang and others, Sanfoqi was based at Jambi.
But wait, the Zhu fan zhi also seems to list Jambi as one of Sanfoqi’s vassals as well, as one of the vassals is a place called “Jianbi” 監篦, a name that certainly could be a transcription of Jambi. Hirth and Rockhill, however, claimed that this was a reference to “the modern Kampar on the E. coast of Sumatra” (72) while Yang has it as “possibly Kampar” but notes that the sailing times that are mentioned in reference to this place don’t make sense.
Here is what the Zhu fan zhi says about this Jianbi:
“The polity of Jianbi – Its kingdom is at a route opening. Many ships anchor here. From Sanfoqi one can sail here in half a month. It was formerly a vassal of Sanfoqi, but later, because of a war, it established its own king. . . It is a five-day journey by water to the polity of Lanwuli [Lamuri/Lambri].”
監篦國，其國當路口，舶船多泊此。從三佛齊國，風帆半月可到。舊屬三佛齊，後因爭戰，遂自立為王。土產白錫、象牙、真珠。國人好弓箭，殺人多者帶符標榜，互相誇詫。五日水路到藍無里國。
So, for anyone who thinks that Sanfoqi was “Srivijaya” and was located at either Palembang or Jambi, this entry about “Jianbi” makes no sense, because it is said to be 15 days from Sanfoqi/Srivijaya (i.e., Palembang/Jambi) and 5 days from Lamuri, at the northern end of Sumatra.
In other words, assuming that Jianbi was between Palembang/Jambi and Lamuri (and that’s what the text implies), this would mean that it would take around 20 days to go from Palembang or Jambi to the northern end of Sumatra. However, in the following century, we know that Ibn Battuta crossed the much longer distance from northern Sumatra to eastern Java in 21 days.
So, as Yang noted, something is wrong here.
What’s wrong here is that Sanfoqi was not a place on the island of Sumatra, and the contradictions that Hirth and Rockhill encountered in 1911 should have led people to realize that.
If we follow the information that Groeneveldt deleted from his 1876 translation, that Sanfoqi was “neighboring Champa,” and realize that this was a reference to “Kambuja,” then everything makes sense (see the image at the top of this page).
It took 15 days to go from Kambuja to Jambi; 5 days from Jambi to Lamuri; and the place where Jambi is located is like a place where a route opens, as the narrow passage through the Straits of Melaka widens and opens to the sea in the area off the coast of where Jambi is located.
Finally, in understanding this, we also don’t encounter any contradictions here when we see that Palembang and Jambi were both vassals of Kambuja. The information fits. There is no need to come up with an undocumented theory about a moving capital or center of power.
Having said that, this understanding of the past is one that is impossible to reach by reading the extant scholarship, because the extant scholarship (including translations) is a complete mess, and it has been a mess since day one. Yang does his best to try to make sense of that body of scholarship and he ends up with a lot of unresolved questions.
That is the inevitable outcome because the extant scholarship is flawed. One can’t resolve it by consulting it. One has to simply put it aside and start again by looking at the primary sources, understanding them, and building a new argument that those sources support. That is what I recently started to do in this article.
This Post Has 19 Comments
I always suspected that the khmer empire was more powerful than stated in history books. how else did they generate enough wealth to build all those gigantic stone temples all over the place? it certainly wasn’t just from agriculture like many historians attribute. there are thousands of temples, walls, bridges, roads, irrigation systems scattered throughout cambodia. cambodia is the richest archaeological site in south east asia. in some of the old khmer temples like in sambor prei kuk and in angkor borei you can find carvings of bearded foreigners with curly hair and some sculptures that look like indians, so cambodia must have been quite an international place even before the angkor period . Oc eo in the mekong delta was proposed to be the site of Ptolemy’s kattigara.
As I read through the new translation with the new facts of Sanfoqi = Kamboja, I can help but wonder how one could “interpret” the Zhenla part. I mean, for example, Angkor, conflicts with the Cham, etc. are already mentioned in that part. The Sanfoqi section seems to be more about its naval power and customs.
there were probably two or more polities in cambodia. what is referred to as land chenla was probably sanfoqi and water chenla was funan. funan probably didn’t ever end as a polity but probably just changed names. if you ever visited cambodia you would also notice that people in northern cambodia and southern cambodia physically look different too. northern cambodians are taller, more muscular and their indian admixture is more noticeable. people in southern cambodia are shorter and thinner with shorter limbs and have more east asian facial features
Yes, this is what I argue in my paper. There were two main Cambodian polities, one in Siem Reap and one down around Phnom Penh (or the lower Mekong more generally). The one in Siem Reap was first called Land Zhenla (Tang sources) and then Sanfoqi (Song sources). The one in the lower Mekong region was first called Water Zhenla (Tang sources) and then just Zhenla (Song sources). When Sanfoqi was eliminated by Ayutthaya, then you just had Zhenla. It is only at that point (the 15th century) that there was only one main Cambodian polity.
As for how Funan fits, I’m not sure. I haven’t looked at the early sources in detail.
Thank you for the reply!
As Zhao Rukuo still attributed some aspects of the Angkor polity to Zhenla, is it OK to assume that either he had had some preconception about the extent of Zhenla (likely from Tang sources) or he had heard stories having called the two polities as Zhenla? Furthermore, as he did not attribute any aspect of Sanfoqi to any now-Cambodian polity, could one assume that, when it came to vassal states and tributes and trade, Sanfoqi/Kambuja and derivative terms were used more often, at least by traders and locals?
thanks for your reply mr kelley. your research just gets more and more interesting
also mr kelley do you think that water chenla eventually took over angkor after its fall? hence why you see a change in the name of kings from varaman to more local sounding names? the names go from jayavarman, indravaraman to names like trasak paem, nippean bat, sithean richea etc etc
there is also a cambodian story about a winter melon (tralach) farmer whom killed the real king and upsurped the throne which is where the modern cambodian royals descend from. could this be an analogy for the water chenla people taking over the throne from the real angkorian lineage?
Here is one way to look at it. Take a look at the “vassal states” that are listed for Sanfoqi/Kambuja/Angkor and Zhenla/lower Mekong.
I don’t agree with some of the places that this author equates with some of these names, but we can put that aside for now.
This author identifies many places as vassals of Sanfoqi/Kambuja/Angkor, and many are prominent places on the Malay Peninsula and northern Sumatra that fall in the area of the trans-peninsular trade routes.
By contrast, this author is not able to identify many of the vassal states of Zhenla, but the ones he does are mainly along the coast of the Gulf of Thailand to the north of the trans-peninsular trade routes.
What I think we see here is that Sanfoqi/Kambuja/Angkor had control over a major trans-peninsular trade network, whereas Zhenla/lower Mekong was like a subsidiary state that was able to collect tribute from places on the northern rim of the Gulf of Thailand.
Given that Angkor was at the peak of its power at this time, I think that this is exactly what we should expect to see.
Here are the lists of vassals from the translation on:
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/39bce63e4e0642d3abce6c24db470760
Sanfoqi = The vassal states of this country include: Pengfeng ( Pahang ), Dengyanong ( Terengganu ), Lingyasijia (Langkasuka = Pattani), Jilandan ( Kelantan ), Foluoan (possibly Phatthalung), Riluoting (possibly Cherating ), Qianmai (possibly Lhokseumawe , Aceh), Bata (possibly the Batak people ), Danmaling (Tambralinga = Nakhon Si Thammarat), Jialuoxi (Grahi = Chaiya), Balinpeng ( Palembang ), Xintuo (Sunda), Jianbi (possibly Kampar), Lanwuli (Lamuri), and Xilan (Sri Lanka).
Zhenla = Vassal states of this country include: Dengliumei (Tambralinga = Nakhon Si Thammarat), Bosilan (possibly Sóc Trăng ), Luohu ( Lavo ), Sanpo (“Three Lakes,” unidentified), Zhenlifu (possibly Chanthaburi ), Maluowen (possibly the Kraburi River ), Luyang (unidentified), Tunlifu (unidentified), Pugan (Pagan), Wali (possibly Myeik ), Xipeng (unidentified), Duhuai (possibly Dawei ), and Xunfan (possibly Chumphon ).
its seems like history in general is a simplified version. imagine all the tribes, peoples, polities and states that existed but were never mentioned in records. the same thing probably happened all over the world, we have become more and more homogeneous and less diverse
I am in awe of your fervor and scholarship. My only comment would be some commentators (?) only made very imperfect contact with folks that were in port at the time of their recording. I have no reasonable explanation other than a hunch. In my experience in SEA, i have been told fantastical things that were offered in my contacts. Folklore is very powerful in the common mind. I greatly appreciate your findings and explanations.. True history, myth, legend, and folk beliefs are not always on the same page.
There is long historical connection with China from Kanchipuram. Rajendra chola’s invasion of Srivijaya is not spoken much.
Visit mine here
The Zhufan zhi was basically rediscovered by Hirth, after having been recompiled from the Ming encyclopedia Yongle dadian and then republished in two collectanea in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Occasional references to it exist in French publications, but it was Hirth who really brought it to the fore, having become acquainted with it while serving in the German diplomatic service. He began translating chapters which he then sent to correspondents for their judgment. One of these was the British consul in Chongqing, E.H. Fraser, who judging from G.E. Morrieon was an excellent Chinese scholar. What went into the 1911 publication then was an original German translation, that had been rendered into English starting in the 1890s (see Hirth’s bibliography of the period, it is mostly about the Zhufan zhi). The 1911 version then basically was still Hirth’s, but with corrections by Rockhill. What is hard to understand is that contemporary scholars still use this work and its assumptions.
Hello, from indonesia,
I live in sumatera,
Back in that time, Kampar is in the other side of your map,
It was Barus port, kampar origin name based from the tree name camphor,
barus-kampar-kampar barus,camphor.
Here in indonesia today we call it “kapur barus”.
zhufan zhi mention about ba-ta tribe, ba-ta also known batak tribe, their kingdom of batak tribes live only this area,
There’s a time when camphor more valuable then gold,
Well…
I dont know my friend…
I’m confused
Kamboja was at one time a vassal state to srivijaya empire through syailendra dynasty (the one that builds borobudur), this may explain the confusion
Prof. Kelley, could you check this article and give your argument about the place of Srivijaya?
The article’s link https://srivijaya2016.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-center-of-srivijaya.html
it will be grateful if you want to check this out
Dear Robby,
Thank you for your sharing this and my apologies for taking so long to respond.
There has long been what we can call a “Thai-Centric” view of “Srivijaya.” Let me explain why that is the case.
The textual study of “Srivijaya” has largely been based on 1) a few inscriptions that mention Srivijaya/Srivishaya and 2) information in Chinese sources about two different placenames: (Shili)Foshi and Sanfoqi.
George Coedes tried to link all of these together. What I have been trying to show is that they are three separate places. While that discussion can get complex, the easiest issue to resolve is the relationship between (Shili)Foshi and Sanfoqi. Coedes’s argument is that (Shili)Foshi is an earlier name for Sanfoqi.
Putting aside the linguistic problem that neither of these names can be made to represent the name “Srivijaya,” there is simply no evidence that links (Shili)Foshi with Sanfoqi. None. Zero.
What the textual evidence makes clear (or at least extremely strongly suggests) is that (Shili)Foshi was located somewhere in what is now southern Thailand. Pranjic P. Prasad states in this blog post that it was in the area of Chaiya. . . There is no way of knowing for certain. However that is one possibility.
Ok, so that’s fine, and if historians stopped there, then everything would be ok. However, what people have done is to follow Coedes’s claim that (Shili)Foshi was the same as Sanfoqi and Srivijaya. So, you get people like this author here who sees that (Shili)Foshi must have been in southern Thailand, and they then think “Ah hah!! So Srivijaya must have been in southern Thailand!!!” And then they go on to look at the information about Sanfoqi and Srivijaya and try to get it to fit, but it doesn’t. . . Because they are not the same place.
This is what I call the “Thai centric” view of “Srivijaya.” It is an idea that “Srivijaya” must have been in Thailand because the historical sources make it clear that (Shili)Foshi was there, and following Coedes’s claim that (Shili)Foshi = Sanfoqi = Srivijaya. . . they try to argue that Srivijaya was in southern Thailand.
They are right that (Shili)Foshi was in southern Thailand. But they should stop there, because those connections with Sanfoqi and Srivijaya are not valid.
That’s what happens in this blog post. There is a lot of information that is simply not correct, and I list some of it below.
Having said all that, there is one thing here that I find very interesting. In the History of the Tang there is information about someone who measured the shadow that the sun cast in certain places. There are people who have tried to figure that out, but I can’t tell if they are correct as I just don’t know the science behind this.
In this blog post, however, the author cites a presentation on “The Tilt of the Rotation Axis of the Earth” by Nipon Saipet, presented at the meeting of the Royal Scholars, Science Academy, on the 17th of January, A.D.2001.
This gentleman apparently knew how to better understand these calculations and with these calculations, the author places (Shili)Foshi in Singhanakhon district in Songkla province and a place called Heling in Yarang district (Langkasuka) in Pattani province.
From my textual research, I would place both of these places a bit further north, but I found it interesting to see that the general relationship between these two places is the same as what I see in the historical sources (meanwhile, many scholars have thought that Heling was on the island of Java, but that’s a long story. . .)
So, I don’t know if this helps or not, and my apologies for taking so long to respond.
There is no evidence for these statements:
Ho-ling, or Po-ling as I-ching stated some people pronounced the name; was from the combination of the word “Bodhi” and “Galinga”. Bodhi is a name of a tree and Galinga, at that time was the name of Indian tribes “Galingaras” who had moved from India to Malay Peninsula to establish their domicile at Ho-ling and Fo-shih.
So, one then can’t build on the above information to say this:
“An inscription discovered at Wat Wiang, Chaiya, dated 775 A.D., showed that the kingdom was called “Srivijaya”. However, the rulers of Chaiya were related to the Sailendra Dynasty in India [no evidence of that], so that, it could have been the origin of the Sailendra Dynasty in the peninsula as the name “Galinga” had obviously been related to the word “Ho-ling”.
“Fo-shih, the capital, was on the river “Fo-shih”, and it was the chief trading port with China.” [no evidence for this]
In 689A.D., I-ching described that Ho-ling, Tan-tan (Don-din of the history of Sui), and Pan-pan (I-ching called Pu-pen), all these states became subordinate to the new state of Fo-shih (Srivijaya). In fact, the country was named “Shih-li-fo-shih”. [As far as I remember, the only place he mentioned as being under the authority of (Shili)Foshi was Moluoyu]
Rokuro Kuwata compared with several evidence and concluded that Chih-tu had become “Shih-li-fo-shi” as the capital of the region. In 670-673 A.D., the king Ho-mi-to of Shih-li-fo- shih sent envoy to the great Tang. Rokuro Kuwata made a point that Shih-li-fo-shih sent envoys instead of Chih-tu as it was “the same state”.They sent 8 embassies
to the Tang court during 670-742 A.D. I-ching also recorded that the king of Fo-shih (Ho-
mi-to)possessed ships,probably for commerce, sailing between India and Chieh- cha (Kedah)
“Ho-lo-tan (Kelantan)” [there is no evidence to indicate that Heluodan/Ho-lo-tan was “Kelantan.” I’ve made the argument that this could me “kraton,” the first part of a longer name that is now lost]
“After Sailendra was expelled from Java, the major Srivijaya city-states formed a new allied state, called San-fo-tsi which was easily approved by the Song Dynasty as the former successor of Shih-li-fo-shih.” [There is absolutely no evidence for any of this]
Thank you very much for your excellent explanation, Prof. Kelly. The evidences that you present and argue in your blog and journal has opened my mind to make a little research myself to find the truth about Srivijaya. I am Indonesian, and here, almost everyone in Indonesian (not including me 😁) is convinced that Srivijaya is in Palembang.
And i have another request if you don’t mind. In the Zhu Fan Zhi (Hirth and Rockhill Version), p. 62, it is reported that Sanfoqi …. “This country to the east is conterminous with Jung-ya-lu [Note : Also called Chung-kia-lu]”. I had search it in Google that Jung-ya-lu is in the East Java and the real name is Janggala. It’s that correct?
I also found supporting information on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janggala
Dear Robby,
Thanks for your comment.
I would encourage you to use this newer translation of the Zhu Fan Zhi:
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/39bce63e4e0642d3abce6c24db470760
I don’t agree with the interpretations in this translation (I think that Sanfoqi is Kambuja and Shepo is some place around Lake Songkhla in southern Thailand), but it’s a better translation than Hirth and Rockhill, and it provides more updated references.
As for that name, Jung-ya-lu (Rongyalu 戎牙路), yes, it refers to a place in East Java.
But is that sentence correct? First, it’s not really accurate to translate the character in this setence (jie 接) as “coterminous.” It’s more vague than that. It means more like “it reaches” or “it connects with.”
Ok, so obviously this does not fit my explanation that Sanfoqi was Kambuja. However, if one thinks that Sanfoqi was Palembang, this statement also doesn’t make sense.
On pages 75-78, Hirth and Rockhill talk about a place they call “Java” (Shepo). I have written a whole paper in which I try to document that this was not Java, but instead, was the area around Songkhla. (https://leminhkhai.blog/a-working-paper-on-the-chinese-sources-on-early-southeast-asia/)
Then on pages 82-85, Hirth and Rockhill talk about a place they call “Central Java.” This is indeed about the island of Java. It starts by talking about places in West Java, and then it moves eastward and eventually mentions Rongyalu.
So, if you believe that Sanfoqi was at Palembang, even if you agree with me that Shepo was not Java, there are still many places on Java (mentioned in Hirth and Rockhill’s section on Central Java) that are mentioned in this text between Rongyalu and the area of Palembang. So the statement that to the east Sanfoqi “reaches” Rongyalu doesn’t work well for this either.
In general, I am always skeptical of information at the very beginning and the very end of sections in texts. Those are the easiest places for some later person to add information. I think that might be the case here, because regardless of where you think Sanfoqi was, that statement doesn’t make sense.
Finally, in case you do not know, a few years ago, I wrote a blog post that talked about the places that are listed in the Zhu Fan Zhi as vassals of “Sanfoqi” (https://leminhkhai.blog/the-singora-angkor-rivalry-the-greatest-story-of-premodern-southeast-asian-history-youve-never-heard/). It’s a long post, but the part at the beginning talks about the vassals.
If you believe that Sanfoqi is Palembang, then that list of vassals is very confusing. Among other things, one of Sanfoqi’s vassals is Palembang (巴林馮 Balinfeng ; Hirth and Rockhill = Pa-lin-fong) and another is Jambi (Jianbi 監篦; Hirth and Rockhill = Kien Pi).
Also, if you think that Sanfoqi was Palembang, then the order in which the places in the Zhu Fan Zhi are discussed is also confusing, as it moves from the mainland, down to Sanfoqi/Palembang, and then back to the mainland.
If, however, you understand that Sanfoqi was Kambuja/Angkor, then the information in the Zhu Fan Zhi is very logical. That’s what I try to show in that post.
However, this statement that to the east it reaches Rongyalu – that does not make any sense, unless it has the meaning of “to the east of Sanfoqi the most important trading center is Rongyalu.” In which case, Sanfoqi could mean either Kambuja or Palembang, but again, the Zhu Fan Zhi clearly records a place call “Palembang” that was a vassal of Sanfoqi. . .
In the information about Shepo, there is also information like this that cannot make sense regardless of where you think Shepo was. That type of information (“it is 5 days to the east of,” “it connects to,” etc.) is the weakest information in this text. So we have to use multiple texts to try to figure things out.