Suvarna-Bhumi i.e., Aurea-Regio or Chryse ; and this record may have been the real basis of the earlier Cambojan tradition. But it must not be forgotten that in Ptolemy s map of the Indo-Chinese coast are found many Sanskrit names, indicating the existence of Hindu settlements at least as early as the 1st century of our era. The name of Kamboja, though in later days we find it subjected to fantastic charade-making after the Chinese fashion of etymology,[1] appears to be simply the transfer of a name famous in old Indian literature as that of a race and region on the N.W. of the Panjab, in or near the present Chitral. Such transfers were common, and many survive in Indo-
Chinese use or memory to this day.[2]It is a singular circumstance that some of the Cambojan legends collected by Bastian indications of which were also recorded by missionaries two centuries ago bring the second Indian immigration from a western region called Rom or Roma-visei. This will be noticed again.
Like other Indo-Chinese states Camboj a possesses written annals; but these do not commence till 1346 A.D. Hence they .only take up the history of the kingdom when its power, and perhaps its civilization, were already past their climax.
From the Chinese annals older information is obtained. These mention, under the name of fu-nan, and as early as the 12th century B.C., a kingdom embracing what afterwards became Camboja ; and the Emperor Hiao-wuti of the Han dynasty is alleged to have made Funan tributary, along with adjoining countries, circa 125 B.C. Some two centuries later the same annals place an immigration under a foreign prince, who became the founder of a dynasty, and is perhaps to be identified with the Indian leader of the native legends. The fourth king of this dynasty say in the latter part of the 2d century makes extensive conquests over the adjoining kingdoms and coasts, and takes the name of Ta- wany (" great king"), probably a translation of the Indian title Mahd-rdja, which reappears some centuries later in Arab narratives as that of the King of the Isles. It is alleged, too, at this time, that the people of Ta-tsin, i.e., of the Roman empire, including Western Asia, frequented the ports of Funan for trade. This circumstance is highly probable when we consider that Ptolemy attests such voyages as having been made at least occasionally, in the 1st or 2d century, whilst the Arab narratives show that they were habitual in the 9th.
Cambojan legend, like that of nearly all the Indo-Chinese countries, couples the introduction of Buddhism (perhaps rather its re-introduction) with the name of Buddhaghosha. However that may be, it is about the 1000th year of Buddha (i.e., according to the ordinary calculation 457 A.D.), and near the date usually assigned to Buddhaghosha, that the traditions place a great king, Phutamma Surivong, i.e., Padma Suryavansi ; and it is at this epoch of the 5th and Gth centuries that Gamier is inclined to place the great kings, who were the founders of the older architectural monuments. Fergusson would place these several centuries later, but the whole subject of their chronology is as yet too obscure. From about this time the kingdom is known in Chinese records as Chinla, and to those days of splendour may be referred an old Chinese proverbial saying, " Rich as Chinla." It appears long to have ruled over the valley of the Menam (since the 14th century the scat of Siamese monarchy), and perhaps at one time to the shores of the Bay of Bengal. In the reign of Prakrama Bahu of Ceylon (1155 A.D.) we hear, in the annals of that island, of his intercourse with Camboja (Jour. As. Soc. Bengal, vol xli. p. 198).
A very remarkable account of Chinla or Camboja, by an envoy sent from Peking shortly after the death of Kublai Khan (viz., in 1295-1297), has been translated by Abel- Re musat, and affords us a strange peep into the midst of a civilization now in the profoundest decay. The accuracy of his details regarding topography and surviving monu ments of architecture attests the writer s truthfulness. The court and capital are described as very splendid, whilst (as in all Indo-Chinese countries) some traits of the deepest barbarism, in manners show themselves. The kingdom possessed many fortified cities ; but its power was already in decline, for it had not long before suffered from one of those invasions of the Thai which have ever since been wearing it away. Again and again such invasions and temporary occupation were repeated, especially after the foundation of the Siamese monarchy by another branch of the Thai in 1350.
The Portuguese found their way to Camboja not long after the conquest of Malacca, and the kingdom still retained a good deal of the shell of its old splendour. Yet its native force appears by this time to have been in reality almost burnt out ; and towards the end of the 16th century the land swarmed with foreign adventurers, both European and Asiatic, among the latter of whom. Japanese were prominent. At the instigation of some of these adven turers we find the Spanish authorities at Manilla (1594- 1598) engaging in " fillibustering " expeditions to Camboja, with little result. Somewhat later the Portuguese had factories in the country, and then the Dutch (1635). Notices of English trade with Camboja appear as early as 1616. In 1641 Gerard van Wusthoff of the Dutch factory conducted a remarkable expedition up the Great River to Vienchang, the capital of one of the Laos states, about 1000 miles from the sea, a feat never repeated till the French mission of 1866-68. In 1643 Mynheer Regemortis, envoy from Batavia, with all the Europeans of the factory, on his way to court, were assassinated under Portuguese instigation, and this put a discreditable and too charac teristic end to the official relations of Europeans with Camboja. The English established a factory at Pulo Condore, a group of islands off the coast of the Cambojan delta in 1702, but this also came to a speedy end in the massacre of its members by the Macassar sepoys of the garrison. The first missionary who entered Camboja was Gaspar da Cruz, a Dominican, in 1555. He has left some curious particulars which are given by Purchas.
stones of Siam and the now rising kingdom of Cochin- China. The former about 1690 annexed large tracts on the N.W., augmented a century later, and again in 1810-12, by seizures which embraced the districts adjoin ing the Great Lake, at the very heart of the old monarchy ; the latter in the middle of the last century absorbed the whole of the Delta ; and Camboja was thus reduced to its present narrow limits. In 1846 a king was enthroned under the joint investiture of Siam and Cochin-China. The French invasion of the Anamite provinces in the Delta took place in 1859, and these v/ere formally ceded in 1862. Meantime Camboja seemed about to be finally swallowed up by Siam. It was manifest, however, that the prospects of the new French possession would be materially restricted if all above the Delta were Siamese ; and France began to claim the character of protector of Camboja. In 1864 the king, Morodam, was solemnly crowned in the presence of
a French and of a Siamese representative ; and a treaty was- ↑ 1 The syllables of Kamboja have been tortured by the later natives to mean " born of the waters," " race of Kam (Khmer)," and what not. The modern Chinese have corrupted Kamboja through Kan-phu-che into Tuny-po-chai, probably to meet some fancy of a similar kind.
- ↑ The occurrence of the name Camboja on one of the repliche of the inscriptions of Asoka, in connection with the names of regions in the extreme south of India, has lately raised a question whether the Indo- Chinese Camboj^did not even then exist.
