Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c8.5

c8.5

The old capital of Fu-nan was probably Vyādhapura, 'the city of hunter', mentioned in a later inscription. The Chinese call it T'o-mu which is perhaps a transcription of the Khmer word *dmak* or *dalmak* which has the same meaning as Vyādhapura. The location of this city is not definitely known. Pelliot identified it with Angkor Borei, but Coedés places it further to the north-east, on the other side of the Mekong, at the foot of the hillock called Ba Phnom, near the village of Banam, and thinks that these two place-names have reserved the memory of the ancient name of the kingdom. According to the *History of the* *Liang Dynasty* the capital city was about 100 miles² from the sea. This is approximately the distance between Ba Phnom and Oc-eo whose archaeological remains described in the preceding lecture, seem to indicate that it was an emporium of the foreign traders, if not the actual port itself.