Ancient Indian Colonization in South-East Asia c8.8

c8.8

A great deal of importance attaches to this king. As his successor sent an embassy to China in A.D. 243, Fan-che-man must have reigned about the first quarter of the third century A.D. This is the first fixed point in the chronology, not only of Fu-nan, but also of the Hindu colonization in South-east Asia. For, from the details noted above regarding the history of Fu-nan since its foundation by Kauṇḍinya, his reign cannot be placed later than the first century A.D. As the Hindu colonists reached almost the furthest point in Indo-China and established a kingdom there in the first century A.D., we must push back the beginnings of intercourse between India and South-east Asia considerably before this period to the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era.