Canasapura

Canasapura
c. 700–970
Proposed locations of ancient kingdoms in Menam and Mekong Valleys in the 7th century based on the details provided in the Chinese leishu, Cefu Yuangui, and others.
Proposed locations of ancient kingdoms in Menam and Mekong Valleys in the 7th century based on the details provided in the Chinese leishu, Cefu Yuangui, and others.
CapitalMuang Sema
Religion
Buddhism, Hinduism
GovernmentMonarchy
Historical eraPost-classical
• Established
c. 700
• Disestablished
970
Succeeded by
Khorakhapura
Dvaravati
Today part ofThailand

Canasapura or Canāśa, Śri Canāśa (Thai: จนาศปุระ, จานาศปุระ, ศรีจนาศะ,[1] Chinese: 迦羅舍), possibly the Jiā Luó Shě Fú (迦逻舍佛, Kalasapura) of the Cefu Yuangui,[a][3][4]: 20  is an ancient kingdom of what is now Thailand, known from two inscriptions and, on one reading, from the Chinese annals as well.[5][6] The two stones are the Bo Ika inscription (K. 400), found at Muang Sema in Nakhon Ratchasima Province,[7] and the Śri Canāśa inscription, found at Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya and dated 937, which names four of its rulers.[8]

Where the kingdom lay is not agreed. It is usually placed in the upper valley of the Mun River in present-day Isan, around Muang Sema, while Tatsuo Hoshino identifies it with the Ge Luo She Fen of the Chinese records and reads those records as showing its core in the northern Chao Phraya plain and the Pasak valley after it lost the Nakhon Ratchasima area to Dvaravati.[2]: 28, 33–34  Peter Skilling cautions that the evidential base is unusually narrow, Canāśa being attested in the two inscriptions and in no literary source.[9]: 81 

Inscriptions

K. 400, the Bo Ika inscription, records a donation to a Buddhist community by a king of Canāśa. It is dated to about 790 CE in the database of the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre,[7] whereas George Cœdès, who published it, took it for a seventh-century text.[2]: 28  The passage has been rendered in English as:[10]

Twenty female buffalos with pendant udders (lambastanyaḥ) and having baby calves, and fifty milch cows, heavy with the burden of their udders, followed by their well-nourished calves, ten female and male slaves, happy in their minds, and four elephants were given to the [Buddhist] community by the king of Canāśa, whose mind was fixed upon awakening.

No. 117 Śri Canāśa inscription displayed at Bangkok National Museum

The Śri Canāśa inscription, in Sanskrit and Khmer, was found at Ayutthaya in 1939 and is dated 937.[b] It mentions four rulers of Sri Canasa, starting with the first king named Bhagadatta, followed by Sri Sundaraprakrama, who had a son named Sri Sundararavarman, and King Sri Sundararavarman had 2 sons, the elder named Narapatisimhavarman who later ascended the throne of the Sri Canasa kingdom. His younger brother, Mangalavarman (มงคลวรมัน, Mongkhon Woraman), created this inscription to celebrate the creation of the image of the queen mother, the wife of Lord Shiva, in 859 CE.[8] Hoshino notes that it carries Khmer vocabulary, and that the last entry concerning the region in the New Book of Tang falls in 907.[2]: 34 

Identification and localization

Hoshino identifies Canāśapura with the polity the Chinese annals call Jia Luo She Fu and, in a second spelling, Ge Luo She Fen, reading the final character as a rendering of the Sanskritic pūra and pointing to the buri and bun of Phetburi, Chanthaburi, Phetchabun and Si Khottabun as its surviving forms; he offers Śrī Canāśapura as "a likely candidate" for the name behind it rather than as a settled identification.[2]: 27–28  On his reading the state was inland and had neither a port nor access to the coast, and the two Chinese reports on it disagree, one placing it north of Dvaravati and the other giving it a common eastern border with Dvaravati. He explains the difference as a change over time rather than as an error: between the dates of the two reports Dvaravati expanded north-eastward and took the areas of Nakhon Ratchasima and Chaiyaphum, after which Canāśapura's territory receded to what he calls its original core in the northern half of the Chao Phraya plain and the Pa Sak valley.[2]: 33–34  He further identifies it with Qian/Gan Zhi Fu, which he places at Si Thep, and cites Dhida Saraya's 1985 study in support of the equation.[2]: 34, 42, 55 

Skilling describes the polity as a mystery that speculation cannot resolve, and has raised the possibility that the unnamed realm of the Wat Chanthuek inscription of about 550–650 CE, whose queen is described as a daughter of the Lord of Dvaravati, was Canāśa, while noting that this too cannot be determined on present evidence.[9]: 81  Anurak Depimai states that Si Thep and Muang Sema became allied states of Dvaravati during the 7th century, citing shared town planning and material culture between the two sites, though without new epigraphic evidence specific to Canāśa itself.[11]: 50 

Hoshino also treats the population as Tai-speaking, though he presents this as an assumption from which a narrative follows rather than as a conclusion: "assuming that Śrī Canāśapura was already Tai-dominated in the eighth century", he reasons, its people would have sought access to the Gulf by the Bang Pakong River, been barred first by the Mon of Dvaravati and later by the Khmer, and moved west into the Pa Sak valley and the lands north of coastal Dvaravati.[2]: 38 [c] He credits the state with 20,000 warriors and groups it in the annals' single category with Xiū Luó Fēn and Gān Bì, all three fortified.[2]: 54–55 

History

The time of the establishment of Canāśa is unknown. It probably existed parallel to the Dvaravati culture of the Mon in what is now central Thailand, and the Khmer of its two inscriptions has been taken to place it on the periphery of the Dvaravati sphere, a network of city-states in the Chao Phraya plain. Both Hinduism and Buddhism were practised there.[9]: 81 [13]

After the reign of Narapatisimhavarman, Canāśa disappears from the record. It may have been absorbed into the Khmer Empire under Jayavarman V, on the evidence of the Muang Sema inscription of about 970 CE, which names Driḍhabhakti Simhavarman (ทฤฒภักดี สิงหวรมัน), taken to be Narapatisimhavarman under a new and reduced style.[14]

Notes

  1. ↑ The two proposed Chinese names are written differently: the form given here is 迦逻舍佛, while Hoshino's is 哥羅舍分, Ge Luo She Fen, which he treats as a second spelling of Jia Luo She Fu.[2]: 27 
  2. ↑ Skilling notes that old Khorat lay on the routes later taken by Ayutthayan armies marching to the plateau, so the stone may have been carried south at some later date rather than indicating any presence of Canasapura at Ayutthaya.[9]: 81 
  3. ↑ Hiram Woodward regards Hoshino's argument that the peoples of these polities spoke a Tai language as tendentious, and holds that it should be used neither to support nor to invalidate his geographical conclusions.[12]: 87 

References

  1. ↑ Songtham Pansakun (2011). "A Study of Place in Khmer Kingdom" (PDF) (in Thai). Silpakorn University. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 April 2023. Retrieved 26 September 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Hoshino, T (2002). "Wen Dan and its neighbors: the central Mekong Valley in the seventh and eighth centuries.". In M. Ngaosrivathana; K. Breazeale (eds.). Breaking New Ground in Lao History: Essays on the Seventh to Twentieth Centuries. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. pp. 25–72.
  3. ↑ ศิริพจน์ เหล่ามานะเจริญ (4 February 2022). "ทวารวดี ในบันทึกของจีน". Matichon (in Thai). Retrieved 28 April 2024.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  4. ↑ "钦定四库全书: 册府元龟卷九百五十七宋王钦若等撰". Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China (in Chinese). Retrieved 14 May 2025.
  5. ↑ Higham: Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations. 2004, S. 63.
  6. ↑ Goodall & Revire 2023, p. 292.
  7. 1 2 "จารึกบ่ออีกา" (in Thai). Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre. 2023. Retrieved 26 September 2023.
  8. 1 2 "จารึกศรีจานาศะ" (in Thai). Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre. 2023. Retrieved 26 September 2023.
  9. 1 2 3 4 Anna Bennett; Hunter Watson, eds. (2019). Defining Dvāravatī: Essays from the U Thong International Workshop 2017 (PDF). Distributed by Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai. DASTA and BIA. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 May 2026.
  10. ↑ Goodall & Revire 2023, p. 283.
  11. ↑ Depimai, Anurak (2025). "Ban Wang Phai Inscription: The Historical Context of The Relationship Between Si Thep Dvaravati and Chenla". Damrong Journal of the Faculty of Archaeology Silpakorn University (in Thai). 24 (2). doi:10.14456/drj.2025.12. Archived from the original on 9 March 2026.
  12. ↑ Woodward, Hiram (2010). "Dvaravati, Si Thep, and Wendan". Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association. 30: 87–97.
  13. ↑ Dhida Saraya: (Sri) Dvaravati. The Initial Phase of Siam’s History. Muang Boran Publishing, Bangkok 1999. Zitiert nach Dougald J.W. O'Reilly: Early Civilizations of Southeast Asia. AltaMira Press, Lanham MD/Plymouth 2007, S. 82.
  14. ↑ "จารึกเมืองเสมา" (in Thai). Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre. 2023. Retrieved 26 September 2023.

Bibliography

Wikimedia Commons logo
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Canasapura.
This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.