Chenla

  General Description   According to Chinese records, Chenla (also known as Zhenla) ^[1] was the polity that ruled over much of mainland Southeast Asia after the decline of Funan. ^[2] As with Funan, this was likely not a unitary state, but rather a cluster of competing small city-states. ^[3] These states occupied much of modern Cambodia and northwestern Thailand, with sites all across the Mekong River Basin, and particularly dense clusters just before the river’s delta, in the Tonlé Sap region, and in the Upper Mun Valley. ^[3] With respect to Chenla’s chronological boundaries, many authors date its beginning to the mid-6th century, ^[3] that is, at the beginning of Funan’s century-long decline. ^[4] This is the chronology we follow, although it is worth noting that, according to the Chinese records, Chenla only conquered Funan in the 7th century. ^[5] The Chenla era came to a close at the turn of the the 9th century with the beginning of the Angkor period, traditionally dated from Jayavarman II’s coronation ceremony in 802 CE. ^[6]
Population and political organization
Although Chenla was probably a cluster of competing centres rather than a unitary polity, inscriptions suggest that there was an overall political hierarchy, at the top of which sat a vrah kamraten, that is, most likely, a deified ruler ^[3] Below this ruler, there was a series of elite ranks whose relationship to each other is not always clear, though no rank was higher than that of pura. ^[7] At the local level, poñ (settlement chiefs) exercised their authority over individual temples, which were important economic as well as ritual centres for their sustaining populace. ^[8]
No overall population estimates could be found in the literature, but the largest settlement probably housed over 20,000 families, ^[9] and Chinese records describe Chenla as ’a wealthy and militarily powerful country with over 30 cities’. ^[10]

[1]: (Miksic 2007, 426) John N. Miksic. 2007. Historical Dictionary of Ancient Southeast Asia. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

[2]: (Southworth 2004, 324) William A. Southworth. 2004. ’Chenla’, in Southeast Asia: A Historical Encyclopaedia, edited by Keat Gin Ooi, 324-26. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

[3]: (Higham 2014, 831) Charles Higham. 2014. ’From the Iron Age to Angkor: New Light on the Origins of a State’. Antiquity 88: 822-35.

[4]: (Hall 2010, 60-61) Kenneth R. Hall. 2010. A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Societal Development, 100-1500. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

[5]: (Miksic 2007, 426-27) John N. Miksic. 2007. Historical Dictionary of Ancient Southeast Asia. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

[6]: (Higham 2014, 254) Charles Higham. 2014. Early Mainland Southeast Asia: From First Humans to Angkor. Bangkok: River Books.

[7]: (Vickery 1998, 24) Michael Vickery. 1998. Society, Economics, and Politics in pre-Angkor Cambodia: The 7th-8th Centuries. Chicago: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies.

[8]: (Higham 2014, 831-32) Charles Higham. 2014. ’From the Iron Age to Angkor: New Light on the Origins of a State’. Antiquity 88: 822-35.

[9]: (Higham 2014, 293) Charles Higham. 2014. Early Mainland Southeast Asia: From First Humans to Angkor. Bangkok: River Books.

[10]: (Coe 2003, 60) Michael Coe. 2003. Angkor and the Khmer Civilization. London: Thames & Hudson.