Chao ju-kwa, in his famous ethnographical work published during the first half of the thirteenth century (between 1205 and 1258 a.d.), mentions, among the one hundred and more countries of Western India (Hsi- T'ien = the Sind of Edrīsī and later Arab writers), that of Nan-ni-hwa-lo, of which he gives an interesting account. This has been made readily accessible to non-Sinologists through a translation by Professor Hirth which appeared in an earlier number of this Journal.

The New History of the T'ang dynasty relates that in a.d. 648 the Chinese envoy Wang Hsüan-ts'ê, having raised an army in Tibet and Nep¯al, advanced into Central India as far as the town Ch'a-po-ho-lo, which he stormed after three days’ siege. The Na-fu-ti(or Ti-na-fu-ti) A-lo-na-shun, an usurper who had just seized the throne after the death of King Śīlāditya (i.e. Harṣavardhana Śīlāditya of Kanauj), thereupon fled, but was shortly afterwards taken prisoner. A band of his dispersed followers, however, took position, barring the way across the Kan-t'o-wei River, but were in their turn routed by Hsüan-ts'ê's second in command.

“Nāgarakretāgama” is the title of a Javanese poem composed by a native bard named Prapañca, in honour of his sovereign Hayam Wuruk (1350–1389), the greatest ruler of Mājapāhit. It has recently been edited with his customary scholarship by Dr. Brandes, and its contents were shortly afterwards analyzed by Dr. Kern. Its date, in so far as can be made out from internal evidence, must be put down to about 1380. At this period the Mājapāhit empire had reached the zenith of its power, and embraced, besides most of the archipelago, several, though little better than nominal, dependencies on the southern part of the Malay Peninsula. Furthermore, friendly and trading relations had been established with a number of States on the Indo-Chinese mainland. In the course of his pæan of praise for his great sovereign, the poet gives a long enumeration of all such countries. This is where the interest of the production chiefly lies, for though it be merely a question of a list of bare toponyms, yet the simple fact of some of them being mentioned at such a date gives rise to issues, as we shall see directly, of high importance for the elucidation of the historical geography, as well as of several obscure points in the early history of the countries concerned.

While going over Messrs. Sinclair and Ferguson's able translation of the “Travels of Pedro Teixeira,” recently (1902) published by the Hakluyt Society, I have noticed that several names of places on the Indo-Chinese Peninsula have been left unidentified. As they all are important for historical geography, I venture to hope that the following short notes on them may prove acceptable to those who take an interest in the subject.

From several centuries before the Christian era a double stream of traders and adventurers began to flow into Indo-China from, respectively, Northern and Southern India, reaching the upper parts of the peninsula by land through Burmā and its southern coasts by sea, and founding there settlements and commercial stations. Brahmanism and, later on, Buddhism (third century b.c.), with most other achievements of Indian culture, followed in the wake of these pioneers; and thus it is to ancient India that Indo-China owes her early civilization. By the dawn of the Christian era, as I have elsewhere demonstrated, Buddhism had already gained a firm foothold on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula near the head of the Gulf of Siām, whence it advanced and soon spread all over the country of the Më-Nam Delta. On the other hand, Brahmanism had established itself in Central and Northern Siām, where Swankhalôk and Sukhôthai formed its principal foci. It is not till about four centuries later that we begin to hear of Nagara Śrī Dharmarāja (Dharmanagara), or Ligor, as the chief centre of both Buddhism and Brahmanism on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula; and to find both faiths—but more especially Buddhism—firmly established in the territory of P‘hraḥ Prathom in the present Nakhōn C‘hai Śrī province, in the Më-Nam Delta.

Having been for years past engaged in researches on the early history of Siātn and its border countries, I had, as a matter of course, to go into their ancient geography— a hitherto unexplored field—and this naturally led me to a study of the documents that the Western geographers of antiquity left us, more especially Ptolemy, who gives us the first collection of anything like authentic data on the countries in question. Thus it came to pass that I found myself hopelessly entangled in the “selva selvaggia, ed aspra e forte” of Ptolemy's geography of India extra-Gangem. I must confess that the results attending my first attempts at interpreting this portion of the work of the great Alexandrian were far from encouraging. This was, however, to be expected, seeing that even master hands like those of Klaproth, Cunningham, Yule, Lassen, and others, whilst meeting with fair success in identifying Ptolemy's names of places west of the meridian of the Ganges, had failed to evolve the slightest order out of the chaos of his trans-Gangetic geography, and to locate with certainty even a single one of the numerous cities he names beyond the outskirts of the Gulf of Bengal.