History - Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Northern Thailand - page 975

Early Empire
The history of this great region is also the history of two great civilisations colliding. China
and India may be making headlines today as the emerging giants of the 21st century, but it
is old news. They have long been great powers and have historically influenced the
Mekong region, from art and architecture to language and religion.
Indian culture was disseminated through much of the Mekong region via contact with
seafaring Indian merchants calling at trading settlements along the coast of present-day
Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Some of these settlements were part of nascent king-
doms, the largest of which was known as Funan to the Chinese, and occupied much of what
is southeastern Cambodia today.
The Funanese constructed an elaborate system of canals both for transportation and the
irrigation of rice. The principal port city of Funan was Oc-Eo in the Mekong Delta and ex-
cavations here reveal contact between Funan and Indonesia, Persia and even the Mediter-
ranean.
Funan was famous for its refined art and architecture, and its kings embraced the wor-
ship of Hindu deities Shiva and Vishnu and, concurrently, Buddhism. The linga (phallic to-
tem) was the focus of ritual and an emblem of kingly might, a feature that was to evolve
further in the Angkorian cult of the god king.
There are few surviving contemporary accounts of Angkor, but Chinese emissary Chou Ta Kuan
lived there in 1296 and his observations have been republished as The Customs of Cambodia, a fascin-
ating insight into that period.