s in Fu-nan.[251] It is therefore safe to conclude
that they must have reached these regions about the beginning of the
Christian era and, should any evidence be forthcoming, there is no
reason why this date should not be put further back. At present we can
only say that the establishment of Hindu kingdoms probably implies
earlier visits of Hindu traders and that voyages to the south coast of
Indo-China and the Archipelago were probably preceded by settlements
on the Isthmus of Kra, for instance at Ligor.

The motives which prompted this eastward movement have been variously
connected with religious persecution in India, missionary enterprise,
commerce and political adventure. The first is the least probable.
There is little evidence for the systematic persecution of Buddhists
in India and still less for the persecution of Brahmans by Buddhists.
Nor can these Indian settlements be regarded as primarily religious
missions. The Brahmans have always been willing to follow and
supervise the progress of Hindu civilization, but they have never
shown any disposition to evangelize foreign countries apart from Hindu
settlements in them. The Buddhists had this evangelistic temper and
the journeys of their missionaries doubtless stimulated other classes
to go abroad, but still no inscriptions or annals suggest that the
Hindu migrations to Java and Camboja were parallel to Mahinda's
mission to Ceylon. Nor is there any reason to think that they were
commanded or encouraged by Indian Rajas, for no mention of their
despatch has been found in India, and no Indian state is recorded to
have claimed suzerainty over these colonies. It therefore seems likely
that they were founded by traders and also by adventurers who followed
existing trade routes and had their own reasons for leaving India. In
a country where dynastic quarrels were frequent and the younger sons
of Rajas had a precarious tenure of life, such reasons can be easily
imagined. In Camboja we find an Indian dynasty established after a
short struggle, but in other countries, such as Java and Sumatra,
Indian civilization endured because it was freely adopted by native
chiefs and not because it was forced on them as a result of conquest.

The inscriptions discovered in Camboja and deciphered by the labours
of French savants offer with one lacuna (about 650-800 A.D.) a fairly
continuous history of the country from the sixth to the thirteenth
centuries. For earlier periods we depen