d almost entirely on Chinese
accounts which are fragmentary and not interested in anything but the
occasional relations of China with Fu-nan. The annals of the Tsin
dynasty[252] already cited say that from 265 A.D. onwards the kings
of Fu-nan sent several embassies to the Chinese Court, adding that the
people have books and that their writing resembles that of the Hu. The
Hu are properly speaking a tribe of Central Asia, but the expression
doubtless means no more than alphabetic writing as opposed to Chinese
characters and such an alphabet can hardly have had other than an
Indian origin. Originally, adds the Annalist, the sovereign was a
woman, but there came a stranger called Hun-Hui who worshipped the
Devas and had had a dream in which one of them gave him a bow[253] and
ordered him to sail for Fu-nan. He conquered the country and married
the Queen but his descendants deteriorated and one Fan-Hsun founded
another dynasty. The annals of the Ch'i dynasty (479-501) give
substantially the same story but say that the stranger was called
Hun-T'ien (which is probably the correct form of the name) and that he
came from Chi or Chiao, an unknown locality. The same annals state
that towards the end of the fifth century the king of Fu-nan who
bore the family name of Ch'iao-ch'en-ju[254] or Kaundinya and
the personal name of She-yeh-po-mo (Jayavarman) traded with Canton. A
Buddhist monk named Nagasena returned thence with some Cambojan
merchants and so impressed this king with his account of China that he
was sent back in 484 to beg for the protection of the Emperor. The
king's petition and a supplementary paper by Nagasena are preserved in
the annals. They seem to be an attempt to represent the country as
Buddhist, while explaining that Mahesvara is its tutelary deity.

The Liang annals also state that during the Wu dynasty (222-280) Fan
Chan, then king of Fu-nan, sent a relative named Su-Wu on an embassy
to India, to a king called Mao-lun, which probably represents
Murunda, a people of the Ganges valley mentioned by the
Puranas and by Ptolemy. This king despatched a return embassy to
Fu-nan and his ambassadors met there an official sent by the Emperor
of China.[255] The early date ascribed to these events is noticeable.

The Liang annals contain also the following statements. Between the
years 357 and 424 A.D. named as the dates of embassies sent to China,
an Indian Brahman called Ch'iao-ch'en-ju (Kaundinya) heard a
supernatur