Not from a Single Seed: Rethinking Funan, Dvaravati, and the Birth of Early Southeast Asia

Mainland Southeast Asia’s early civilizational landscape has long been interpreted through the lens of central empires like Funan and the Khmer, imagined as singular cradles from which culture radiated outward. Yet emerging archaeological, epigraphic, and religious evidence, alongside outsider accounts from Chinese pilgrims, suggests a more intricate reality: a diverse network of city-states and sacred hubs flourishing independently across riverine basins. This essay revisits that contested terrain, weighing the rival frameworks of centralized genesis versus pluralist emergence, and argues that Southeast Asia’s true foundation lies not in a singular origin, but in the convergence of many, a thousand flowers in simultaneous bloom.

Pallava-Script Stone Inscription from the Dvaravati Cultural Horizon: This inscription, carved in early Pallava Grantha script and composed in Sanskrit verse, reflects the deep penetration of Indic literary and ritual traditions into the Chao Phraya basin. Unearthed in present-day Nakhon Pathom, it reveals both the religious commitment of local elites, likely Buddhist, and their linguistic sophistication, adopting poetic meters common in South India. Rather than evidence of imperial subjugation, such inscriptions suggest selective adaptation and localized articulation of broader transregional ideas. They stand as textual proof of Dvaravati’s civic religiosity and its positioning as a learned, if decentralized, constellation of sacred urban centers. [source]

Interpreting the Terrain through the Chinese Pilgrims’ Gaze

In the early centuries of the first millennium CE, two renowned Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, Faxian (法顯) and Xuanzang (玄奘), set forth on transformative journeys across the Indic and Southeast Asian worlds. Though their motives were religious, their records now stand as some of the most precious external testimonies to the political and cultural landscape of early Southeast Asia. The clarity of their accounts may be softened by distance, oral transmission, and the cosmological geography of their time, but their observations yield consistent patterns of civilizational presence.

Faxian, writing in the early 5th century, provides only fleeting glimpses of Southeast Asia, mentioning lands like Dvipantara in vague directional terms. Yet even in these passing references, there is acknowledgment of organized religious life and Buddhist influence beyond the Indian subcontinent. More illuminating, however, is the record of Xuanzang in the 7th century. His journey, though primarily India-bound, presents richer insights into the Southern Maritime Route and the polities that dotted its shores.

Pilgrimage Route of Xuanzang (c. 629–645 CE) — The renowned Chinese monk Xuanzang embarked on a seventeen-year journey from Chang’an to Nalanda and beyond, traversing Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and returning via the maritime route. Though his primary aim was the acquisition of authentic Buddhist scriptures, his travel records, particularly from later stages, include scattered references to Southeast Asian polities. Among these is Tolopoti, a kingdom he noted in the southern direction, possibly corresponding to Dvaravati, though its exact placement remains debated. His route, indirect yet insightful, offers glimpses into the cultural constellation of early Southeast Asia, as seen through the lens of a Mahayana scholar navigating a web of beliefs, languages, and political orders. [source]

Xuanzang refers directly to Funan and Zhenla, chronicling the transformation from one into the other, a dynastic and cultural shift centered in the Lower Mekong basin. These references confirm not only continuity of governance but also the growing complexity of statehood in this region. His text also refers to a kingdom named Tolopoti, a transcription that many scholars associate with Dvaravati, though its exact geographic identification remains elusive. The phonetic resemblance is strong, but the directional markers in Xuanzang’s text are inconsistent. Some place it southeast of Zhenla, others to the west, leading to the possibility that “Tolopoti” may have referred either to a confederation of central Thai polities or to a misunderstood transmission of a localized name. Regardless of the imprecision, its mere appearance testifies to a substantial presence, sufficient to be transmitted through the complex oral-diplomatic networks that informed his travel.

In addition to Zhenla and Tolopoti, Xuanzang’s record mentions Mo-ho-hsin and Pan-p’an, possible references to regions or proto-polities along the Irrawaddy and southern isthmus respectively. These signals, despite their fuzziness, map a triangulated landscape in which three major basins, Irrawaddy, Chao Phraya, and Lower Mekong, had become known poles of civilizational weight. They were no longer obscure hinterlands, but vibrant zones visible from afar through the fabric of pilgrimage, trade, and regional lore.

The pilgrim narratives thus substantiate a conceptual model of Southeast Asia not as a chain of imperial succession, but as a web of coexisting and sometimes rival powers. From this triangulated terrain emerges the contest between two interpretative frames, one that sees diversity and diffusion, and one that traces everything back to a single cradle.

Archaeological Evolution of the Three Poles, with Focus on the Chao Phraya Basin

The archaeological corpus of mainland Southeast Asia has, over the past century, confirmed what the Chinese pilgrims only hinted at: the region’s civilizational roots are distributed across multiple centers. These centers, situated along the Irrawaddy, Tonle Sap or Lower Mekong, and Chao Phraya river systems, demonstrate layered cultural development, material sophistication, and complex sociopolitical formations. Each emerged independently, though in active dialogue with neighboring powers across the South China Sea and Indian Ocean.

In the Irrawaddy basin, the Pyu city-states offer the earliest and clearest signs of urbanism. Excavations at Sri Ksetra, Halin, and Beikthano reveal grid-planned cities, brick stupas, and inscriptions in both Brahmi and Pyu scripts. The integration of Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, evident in architectural motifs and reliquary contents, speaks to a cosmopolitan ethos shaped by Indian influence and overland trade routes connecting to Yunnan and Bengal. By the 6th century, Pyu culture had solidified into a sophisticated network that laid the foundation for the rise of Pagan in centuries to come.

To the east, the Tonle Sap–Lower Mekong complex, anchored first by Funan and then Zhenla, exhibits early signs of state formation with maritime orientation. The archaeological site of Óc Eo reveals a vibrant entrepôt economy, with Roman, Indian, and Chinese artifacts attesting to long-distance exchange. Urban planning, canal systems, and extensive brickwork in temple construction signal a society capable of complex engineering and ritual expression. Inscriptions in Sanskrit and Old Khmer confirm early literacy and religious patronage, especially in Vaishnavite and later Mahayana traditions. This basin, the cultural ancestor of the Khmer Empire, demonstrates both scale and continuity in the civilizational arc of Cambodia.

But it is in the Chao Phraya basin that the archaeological record takes a more fractured, yet deeply revealing form. Here, the story is not of centralized empire, but of a constellation of city-states—most notably in the Dvaravati cultural horizon. The region lacks monumental capitals like Angkor or Pagan, but compensates with an archaeological richness suggestive of both diversity and cultural sophistication.

Excavations in Nakhon Pathom, U Thong, and Lopburi have unearthed a unique confluence of Indic and indigenous aesthetics. The use of Pallava script on stone inscriptions, such as the Wat Phra Ngam stele, is particularly noteworthy. These inscriptions refer not just to religious concepts but to specific polities like “Dvaravati-vibhuti,” indicating self-awareness and political identity. Moreover, the deliberate application of Sanskrit poetic meters (malini, vasantatilaka) in stone inscriptions points to a class of learned elites, likely Brahmanical or Buddhist, employed by urban rulers.

The presence of round stupas, “chakra” motifs, and ritual architecture echo Indian prototypes, but their stylistic variations are localized. What emerges is a mosaic of spiritual centers, not merely Buddhist, but ritualistically syncretic, linking river towns in a loose mandala pattern. The region’s strategic position between maritime and overland routes made it a nexus of movement, trade, and migration, but not of unification under a single banner.

Where the Irrawaddy and Lower Mekong suggest vertical power, pyramidal, centralized, and eventually imperial, the Chao Phraya basin suggests horizontal articulation: a fabric of city-states, ceremonial hubs, and trade nodes negotiating identity and autonomy. It is this very looseness, this refusal to conform to empire, that lends the Chao Phraya archaeological record its unique interpretive power.

This decentralized landscape of the Chao Phraya basin was not merely political. It was religiously pluralistic, a crucible where divergent Indic belief systems competed for spiritual and institutional supremacy. The physical heart of this contest lies in the stupa, or sathupa, which became the architectural emblem of Buddhist sanctity. These structures, ranging from modest reliquaries to towering symbolic mounds, anchored many Dvaravati settlements. Their omnipresence in sites like Nakhon Pathom and Suphanburi reflects Buddhism’s entrenchment, not just as a faith but as a social engine that shaped civic ritual and urban layout.

Yet alongside these stupas, one finds unmistakable traces of Brahmanical cosmology. Lingas, yoni altars, and Vishnuite imagery coexisted, sometimes literally, within the same sacred precincts. This religious dualism speaks to a deeper sociological bifurcation, inherited from the varna schema of the Indian subcontinent. In this context, Buddhism aligned closely with the merchant class, the Vaishya, or visana varna, as it was called in regional dialects. It offered a moral cosmology compatible with commerce, trade routes, and urban lay society. Its ethical structure, grounded in karma, charity (dāna), and merit-making, provided the ideological backbone for trade-linked republics and semi-independent city-states.

Evolution of the Brahmi Script into South and Southeast Asian Writing Systems: This chart traces the lineage of the ancient Brahmi script (3rd century BCE), the mother script of most South and Southeast Asian alphabets. As Brahmi diverged into northern and southern branches, the southern scripts, particularly the Pallava script (c. 6th–8th century CE), became instrumental in transmitting Indic literacy across maritime and inland Southeast Asia. The Pallava Grantha variant provided the template for numerous regional scripts, Khmer, Javanese, Mon, and Old Thai among them. Its angular style and phonetic sophistication made it suitable for inscribing both Sanskrit and local vernaculars, playing a pivotal role in sacral architecture, statecraft, and historical memory in the region’s formative centuries. [source]

Conversely, Brahmanism (later codified into what is now termed early Hinduism) was the faith of political power. Its complex sacrificial rituals, caste-bound authority, and divine kingship narratives appealed to the ruling class, the Kshatriya, as well as the intellectual custodians of ritual, the Brahmin elite. The king, as chakravartin (universal ruler), could not merely preside over a trade hub; he was to embody divine order, restore dharma, and wield absolute legitimacy. This theological architecture made Brahmanism an ideal ideological ally for centralizing regimes, as later observed in Funan and its successor Zhenla.

It is this cultural divergence, perhaps more than geography alone, that conditioned the trajectories of the three poles. In the Lower Mekong, the Funan-Zhenla lineage leaned toward centralized, Brahmanical models of kingship. In the Irrawaddy, though initially Buddhist, the Pyu kingdoms began embracing Mahayana cosmologies that hinted at divine monarchs. But in the Chao Phraya basin, the proliferation of Buddhist stupa-centric polities suggested a civic, trade-oriented, and relatively egalitarian religious polity.

“Ye Dhamma” Stone Inscription at Phra Pathom Chedi (ca. 12th Buddhist Century): Inscribed in early Pallava script and composed in Pāli, this stele preserves one of the most venerated verses in Theravāda Buddhism: the Ye Dhamma Hetuppabhavā stanza, a succinct formulation of the Buddha’s core teaching on causality. Found near the stupa precincts of Phra Pathom Chedi in Nakhon Pathom, it exemplifies a pattern common to Dvaravati inscriptions in the Chao Phraya basin, where such Buddha-praising verses were prominently engraved to mark spiritual devotion and doctrinal orthodoxy, especially among the merchant (vaisya/visana) communities. However, the Nakhon Pathom inscription diverges from this norm. Though fragmentary, its structure suggests a shift in emphasis from canonical tribute to the Buddha, toward glorifying a royal patron, possibly reflecting a localized ideological adaptation where political authority began to rival religious doctrine as the source of social legitimacy. [source]

Thus, Dvaravati did not aspire to centralization in the way that Funan did. Its spiritual preference and class alliances made it a natural matrix for decentralized city-states, in dialogue rather than subordination with one another. This does not imply political weakness, but a different logic of organization, more akin to the Peloponnesian League than an empire, a system where autonomy and shared cosmology coexisted.

Emergence of the Two Competing Theories

The preceding evidence, textual, architectural, and geographical, has set the stage for two diverging frameworks to explain the origins and structure of mainland Southeast Asia’s early civilization. Each theory draws from the same pool of material but channels it toward contrasting conclusions.

The first, often termed the “Thousands Flowers Theory”, proposes that the mainland was never unified under a singular cultural or political authority during its formative centuries. Instead, it flourished through multiple autonomous centers, city-states, ritual hubs, port settlements, each developing independently yet dynamically through mutual influence, trade, and religious diffusion. It posits that the region's civilizational trajectory resembles a garden of diverse blooms, each rooted in its own micro-environment but nourished by shared currents of Indic, Sinic, and indigenous influences. This model is reinforced by the decentralized pattern of Dvaravati, the variegated nature of Pyu city-states, and even the shifting capitals and dualist rituals of early Zhenla.

By contrast, the “Cradle of Peninsula Theory” asserts a more hierarchical and linear development. According to this interpretation, Funan, and its evolutionary successor Zhenla, served as the original nucleus from which cultural, political, and religious institutions diffused outward. This view sees Funan not merely as an entrepôt or trading state, but as a civilizational epicenter, radiating its influence across the Mekong Delta, upland Cambodia, the Chao Phraya basin, and beyond. Its integration of Indic scripts, maritime networks, temple-building traditions, and political theology modeled on Brahmanical kingship is taken as the blueprint later polities adapted, modified, or rebelled against.

The two theories, then, offer mutually exclusive assumptions about early Southeast Asia: one sees a polycentric cultural field with no single origin point, while the other insists on a core periphery structure emanating from the Lower Mekong.

Crucially, these are not merely academic abstractions, they frame how we understand the nature of sovereignty, legitimacy, and cultural transmission in the region. They impact how we read inscriptions, classify architectural ruins, and even interpret the narratives of pilgrims like Faxian and Xuanzang. Moreover, each theory shapes how modern nations in the region construct their historical identities, whether as inheritors of a single ancient empire, or as products of a pluralist, intercultural matrix.

Between Plural Bloom and Singular Seed

To determine which theoretical model more faithfully captures the historical realities of early mainland Southeast Asia, we must turn not to romantic preference, but to methodological robustness. The contest between the Thousands Flowers Theory and the Cradle of Peninsula Theory ultimately hinges on the resilience of evidence under temporal and spatial scrutiny.

The Cradle of Peninsula Theory offers compelling strength in the form of textual consistency. Chinese records, especially during the late Han and early Tang, refer to Funan and Zhenla in relatively centralized terms, identifying rulers, embassies, and exchanges that project state-like structures. Inscriptions and royal genealogies support the impression of stratified authority. The grandeur of Angkor and its predecessor regimes seems to echo backward, casting a retrospective aura of origin onto the Mekong delta. The theory's logic is seductive: a radiating core of early civilization that imposed political and religious order on an otherwise formless frontier.

Yet seduction is not validation. The Thousands Flowers Theory, though messier in its implications, survives the harsher light of evidentiary fragmentation. The archaeological record across the Chao Phraya, Irrawaddy, and Mekong does not reveal a singular lineage of descent, but a constellation of overlapping yet autonomous cultural expressions. Scripts evolve unevenly, religious motifs blend rather than dominate, and no single polity maintains unbroken hegemony across the region during the formative centuries. The supposed centrality of Funan collapses under close inspection; its inscriptions are sparse, its material remains diffuse, and its identification, as a coherent kingdom rather than a Chinese exonym, remains ambiguous. Zhenla’s rise appears more as a regional successor than a direct civilizational descendant, likely born of local dynamics rather than imposed templates.

Most decisively, the structure of Dvaravati refuses to submit to the narrative of centralized genesis. Its stupa-rich settlements, dispersed yet thematically linked, suggest not subordination but synchronic resonance, a religious and urban network, not an empire. This pattern echoes in the Pyu city-states of the Irrawaddy, and even in northern Vietnam’s interaction with Chinese dominion. Everywhere, we find plurality, not convergence. That plurality was not a weakness, but a signature.

Thus, when tested against geographic coherence, textual pluralism, material diffusion, and sociopolitical variability, the Thousands Flowers Theory emerges as the more viable historical model. It accounts for contradiction without collapsing into incoherence. It explains the dynamism of the region without presuming uniformity. It allows for greatness without demanding empire.

Mainland Southeast Asia, then, did not bloom from a single seed. It flourished, early on, as a field of wild resilience, a thousand flowers, each rooted in its own soil, leaning toward a shared sun.