Yamanadvipa

Yamana/ Yen-nio-na-cheu
650s – 1350s
Proposed location of Yamanadvipa, with the other five kingdoms in Mainland Southeast Asia mentioned by Xuanzang in the 7th century.
Proposed locations of ancient kingdoms in Menam and Mekong Valleys in the 7th century based on the details provided in the Chinese leishu, Cefu Yuangui, and others.
Historical era	Post-classical era
• Established	650s
• Mentioned by Xuanzang	7th century
• First envoy from Indrapura	911
• Mentioned in Angkor source	1200s
• Last mentioned in Champa source	1306
• Disestablished	1350s
Preceded by Succeeded by Zhān Bó Wen Dan Lan Xang
Today part of	Thailand Laos

Yamanadvīpa, also rendered Java, is a polity of mainland Southeast Asia known from the travel account of the Chinese monk Xuanzang and, under related names, from inscriptions in Champa and Cambodia. Neither its location nor the relationship between the several similar names has been established.

The name itself has been read in two directions. The Sanskrit dvīpa means an island or a land surrounded by water, which has drawn interpretation towards an insular or riverine setting, while yamana carries senses running from "restraining" to "eastern" and "border". A closely similar Yavadvīpa appears in inscriptions of Champa dated 911 and 1305 or 1306, and Cham scribes ordinarily wrote Javā when they meant the island of Java, so the two are not simply one name in different spellings.

Proposals for what the Javā of the later Cambodian inscriptions denotes range from the island of Java to the northern Malay Peninsula, Champa, a principality far up the Mekong, Wen Dan, and a wholly mythical tradition. A further proposal identifies Yamanadvīpa with the inland Cham polity Zhān Bó, on Michael Vickery's reading of Java as the Chams, while Tatsuo Hoshino holds that two places of that name lay in the Mekong basin, the upper of them the Khmu kingdom of Sawa that became Luang Prabang.

Attestation and name

Xuanzang records the name as Yen-nio-na-cheu (閻摩那洲國) in the account of his pilgrimage in India. He situates the kingdom to the west of Mo-ho-chan-po (Mahacampa), identifiable as Lin-i, and lists it among six realms located beyond the “deep seas,” enclosed by high mountains and rivers that were difficult to access. The other Mainland Southeast Asian kingdoms enumerated by Xuanzang include Sri Ksetra, Kamalanka, Dvaravati, Chenla, and Champa. These six were considered to lie within the Jumukote or Yamakote (यमकोटि; यमकोटी), corresponding to the “Eastern Boundary” of Ptolemy’s cartographical representation of Jambudvipa.

The precise identification of Yamanadvīpa remains confusing. Yet its Sanskrit suffix dvīpa (Sanskrit: द्वीप), meaning “island” or “land surrounded by water,” has encouraged scholars to associate it with an insular or riverine setting. The element yamana (Sanskrit: यमन), meaning “restraining,” “curbing,” "eastern," "border," or “governing,” has further complicated interpretive attempts. Some researchers have equated Yamanadvīpa with Yavanadvīpa (Sanskrit: यवनद्वीप), noting that a “king of Yavana” appears in the Preah Khan inscription (K.908) of Jayavarman VII alongside the “king of Java” and two rulers of Champa. Earlier scholarship, however, equated “Yavana” with Annam, though both this identification and the Khmer assertion of suzerainty over neighboring polities have recently been critically reassessed.

In northern Champa, an inscription (C.149) records that two groups of senior officials of the Indrapura were dispatched to Yavadvīpapura—the capital of the nearly synonymous kingdom of Yavadvīpa—on diplomatic missions in 833 Śaka (911 CE). Yavadvīpa appears again in inscription C.22, dated to 1228 Śaka (1305/1306 CE), which notes that a princess of the great king of Yavadvīpa became a chief queen of Champa. Although Yavadvīpa has sometimes been equated with Java in Indonesia, Champa inscriptions generally refer to Java explicitly as Javā. Thus, the identification of Yavadvīpa likewise remains unresolved.

Identifications

There was also a kingdom with an almost identical name, Chawa or Sawa (Lao: ຊວາ, pronounced [súa]) of Khmu people, located northwest of Champa, and bordered Gotapura, centered at Thakhek, to the south. This area may have been influenced by the culture of Dvaravati in central Thailand. Chawa was later conquered by the legendary Khun Lo of Lao people in 698. The polity was then Taificated and historically known as Muang Sua. It later evolved to Luang Prabang of the Lan Xang kingdom in the 14th century. Hoshino identifies this Sawa with the Sa Lu of the Chinese records and takes it for one of the two places called Java in the Mekong basin.

Given Michael Vickery’s reinterpretation of the term “Java”—originally associated with the legacy of Jayavarman II—as referring to “the Chams,” Yamanadvīpa may correspond to the inland Cham polity known in Chinese records as Zhān Bó, whose hypothesized location aligns broadly with that of Yavanadvīpa. This interpretation is consistent with the hypothesis advanced by Tatsuo Hoshino, who argues that following the dissolution of the Wen Dan (a trans-Mekong confederation of city-states) in the early ninth century, the Isan region of present-day Thailand entered a political phase he designates as “Java.”

The range of proposals is wider than these two, and none has been established. Reviewing the Javā named in later Cambodian inscriptions, either as an enemy of Jayavarman II or as his place of origin, Hiram Woodward records that it has been treated as possibly wholly mythical by Michael Vickery, as the island of Java if the reference belongs to a late myth, as the northern Malay Peninsula by Claude Jacques, as Champa by Vickery in an earlier work he subsequently rejected, as a principality far up the Mekong by Hoshino, and as Wen Dan itself in Woodward's own reading. Michel Ferlus likewise identified the Javā of the Cambodian inscriptions with Land Zhenla, that is with Wen Dan. Jacques, surveying the older instances of related names, including the Sanskrit Yavadvīpa and the Java of a Cham inscription of 799, concluded that it is not clear what the differing spellings denote, if anything.

Hoshino's own position is more specific than the summary of it in this list. He holds that two places called Java lay in the Mekong basin rather than one, an upper and a lower, and that neither was in the Indonesian archipelago. The lower he identifies with Du Po, the southern He Ling of the Chinese records; the upper with Sa Lu, which he takes for the Khmu kingdom of Sawa and a precursor of the Lao kingdom later known as Xieng Dong and Xieng Thong, that is Luang Prabang. The equation rests on the correspondence between the Tai letters s and w and the Sanskrit j and v, by which a name pronounced sawa may be romanised java.