Sankhapura

Śaṅkhapura शङ्खपुर (Sanskrit) ศังขปุระ (Thai)
attested 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.
Capital	Śaṅkhapura, possibly the moated settlement at Don Mueang Toei
Common languages	Sanskrit
Religion	Shaivism
Lord of Śaṅkhapura
• 7th century	Pravarasena
Historical era	Early historic
• Attested in the Don Mueang Toei inscription	7th century
Today part of	Thailand

Śaṅkhapura (Sanskrit: शङ्खपुर; Thai: ศังขปุระ) was an early historic settlement or polity in the Chi basin of what is now northeastern Thailand. It is known from a single Sanskrit inscription, catalogued as ยส. 6 and K. 1082 and generally called the Don Mueang Toei inscription, which names a lord of Śaṅkhapura and a line of three men associated with him. No second attestation of the name is known, and the inscription does not state where the town lay.

The stone was found in 1983 at the moated site of Don Mueang Toei in Kham Khuean Kaeo district, Yasothon province. Much of what is written about Śaṅkhapura is drawn from the archaeology of that site. Whether the two are the same place is not settled.

Inscription

The inscribed object is a rectangular sandstone slab carrying four lines of Sanskrit in the Pallava script, dated on palaeographic grounds to about the seventh century. Michel Lorrillard describes it simply as pre-Angkorian. The text records the founding of a liṅga shrine by Dharmasena, described as an offspring of Kroñcavāhu and as the twelfth member of that lineage, under the authority of Śrīmān Pravarasena, lord of Śaṅkhapura. French scholarship therefore names it for its dedicator rather than for the ruler.

The record was at first misunderstood. Photographs of the stone circulated as four separate images and were taken for four different inscriptions until they were reassembled and read as one text.

Rulers

The inscription yields three names, Pravarasena, Kroñcavāhu and Dharmasena. Lorrillard calls them a genealogy of kings who reigned at Śaṅkhapura. Anurak Depimai gives the same sequence and notes a resemblance to the naming pattern of inscriptions recording Chitrasena, the pre-consecration name of Mahendravarman of Chenla, without asserting that the two lineages are the same. Chirapat Prapandvidya reads the lineage differently, taking Kroñcavāhu for a son of Pravarasena whose own sons included a youngest named Śrī Añjali. The second name is transliterated variously as Kroñcavāhu, Kroñcabahu and Kroñjapāhu.

Only Pravarasena is called a ruler in the text. Dharmasena appears as the dedicator of the shrine, acting under his authority, so the relation between the three is one of descent rather than a recorded succession.

Location

Don Mueang Toei is a moated settlement enclosed by earthen ramparts, about one kilometre east of the village of Song Pueai. Moated sites of this kind are characteristic of the early communities of the Mun–Chi basin. The Sanskrit inscription and the Śaiva foundation have been read as marking a Brahmanical religious centre there.

Pierre Pichard nonetheless holds the identification of the site with Śaṅkhapura to be uncertain, since the inscription nowhere says that the sanctuary stood inside that town. He also records a second candidate. Local traditions collected in the late nineteenth century by Étienne Aymonier near Sangkha in Surin province name a place called Sarikhapura, which some researchers have tentatively linked to the toponym of the inscription.

Relations with Zhenla

Śaṅkhapura is often discussed in connection with Zhēnlà, whose inscriptions are found across the same region, but the sources that address the question directly have declined to place it within that polity. Lorrillard states that no link has been established between the Śaṅkhapura names and the rulers of Cambodia, following Claude Jacques. Chaowanee Lekkla compares Don Mueang Toei with Sambor Prei Kuk, about 400 km away by the Chi, and finds the two contemporary and the northern site working its own iron. She states that the evidence is insufficient to place the town within Zhēnlà's area of political influence, and that a shared Śaiva cult does not establish one.

See also

• Chenla
• Dvaravati
• Yasothon province