Pú jiā yuè mó

Pujiayuemo is recorded in the Chinese leishu Cefu Yuangui and in the New Book of Tang as a ruler of the polity known as Gē Luó Shě Fēn . He is named in the entry for the fifth month of 665, which records the arrival of a group of missions from the South Seas; the same entry states that the envoy sent in his name had set out in 656 and reached China only nine years later, so that the two dates mark the span of one journey rather than the length of a reign.

Name

Gē Luó Shě Fēn is generally taken to be a corrupted transcription of Jiā Luó Shě Fú , interpreted as Canasapura, a polity centred at Si Thep with as an important eastern centre. No corresponding form has been established in the local vernaculars. The Nakhon Pathom seat over which he is held to have extended his authority appears in the epigraphic record under yet another name, Sambuka, identified by several scholars with Nakhon Pathom, whose king is mentioned without being named in the Lopburi inscription K.577 of about the 8th–9th century.

Reign and territory

His reign is understood as a period of territorial expansion taking in Si Thep, associated with Qiān Zhī Fú, and the western Menam valleys, a region previously under Dvaravati control. The Cefu Yuangui places Gē Luó Shě Fēn in the southern part of the South Seas and connected on its eastern side with Duoheluo, that is Dvaravati, which puts it to the west of that polity, Cefu Yuangui: New Book of Tang: The English rendering of the Cefu Yuangui entry published by Lin Ying and Huang Jiaxin gives 20,000 for Xiū Luó Fēn, agreeing with the New Book of Tang against the Chinese text quoted here. and with Gān Bì, whose strength is given as only 5,000, which suggests wider networks of alliance or tributary interaction in the region. In 665 the three are recorded as having sent embassies together to the Chinese court under the Tang, arriving in the fifth month of that year alongside missions from Yufo, Mola and Sanpu.