gs
naturally came to be regarded as the progenitor of the race. The
Chinese traveller Chou Ta-kuan (1296 A.D.) says that the country known
to the Chinese as Chen-la is called by the natives Kan-po-chih but
that the present dynasty call it Kan-p'u-chih on the authority of
Sanskrit (Hsi-fan) works. The origin of the name Chen-la is unknown.

There has been much discussion respecting the relation of Chen-la to
the older kingdom of Fu-nan which is the name given by Chinese
historians until the early part of the seventh century to a state
occupying the south-eastern and perhaps central portions of
Indo-China. It has been argued that Chen-la is simply the older name
of Fu-nan and on the other hand that Fu-nan is a wider designation
including several states, one of which, Chen-la or Camboja, became
paramount at the expense of the others.[246] But the point seems
unimportant for their religious history with which we have to
deal. In religion and general civilization both were subject to Indian
influence and it is not recorded that the political circumstances
which turned Fu-nan into Chen-la were attended by any religious
revolution.

The most important fact in the history of these countries, as in
Champa and Java, is the presence from early times of Indian influence
as a result of commerce, colonization, or conquest. Orientalists have
only recently freed themselves from the idea that the ancient Hindus,
and especially their religion, were restricted to the limits of India.
In mediaeval times this was true. Emigration was rare and it was only
in the nineteenth century that the travelling Hindu became a familiar
and in some British colonies not very welcome visitor. Even now Hindus
of the higher caste evade rather than deny the rule which forbids them
to cross the ocean.[247] But for a long while Hindus have frequented
the coast of East Africa[248] and in earlier centuries their
traders, soldiers and missionaries covered considerable distances by
sea. The Jatakas[249] mention voyages to Babylon: Vijaya and Mahinda
reached Ceylon in the fifth and third centuries B.C. respectively.
There is no certain evidence as to the epoch when Hindus first
penetrated beyond the Malay peninsula, but Java is mentioned in the
Ramayana:[250] the earliest Sanskrit inscriptions of Champa date from
our third or perhaps second century, and the Chinese Annals of the
Tsin indicate that at a period considerably anterior to that dynasty
there were Hindu