Yarang

Who holds it

Name

not known: no ruler of Langkasuka is named after the eleventh century

Title

Lord or headman of Yarang

Since

not known

Born

not known

Family

not known

Confidence

low

Lord in 1200

not known: no ruler of Langkasuka is named after the eleventh century

How things stand that morning

Not recorded. The site may be a working capital, a shrine town or a ruin in 1200.

Council

No headman, judge or council is named in any source.

Communities

Brick shrines of Buddhist and Hindu type (the earlier phases); nothing named for 1200.

Fairs and markets

None known; trade follows the monsoon.

Militia

No source.

Walls and castle

Banked earth and moats (the site's own works); the date of their last use is not known.

Trade and crafts

Rice of the Patani plain; the harbour behind the sand spit; the road inland by the Betong saddle (inference).

Where the sources disagree

• The campaign board marks it 'contested', meaning the identification with Langkasuka is argued; the Kedah and Patani chronicles that give Langkasuka a long line of kings are late and are not used.

Evidence: Fair for a great earthwork site; nothing dates a ruler or an event in the twelfth century.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

Primary sources for Langkasuka

Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.

• The Grahi (Chaiya) Buddha inscription and the Tambralinga records, Various (the officers of Grahi and the kings of Tambralinga), edited by George Coedes (the Chaiya bronze Buddha inscription 1183; the Nakhon Si Thammarat records 13th century; edited 1929, revised 1961). The peninsula in 1200 has one near-contemporary dated text: the Old Khmer inscription on the base of a bronze Buddha from Wat Hua Wiang at Chaiya, dated 1183, which records the image's casting by order of the mahasenapati Galanai, governor of Grahi, under the king Srimat Trailokyaraja Maulibhusanavarmadeva, a name that is argued to be either a Malayu (Srivijaya) overlord or a local king.
• A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations), Zhao Rukuo (Zhao Rugua) (1225 at Quanzhou). The best single text for the island world around 1200, written by the superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou from merchants' reports a generation after the date. Read online
• Description of the Foreign Peoples (Chau Ju-kua), Zhao Rukuo (趙汝适) (about 1225, while superintendent of maritime trade at Quanzhou). The Song customs officer's survey of the overseas world, compiled from merchants and from Zhou Qufei, a generation after 1200 but describing trade routes that were the same in 1200. Read online