A Description of the Foreign Peoples (Records of Foreign Nations)

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. Its first part describes Champa (and reports the Khmer conquest of 1199), Zhenla, Pagan, Tambralinga (Danmaling), Langkasuka, Srivijaya (Sanfoqi, that is Palembang and Jambi) with its fifteen dependencies and its control of the straits, Java (Shepo, the Kediri kingdom), Brunei (Boni), Ma-i and the Philippine islands, Lanka, Malabar, Gujarat and the Chola country, giving each state's capital, ruler, products, customs and tribute. The second part lists the goods of the trade. The author never left China and copies older books, so a description may be decades old; but the political notices (which ports owed what to whom) are the nearest thing to a map of the southern seas in 1200.