Chin Lin


Chin Lin or Kim Lin was an ancient political entities in modern lower central Thailand existed from the 9 CE to the 3rd century.
In the 3rd century CE, after defeating Tun Sun to control the trans-Kra Isthmus trade route and encircle Chin Lin, king Fan Man of Funan attempted to seize Chin Lin, but failed due to his illness.
The city "Balangka, an inland town", mentioned in the Geographike Hyphegesis of Ptolemy in the 2nd century, has been assumed by Thai scholars to have been Mueang Uthong, the center of Chin Lin. However, some identified Balangka with the ancient Nakhon Pathom.

Location

The location of Chin Lin remains unclear. It was first mentioned around 9 – 22 CE during the late Western Han period, a Chinese emperor Wang Mang sent an embassy to visit Chin-lin. Later in the 3rd century, Chin Lin was again mentioned in the account of Funan king Fan Shih-man's conquests in the Chinese text Liáng Shū, which states that Chin Lin was located 3,000 li north of the kingdoms of Ta-k'un and Chü-li, speculated to be Kou-chih of Kole polis in present-day near Kuantan of Malaysia. Palmer Briggs proposes that Chin-lin and its southern neighbor, Tun Sun, was the Mon countries. The boundary between this two entities was ill-defined, but probably not far above the present-Mergui-Tanintharyi Region.

Rulers

The copper plate dating from the 6th–mid 7th centuries found at U Thong mentions King Harshavarman, who was assumed by Jean Boisselier to be one of the kings of Dvaravati, while George Cœdès considered the plate was brought from the Angkor, and the name mentioned might be the Khmer king as well. Nonetheless, the timeframes appear disconnected, as King Harshavarman I of Khmer ruled from 910 to 923, two centuries after the date of the inscription, and Harshavarman I's grandfather was Indravarman I, not Isanavarman as the inscription mentioned.