Chi Tu

Court and Governance

In the 6th century, Chi Tu had already established diplomatic relations with China. During the Sui dynasty, the Chi Tu court was honoured with a Chinese embassy bearing "over 5,000 gifts". Chinese records describe a relatively sophisticated system of governance and court ritual; a senior court official was dispatched with a fleet and presents to receive incoming envoys, and succession among rulers was noted as orderly and peaceful.

The kingdom engaged in trade, particularly in gold and camphor, and maintained a fleet of around 30 ocean-going vessels. A Chinese embassy in 607 remarked on the wealth and refinement of the court. Administrative structures included officials responsible for criminal law, while local settlements were overseen by district chiefs. The king also maintained a treasury used to reward nobles within a vassalage system. Although regional nobles exercised a degree of autonomy, Sui envoys observed that they remained subject to some rulings of the central court.

The royal seat is named Sengzhi (僧祇). Its gate was in three tiers set about a hundred paces apart, each leaf painted with devas, ascetics and bodhisattvas and hung with feather work and flowers of gold; attendants stood at either side, those before the gate bearing arms and those within holding horsetail whisks. The palace consisted of several halls ranged one behind another and facing north, the king seated on a three-tiered throne in cloth of a colour likened to cloud at sunrise, wearing a gold crown and a chain of jewels, with a guard of more than a hundred and several hundred brahmans seated in facing rows to east and west.

The Book of Sui names the offices of state. Three grades shared the administration, one Satuojialuo (薩陀迦羅), two Tuonadayi (陀拏達乂) and three Jialimijia (迦利密迦); a single Juluomodi (俱羅末帝) had charge of law and judgment; and every town had one Nayejia (那邪迦) and ten Bodi (鉢帝).

The embassy of 607

In the third year of the Daye era (607) Emperor Yang of Sui, seeking contact with the lands overseas, sent Chang Jun (常驿) of the agricultural-lands office and Wang Junzheng (王君政) of the forestry office as envoys to Chi Tu, granting them a hundred bolts of cloth each and five thousand bolts to present to its king. The party sailed from Nanhai (南海郡) in the tenth month, passed Jiaoshi Island (焦石山) after twenty days and nights, and continued south to Lion Rock (獅子石), beyond which lay a chain of islands; two or three days further on they sighted the mountains of Langyaxu (狼牙須, Langkasuka) to the west and reached Jilong Island (雞籠島) on the frontier of Chi Tu.

The king sent a brahman named Kumara (鳩摩羅) with thirty ships, conch and drums to meet them, and a chain of gold to tow Chang Jun's vessel; at the capital the party was received by the king's son, Nayejia (那邪迷), escorted by a hundred men and women sounding conches and led in by two brahmans. The imperial letter was read before the assembled officials, after which music in the Indian manner was played. Chang Jun objected to the simplicity of the food first sent to the guest house, saying that he came from a great country and expected to be received accordingly; a banquet followed some days later at which more than a hundred dishes were set out on leaf platters, with cakes of four colours, and the envoys were seated above their attendants.

The return gifts were a gold crown and camphor, together with a letter engraved on gold beaten into the shape of leaves and carried in a censer of scented wood, seen off with conch and drum. The party sailed for more than ten days to a point north-east of Linyi and then along the coast north to Jiaozhi. In the sixth year of Daye (610) Chang Jun presented the prince at court, and the emperor rewarded the envoys with two hundred bolts of cloth, the prince and his companions receiving gifts according to rank.

Society and customs

The Book of Sui describes the people as piercing their ears and cutting the hair short, using no kneeling salutation, and anointing themselves with scented oil. They honoured Buddhism and held brahmanism in respect; women wore the hair in a knot at the nape, and both sexes favoured cloth of a colour likened to cloud at sunrise. Wealthy families displayed their means freely, but gold ornament could not be worn unless granted by the king.

Marriages were set for an auspicious day. Five days beforehand the bride's family held a feast, at which her father led her by the hand and gave her to the groom; the wedding followed seven days later, after which the couple took their share of the property and set up separately, only young children remaining with the father. At a death the family cried aloud and put on white, built a pyre of timber beside the water, laid the body on it with incense and banners, and sent the dead off with conch and drum before letting the ashes fall into the stream. The rite was the same for every rank, except that a king's ashes were placed in a golden jar and lodged in a temple.

The climate is described as warm in both seasons with heavy rain and thin cloud, allowing cultivation all year, chiefly of rice, millet, white beans and hemp, with crops much like those of Jiaozhi. Liquor was made from sugarcane, yellow-red in colour and mild, and was known as drunken sugar.

Location

Scholars do not agree on the location of Chi Tu. While some consider it to have been in the area of Phatthalung / Songkhla area, or Kelantan. The ruins around the Songkhla lake such as Bang Kaeo in Phatthalung or Sathing Phra in Songkhla might be one of the cities of Chi Tu.

The Chinese accounts do not agree on the length of the voyage. The Book of Sui places Chi Tu more than a hundred days' sail from China, whereas the later notice reckons it at little more than ten days south from Yazhou (崖州) with a favourable wind, passing Jilong Island. The same later notice records an observation of the sun standing overhead at the winter solstice, with night equal in length to day.

Sources from Indian scholars

J.L. Meons (1937) believed that early Srivijaya was located in Kelantan and K.A. Nilakanta Sastri (1949) supported the idea. The Kelantan theory may not be far-fetched, since the Chinese Sui dynasty annals of the 7th century describe an advanced kingdom called Chi Tu or Raktamrittika (as in Kelantanese history) as being in Kelantan, which the name was later changed to "Sri Wijaya Mala". The founding of Sri Wijaya Mala was 667 BC with its capital called "Valai", and it was situated along the upper Kelantan river of Pergau, known for its rich gold mines. It was in 570 BC that the kingdom changed its name to Sri Wijaya.

Songkhla vicinity theory

The inscription of the Buddhagupta Stone found in Kedah mentioned a Raktamaritika, the meaning is red earth land, to be the home town of a seafarer named Buddhagupta.

Lawrence Palmer Briggs placed Chi Tu at Patani. He argued that the account of Chang Chun's voyage puts it in the peninsula rather than the Menam valley, with its capital on the east coast and approached from the north. On his reading it reached across the peninsula into Kedah. He took the Buddhagupta inscription to fix that location, since Raktamrittikā is the Sanskrit equivalent of the Chinese Ch'ih-t'u, "Red Earth"; Hendrik Kern had suggested as much in 1884 and Pelliot drew attention to it in 1904. Earlier writers had instead read Chi Tu as lying in the Menam valley, among them Abel-Rémusat, Aymonier, Léon de Rosny, and Hirth and Rockhill, who rendered it simply as Siam; Le May in 1938 thought it might be Srideb. The old name of Songkhla is Singgora (City of Lions), which coincides with the Chinese chronicles that state the capital of Chi Tu was Sing-Ha (means lion) and also the nearby Singhanakhon district.

This name may also be related to Tambralinga because there is "Tam" (means red) in this name as same as Raktamaritika and Tampapanni. And this state has appeared in 642, the same area of the central Malay peninsula after Chi Tu has already faded away from the history. The best evidence supporting this theory is the mention that when the envoys left Chi Tu, they took 10 days to sail to Champa, which indicates the kingdom was located at the 'red earth' areas such as Rattaphum because Rattaphum means red earth as well.