500 Years of Glory, Then it Vanished.
Diggings by a Vietnamese team in the last 25 years have unearthed more
clues to the mystery that was Fu Nan, South-east Asia's first thriving
polity. It was South-east Asia's first thriving, cosmopolitan entrepot.
Traders from India, China, Persia and the Indonesian
archipelago converged in this city, situated on the Gulf of Thailand near
the mouth of the Mekong River, to buy and sell goods.
This was Oc Eo, part of a kingdom or polity which
the Chinese called Fu Nan. It occupied an area that covers parts of today's
Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, right down to the Isthmus of Kra.
By all accounts, Fu Nan was a thriving polity,
with a highly sophisticated network of canals that facilitated agriculture
and the transport of people and produce.
It was a commercial hub, an arbitrage for trade
between China and India, the Mediterranean polities, the Middle East and
Africa.
But glorious as it was, Fu Nan lasted only 500
years, from the first century to the sixth. Then it disappeared.
Historians, archaeologists and scholars cannot
say exactly how the once thriving polity declined and died. Neither are
they certain who the people of Fu Nan were. To this day, much of what Fu
Nan was remains a mystery.
But there is no doubt that it had played a pivotal
role as the precursor and early foundation of Khmer culture.
More importantly, as archaeologist John Miksic
says: “The stories of Oc Eo and Fu Nan hold the key to understanding
much about the entire ancient history of Southeast Asia.”
Fu Nan was first discovered by French archaeologist
Louis Malleret in 1942.
In the two years he was in the region, he discovered some 20 sites and
wrote a few volumes on Oc Eo culture, based largely on ancient Chinese
records. In the last 25 years, after the end of the Vietnam War, Mr Vo Si Khai and
his colleagues from the Institute of Social Science in Ho Chi Minh City
have devoted their energies to picking up from where Malleret had left
off.
With minimal resources, they have so far identified
90 sites and excavated more than 20 of them. Unfortunately, their worthy work had largely gone
unreported in the West. A dialogue of this nature with the West is important
because it will generate interest in the project, and help bring in the
much needed funds and more research and scholarship.
But this has now been set right by Dr James Khoo,
one of Singapore's longest-practising neurosurgeons whose other great passion
is history and culture.
Yesterday, at the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM), Minister of Trade and
Industry George Yeo launched a much-needed book edited by Dr Khoo, titled
Art & Archaeology of Fu Nan.
An effort that took five years, the book was a
labour of love for the surgeon, 58, who was also the former chairman of
the ACM. It is a recognition of the work that Mr Vo, now 65, had undertaken
against many odds in the last quarter of a century.
So driven was Mr Vo in his Fu Nan project that he sold half his house to
finance his diggings, as Dr Khoo relates it.
The latter had made all the necessary preparations
for Mr Vo to fly out here for the book launch, but an illness had detained
him back home.
In putting together the book, Dr Khoo had assembled
a team of experts to write on the various aspects of Fu Nan and Oc Eo,
based largely on the finds unearthed by Mr Vo and his team.
They include Dr Miksic, associate professor at
the Southeast Asia Studies Department of the National University of Singapore;
art historian Kwa Chong Guan; American archaeologist Miriam Stark; and
Heidi Tan, curator in charge of the Southeast Asia department in the ACM.
The heart of the book is an extended essay by Mr
Vo himself. It provides details of the many sites which he has excavated,
and an authorita-tive look at the history of Fu Nan and the Oc Eo culture.
Dr Khoo contributed an essay on the religious sculptures
which have been dug up in recent years in the various sites spread over
the Mekong Delta. These folk sculptures, mainly of the Indian deity Vishnu, have individual
faces, as with China's terracotta warriors, and they are often depicted
smiling.
“They were likely to be common household
deities, and the smiling faces indicate a people who were likely to have
been prosperous and happy,” says Dr Khoo.
Lovely pictures of these sculptures and other cultural
and religious artefacts make the book a visual treat, on top of it being
a valuable document of history.
For Dr Khoo, the book was a bringing together of
East and West.
He says: “It was a collaborative effort between
Asean and Western scholars.
“I hope it will be the catalyst for more such collaborations and
research and scholarship work on South-east Asian history.”
Art & Archaeology of Fu Nan is available at
bookshops at (Singapore Dollars) $80. Seventeen per cent of the royalties
will go towards a research fund set up under the auspices of the Southeast
Asian Ceramic Society.
Richard Lim
[Read a review from The Journal of the Siam Society]
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