Article

Ch’ih-t’u

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Ch’ih-t’u

Paul Wheatley’s 1957 article “Ch’ih-t’u” addresses the long-standing problem of locating the Southeast Asian kingdom known to Chinese sources as the “Red Land,” arguing that the weight of textual evidence places it in the northern half of the Malay Peninsula rather than in Siam or further south. Drawing on parallel passages preserved in the Sui shu, Pei shih, T’ai p’ing yu lan, and other Tang-era compilations, Wheatley reconstructs the account of the Sui embassy of 607 and uses its itinerary to constrain the kingdom’s geography.

Summary

The article opens with a detailed translation of the Sui shu chapter on Ch’ih-t’u, which describes a Buddhist kingdom in the South Seas reached by sea in more than a hundred days from China. The capital, Seng-chih (also called Shih-tzu or “Lion City”), is depicted with triple gates adorned with paintings of bodhisattvas and golden flowers, a royal court where the king sat on a three-tiered couch facing north, and a bureaucratic structure with officials bearing Sanskrit-derived titles such as Na-ya-chia and Po-ti. The account covers social customs (cremation rites, marriage practices, ear-piercing), agriculture (padi, sugar-cane, white beans, black hemp), and the kingdom’s position relative to neighbouring polities including Po-lo-la to the east, P’o-lo-so to the west, and Ho-lo-tan to the south (pp. 123–125).

Wheatley then surveys the historiographical debate, noting that traditional Chinese scholarship and most early Western investigators from Abel-Remusat (1829) through le May (1938) identified Ch’ih-t’u with the Chao Phraya basin in Siam, while a competing school—Kern, Ferrand, Moens, Coedes, Briggs, Luce, and Wales—favoured various locations on the Malay Peninsula (pp. 128–129). He systematically eliminates the Siamese hypothesis by pointing out that the Sui shu states the ocean washed the northern shores of Ch’ih-t’u, a condition incompatible with the Chao Phraya basin. He further dismisses southern peninsula and Sumatran locations by noting that the return voyage from Ch’ih-t’u’s borders to south-eastern Champa took only just over ten days, a distance that implies a position in the northern half of the peninsula (p. 133).

The decisive geographical anchor is the identification of Lang-ya-hsu, a country whose mountains were visible from the envoys’ route, with Patani. This fixes the Lion Rock Archipelago in the waters off the Bay of Bandon and places Ch’ih-t’u’s eastern frontier in the vicinity of the Kelantan coast. The capital, being one month’s journey inland from the sea, would have lain in the ulu of an east-coast river, most plausibly the Kelantan, which is navigable for nearly a hundred miles and leads toward the gold-fields of Ulu Pahang (p. 133).

Key Findings

  • The Sui embassy under Ch’ang-chun departed Nan-hai (Canton) in the tenth month (November/early December) of 607, sailing before the north-east monsoon, and reached Ch’ih-t’u’s borders after passing Ling-ch’ieh-po-pa-to Island (identified as Lingaparvata), Lion Rock, and the mountains of Lang-ya-hsu (Patani) (pp. 125–126, 131–132).
  • The Sui shu records that the return voyage from Ch’ih-t’u’s frontiers to south-eastern Lin-i (Champa) took “more than ten days,” a constraint that excludes locations in South Malaya or Sumatra (p. 133).
  • The capital Seng-chih (Shih-tzu) lay one month’s journey inland from the coast, implying a position in the upper reaches of an east-coast river; Wheatley identifies the Kelantan as the most likely candidate given its navigability for nearly a hundred miles (p. 133).
  • The T’ung tien records that at the winter solstice shadows fell directly below and at the summer solstice to the south—a statement Wheatley notes is geographically erroneous (it would place the kingdom on the Tropic of Capricorn) and likely a scribal error, though one that resists easy emendation (p. 129).
  • The king’s family name was Ch’u-t’an, his personal name Li-fu-to-se; he had reigned sixteen years at the time of the embassy and held three wives from neighbouring royal houses (p. 124).
  • The Hsin t’ang shu notes a similarity between the customs of Ch’ih-t’u and those of Ko-lo and Dvaravati, while the Pei shih compares its material culture with that of Chen-la (p. 127).

Conclusion

Wheatley concludes that Ch’ih-t’u was situated in the northern half of the Malay Peninsula, with its capital in the upper Kelantan valley. His argument rests not on any single decisive datum but on the cumulative weight of the itinerary evidence—particularly the ten-day return sail to Champa and the identification of Lang-ya-hsu with Patani—which together render the traditional Siamese identification untenable and the southern peninsula or Sumatran hypotheses geographically implausible.

Context

  • The primary sources are all Chinese: the Sui shu (chap. 82), Pei shih (chap. 95), T’ai p’ing yu lan (chap. 787), Wen hsien t’ung k’ao (chap. 331), T’ung tien (chap. 188), and T’ai p’ing huan yu chi (chap. 177), all of which preserve or abbreviate the lost Ch’ih-t’u kuo chi.
  • The article contributes to the historiography of early Southeast Asian political geography by demonstrating how a carefully read itinerary, combined with the elimination of incompatible hypotheses, can narrow the location of a poorly attested kingdom to a specific river valley.

References