The Khmer Empire and the Malay Peninsula

Sea trade, invasions, political alliances between commercial emporia along the coastline: the interaction between Malay people, Mon-Khmer indigenous populations and Indian and Chinese settlers have been multiple and various since as early as the 3d century CE.

Among the many connections between the two peninsulas put forward by the author, we note that "a prince of Tambralinga seized the throne of Cambodia and conquered the Mons of the Menam and the peninsula (1002-50). The close relations between Kambujadesa and the Bandon region are historic. The basic populations of the two regions seem to have been essentially the same, and they seem to have spoken fundamentally the same language. The Bandon region was under the domination first of Funan and then of Chenla from the beginning of the third century until it was conquered by Srivijaya in the latter part of the eighth. After that conquest, the region from Kra to Kedah seems to have been known to the Arabs as Kalah, with a capital at Kedah, while the old partly-Khmerized kingdoms of the Bandon region retained their identity, subject to the suzerainty of San-foch'i (or Sribuza, as the Arabs called it), whose Malay ruler seems to have divided his time between Kalah and Sribuza."