Article

Notes on Tan Tan

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Notes on Tan Tan

Hsu Yun-ts’iao’s 1947 article in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society is a philological-geographical study that attempts to locate the ancient state “Tan-tan” (檀檀), first recorded in the Liang Shu (530 A.D.), by systematically eliminating competing identifications proposed by Western and Japanese sinologists and ultimately arguing for its placement in the Kelantan region of the Malay Peninsula. The author, who was also editor of the Journal of the South Seas Society in Singapore, draws extensively on Chinese dynastic histories, Arab navigational accounts, and Ptolemaic geography to reconstruct the political geography of the eastern coast of the Peninsula between the 5th and 13th centuries.

Summary

The article addresses a long-standing problem in Southeast Asian historical geography: the identification of several ancient states mentioned in Chinese sources—Ho-lo-tan, Ko-lo Fu-sha-lo, and Tan-tan—with modern locations. Hsu Yun-ts’iao begins by surveying the scholarly debate, noting that Schlegel’s early identification of Ho-lo-tan with Kelantan had been largely abandoned after Pelliot placed it in Java, and that Gerini’s etymological linking of Ko-lo Fu-sha-lo to Kelantan rested on speculative Sanskrit derivations that the author finds untenable. He then turns to Tan-tan itself, which appears in the Liang Shu, T’ung Tien, Hsin T’ang Shu, and I-Ching’s travel narrative, and works through the positional clues given in these texts: Tan-tan lay north-west of To-lo-mo, south-east of Chen-chow (Hainan), and was encountered on the sea route from Chiao-che (North Indo-China) through Ch’ih-t’u to P’oli.

The core of the argument is a process of elimination. Hsu Yun-ts’iao identifies the surrounding states with confidence—P’an-p’an as Pranpuri (Hua Hin), Ch’ih-t’u as Singora, Lo-yueh as Johore (following Pelliot), and To-lo-mo as Talubin or Telubin on the east coast—and then shows that Tan-tan cannot be Pattani (which he assigns to the territory of Lang-ya-siu, a Mon-Khmer kingdom centred at Ligor), cannot be Pahang (occupied by P’o-hwang and later Tan-ma-ling), and cannot be any location on the west coast. This leaves only Kelantan or Trengganu. The decisive evidence comes from Ch’ing Dynasty sources (Hwang Ching Wen Hsien T’ung Kao and Hwang Ching T’ung Tien), which list Tan-tan as a dependency of Johore alongside Trengganu and Pahang, and which place it closer to Amoy than either Johore or Singora. The author further notes the phonetic plausibility of “lan-tan” in Kelantan being rendered as “Tan-tan” in Chinese, and identifies the specific village of Tendong, ten miles from the Kelantan River mouth, as the most probable seat of the ancient capital.

The article also contributes to the broader reconstruction of the political landscape of the eastern coast during the Tang Dynasty, when Tan-tan and P’an-p’an were the two most influential powers, and traces the subsequent decline of Tan-tan after the Sung Dynasty, when it disappears entirely from the Chinese chronicles and is superseded by the appearance of Kelantan as a distinct name in the 13th-century Chu Fan Chih.

Key Findings

  • The Liang Shu (Vol. LIV) records Tan-tan’s first embassy to China in 530 A.D., presenting ivory images, pagodas, fire pearls, karpasi (cotton), and perfumes; a second mission followed in 535 A.D. with gold, silver, and glass (pp. 7–8).
  • The T’ung Tien (Vol. CLXXVIII) describes Tan-tan’s capital as accommodating more than 20,000 families, with eight Brahmin ministers called the “Eight Seats,” and a king surnamed Sha-li (Ksatriya) named Shih-ling-chia (identified with Cri Lingga, an alias of Siva) (p. 10).
  • The Hsin T’ang Shu (Vol. CCXXII) records that Tan-tan paid tribute during the reigns of Chien Feng (666–667 A.D.) and Tsung Chang (668–669 A.D.), and that the neighbouring state Lo-yueh (Johore) lay 5,000 li from the sea (p. 15).
  • The Hwang Ching Wen Hsian T’ung Kao (Vol. CCXCVII) lists Tan-tan, Trengganu, and Pahang as three dependencies of Johore, while the Hwang Ching T’ung Tien (Vol. XCVIII) places Tan-tan 130 watches south-west of Amoy, compared to 180 watches for Johore and 150 for Singora and Pattani (p. 17).
  • The name “Kelantan” first appears in Chao Ju-kua’s Chu Fan Chih (1225 A.D.), where it is listed alongside P’ong-feng (Pahang) and Teng-ya-nung as dependencies of Crivijaya; before this date, no Chinese source records a state in the Kelantan–Pahang region (p. 14).
  • The author identifies the village of Tendong, ten miles from the Kelantan River mouth and five to six miles from Kota Bahru, as the most probable location of the ancient Tan-tan capital (p. 18).

Conclusion

Hsu Yun-ts’iao concludes that Tan-tan most probably represents the Kelantan region, specifically the Tendong area, and that the name persisted in Chinese sources from the Liang Dynasty (530 A.D.) through the Tang Dynasty (669 A.D.) before disappearing entirely after the Sung period, at which point the name Kelantan itself entered the Chinese record. He explicitly frames the article not as a final conclusion but as “a mere commencement” of research, calling for archaeological excavations across the Peninsula to provide the material evidence needed to confirm or refute the identifications of these ancient states.

Context

  • The author was editor of the Journal of the South Seas Society (Singapore), a Chinese-language publication, and this article was a translation of his Chinese-language original published in Vol. I, Part I of that journal.
  • The study draws on Chinese dynastic histories (Liang Shu, Sui Shu, Chiu T’ang Shu, Hsin T’ang Shu, T’ung Tien, T’ung Chih, T’ai Ping Huan Yu Chi, Wen Hsien T’ung Kao), Arab navigational accounts, Ptolemy’s Geography, and the works of I-Ching and Hsuan Chuan, representing the state of sinological and Southeast Asian historical scholarship in the immediate post-war period.

References