Dvaravati

Dvaravati refers to a network of early historic polities in present-day central Thailand, conventionally dated from about the 6th to the 11th century; archaeological evidence places the beginnings of its culture several centuries earlier, in a phase usually called Proto-Dvaravati. It has also been tentatively linked to the polity Chinese sources call Lang-chia or Lang-ya-hsiu. Mid-7th-century Chinese Buddhist accounts place a kingdom called To-lo-po-ti west of Isanapura, east of Sri Ksetra and north of Pan Pan. To the north it bordered Jiā Luó Shě Fú (迦逻舍佛), identified with Canasapura in the upper Mun-Chi basin and with Si Thep in the Pa Sak basin. Embassies to the Chinese court are recorded in 583, around 605–616, in 638, 640, 643, 647, and 649. Baker and Pasuk, and Murphy after Robert L. Brown, count three under that name: 638, 640 and 649.

The term also covers a cultural and artistic sphere wider than any political entity, and a shared material culture does not by itself imply a single ethnic group. Mon communities, perhaps including maritime traders, are thought to have carried the culture into the Chao Phraya valley by the early centuries CE, after a transitional Proto-Dvaravati phase associated with principalities such as Chin Lin and Tun Sun in the western plains and Tou Yuan to the east, a phase usually dated to the 1st to 5th centuries, though Stephen A. Murphy limits it to the 4th and 5th.

Dvaravati's early political centre is disputed. Proposed centres include Ayojjhapura (Si Thep), Sambuka (Nakhon Pathom), and Avadhyapura (). By the mid-7th century, prominence appears to have shifted to Lavo's Lavapura, following the absorption of Tou Yuan in 647. Some place the shift in the 10th or 11th centuries, with the decline of Si Thep; others take Lavapura for a separate polity, later the Lavo Kingdom, inside the Dvaravati sphere.

Its decline probably had several overlapping causes. Proposed factors are the expansion of Angkor from the lower Mekong between the 11th and 13th centuries, northward campaigns by Tambralinga under King Sujita in the mid-10th century, reported to have taken Lavo, and warfare associated with Angkor in the early 11th century that reached the Menam valley. Pagan incursions into central Thailand in the 11th and 12th centuries are also proposed. Jean Boisselier held that the eastern centres such as Lavo were lost by the 10th or 11th century, while the western principalities lasted into the early 12th and came briefly under Jayavarman VII (r. 1181–1218). The region then entered the Xiān period, marked by the emergence of Suphannabhum, Phrip Phri, and Ayodhya, with the latter reasserting control over Lavo by the 14th century.