One of the earliest major states of mainland Southeast Asia, and the first important Hinduized kingdom known from the region: a wealthy trading state on the Mekong delta that, around two thousand years ago, became a gateway through which Indian culture entered the region. It grew rich as a way-station on the sea route between India and China, and then faded so completely that we know it largely through Chinese reports and a scattered archaeological record, above all the port of Oc Eo. Even its name comes from Chinese records — we do not know for certain what its own people called it.
We do not know what the people of Funan called themselves. The name is Chinese, taken from the reports of envoys who sailed to the Mekong delta nearly two thousand years ago and described a rich kingdom of canals, harbors, and walled towns. There it stood at the meeting point of the sea lanes from India and China, and through states like Funan, Indian gods, Sanskrit writing, and Indian kingship became firmly established on the mainland. Then it vanished. No chronicle of its own survives. One of the region's first great states is known mostly through the eyes of strangers, and through a scattered archaeology centered on one buried port dug out of the mud.