Xiu Luo Fen

Xiū Luó Fēn (Chinese: 修羅分) was an ancient Xiān political entity recorded in the New Book of Tang and the Cefu Yuangui, a leishu compiled during the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE).  Chinese sources describe the polity as being located north of the South Sea, with an urban perimeter—possibly corresponding to Indaprasthanagara in the Phraek Si Racha area—enclosed by wooden palisades rather than masonry walls. Its territory is further said to have reached eastward toward the Kingdom of Zhenla and southward to the maritime frontier. These spatial descriptions stand in clear tension with the identification advanced by Tatsuo Hoshino in his earlier study, which equated Xiū Luó Fēn with Isanapura, the capital of Zhenla.

During the Tang period, three closely associated city-states—Xiū Luó Fēn, Gē Luó Shě Fēn, and Gān Bì—were documented as sending tributary missions to the Chinese imperial court in 665. The three shared broadly similar sociopolitical customs and systems of governance, each ruled by its own sovereign and protected by fortified city walls.

Militarily, Xiū Luó Fēn maintained a substantial army of 20,000–30,000 elite soldiers under the command of its ruler, Shīdámó Típó (尸达摩提婆; ศิทามะเทวา). Its principal allies are recorded as Gē Luó Shě Fēn, which reportedly possessed around 20,000 elite troops, and Gān Bì, whose military establishment was considerably smaller, numbering approximately 5,000. The region tentatively associated with Xiū Luó Fēn is also later linked in local historical traditions to the dynastic lineage of Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri, figures who subsequently played a role in the consolidation of multiple principalities within the Menam valley, a process that ultimately culminated in the establishment of the Ayutthaya Kingdom in the 14th century.

No extant contemporary record documents the termination of Xiū Luó Fēn’s authority in the Phraek Si Racha area. However, later French accounts—most notably Du Royaume de Siam and Instructions Given to the Siamese Envoys Sent to Portugal (1684)—refer to the relocation of Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri to Sukhothai in the 1150s. Local text, Ayutthaya Testimonies, describes him as a prince serving under Anuraja, identified as the last ruler of Xiū Luó Fēn. In the aftermath of this relocation, a short-lived polity known in Chinese sources as Chen Li Fu appears in records dating from 1180 to the early 13th century, with its proposed center likewise situated in the Phraek Si Racha region. The rulers of this polity are reported to have maintained dynastic connections with the Mahidharapura Kingdoms of the Khorat Plateau. According to the Legend of Nakhon Si Thammarat, in 1225 Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri returned to his ancestral domain and incorporated it into Xiān at Ayodhya under the rule of his son, Uthong II.