ABSTRACT
it was in the first century a.d. that a kingdom was founded in the lower valley of the Mekong which so far is only known by the Chinese name of Fu-nan 1 – probably a transcription of the word bnam, common to most of the Mon-Khmer dialects, meaning ‘mountain’. This is the word which is translated into Sanskrit in the dynastic title Shailaraja or Parvatabhupala, ‘king of the mountain’, where it apparently refers to one of those mountains upon which, as has been mentioned above, the founder of a State or a dynasty instituted the cult of a sort of god or national guardian spirit which transcended the particularist cults of local gods.
