ABSTRACT
Lady Sinn is the Chinese name of a Southeast Asian woman who lived on the Southeast Asia/China interface in the sixth century CE. Likely a speaker of an Austroasiatic language, she was obviously powerful politically and militarily within her own society. Through diverse engagements with Chinese polities and inter-marriage with a Chinese clan, Lady Sinn (and her descendants) played a well-documented role in facilitating the incorporation of the Southeast Asian polities which she dominated into the Chinese state. For her military prowess and social standing she was deified and today there are a range of temples dedicated to Lady Sinn across southern Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan—Southeast Asian lands which have been successively incorporated into Chinese polities.
