Chin Lin

Chin Lin or Kim Lin (Chinese: 金鄰/金邻; Thai: จินหลิน/กิมหลิน; lit. 'golden/wealthy neighbor') was an ancient political entities in modern lower central Thailand exited from the 9 CE to the 3rd century.^[1]: 27

Chin Lin/Kim Lin (金鄰/金邻国) (จินหลิน/กิมหลิน)
9 CE–c. 3rd century CE
Chin Lin? Chin Lin? Proposed locations of Chin Lin
Capital	Mueang Uthong?
Religion	Buddhism Brahmanism[1]: 27, 28
Historical era	9 CE -3rd centuries CE
• Established	9 CE
• Disestablished	c. 3rd century CE
Preceded by Succeeded by Mon city-states Dvaravati Chen Li Fu
Today part of	Thailand Myanmar

In the 3rd century CE, after defeating Tun Sun to control the trans-Kra Isthmus trade route and encircle Chin Lin,^{[1]: 20, 25 [2]: 258} king Fan Man of Funan attempted to seize Chin Lin,^[1]: 20 but failed due to his illness.^{[3]: 258 [2]: 269}

The city "Balangka, an inland town" (บลังกา), mentioned in the Geographike Hyphegesis of Ptolemy in the 2nd century, has been assumed by Thai scholars to have been Mueang Uthong, the center of Chin Lin.^[4]: 94

Location

The location of Chin Lin remains unclear. It was first mentioned around 9 – 22 CE during the late Western Han period, a Chinese emperor Wang Mang sent an embassy to visit Chin-lin. Later in the 3rd century, Chin Lin was again mentioned in the account of Funan king Fan Shih-man's conquests in the Chinese text Liáng Shū, which states that Chin Lin was located 3,000 li north of the kingdoms of Ta-k'un (Ch'ü-tu-k'un) and Chü-li (Chiu-chih),^[2]: 258 speculated to be Kou-chih of Kole polis in present-day near Kuantan of Malaysia.^{[1]: 26–27} Palmer Briggs proposes that Chin-lin and its southern neighbor, Tun Sun, was the Mon countries. The boundary between this two entities was ill-defined, but probably not far above the present-Mergui-Tanintharyi Region.^[2]: 259