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100-1290 - Tambralinga (Tan-ma-ling / Teng-Lui-Mei) Tambalingavisaya

The first states, such as Langkasuka, Tambralinga, and Kedah, arose in the northern part of the Malay Peninsula. In the Malaypeninsula there were the-kingdoms of Sri-Dharmaraja, Tambralinga and Lankasuka, in Sumatra and Java kingdom of Srivijaya and various other small kingdoms with Indian names in other parts of the archipelago.

At the beginning of the Christian era, Nakhon (then known as Ligor) was the capital of the Tambralinga state, one of a number of a petty kingdoms in Southeast Asia that were set up by Hindu colonists from India. The city-state Tambralinga (Nakhon Si Thammarat today) was settled by Indian immigrants early in the first century CE on the narrow southern peninsula that constitutes the western border of the Gulf of Thailand.

Some consider it to be proved that Tambralinga on peninsular Malaya was already in existence in the 2nd century AD. The the eastern Isthmus of Kra port town, long known under the Malay name of Ligor or as Lakorn, was capital of the kingdom of Tambralinga, and appears in the records as early as the 2nd century AD. Sir Donald Braddell is of opinion that Tambralinga lies in the Kuantan area where an important tributary of the Pahang river still carries the name of Tembeling or Tanjong. Tambralinga was probably synonymous with Madamalingam of the Tanjore.

Tan-Mei-Liu was a kingdom in Malaya tributary to Palembang. The 'State' of 'Tan-mei-liu' is mentioned in the Sung shih as sending an embassy to China in 1001. On the grounds of similarity of position relative to Chen-la, Pelliot equated the Teng-liu-mei of the Ling-wai Tai-ta, the Chu-fan-chih and the Sung-shih with the Tan-mei-liu mentioned on a later folio of the Sung-shih. The earlier references, such as in Sung Shih, call Tambalinga Tan-mei-leou, as transcribed by French Sinologists, the transcription of English Sinologists being Tan-mi-liu or Tan-mei-liu.

According to some, Danliumei (Tan-liu- mei)- Danmeiliu (Tan-mei-liu)-Zhoumeiliu (Chou-mei-liu) can be considered identical to Tambralinga. Owing to an error in the Sung sbib, where the transliteration of the name of the state was given as Tan-mei-liu, instead of Tan-liu-mei, some confusion occurred in the reconstruction of Tâmbralinga history. The Liang history records that ten kingdoms were conquered in the third century ad by the great Funan General Fan Shih Man. Of these, four were on the Malay Peninsula, including Tan Mei Liu (Tambralinga).

Its importance lay in the fact that it controlled the Isthmus of Kra. The kingdom may already have existed in the 2nd century and is attested by 6th-century inscriptions. By the tenth century, the city-state Tambralinga (present-day Nakhon Si Thammarat) had control of all routes across the Isthumus. Ligor, also known by the toponym Tambralinga, was for centuries an important east coast port in the isthmian trade route.

At the end of the tenth century, Sujitaraja, King of Tambralinga, conquered the Mon kingdom of Lavo (Lopburi). After 1001 Tambralinga- Lavo supported by Cambodia imposed difficulties upon the Cojas in connection with the Indian use of the portage routes. The Khmer monarch Suryavarman I (1002–50) developed Tambralinga on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula as a base for trade across the Isthmus.

The kingdom of Tambralinga, with its capital at the port of Ligor was a vassal state of Srivijaya. Tambralinga's political alliance with Srivijaya during this decade and after was doubtless responsible for their sharing in common the ire of the Tamil Cholas of South India in a series of hostile raids from 1017 to 1026. At Nakorn Sri Thammarat, the kingdom of Tambralinga may have been one of the principal cities in the confederation of Srivijaya. A Chola naval expedition in 1023-1024 or 1025 plundered Palembang and conquered some of Srivijaya's vassal states both in Sumatra and on the Malay Peninsula: Malayu, Kedah, Pane, Lankasuka, Tambralinga and Lamuri (Achin).

It is significant that Tambralinga sent an independent embassy to China in 1170, the first tribute Tambralinga presented it to the Chinese court since 1016.

During much of its history, at least from the beginning of the eleventh century until the end of the reign of Jayavarman VII, Tambralinga was, with varying degrees of intimacy, under the Khmer sphere of influence. The Ling-wai-tai-ta, dated 1178 — just before the beginning of Jayavarman VIII's reign — listed Tambralinga as a dependency of Cambodia. Tambralinga (probably associated with the portages leading to Nakhon Si Thammarat) sought to cultivate relations with both China and Srivijaya in the eleventh century, to balance dangers from Angkor.

The thirteenth century was marked by the rise to prominence of Nakhon Si Thammarat, or of its predecessor Tambralinga. Ceylon was invaded twice during this period by a Malay Buddhist, called Chandrabhanu, the ruler of Tambralinga, a state in the Malay Peninsula near the Bay of Bandon. He made his first invasion in 1244. According to the chronicles of Nakhon Si Thammarat, Phra Buddha Singha images were given to the ruler of Tambralinga by the Sinhalese king during the second half of the thirteenth century.

There is evidence that Lanka exercised some kind of suzerainty over Tambralinga. Wyatt once suggested Sri Lanka became the protector of the court of Tambralinga in the late 12th century. According to Ceylon history as at present accepted, the invasions of the Island by Candrabhanu of Tambralinga were not related to any event which took place before or after them. The result was a long drawn controversy among the scholars over the identification of this Candrabhanu of Tambralinga country mentioned in Sri Lankan chronicles. The Buddhist revival in Lanka had an interesting an important influence in Southeast Asia, notably in Tambralinga (Malaya), Sukhodaya (Siam), and Pagan ( Burma), indicating the transmission of a homogenous dhamma to several great centers.

The king of Tambralinga in the north of the Malay Peninsula challenged his overlord's authority by capturing the neighboring state of Grahi in AD 1230. In the year 1230 Dharmaraja Chandrabanu of Tambralinga (Ligor) erected an inscription at Ch'aiya, in which he assumes the style of an independent ruler. In 1270 Tambralinga suffered such a severe reverse while attempting to intervene in the affairs of Ceylon that, some twenty years later, she could offer little resistance to T'ai southward penetration.

Junkceylon (modern Phuket Island), a tributary of Siam, first begins to be mentioned as a major source of tin exports in the sixteenth century, though the produce of that area must have contributed to the wealth of Tambralinga long before then.