Tambralinga emerges from the end of the tenth and the beginning of eleventh century.
The State is associated with coastal lands round the Bay of Bandon in the narrowing waist of the Malay Peninsula. Sometimes it is referred to as the State in the Ligor area.
Tambralinga sought to cultivate relations with both China and Srivijaya in the eleventh century, to balance dangers from Angkor, and later Pagan, and the Colas of South India. In 1170 Tambralinga sent an independent embassy to China.
Tambralinga became an important center of the Theravada Buddhist school. Pali literature from Sri Lanka regarded Tambralinga as an important twelfth-century center of Buddhist scholarship.
In 1247, Chandrabhanu of Tambralinga sent an expedition to Sri Lanka with the ostensible aim of obtaining a Buddhist relic, and occupied part of the island. The invasion occurred when Parakramabahu II was the Sinhalese king ruling at Dembadeniya.
Later in 1258 a Pandya prince, Jatavarman Sundara Pandya invaded Sri Lanka, defeated an alliance of Tambralinga forces.
In 1270 Chandrabhanu attacked Sri Lanka again and was defeated badly enough and had not recovered when attacked by the Thais twenty years later.
History of Tambralinga
