In 1918, George Cœdès concluded that Chinese forms of San-fo-ts'i (Sanfoqi), Fo-ts'i (Foqi), Fo-che (Foshi), Che-li-fo-che (Shilifoshi), which correspond to Arabic Sribuza and can be reconstructed as Śribhoja, are names referring to the Srivijaya empire, located in Palembang, South Sumatra, in present-day Indonesia.
[4] Chinese records also indicated that there were at least two different places named Sanfoqi after the Chola attack on Palembang: Sanfoqi-Zhanbei (for Jambi) and Sānfóqí Zhu nian (Kedah).
Excerpts here translated by Hirth and Rockhill: This Tang dynasty chronicle Hsin-Tang-shu mentioned that the envoy of Mo-lo-yu (Melayu Kingdom) came to Chinese court in 644–645.
In the winter, with the monsoon, you sail a little more than a month and then come to Ling-ya-mon, where one-third of the passing merchants put in before entering this country of Sanfotsi.
It is a custom of this people to make rafts to float on the water and to live on them.The established theory has concluded that Sanfotsi or Sanfoqi is identical to Srivijaya.
[1] Srivijaya was written in older Chinese sources as Shi-li-fo-shi (室利佛逝, also shortened as fo-shi) which is an approximate phonetic rendering, but changed to San-fo-qi at the end of the Tang dynasty.
[3]: 99 In this interpretation the kingdom was Suvarnabhumi (Sanfotsi or Sumatra) while the capital was shifted between Palembang (Shi-li-fo-shi or Srivijaya) and Jambi (Chan-pi or Mo-lo-yu).
Historian Liam Kelley argues that the Sanfoqi mentioned in 14th century Chinese sources refers to Angkor in Cambodia.
[8] Some Thai historians, such as Chand Chirayu Rajani, while agreeing with the designation of Sanfoqi with Srivijaya, argued that it refers to Chaiya in Thailand rather than Palembang.