Phuket was a way station on the route between India and China for seafarers to stop for shelter. The island appears to have been part of the Shivite empire (called the Tam Porn Ling in Thai) that established itself on the Malay Peninsula during the first millennium AD. Later, as Muang Takua-Talang, it was part of the Srivichai and Siri Tahm empires. Governed as the eleventh in a constellation of twelve cities, Phuket's emblem, by which it was known to others, in those largely pre-literate times, was the dog.