Journal of the Siam Society; 78

Table of contents :
JSS_078_1a_Front
JSS_078_1a_Front_001
JSS_078_1b_Sternstein_LowsDescriptionOfSiameseEmpire1824
JSS_078_1b_Sternstein_LowsDescriptionOfSiameseEmpire1824_001
JSS_078_1c_Bernd_PrussianExpeditionToFarEast1860
JSS_078_1c_Bernd_PrussianExpeditionToFarEast1860_001
JSS_078_1d_Wright_SacrificeAndUnderworld
JSS_078_1d_Wright_SacrificeAndUnderworld_001
JSS_078_1e_Webb_ChurchAndTempleInNEThailand
JSS_078_1e_Webb_ChurchAndTempleInNEThailand_001
JSS_078_1f_Lyman_MongGreenMiaoAndLanguage
JSS_078_1f_Lyman_MongGreenMiaoAndLanguage_001
JSS_078_1g_Formoso_FromHumanBodyToHumanisedSpaceInNEThailand
JSS_078_1g_Formoso_FromHumanBodyToHumanisedSpaceInNEThailand_001
JSS_078_1h_Wilson_EconomicActivitiesOfBangkokWomen1883
JSS_078_1h_Wilson_EconomicActivitiesOfBangkokWomen1883_001
JSS_078_1i_SunaitChutintaranond_MandalaSegmentaryStateInMedievalAyudhaya
JSS_078_1i_SunaitChutintaranond_MandalaSegmentaryStateInMedievalAyudhaya_001
JSS_078_1j_MyersMoro_MusicalNotationInThailand
JSS_078_1j_MyersMoro_MusicalNotationInThailand_001
JSS_078_1k_Reynolds_ProblemsInStoneAgeOfThailand
JSS_078_1k_Reynolds_ProblemsInStoneAgeOfThailand_001
JSS_078_1l_Reviews
JSS_078_1l_Reviews_001
JSS_078_1m_Obituary
JSS_078_1m_Obituary_001
JSS_078_1n_Back
JSS_078_1n_Back_001
JSS_078_2a_Front
JSS_078_2a_Front_001
JSS_078_2b_Davis_HRHPrincessMother
JSS_078_2b_Davis_HRHPrincessMother_001
JSS_078_2c_ChirapatPrapandvidya_SabBakInscription
JSS_078_2c_ChirapatPrapandvidya_SabBakInscription_001
JSS_078_2d_Vickery_OldCityOfChaliangSatchanalaiSawnkhalok
JSS_078_2d_Vickery_OldCityOfChaliangSatchanalaiSawnkhalok_001
JSS_078_2e_JacqHergoualch_DessinsDeCharlesLeBrun1686
JSS_078_2e_JacqHergoualch_DessinsDeCharlesLeBrun1686_001
JSS_078_2f_Raikes_PerformancesByNationalLivingTreasures
JSS_078_2f_Raikes_PerformancesByNationalLivingTreasures_001
JSS_078_2g_Webb_OpiumOfPeopleProtestantDevelopmentStrategies
JSS_078_2g_Webb_OpiumOfPeopleProtestantDevelopmentStrategies_001
JSS_078_2h_YuichiroKazuo_MetallographicAndLeadIsoltopeStudiesOfMetalFromTak
JSS_078_2h_YuichiroKazuo_MetallographicAndLeadIsoltopeStudiesOfMetalFromTak_001
JSS_078_2i_OConnor_PlacePowerDiscourseInThaiImageOfBangkok
JSS_078_2i_OConnor_PlacePowerDiscourseInThaiImageOfBangkok_001
JSS_078_2j_Torok_MultiCriteriaDecisionMaking
JSS_078_2j_Torok_MultiCriteriaDecisionMaking_001
JSS_078_2k_Crocco_BanBhorePortOnCeramicAndGlassRoutes
JSS_078_2k_Crocco_BanBhorePortOnCeramicAndGlassRoutes_001
JSS_078_2l_Sternstein_SiamAndSurrounds1830
JSS_078_2l_Sternstein_SiamAndSurrounds1830_001
JSS_078_2m_Reviews
JSS_078_2m_Reviews_001
JSS_078_2n_ObituaryChirieVoravarn
JSS_078_2n_ObituaryChirieVoravarn_001
JSS_078_2o_Back
JSS_078_2o_Back_001

Citation preview

I

I

s· a ·~,)f:f s · .

I

.,_,

TH J

"

~;),,//IV:7f'l •

_ J,.,.,.••n{-rifi..T JtA,..,~

, , /,./H'It/,;1 ft.~

IN't

'M'II'tf.

-J

P

-

OJ

AM,

'

t..~·

. . os

.M.aortu,..t.• .A«omptntllle.ttf

, SOcte•~r ~~,

.. :;._" 1!-i... t/..,/

..

.c.......·~.Jtt>.

~ tt~ ;,~..;,

.l,w.,,u ,1}•/c. ~J4-•t-• /'.t ..

N-1.-*t

~!?:J~:::. . i::~:~,~: Jv/r . ' "'"' ·~ ·· h"~) _,~

0

·t.

VOLUME 18, PAR _..

!

..:. ... ,..

It~ .-·~·

..

The Journal of the Siam Society

VOLUME 78, PART 1

1990

©

All Rights Reserved The Siam Society 1990

ISSN 0857-7099

Printed by Amarin Printing Group Co., Ltd., 413/27-36 Arun Amarin Road, Bangkok Noi, Bangkok 10700, Thailand. Tel. 424-2800-1 Front cover:

From a copy of Capt. James Low's map of Siam held at the National Archives of India. $eep.9.

THE SIAM SOCIETY PATRON VICE-PATRONS

His Majesty the King Her Majesty the Queen Her Royal Highness the Princess Mother Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhom

HON. PRESIDENT HON. VICE-PRESIDENTS

Her Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana Mr. Alexander B. Griswold Mom Kobkaew Abhakara na Ayudhaya H.S.H. Prince Subhadradis Diskul M.R. Patanachai Jayant Maj. Gen. M.R. Kukrit Pramoj Professor Chitti Tingsabadh

HON. MEMBERS

The Ven. Dhammaghosacariya (Buddhadasa Bhikkhu) The Ven. Debvedi (Payutto) Dr. Fua Haripitak Dr. Puey Ungphakom Dr. Kraisri Nimmanahaeminda Dr. Sood Saengvichien H.S.H. Prince Chand Chirayu Rajani Professor William J. Gedney Professor Prawase Wasi, M.D.

HON. AUDITOR

Mr. Yukta na Thalang

HON. ARCHITECT

Mr. Sirichai Narumit

HON. LEGAL COUNSEL

Mr. John Hancock

HON. LANDSCAPE CONSULTANT Mr. William Warren

COUNCIL OF THE SIAM SOCIETY FOR 1990/91 Dr. Piriya Krairiksh Dr. Tern Smitinand Mr. Dacre F.A. Raikes Dr. Rachit Burl Mrs. Virginia M. Di Crocco Mr. James Stent Mr. Sidhijai Tanphiphat Dr. Warren Y. Brockelman Mr. James V. Di Crocco H.E. Mr. Hisahiko Okazaki H.E. Mr. George A. Sioris Prof. Wongchan Pinainitisatra Dr. Pintip Tuaycharoen. MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL: Mrs. Bonnie Davis Dr. Chek Dhanasiri Dr. Ing. Hermann W. Heitmann Mr. Henri Pagau-Clarac Mr. Teddy Spha Palasthira Mr. Kaset Pitakpaivan Dr. Thawatchai Santisuk Mr. Smitthi Siribhadra

President Vice President Vice President Vice President & Leader of the Natural History Section Honorary Secretary Honorary Treasurer Honorary Librarian Honorary Editor of the NHB Honorary Editor of the JSS Honorary Officer Honorary Officer Honorary Officer Honorary Officer (for Publicity) Mr. Barent Springsted Dr. Pomchai Suchitta Mr. William B. Tate Dr. Charit Tingsabadh Dr. Steven}. Torok M.R. Chirie Voravam Mr. Peter Rogers Mrs. Jada Wattanasiritham Mr. Kamjohn Kemasingki

Editor's Note The Honorary Editor wishes to express his indebtedness to Euayporn Kerdchouay for his continuing outstanding role in assisting with the preparation of this publication. Thanks also are due to Peter Rogers, Jeffri Bash Scheliga, Barent Springsted and Anothai Nanthithasana for significant and ongoing help. We are also grateful to the newspaper Thai Rath for providing the illustration used on p.47.

The Journal of the Siam Society

VOLUME 78, PART 1 1990

CONTENTS

Editor's Note

4

In This Issue

7

ARTICLES LARRY STERNSTEIN

LOW'S DESCRIPTION OF THE SIAMESE EMPIRE IN 1824

9

THE PRUSSIAN EXPEDITION TO THE FAR EAST (1860- 1862)

35

BERND MARTIN

SACRIFICE AND THE UNDERWORLD: DEATH AND FERTILITY IN SIAMESE MYTH AND RITUAL

43

MICHAEL WRIGHT

CHURCH AND TEMPLE: SOCIO - ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN NORTHEAST THAILAND

55

R.A.F. PAUL WEBB

THE MONG (GREEN MIAO) AND THEIR LANGUAGE: A BRIEF COMPENDIUM

63

THOMAS AMIS LYMAN

FROM THE HUMAN BODY TO THE HUMANIZED SPACE: THE SYSTEM OF REFERENCE AND REPRESENTATION OF SPACE IN TWO VILLAGES OF NORTHEAST THAILAND

67

BERNARD FORMOSO

ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF WOMEN IN BANGKOK, 1883

85

CONSTANCE M. WILSON

"MANDALA," "SEGMENTARY STATE" AND POLITICS OF CENTRALIZATION IN MEDIEVAL AYUDHYA

89

SUNAIT CHUTINTARANOND

MUSICAL NOTATION IN THAILAND

101

PAMELA MYERS - MORO

PROBLEMS IN THE STONE AGE OF THAILAND

109

T.E.G. REYNOLDS

DEREK MASSARELLA A World Elsewhere: Europe's Encounter With Japan in The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

115

GEORGE A. SIORIS

ALAIN PEYREFITTE L'Empire Immobile, ou le Choc des Mondes

117

MICHAEL SMITHIES

121

SULAK SIVARAKSA

REVIEWS

OBITUARY SOEDJATMOKO- AN APPRECIATION

Corrigendum

In This Issue Responding to requests from scholars occasioned by his article, ' "LOW" Maps of Siam,' in JSS Vol. 73, 1985, LARRY STERNSTEIN provides Lieutenant James Low's maps and geographical memoirs of 1824 and 1830. Despite Low's tantalizingly sloppy if not negligent methods, his detailed listing of place names and associated data, both factual and fanciful, must still be useful to students of the Siamese Empire of his day. BERND MARTIN presents a narration of the Prussian expedition to the Far East in 1860-1862 led by Count Fritz zu Eulenburg aboard the pride of the Prussian navy, the steamship "Arcona." Eager to follow in the footsteps of other European states which had long since turned to the Orient, especially after the opening of Japan, and wishing to demonstrate the new leading position of Prussia within the German Union, Prussian officials sought commercial treaties with Japan, China and Thailand. Dr. Martin discusses the negotiations between the self-assured Prussians and the dubious Chinese, and draws special attention to the courteous reception of Eulenburg and his colleagues by King Mongkut, whose sophistication and friendly informality made a strong impression on the delegation. MICHAEL WRIGHT, focusing his attention on Siamese myth and ritual, examines survivals in Siamese popular religion of the primeval cult of the Earth Goddess and the Door to the Underworld, influences from which can be traced in Christianity and Judaism as well. His research is directed toward explaining practices whose origins otherwise would remain obscure and whose symbols can be seen even now as major characteristics of the grotesque and eerie products of certain schools of contemporary Siamese art. Noting that among the first priorities of Christian churches in Thailand, as they tend to the welfare of the whole person, have been education and the care of the poor, R.A.F. PAUL WEBB discusses the socio-economic developments undertaken by the Catholic Church in Northeast Thailand. The goal is to lift up economic sights and rural values so that by ministering to body as well as soul a climate may be provided where things of the spirit may constructively be discussed. Dr. Webb emphasises the role of priests of the Diocesan Social Action Center (Disac) in this endeavor as well as that of donor organizations, with special attention to their work in Ubon Rachathani. That branch of the Mong population known as the Mong Njua, or Green Miao, less well known than the Hmong or White Miao, is described by THOMAS AMIS LYMAN with special attention to characteristics of their language. In a concise compendium Professor Lyman notes those features of extreme lin-

guistic interest in the speech of the Mong Njua against a brief background sketch of their history and demography. Scrutinizing two specific villages, BERNARD FORMOSO explains the parallels between the representation of village space in Northeast Thailand and the structure of the human body. He analyzes the conceptual pattern of head and feet as it is applied beyond the human body to society, human dwellings, the villages themselves, and to rice, both in storage and in the field. CONSTANCE M. WILSON continues her analysis, begun in our last issue, of the picture of Bangkok in 1883 given by the city's first postal directory, published in that year. She evaluates the role played by women in the economy of Bangkok of that day, discussing their ethnic derivation, occupations, position as heads of households, and status as property owners, etc., all providing evidence of their having been an important economic force in late nineteenth-century Bangkok. SUNAIT CHUTINTARANOND analyses the system of government in effect in medieval Ayudhya with respect to the exercise of authority from the center of the state to its periphery. He challenges the commonly-held conception that in Ayudhya and its neighboring states the king ruled an "imperial court" and was effectively and continuously able to impose political control through a centralized bureaucratic system. In doing so he discusses the applicability of various geopolitical models: the mandala from Kautilya's ancient Arthasastra to its modern emphasis by Wolters, Tambiah's "galactic polity," and Southall's "segmentary state," among others. He concludes that the political map of Southeast Asia before the colonial period, including Ayudhya, was characterized by a multiplicity of political centers primarily based on networks of loyalties, kinship relations, and tributary expressions of recognition. PAMELA MYERS-MORO takes up the applicability of Western-style musical notation to indigenous Thai music, with its advantages and inadequacies, and the generational conflict it brings about between the older traditional musicians and young students acculturated to Western music. To summarize the implications of the modern notation of Thai music she contrasts these with the situation and attitudes prevailing in Java. Finally, noting the new research and associated discoveries which distinguish the present period in concepts of prehistory in Thailand, T.E.G. REYNOLDS calls for serious critical review of the stone age sequence as evidenced in this country. A new sequence should be reconstructed based on more work in context and chronology, especially in an attempt to fill the gaps in the late Middle and early Upper Pleistocene, and also with an intensive attack on the persistent questions posed by the Hoabinhian.

I

I

s· a ·~,)f:f s · .

I

.,_,

TH J

"

~;),,//IV:7f'l •

_ J,.,.,.••n{-rifi..T JtA,..,~

, , /,./H'It/,;1 ft.~

IN't

'M'II'tf.

-J

P

-

OJ

AM,

'

t..~·

. . os

.M.aortu,..t.• .A«omptntllle.ttf

, SOcte•~r ~~,

.. :;._" 1!-i... t/..,/

..

.c.......·~.Jtt>.

~ tt~ ;,~..;,

.l,w.,,u ,1}•/c. ~J4-•t-• /'.t ..

N-1.-*t

~!?:J~:::. . i::~:~,~: Jv/r . ' "'"' ·~ ·· h"~) _,~

0

·t.

VOLUME 18, PAR _..

!

..:. ... ,..

It~ .-·~·

..

The Journal of the Siam Society

VOLUME 78, PART 1

1990

©

All Rights Reserved The Siam Society 1990

ISSN 0857-7099

Printed by Amarin Printing Group Co., Ltd., 413/27-36 Arun Amarin Road, Bangkok Noi, Bangkok 10700, Thailand. Tel. 424-2800-1 Front cover:

From a copy of Capt. James Low's map of Siam held at the National Archives of India. $eep.9.

THE SIAM SOCIETY PATRON VICE-PATRONS

His Majesty the King Her Majesty the Queen Her Royal Highness the Princess Mother Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhom

HON. PRESIDENT HON. VICE-PRESIDENTS

Her Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana Mr. Alexander B. Griswold Mom Kobkaew Abhakara na Ayudhaya H.S.H. Prince Subhadradis Diskul M.R. Patanachai Jayant Maj. Gen. M.R. Kukrit Pramoj Professor Chitti Tingsabadh

HON. MEMBERS

The Ven. Dhammaghosacariya (Buddhadasa Bhikkhu) The Ven. Debvedi (Payutto) Dr. Fua Haripitak Dr. Puey Ungphakom Dr. Kraisri Nimmanahaeminda Dr. Sood Saengvichien H.S.H. Prince Chand Chirayu Rajani Professor William J. Gedney Professor Prawase Wasi, M.D.

HON. AUDITOR

Mr. Yukta na Thalang

HON. ARCHITECT

Mr. Sirichai Narumit

HON. LEGAL COUNSEL

Mr. John Hancock

HON. LANDSCAPE CONSULTANT Mr. William Warren

COUNCIL OF THE SIAM SOCIETY FOR 1990/91 Dr. Piriya Krairiksh Dr. Tern Smitinand Mr. Dacre F.A. Raikes Dr. Rachit Burl Mrs. Virginia M. Di Crocco Mr. James Stent Mr. Sidhijai Tanphiphat Dr. Warren Y. Brockelman Mr. James V. Di Crocco H.E. Mr. Hisahiko Okazaki H.E. Mr. George A. Sioris Prof. Wongchan Pinainitisatra Dr. Pintip Tuaycharoen. MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL: Mrs. Bonnie Davis Dr. Chek Dhanasiri Dr. Ing. Hermann W. Heitmann Mr. Henri Pagau-Clarac Mr. Teddy Spha Palasthira Mr. Kaset Pitakpaivan Dr. Thawatchai Santisuk Mr. Smitthi Siribhadra

President Vice President Vice President Vice President & Leader of the Natural History Section Honorary Secretary Honorary Treasurer Honorary Librarian Honorary Editor of the NHB Honorary Editor of the JSS Honorary Officer Honorary Officer Honorary Officer Honorary Officer (for Publicity) Mr. Barent Springsted Dr. Pomchai Suchitta Mr. William B. Tate Dr. Charit Tingsabadh Dr. Steven}. Torok M.R. Chirie Voravam Mr. Peter Rogers Mrs. Jada Wattanasiritham Mr. Kamjohn Kemasingki

Editor's Note The Honorary Editor wishes to express his indebtedness to Euayporn Kerdchouay for his continuing outstanding role in assisting with the preparation of this publication. Thanks also are due to Peter Rogers, Jeffri Bash Scheliga, Barent Springsted and Anothai Nanthithasana for significant and ongoing help. We are also grateful to the newspaper Thai Rath for providing the illustration used on p.47.

The Journal of the Siam Society

VOLUME 78, PART 1 1990

CONTENTS

Editor's Note

4

In This Issue

7

ARTICLES LARRY STERNSTEIN

LOW'S DESCRIPTION OF THE SIAMESE EMPIRE IN 1824

9

THE PRUSSIAN EXPEDITION TO THE FAR EAST (1860- 1862)

35

BERND MARTIN

SACRIFICE AND THE UNDERWORLD: DEATH AND FERTILITY IN SIAMESE MYTH AND RITUAL

43

MICHAEL WRIGHT

CHURCH AND TEMPLE: SOCIO - ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENTS IN NORTHEAST THAILAND

55

R.A.F. PAUL WEBB

THE MONG (GREEN MIAO) AND THEIR LANGUAGE: A BRIEF COMPENDIUM

63

THOMAS AMIS LYMAN

FROM THE HUMAN BODY TO THE HUMANIZED SPACE: THE SYSTEM OF REFERENCE AND REPRESENTATION OF SPACE IN TWO VILLAGES OF NORTHEAST THAILAND

67

BERNARD FORMOSO

ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES OF WOMEN IN BANGKOK, 1883

85

CONSTANCE M. WILSON

"MANDALA," "SEGMENTARY STATE" AND POLITICS OF CENTRALIZATION IN MEDIEVAL AYUDHYA

89

SUNAIT CHUTINTARANOND

MUSICAL NOTATION IN THAILAND

101

PAMELA MYERS - MORO

PROBLEMS IN THE STONE AGE OF THAILAND

109

T.E.G. REYNOLDS

DEREK MASSARELLA A World Elsewhere: Europe's Encounter With Japan in The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

115

GEORGE A. SIORIS

ALAIN PEYREFITTE L'Empire Immobile, ou le Choc des Mondes

117

MICHAEL SMITHIES

121

SULAK SIVARAKSA

REVIEWS

OBITUARY SOEDJATMOKO- AN APPRECIATION

Corrigendum

In This Issue Responding to requests from scholars occasioned by his article, ' "LOW" Maps of Siam,' in JSS Vol. 73, 1985, LARRY STERNSTEIN provides Lieutenant James Low's maps and geographical memoirs of 1824 and 1830. Despite Low's tantalizingly sloppy if not negligent methods, his detailed listing of place names and associated data, both factual and fanciful, must still be useful to students of the Siamese Empire of his day. BERND MARTIN presents a narration of the Prussian expedition to the Far East in 1860-1862 led by Count Fritz zu Eulenburg aboard the pride of the Prussian navy, the steamship "Arcona." Eager to follow in the footsteps of other European states which had long since turned to the Orient, especially after the opening of Japan, and wishing to demonstrate the new leading position of Prussia within the German Union, Prussian officials sought commercial treaties with Japan, China and Thailand. Dr. Martin discusses the negotiations between the self-assured Prussians and the dubious Chinese, and draws special attention to the courteous reception of Eulenburg and his colleagues by King Mongkut, whose sophistication and friendly informality made a strong impression on the delegation. MICHAEL WRIGHT, focusing his attention on Siamese myth and ritual, examines survivals in Siamese popular religion of the primeval cult of the Earth Goddess and the Door to the Underworld, influences from which can be traced in Christianity and Judaism as well. His research is directed toward explaining practices whose origins otherwise would remain obscure and whose symbols can be seen even now as major characteristics of the grotesque and eerie products of certain schools of contemporary Siamese art. Noting that among the first priorities of Christian churches in Thailand, as they tend to the welfare of the whole person, have been education and the care of the poor, R.A.F. PAUL WEBB discusses the socio-economic developments undertaken by the Catholic Church in Northeast Thailand. The goal is to lift up economic sights and rural values so that by ministering to body as well as soul a climate may be provided where things of the spirit may constructively be discussed. Dr. Webb emphasises the role of priests of the Diocesan Social Action Center (Disac) in this endeavor as well as that of donor organizations, with special attention to their work in Ubon Rachathani. That branch of the Mong population known as the Mong Njua, or Green Miao, less well known than the Hmong or White Miao, is described by THOMAS AMIS LYMAN with special attention to characteristics of their language. In a concise compendium Professor Lyman notes those features of extreme lin-

guistic interest in the speech of the Mong Njua against a brief background sketch of their history and demography. Scrutinizing two specific villages, BERNARD FORMOSO explains the parallels between the representation of village space in Northeast Thailand and the structure of the human body. He analyzes the conceptual pattern of head and feet as it is applied beyond the human body to society, human dwellings, the villages themselves, and to rice, both in storage and in the field. CONSTANCE M. WILSON continues her analysis, begun in our last issue, of the picture of Bangkok in 1883 given by the city's first postal directory, published in that year. She evaluates the role played by women in the economy of Bangkok of that day, discussing their ethnic derivation, occupations, position as heads of households, and status as property owners, etc., all providing evidence of their having been an important economic force in late nineteenth-century Bangkok. SUNAIT CHUTINTARANOND analyses the system of government in effect in medieval Ayudhya with respect to the exercise of authority from the center of the state to its periphery. He challenges the commonly-held conception that in Ayudhya and its neighboring states the king ruled an "imperial court" and was effectively and continuously able to impose political control through a centralized bureaucratic system. In doing so he discusses the applicability of various geopolitical models: the mandala from Kautilya's ancient Arthasastra to its modern emphasis by Wolters, Tambiah's "galactic polity," and Southall's "segmentary state," among others. He concludes that the political map of Southeast Asia before the colonial period, including Ayudhya, was characterized by a multiplicity of political centers primarily based on networks of loyalties, kinship relations, and tributary expressions of recognition. PAMELA MYERS-MORO takes up the applicability of Western-style musical notation to indigenous Thai music, with its advantages and inadequacies, and the generational conflict it brings about between the older traditional musicians and young students acculturated to Western music. To summarize the implications of the modern notation of Thai music she contrasts these with the situation and attitudes prevailing in Java. Finally, noting the new research and associated discoveries which distinguish the present period in concepts of prehistory in Thailand, T.E.G. REYNOLDS calls for serious critical review of the stone age sequence as evidenced in this country. A new sequence should be reconstructed based on more work in context and chronology, especially in an attempt to fill the gaps in the late Middle and early Upper Pleistocene, and also with an intensive attack on the persistent questions posed by the Hoabinhian.

( ' ,. to•l' " ' " fr., •u " l"rt;•' lo< l ol

jtllft•o>~oo i

I !< I t IIIIo

,f

H... r~

f ;U;IJt( Or'r n rU,

,.r ..n ( •u .,l l •r" '

l r•r " " " '

I'" 01 dhisattvaprabhur varal}l 4. adharal") sarvabuddhaniirn tan namami vimuk~aye II 5. srisamaje para yasya bhaktil) sraddha ca niramala I 6. tasya dasasya daso'ham bhaveyam sarvajanmasu II 7. ity ajiia paramagurol) srutvii stutyii namaskt;ta I 8. anukathya maya bhaktya srisamajan name sada II 9. jayantrapuranamadau chparransiti tatal1 param I 10. desas tatra sthitas tayi srisamantaprabhesvaral;ll 11. saiva bauddhabhayam hatva kambuje buddhasasanam I 12. cakara dr,a- tkiii.cid atrety amutra hi II 29. cet phalam me'sti pu~yanam jato'hamkambuje drutam I samajasamkhya30. ya deve'trartham kurvas tu nanyatha II api ca I anyapral)idhayo'nekaJ:t

The text in Khmer 31. ri vra]J vuddhalosvara ta pram pvann ti kamsten srisatyavarrna ta man siddhi sthapana vren 32. le abhayagiri tern kampi java akranta sruk khmer vra]J no]Jsyanta nu tvalla dau 33. hon kamraten aii ta gurudharaqindrapura jirqoddharaqa thve pi pravai sthapa34. na iss vra]J no]J vin tel no]J syan ta ayat vighna ri acaryya vral) dhanu 35. ta sir;;ya gi ta sthapana vral) ne)J ay ta ar;;ta ar;;ta nava ta gi rajya vral) pada kamrate36. n kamtvan aii sri udayadityavarmadeva ere!). sri sthira sakti ta rap phdai karom

The text on the adjoining face to the right Line 1. 990 gi nu nuk 2. 996 3. 4.

5. mai ro va 6. svadhya

Line 7. maika 8. vata 9. dvaya rardho lO.gra 11 .... 2

Translation of the Sanskrit text Verses 1. First, I salute the five Buddhas, who are the manifestations of the celebrated elements, who are the celebrated bodies of gods and who are the bestowers of fortune. 2. For salvation I salute the Vajrasattva who is the sixth [Dhyanibuddha], the bearer of all the Buddhas and the highest master of the holy Bodhisattva. 3. In all my births, may I become the slave of that slave, who has great devotion to and impeccable faith in the Srisamaja. 4. "Having saluted with praise, I must hear and repeat the teacher's command devotedly.": thus is the command of the supreme teacher. I constantly pay my obeisance to Srisamaja. 5. The protecting lord of the all-around lighted sphere stayed in the country the name of which begins with Jayantrapura and ends in Chparransi. 6. After having got rid of the threat to the Buddhists, he himself consolidated Buddhism in Kambuja even to the present day. I repeatedly pay my obeisance to him. 7. The most revered and adorable Cunvis, who is famous for his good conduct, is pure and possessed of many exploits. His speech is unblemished. He is devoted to the worship of the Buddha and to religious chanting. 8. The most revered and adorable Campaka, who is devoted to his teacher's feet, who has been saluted by those who have become Siddhas [accomplished beings] and who is the teacher of the country of Chparransi, has gone to the lord of the place the name of which is Sthalasvay. 9. The virtuous, most revered, and adorable Dharal);indrapura, effulgent on account of his intelligence, who became fortunate after having decorated the Firm One by means of great wealth, purified his heart in the Bodhi [Enlightenment]. 10. Those whose army is Prajiiaparamita, who have striven strenuously after having crossed the ocean in the form of the commentary on philosophical thought, have become the enjoyers of the fruits in the form of the truth on the secret tree. 11. Vraj;l. Dhanus, who is possessed of clear perception, firm and intelligent, is a student of the Siddhanta [accomplished being]. I salute the three teachers among the three teachers with joy. 12. He whose mind is scorched by fire in the form of texts like the Kasika, poems, external texts, etc., while drinking the nee-

THE SAB BAK INSCRIPTION tar in the form of the Guhya for a long time, is ready for sacrifice, religious chanting, Yoga and taste. 13. It is the learned VraJ:t Dhanus who has installed the images of the Dhyani Buddhas and Adibuddha at Tenpasnaga, the specially fortunate sacred place, on Friday the seventh of the bright fortnight in the month of Phalguna [February-March] in the year 988. 14. A certain knowledge has been arrived at by me in this world on account of many gods and goddesses, namely ~ri, Saktis, Kirti and the lord of gods [Indra], being brought. Certainly the same should take place in the next world. 15. If I should have the fruit of my meritorious act I should soon be born in Kambuja. We both do good for the sake of the god here for the benefit of the Samaja, not for anything else. In addition, there are several other entreaties.

Rendering of the Khmer text Indeed, the images of VraJ:t [the adorable] Buddhalokesvara were installed by the Venerable~risatyavarman, who had supernatural power, in the past, on Abhayagiri, with the intention that Java may not attack Kambuja. Later on, the nine images deteriorated. The venerable teacher by the name of DharaQindrapura has renovated the deteriorated images and reinstalled them once again. In this way, they became free from harm. Indeed, his pupil, Vral). A.caryya Dhanu, has installed these images in the year 988, which is in the reign of His Majesty King Udayadityavarmadeva. May he live long and remain powerful for the rest of his reign. [The text on the adjoining face cannot be translated as it appears to be incomplete.]

Notes by verse on the translation of the Sanskrit text 1. The term Paficasugata seems to refer to the five Dhyani Buddhas, namely Ak!!obhaya, Vairocana, Amitabha, Ratnasambhava and Amoghasiddhi, whose colours are blue, white, red, yellow and green respectively (see Bhattacharyya: 1972, p. 16; see also Bhattacharyya: 1980, pp. 100 ff.). This stanza seems to be well illustrated by passages quoted hereafter: "According to Guhyasamaja, when the Bodhicitta secures oneness with ~unya or the Infinite Spirit in the highest state of meditation, its mind-sky is filled with innumerable visions and scenes, until at last, like a spark, the Bodhicitta visualizes letters of the alphabet as germ syllables, which gradually assume the shape of deities, first indistinct, then changing into perfect, glorious, living forms, the embodiments of the Infinite. The deities appear before his mind's eye in bright, effulgent, gorgeous and divine beauty in form, dress and ornament." (ibid., 1972, p. 16). "From these five Dhyani Buddhas originate the families of deities named in the Guhyasama Tantra." (ibid., 1972, p. 16.)

13

2. Vajrasattva, the sixth Dhyani Buddha, is regarded as the Purohita or the priest of the five Dhyani Buddhas. His worship is always performed in secret and is not open to those who are not initiated into the mysteries of the Vajrayana (Bhattacharyya: 1985, p. 6). Note the gilt bronze image of Vajrasattva Bodhisattva ( p. 10 ) from Cambodia which appears in Plate 37 on page 131 and is described on page 410 of The Crucible of Compassion and Wisdom: Special Exhibition Catalog of Buddhist Bronzes from the Nitta Group Collection, for the exhibition held at the National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, from October 10, 1987 to September 15, 1988. The image is 36.9 em high and is attributed to the 11 111-12111 century A.D. Vajrasattva has six arms. His two major arms carry a vajra and a vajra-topped bell. The body wears jewelled ornaments, bracelets and a decorated belt sash. On the head the hair is piled high under a jewelled crown with images of five Buddhas. He sits in sattvaparyali.kasana on a dais shaped like Mt. Sumeru. In each of the four directions on top of the base there is a three-pointed vajra. It is interesting to note that the Buddha image at Thiksey Monstery, Leh, Ladakh, India, bears on its head the five deities, matching the description of the five Dhyanibuddhas. 3. Srisamaja appears to be the short form of Sriguhyasamaja which is a form of Tantra (see Hopkins: 1980, p. 21). 5-6. Chparransi may be identified with Stuk Ransi or Vamsahrada, its Sanskrit equivalent, met with many times in the Sdok Kak Thorn Inscription. The literal meaning of both Stuk Ransi and Vamsahrada is Bamboo Lake (see verse 84: Majumdar: 1953, p. 368; Chakravarti: Part II, 1980, p. 75 n8). ~risa­ mantaprabhe5vara seems to be the name of a certain god or possibly a posthumous title accorded to a king: Could it be meant for Suryavarman I, whose favour for Buddhism earned him the title of NirviiQapada? (see Coedes: 1968, p. 135.) The literal meaning of the word ~risamantaprabhesvara also fits in with the meaning of the word Sfiryavarman. The meaning of stanza 6 seems to support the above-mentioned speculation as well. 7-8. It appears that Campaka, the Blessed One, is the pupil of Curwis, the Blessed One. The former, as the spiritual teacher of the country of Chparransi, seems to have gone to the local ruler of a place called Sthalasvay and possibly resided there for the rest of his life. Sthalasvay is probably Kompong Svay, which is associated with Siiryavarman I (ibid., p. 136). 9-10. Dharanll}drapura, the Blessed One, seems to have restored some image which is designated as the Firm One. Could it be the Buddha image representing either Cunvis, the Blessed One, or Campaka, the Blessed One? Both of them, including DharaJ;~.indrapura, might have been regarded as having attained godhood as is indicated by the respectful term Bhagavad used for them. This assumption is evidently supported by stanza 10. The Khmer text states clearly that Dharat;iindrapura refers to a person, not a city. Why the word pura is added at the end is unclear. It could mean that this venerable figure is the spiritual teacher of the city called Dharar;Undrapura. 11-12. VraJ:t Dhanus seems to be DharaJ;Undrapura's pupil, who is not satisfied with the study of the other texts outside the

14

CHIRAPAT PRAPANDVIDYA

Guhyasamaja Tantra, for instance the Ka:Sika, which is the commentary on the Pfu:rinisutra. The terms Homa, Japa and Yoga possibly refer to the means of the Tantras, which are divided into four sets, Action, Performance, Yoga and Highest

Yoga, by way of the varying abilities of the trainees to use desire in the path (for details see Hopkins: 1980, pp. 120 ff.). The word Guhyanu:ta may refer to the teaching of the Guhyasamaja Tantra.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BHATIACHARYYA, BENOYTOSH. An Introduction to Buddhist Eso-

terism. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1980.

- - The Indian Buddhist Iconography. New Delhi: Cosmo Publications, 1985. _ _ ed. Ni~pamrayogtimli of Mahapal)Qita Abhayakaragupta. Baroda: Oriental Institute, 1972. CHAKRAVARTI, ADHIR. The Sdok Knk Tlrom Inscription Part I: A Study in Indo-Kirmer Ci'l'iliZiltion. Calcutta: Sanskrit College, 1978.

COEDES, G. Tlu? Indianized States of Southeast Asia. Translated from the French by Susan Brown Cowing; edited by Walter F. Vella. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1968. HOPKINS, JEFFREY, trans. and ed. Tmrtra in Tibet: The Great Exposi-

tion of Secret Mantras -Volume I by Tsong-ka-pa. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980. MAJUMDAR, R.C. Inscriptions of Knmbuja. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1953.

- - The Sdok Knk Thom Inscription Part II: Text, Translation and Commentary. Calcutta: Sanskrit College, 1980.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The transliteration of the text was done with the help of Miss Kanikar Vimolkasem, Lecturer in Palaeography, Department of Oriental Languages, Faculty of Archaeology, Silpakom University, Bangkok. The

rendering of the Khmer. text was done with the help of Dr. Uraisi Varasarin, Assistant Professor, Department of Oriental Languages, Faculty of Archaeology, Silpakom University, Bangkok.

THE OLD CITY OF 'CHALIANG''SRI SATCHANALAI'-'SAWANKHALOK' A Problem in History and Historiography1 MICHAEL VICKERY UNIVERSITI SAINS MALAYSIA

The old city which is under discussion here is that located about 50 km north of Sukhothai on the west side of the Yom river, and 14 km south of the Amphoe administrative center officially named [new] Sri Satchanalai, but locally known as Hat Siaw. 2 Just 2-7 km north of the old city extend the ancient ceramic kiln fields of Pa Yang and Ban Koh Noi which have received much archaeological attention in recent years, and which must have constituted a major economic activity for several centuries, although they are unmentioned in any legendary or historical sources. 3 This old city and the names which have been attributed to it have come under new attention as a result of archaeological study of the kilns and their wares, the transformation of the area into a 'historical park' at the hand of the Fine Arts Department, and the new Ram Khamhaeng controversy which involves both Sukhothai and Sri Satchanalai. Because some of the material to be examined, and conclusions reached, impinge on problems of the history of the Kingdom of Sukhothai in a wider sense and on the status of the Ram Khamhaeng inscription, and because another historian has recently discussed some of this material in connection with that inscription, I hasten to state at the outset that those issues are not what is of primary concern here. 4 This paper was conceived as part of a historical background study of the development and decline of the 'Old City' as a ceramic production center, and its narrower purpose is to determine which of the names in question were attached to it at different times in the past. The reason for placing the names 'Sri Satchanalai' (sajjaniilai), 'Chaliang' (jalyan) and 'Sawankhalok' (savarrgalok) in single quotation marks is because the names themselves involve historical and historiographical problems, not the least of which is the identities of the places to which they were at-

tributed in the past. That is, did they always, as in current opinion, represent a single location, or two, or three? There are even problems with the literal meanings of the names. If 'sajjaniilai' could be understood as Sanskrit 'abode of good people', this gloss does not fit the forms 'sejaniilai' or 'sajaniilai' found in some inscriptions; and if 'savarrgalok' means 'heaven's world', the origin of the name may have been 'sm1ga lok' ('sangkhalok') which cannot be explained in the same way. 5 The third name 'Chaliang' (jalyan), which must be from a non-Thai language, has so far not been understood, and it should probably be investigated in connection with the stilloccurring toponym 'chaliang' (chalian), found, for instance, in the village name 'Ban Kong Chaliang', just east of the mountain Khao Luang, some 12 km south of Old Sukhothai, and in the name of a stream, 'Huay Khlong Wang Chaliang' running 20-25 km to the northeast of Kamphaeng Phet. 6 Lest linguistic purists object that the initial low consonant of the historic term and initial high consonant of the modern names make the identification impossible, I must emphasize that w~ are in the domain of popular etymological reinterpretation of foreign term(s) in which anything may happen. Thus after Old Thai j devoiced to I chi the local population might well have adopted a pronunciation of the initial short syllable I cha? I, or perhaps even pronounced it as a consonant cluster I chi/ in such a way that modern surveyors understood it as high consonant ch. The official view on the location(s) of places bearing these three names, concretized in the writings of Prince Damrong Rajanubhab (1862-1943), is that there was a site named Chaliang at the bend in the River Yom just 4 km south of the old city; then one of the early Sukhothai kings added constructions (i.e. the old city under discussion here) above Chaliang and renamed the entire area Sri Satchanalai; finally in the

16

MICHAEL VICKERY

Ayutthaya period both Chaliang and Sri Satchanalai together were renamed Sawankhalok. The same view is upheld in the Department of Fine Arts report on the archaeology of Wat Chang Lorn in which the last name change is dated to B.E. 2099 I A.D. 1556 in the reign of King Maha Chakrabartiraj. This is erroneous, as I shall show. 7 The evidence which led Prince Damrong to this reasoning was: (1) inscription no. 1, that of 'Ram Khamhaeng', mentions Sukhothai (sukltodai) and Sri Satchanalai several times, in particular as a place where Ram Khamhaeng buried relics and constructed a cedi over them, and Chaliang once, which shows that Chaliang and Sri Satchanalai were distinct sites, and that there is no question of the former simply having been renamed to become the latter; (2) in the same inscription Ram Khamhaeng is said to have placed an inscription at a temple in Chaliang called Sri Ratnathat, which 'must be' the one at the bend of the river, now known popularly as Wat Phra Prang; (3) the Ayutthayan "Law on Abduction", ostensibly dated 1356, pairs Chaliang with Sukhothai, without mention of Sri Satchanalai; (4) no other inscription than no. 1 mentions Chaliang, and its mention there is because Ram Khamhaeng placed an inscription in Chaliang, not in Sri Satchanalai; while (5) Chaliang is not mentioned in other inscriptions because by then (14th century) it had been included in the new Sri Satchanalai; and (6) although everything written at Sukhothai [except no. 1], that is inscriptions, names only Sri Satchanalai, material written elsewhere, such as the chronicles of Chiang Mai or the Ayutthaya laws, show the name Chaliang, but not Sri Satchanalai, "to such an extent that one can say the two names are not found together in the same text"-the other political centers saw no point in using a new name (Sri Satchanalai), and continued to use the old name which they knew (Chaliang).8 Now first of all Prince Damrong was mistaken about the distribution of the two names Chaliang and Sri Satchanalai, partly because not all of the inscriptions now known were available to him. At least three more, nos. 2, 10, and 38, contain the name Chaliang, and in nos. 2 and 38 Sri Satchanalai is also found, while at least two northern chronicles, Jinakalamiilipakarl'} of Chiang Mai and Tiirrman Mulasiisana of Lamphun, refer to Satchanalai. A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, who did know all of the inscriptions discovered since Prince Damrong's time, still opted for an equivalent explanation. Chaliang ".. .in the thirteenth and the fourteenth century ... was the second most important city of the kingdom of Sukhodaya .. .it was known as Sajjanalaya ... [s]ome of the inscriptions of Sukhodaya make a distinction between Sajjanalaya and Chalieng; but later the two names are used interchangeably". As for non-epigraphic sources, in the Ayutthaya chronicles "the whole complex is called Salieng, which is a doublet of Chalieng; in the Chieng Mai Chronicle it is called Chalieng, except in one entry where it is called Chieng Chiin; in Y [uan] P [hail it is called Chieng Chiin, except in one place where it is called Chalieng".9 Let us first review. the relevant contexts to see how solid

these conclusions about the names 'Satchanalai', 'Chaliang', and 'Sawankhalok' really are.

The epigraphic evidence The occurrences of these names in the Sukhothai inscriptions other than no. 1 are as follows:

-Inscription 2 (1361 ?): side 1, near the beginning, lines 8-9, Sri Nav Nc'irl). Thun;t, an ancestor of the inscription's protagonist "built (or ruled) in two nagar, one named Nagar Sukhodai, one named Nagar Sri Sejanalai ... ";line 10, "founded a bra~t sri ratnadlziitu beside the water in nagar Sukhothai" [broken passage] .. .line 12, momi Jalyan ... [broken passage"; lines 2325, "Ba Khun Pan Klan Hav captured momi Sri Sejanalai...Ba Khun Pha Moan took his army to ... Sri Sejanalai and Sukhothai":10 side 1, lines 36-37, Ramaraj built a brah sri ratnadltiitltu in· Sri Sajanalai; lines 38-40 "Ba Khun Pha Moan ... resided in Sri Sejanalai"; 11 side 2, line 8, a journey by the the inscription's protagonist via "Sukhodai, pan chlann, Sri Sajanalai"; 12 -Inscription 11 (1360s?): side 2, line 13, ... then went to Sukhodai Sejanalai...";13 - Inscription 3 (1357): side 1, line 4, Lithai "ruled moan Sri Sajjanalai Sukhodai"; side 2, line 55, Buddha footprints were placed in "moan· Sri Sajjanalai on top of Mt.-" and in " moan Sukhodai on top of Mt. Sumanakut"; 14 -Inscription 4, in Khmer (1361): in 1347 Lithai "led an army from Sri Sajanalay", and "entered· to reign in sruk [=moan"] Sukhodai"; he "ruled in Sukhodai"; there was a Buddha image "in the middle of this sruk Sukhodai"; the "Mango Grove is west of this Sukhodai"; 15 -Inscription 5 (1361 ): Lithai "ruled in moan Sri Sajjanalay Sukhodai"; "he had been ruling in moan Sri Sajjanalai Sukhodai for 22 years"; a Buddha image "in the middle of moan Sukhodai";16 - Inscription 8 (1359): "the road from moan Sukhodai to this mountain"; "moan· Sri.Sajjanalai Sukhodai"; "from Sbrl Gvae to Sukhodai";17 -Inscription 102 (1380): "moan Sukhodai"; 18 -Inscription 45 (1392): "the deity on Mt. yann yan" bral;z sri", which Griswold and Prasert have interpreted as the "spirit Braq Khabarl of Mount Yannyarl [the spirit of Mount] Braq Sri", because in inscription no. 1 there is a Bra]J.Khabarl "generally identified with Khau Hlvarl" at Sukhodai, whereas "Mount Bral;t Sri is the hill ofthat name ... south of Sajjanalay"; 19 -Inscription 64 (1390s?): "the dynasty of Sukhodai";20 -Inscription 38 (1373?, 1397?, 1433?): a list of 4 officials placed in relationship to SagapOri, Sri Sejanalaipiiri, Dvaiynadi Sri Yamana, Nagor Dai; the king "proceeded to Sukhodaipflri"; "in the middle of moan Sukhodai.. .cities such as Jalyari, Kambhaeri Bhejr, Dan Yari, Pak Yam, Sori Gvae";21

'CHALIANG'-'SRI SATCHANALAI'-'SAWANKHALOK'

-Inscription 46 (1403): "... king of (nagara Sri Sajjanalai) Sukhodai;22 - Inscription 10 (1404): "moan Jalyan"; "then prince/ venerable [dan caul Phan left Jalyan and went to stay in Son Gvae ... "; "... went to Jian Mai..."; "... built a chedi in moan Jian Mai"; 23 -Inscription 9 (1343-1406): this record consisting of three obviously related inscribed stones is the only inscription which is believed to have come from the 'old city' under discussion here, and which is otherwise completely bereft of epigraphic records. This belief, however, is an inference from its contents, for the immediate provenance and original location of the stones are unknown. The entire record was probably written at or soon after the latest date, and it is thus an historical account of the previous 60-odd years. The relevant details of its content are: (side 1, lines 1115) in 1359 King 'grandfather' Mahadharmaraja (Lithai) had a kuti (monk's dwelling) built for a monk, Maha Kalyal)athera, when he went to worship the Mahathat ('great relic') at Sri Sajjanalai, and he also had the Red Forest Monastery built for him; (lines 19-21) in 1361 the narrator, a monk named Tilokatilaka, says he went to Sukhodai to do homage to Maha Kalyap.athera; then the latter became ill and they both [returned?) to "this Red Forest Monastery"; as Kalyal)athera's condition worsened they "sent word to [the king) at Sukhodai"; (side 2) a damaged and therefore very fragmented account of acquaintance and visiting between Tilkokatilaka and Mahasamanathera (Sumana of other sources) involving rainy season retreats at "this" [i.e. 'here') Red Forest Monastery and the Mango Grove Monastery, possibly at Sukhodai. First the king invited Sumana to the Mango Grove; Sumana wanted to go ... also wanted to visit "me" in the Red Forest; he came to see this Red Forest Monastery and after he had paid his respects [I) sent him to worship the Mahathat; he spent the rainy season at the Mango Grove "there" and I spent it at "this" Red Forest; in [1362) and [1363) ... spent the rainy season in this Red Forest.. .in [1364) ... [broken context) in the Mango Grove, in 1363 Sumana went 'north' ". 24 Between sides 2 and 3 there is a break in time from 1369 to 1388, probably indicating that a fourth stone has been lost. In side 3 the story has switched to a Kalyal)a Forest Monastery which Griswold and Prasert assume to be the old Red Forest Monastery renamed in honor of Maha Kalyiil)athera. 25 Sukhothai and Satchanalai are not mentioned, but there is an account of a monastic dispute being settled at Lake Chan, which Griswold and Prasert seem to have taken as located near Sukhothai, and in the last paragraph reference to a Mt. Svargarama, apparently associated with the Kalyal)a Forest Monastery. If, however, the action of Face 3 was in Sukhothai, the concluding lines, in their reference to "this Kalyal)a forest Monastery", would seem to place the latter, and the original site of Inscription no. 9, at Sukhothai, rather than Sri Satchanalai, wherever that city was located. Whatever the status of the details on side 3 this inscription at least associates a Mahathat with Sri Satchanalai, and

17

situates a Red Forest Monastery in the vicinity. It is the assumptions associated with these terms which have led to the placing of inscription no. 9 in the 'old city' on the Yom. That city was assumed to be Sri Satchanalai, and the Mahathat was assumed to have been either Wat Chang Lorn or the large edifice at the river bend. A Red Forest Monastery is mentioned in Jinakalamiili near a Mount Siripabbata, now assumed to be the Mount Phra Sri just west of our old city, although none of the visible ruins has been identified as the Red F0rest Monastery. However, as I shall describe below, there is another Red Forest wat, still traditionally identified as such, at another location which, once the assumptions are bracketed out, makes a better case for the location of Sri Satchanalai.2 6 From the contemporary 14th century references in the inscriptions we may infer that Sukhothai and Sri Satchanalai were close enough to be considered a joint political entity, moan"/nagara Sri Satchanalai Sukhothai. They were not, however, just a single city, for certain contexts separate them. Inscription 3 speaks of separate Buddha footprints on separate hills in each; and in inscription 4 Lithai is said to have led an army from Sri Satchanalai, and to have entered to rule in Sukhothai. It cannot, however, be accepted that Satchanalai was a later name for Chaliang at the bend in the river. Inscription 2 shows that for the mid-14th century Sukhothai elite Sri Satchanalai was already an ancient city; the three etymologically different orthographies of its name indeed indicate it was of such age that its origins were forgotten; and in inscription no. 38 a king, accompanied by an official of "Sejanalaypllri ", is described as issuing a law in moa1i Sukhothai, surrounded by several cities, including Chaliang, but not Satchanalai. Even later, after frequent use of the name Satchanalai in Sukhothai epigraphy, inscription no. 10 ignores it and refers only to Chaliang as a place from which monks went to Song Khvae (Phitsanulok?) and to Chiang Mai, and by its date proves that wherever Chaliang was located, it was not a place which was later renamed Sri SatchanalaiP

Textual references One of the early northern chronicles makes the separation of Sukhothai and Satchanalai quite explicit. In a long section concerning monks who brought Sinhala Buddhism to the Sukhothai kingdom, the Til 1f1nlill Mulasasanii tells of a cau Anomadassi who went to reside in momi Satchanalai, while another, cau Sumana, stayed in the Red Mango Forest Monastery in Sukhothai. They often went back and forth to help one another ordain monks in either place. This seems to be the story recorded in inscription no. 9. 2" On one such journey Sumana was on his way to Satchanalai and was led to a miraculous relic in a deserted chedi at a place called Pang Cha (pan"ca), described as situated with Sukhothai 2 yojana to its southwest and Satchanalai 1 or 2 yojana

18

MICHAEL VICKERY

to its northwest, which given the old length of the yoja11a places it 22 km from Sukhothai, and places Satchanalai 33 or 44 km from Sukhothai, whereas the old city of Chaliang-Sawankhalok is over 50 km from Sukhothai. These distances have traditionally been reinterpreted to fit the distance from Sukhothai to Sawankhalok, which also lies northeast of the route Sumana was following; but taken as given, these details place Miilasiismli'l's Satchanalai in an interesting location which will be discussed below."" 'Pang cha' is not identifiable, but given the Mon gloss of pii1l as 'river mouth', it may indicate the confluence of a 'khlong' with the Fa Kradan river, which in contrast to other versions of the story and descriptions of the route, is otherwise unmentioned. 30 The oth~r famous northern religious chronicle, /illakiilamii/1pakanJ, also keeps Sukhothai and Sri Satchanalai separate.31 Its passage corresponding to that cited above from Mfdasiisa11ii says "King Dhammaraja was ruling at Suk.hodayapura", and from there "one day Sumana was going to Sajjanalaya, he stopped beside the river named 'Pa' ", and found the relic, which he took "to Sajjanalaya, where a son of Dhammaraja named Lideyyaraja was ruling", and Sumana was installed there in the Maharattavanarama (Great Red Forest Monastery) at the foot of Mt. Siripabbata ('Mt. Sri'). Further on, in a legendary section about the acquisition of the Phra Sihing Buddha image by Rocaraja (Pali for Phra Ruang), father of Ramaraja (mentioned in inscriptions 2, 3, 5, 38, 45), the former, reigning at Sukhothai, is credited with construction "at Sajjanalayapura of a grand and magnificent stupa in bricks and stone, covered with white plaster", apparently in honor of the Sihing statue. This detail, as will be clear below, means either that the Satchanalai mentioned here was not the 'old city' under discussion, or the author of /illakii/amii/1 did not have accurate information about Satchanalai, for no major temple in the old city on the Yom may any longer be attributed to Ramaraj or to his father. This event would of course have been earlier than the adventures of Sumana. Later, in a section about another group of monks returning from abroad in the 15th century, they are said to have come from Ayutthaya "to Sajjanalaya ... then to Sukhodaya", a route which now appears unusual.' 2 Indeed, in a study of the Ram Khamhaeng inscription Dr. Piriya Krairiksh has used this itinerary as evidence that 'Satchanalai' meant Phitsanulok. This is not a necessary conclusion, because on a journey up the Yom from Nakhon Sa wan, Satchanalai, understood either as Chaliang or as the now deserted alternative site which I propose below, would be more directly reached with the usual transportation of the time than Sukhothai. Part of Dr. Piriya's argument depends on a rejection of the early name, 'two [river] branch-city', (so1l gvae, dvisakha), as a name for Phitsanulok, and its displacement to Nakhon Sawan, but this is difficult to accept. The references to King Naresuor's (1590-1605) father, Mahadhammaraja, as Lord ofPhitsanulok in all sources, and as "Phraya Song Khveen" in the van Vliet chronicle, means that the name 'two branch' cannot be displaced to Nakhon Sa wan, however attractive the hypothesis.n

As noted above, Griswold commented on the Ayutthayan chronicles' treatment of "the whole complex" as sa/ie11g, equivalent to jalymi I Chaliang. At least that equivalence of name is acceptable, but the most accurate Ayutthayan chronicle, that of L1ta11g Prasot, records in 1460 that "Phraya Jalyarl turned traitor and joined the Maharaj [King of Chiang Mail". Then in 1474 "the king [of Ayutthaya) went to take momiSalieng". Neither of these entries is related to any details of location, and it is not only impossible to affirm that they refer to "the whole [Chaliang-Satchanalai] complex", but without the information available from other sources it would be impossible to determine their location at all, or even to infer that salieli=jalymi. In fact use of different names one after the other in closely related contexts is suspect, and perhaps indicates that the compiler of the L11a11g Prasot chronicle was working from disconnected records which he did not fully understand. Thus the pronunciation /saliang/ represents a Lao/lsan treatment of jalymi, but not the pronunciation of either Chiang Mai or Ayutthaya. As for the Chiang Mai chronicle (CMC), which Griswold also cited for its use of Chaliang in all contexts except one where "the whole complex" is called Chiang Chi.in (jimi jiill), those two names do occur as Griswold said. In the first instance, during a struggle with "the southern rul0r" (i.e. King of Ayutthaya) which seems to correspond to an Ayutthayan invasion of Chiang Mai recorded in L11a11g Prast'it in 1442, one of the enemy is called "Phraya Chaliang Sukhothai", a terminological pairing quite different from anything in the inscriptions and of no help at all in the problem, if it was intended to mean that Chaliang was Sri Satchanalai, something the inscriptions show to be untrue. Perhaps the intention was that Phraya Chaliang also ruled Sukhothai, which if not entirely accurate is at least concordant with other chronicles noted below which show Chaliang as the most important miimi in the area in mid15th century. Following this there are other references to Sukhothai without Chaliang, and some years later a story of the ruler of Chaliang betraying Chiang Mai. Still later the 'southern ruler' became a monk, recorded in Luang PrasOt in 1465, and asked Chiang Mai for Chaliang as alms. Finally, in 1474, the Chiang Mai chronicle says Hmi.in Dan, governor of Chiang Chi.in, died and a new governor was appointed. The ruler (Phraya Luang/ brmiil h/van) of Sukhothai attacked and took Chiang Chi.in, which corresponds in date to the Luang PrasOt record of an Ayutthayan attack on Salieng. Comparison of the two texts then does suggest that Chiang Chi.in=Chaliang, but since it is the last record of the place in CMC, and occurs after a period under governors appointed from Chiang Mai, it may be simply a new name in the northern Thai pattern (Chiang/jiani imposed by the northern suzerain. The Chiang Mai chronicle then is of no help in distinguishing among the names 'Satchanalai', 'Chaliang' and 'Sawankhalok', although it indicates that Chaliang was involved politically with SukhothaP 4 The name Chiang Chiin occurs in one other text, the allegedly 15th-century poem Yuan Phai, an epic of the mid-15th century struggles between Ayutthaya and Chiang Mai for control of the Yom-Nan basin moari, Phitsanulok, Sukhothai,

'CH ALI ANG'-'SR[ SA TCHANALAI'-'SA WANKHALOK' Sri Satchanalai, Chaliang. There, like a mirror-image of the Chiang Mai Chronicle, 'Chiang Chi.in' occurs in all but one instance where Chaliang is found, and there can be no doubt of the identity of Chiang Chi.in, for one descriptive passage certainly represents the old city which is the subject of this enquiry.3" The single occurrence of 'Chaliang', unlike that of Chiang Chi.in in the Chiang Mai Chronicle, occurs in the middle, following and preceding several mentions of Chiang Chi.in, and it seems to be devoid of significance. Ywm Phai also, without mention of Satchanalai, is of no help for our inquiry, but close attention to the other sources may permit new inferences about Yumz Plwi, a text with its own problems which have so far been pushed into the background.3"

The chronicle of Nan, a polity closely connected with Chiang Mai and involved in the 15th-century disputes between Chiang Mai and the Sukhothai area, relates that in 1434 its ruler, Cau Indakeen Dav, was imprisoned by his brothers, then escaped and fled "down to the southern momi... to seek refuge with /Jra:yii Chaliang"; and the following year he was helped by troops from Chaliang to retake Nan. Later, in 1450 King Tilokaraj of Chiang Mai attacked Nan and Indakeen Dav again fled south to get help from "his friend /1ra:yii Chaliang". 37 These statements do not contribute to our discussion, except as another indication of the importance of Chaliang. It is not certain when the names Chaliang, Satchanalai, and Sawankhalok came to be accepted as indicating a single place. Two old chronicle fragments, which were apparently unknown to Prince Damrong, illustrate the relations among the upper Chao Phraya basin chiefdoms and with A yutthaya just before mid-15th century, a time when there are no longer any useful inscriptions and when the hithero standard Ayutthayan records are of an unhelpful brevity. The two documents are Ayutthayan chronicle fragments one of which I discovered and published in 1977, and the second, which precedes it by a few years, discovered and published by Miss Ubolsri Atthaphandhu in the 1980s. 3x Together the two fragments provide a detailed treatment of Ayutthayan relations with the Central Thai chiefdoms, Angkor, and to some extent the PhimaiPhanom Rung area during the years 1439-1444, with details hitherto unsuspected from a reading of the standard chronicles. The dates given in the two fragments fit the presumed reliable chronology of Luang Prasot, and this together with the style of official titles, which appear to predate the reforms ascribed to King Trailokanath (1448-1488), indicate that they are based ultimately on genuine 15th-century records which have disappeared.39

Like the standard treatment of the period, which to the extent it is factual is based on the Luang Prasot chronicle, the two fragments show that a major thrust of Ayutthayan foreign policy was toward control over the Central Thai chiefdoms. They indicate, however, that some details of the standard picture are mistaken. Both fragments show the Central Thai chiefs in alliance with the King of Ayutthaya campaigning in what is now the Burma border region beyond Kamphaeng Phet and

19

Tak, campaigns which are also reflected in Luang Prasot as a series of Ayutthayan attacks on the Kamphaeng Phet region. Another interesting aspect of these fragments is that Mahadharmanijadhiraj, the ruler of Phitsanulok, contrary to the assumptions of standard history, does not appear as the paramount chief of the Yom-Nan valleys. In the several passages in which the chieftains are listed precedence is usually given to Braful Chaliang, ruler of moad Sawankhalok. In addition to Brafia Chaliang and Mahadharmarajadhiraj, Brafia Ramaraj of Sukhothai and Brafia Sa en Soy Tav of Kamphaeng Phet are frequently mentioned, and in one passage Brana Dharrm, whose mom! is unidentified. These are the earliest sources which make a direct connection between two of the three problematic names, Chaliang and Sawankhalok, and as ealy as the 15th century. 40 If there was a name change, as Prince Damrong suggested, these chronicles show it as having occurred in the opposite direction (Satchanalai>Chaliang); or else they are evidence that Chaliang-Sawankhalok and Satchanalai were quite distinct places. These fragments, which must be given a fair amount of credence, for they have helped clear up several mysterious entries in other better-known chronicles,41 indicate that the name samrrga/ok/'Sawankhalok' was in use earlier than believed.

When Prince Damrong said 'Ayutthaya period' in connection with a name change, he was probably thinking of the evidence in the standard Ayutthayan chronicles. In those texts, however, there is no question of an adoption of a new name, or any kind of name change. There is simply a reference to the Lord of Sawankhalok (/1ra:yii savarrgalok), one of several noblemen, including the Lord of Phitsanulok, "of the lineage of Phra Ruang", who plotted to overthrow an apparent usurper and place on the throne the prince who became King Maha Chakrabartiraj. The first mention of the title 'sm.>arrgalok/ sawankhalok' is dated A.D. 1545, not 1556 when the new king promoted his supporters to higher ranks.•~ On the other hand, the Ayutthayan Law on Military and Provincial Hierarchies, traditionally attributed to King Trailokanath (1448-1488), ignored Chaliang and gave the governor of "Sri Sajanalay" the title "bai'ia Savarrgalok" as well, which does not with certainty indicate that they were considered the same place, only that the same governor administered both. Moreover, the governor was entitled Ramaraj, which one would expect associated with Sukhothai, while Sukhothai is listed as a quite separate province from Satchanalai-Sawankhalok, and its governor is named Okfia Sri Dharrmasukanij, which epigraphy has shown us to have been associated with Kamphaeng Phet in Sukhothai times} 3 Thus these sections of the law, like other parts of the Three Seals Code, may have become garbled in successive recopyings, and the very absence of 'Chaliang' from a text allegedly of the reign of Trailokanath is reason for suspicion. But the title for governors of Phitsanulok, reflecting total subordination to the Ayutthayan government, and abolition of the old title Mahadharmaraja (dhiraj), indicates that this law as a whole should not be attributed to any date before the reign of Naresuor (1590-1605), and is not as reliable for the question of names and titles as the chronicle fragments discussed above}•

20

MICHAEL VICKERY

An A yutthayan law text which does name Chaliang, and which influenced Prince Damrong in his explanation, is that on Abduction (Lak bhii). Prince Damrong wrote that it seems to pair Chaliang with Sukhothai in a list of north central momzg, as follows: Jalyari, Sukkhodai, Duri Yari, Pari Yam, Sari keev, Sahlvari, Javdarirav, Kambeeribej. In fact there is a second list of the same places in different order, Jalyan, Dumi. Yan, Pan Yam, Sahlvati., Javdanrav, Kambeenbej, Sukkhodai, which if it were the only list would not have permitted the conclusion drawn by Prince Damrong. Thus this law in itself is not at all helpful, and only becomes comprehensible in conjunction with other sources. Its traditional date is within the reign of King Ramadhipati I of Ayutthaya (1351-1369), and in that respect mention of Chaliang but not Sawankhalok is not surprising. Although it has gone through a revision which supplied it with a spurious year date, this section might indeed be thought to represent an early Ayutthayan record, but then the absence of Sri Satchanalai from its list merits suspicion. 45 The Phongsmoadan Noa (Northern Annals), a collection of legendary historical tales compiled and written down in the first Bangkok reign, indicate an association of the names 'Satchanalai' and 'Sawankhalok' through the agency of a Rishi named Satchanalai who had the city of Sawankhalok, clearly the old city under study here, built. Here, however, there is no recollection of 'Chaliang', and the story indicates that by the time the tale found in Phongsawadan Noa had developed no true memory of a city named Satchanalai had been preserved. In another section, however, Wat Khok Singkharam, approximately one-third of the way between the present walled city and the Mahathat at the river bend, is described as located in the center of moan Satchanalai. The dating of the events of this section in 1000 of the Buddhist era, however, shows that no historical value may be imputed to it. 46 Another detail of PN is more interesting for the history of the old city. When the city walls were built, so the story goes, the hill bnam blon ('fire hill', which is Khmer and suggests an ancient tradition) was kept within the wall pen di srtM brat puja kutl4, "as a ritual place to worship the bowl/pitcher /pot (kendi)", taking kutlq(a) in its original Sanskrit sense, although it has now been translated by the Department of Fine Arts in a sign set up for tourists as "to worship the sacred fire", which in itself, because of the local ceramics industry, would fit the same historical pattern. 47 These last two sources are too different from the inscriptions to be accepted as evidence for the 13th-14th centuries, and they simply indicate that the modern beliefs about the three names, that is, association of all of them with the old city on the Yom, may have been formed as early as the 16th century, and certainly as early as the first Bangkok reign. Another document of uncertain origin, the Traiphumi phra ruang (Traibiimi bra~ ruan·), traditionally attributed to King Lithai of Sukhothai, says in its exordium and colophon that the author's father ruled in moan Sri Satchanalai and Sukhothai, and that the author had ruled in Satchanalai for 6 years when the work was written. 48 These details accord with the picture

of two closely related but separate cities seen in the inscriptions, but do not otherwise indicate the location of Satchanalai.

The old city: description The first modern description of the old city, which I shall henceforth call 'Sawankhalok/Savarrgalok' and of the route to it from Sukhothai, was Prince Vajiravudh's account of his trip to "the land of Phra Ruang" in 1907, following the Phra Ruang 'road' from Kamphaeng Phet to Sukhothai and thence to Sawankhalok. Prince Vajiravudh's opinions about what he saw, modified in a few details by Prince Dami:ong, became the authoritative position on these old cities until the cautious beginnings of archaeological study in recent years. 4 g Some attention to his route helps put the problem of Sri Satchanalai into perspective; unfortunately not all relevant distances are mentioned in his report. Starting from Sukhothai's northern gate Prince Vajiravudh's party crossed the Khlong Srakes, still visible on the 1: 250,000 map, just after midday, and went on to camp that night at Tambon Nang Yav, not shown on the map, but perhaps, given the time of travel, ;tear Ban Na Phong, about 15 km north of Sukhothai. The next day, about 3 km farther on they came to a deserted wat which the local population called Wat pii teed tai, 'Red Forest South'. The bot was built of brick with laterite pillars. About 4 km farther there was another deserted wat called Wat Bot (posth). Prince Vajiravudh considered it well worth a visit. Around the square mandapa was a wall made of round or hexagonal blocks of laterite placed close together like the posts of an elephant corral with a laterite column laid across the top and bevelled to imitate a sloping roof ridge. From the height of the doors in the wall it could be seen that it had been much higher, but silting had occurred, to the extent that a person had to stoop to pass through the gates in the wall. 50 It appeared to have been an important place, and Prince Vajiravudh was puzzled as to why it had been constructed in the middle of a forest, but then examination showed the existence of moan Ban Khang (pan khan) about 2.8 km due east of Wat Bot on the Fa Kradan river. Another 4 km brought them to still another old wat locally known as Wat Yai (hfiai 'big'), with a surrounding laterite wall just like the one at Wat Bot. The area within the temple wall was about 60 m in width and length. In the center were ruins of a square edifice for relics with several chedis surrounding it, all indicating, according to Prince Vajiravudh, the previous existence of a moan". Moreover, the local governor related that in the forest between Wat Bot and Wat Yai were many old wells, indicating former habitation sites; and Prince Vajiravudh considered that the moan must have been deserted because of a change in the course of the Fa Kradan river, meaning a shift eastward to its present course, which in this area runs north northwest to south southeast.51 From the point where they crossed the Fa Kradan it was 10.8 km to Nong Chik, then 4 km to Sra Manohra, and from Sra Manohra to Mt. Phra Sri 3.8 km.

'CHALIANG'-'SRI SATCHANALAI'-'SAW ANKHALOK' Prince Vajiravudh's route had taken him up the old Phra Ruang road, approaching the old city of Sawankhalok from behind (on the west side of) Mt. Phra Sri. The estimated total distance from Sukhothai to the spot where they camped just outside the northern wall of Sawankhalok was 52.2 km, and it had taken two days by elephant and horse, probably in a leisurely manner. Indeed Prince Vajiravudh wrote that a horseman could make it in a day without stopping. The area where he had seen manifold signs of old temples and old moan was about one-third of the way from Sawankhalok toward Sukhothai, or two-thirds of the way starting from Sukhothai, meaning that it could have been linked with Sukhothai in the best times by communications of less than a day. That area, judging by the distances given, was near a hill marked on the 1: 250,000 map with an elevation of 261 m, slightly lower than the 325 m. of Sawankhalok's Mt. Phra Sri, but considerably higher than any other hill in the immediate neighborhood. Thus the only topographical feature associated with Satchanalai in the contemporary epigraphic record may be imputed to this place as well as to the hitherto favored location; and the name of the hill, 'Phra Sri', it should be noted, is non-specific, meanig no more than 'sacred auspicious'. At this point we should recall the story of Mftlasiisanll cited above. If its distances are taken as given, without reinterpretation to fit preconceived views, Satchanalai should be placed near the Wat Yai of Prince Vajiravudh's itinerary. This conclusion cannot be avoided, as Griswold attempts, by asserting that "the Fa Gradan cuts across the route a little over 30 km north-northwest of Sukhodaya"/ 3 which would put it beyond the area of the deserted old temples and city, for in that area the old road is partly obliterated, the river runs nearly northsouth leaving a large space in which the ancient crossing could have lain, and as Prince Vajiravudh determined, the river in ancient times would have been west of its present channel, placing the crossing even closer to Sukhothai. With this interpretation even the apparently aberrant azimuths of Mfilasiisal!a, placing Satchanalai northwest of the river crossing, do not need to be arbitrarily reinterpreted. If this now deserted area were ancient Satchanalai, the problems of name changes, and seemingly contradictory references in the inscriptions disappear. Satchanalai and Chaliang were distinct, the former lying two-thirds of the way between Sukhothai and the latter, and the name 'Satchanalai' fell into disuse, or was reinterpreted, as the city declined and disappeared.

Old Sawankhalok comprised the traditionalists' Chaliang, represented now by Wat Mahathat and ancillary structures at the bend in the Yom river and the area within and around the rectangular walls 3 km to the north, the traditionalists' Sri Satchanalai. The wall has distracted a number of observers from the true ancient layout and led to views that distinguish between the walled or hill area and the river bend area, but as Don Hein has pointed out, the wall in fact makes a narrow southward extension to include the temples at the river bend. 54 The wall

21

is also of late date, as revealed by the square openings still visible at the top of its south side, and which can only be gun ports, indicating construction no ealier than early 16th century. The treatment of the walls in recent historical literature has been interesting. As I remarked in another context, Prince Vajiravudh and Prince Damrong were both perfectly willing to accept that the triple walls at Sukhothai, based on reasoned consideration of their construction, were 16th-century works; and the official view only changed after 1923 when Coedes showed that a previously misunderstood term in inscription no. 1 meant 'triple wall', and therefore the construction had to have taken place in the 13th century. 55 Likewise at Sawankhalok, A.B. Griswold at one time considered that the "city walls of Sajjan;Haya ... revetted with great blocks of laterite, probably received their revetment in the 16th century ... when both the Burmese and Siamese armies started using artillery operated by Portuguese mercenaries ... ". Before that time "[e]arthen embankments with wooden stockades on top had previously served well enough [before 16thcentury artillery)". Then, having studied the supposedly 15thcentury poem Yuan Phai with its description of a laterite wall, he revised his opinion which otherwise would cast doubt on the date of that literary work, and wrote "[t]he walls themselves, built with huge blocks of laterite, are over fifteen feet high", with no notion of revetment. He did not, however allude to the gun ports, which may not yet have been described anywhere. In a footnote he acknowledged the embarrassment ensuing from his change of opinion, referring to his earlier statement about 16th-century construction, and adding "but it now seems certain to have been earlier, though they may not have been built up to their present height until then". In fact, for lack of evidence nothing can be known about any possible earlier state of the walls, nor can it be deduced from inspection, for the walls indeed seem to be of solid laterite, as implied in Yuan Phai. 56 Thus an open-minded study of the truly ancient city (pre-16th century) should start by visualizing it as without the walls, as a settlement integrating the area now within the walls, as well as the area thickly built up with temples to the west and north of the walled area, and including Wat Mahathat and the other temples lying to the east. 5 7 This larger area is bounded on the east, and in part on the north, by the river Yom, and is partly encircled from the south-west around the west by hills which cross through the present walled city area in a slight southwesterly to northeasterly direction, continuing on the eastern side of the river, forming a naturally enclosed whole. Moreover, as Don Hein showed me in June 1989, earthen embankments were at one time constructed to fill some of the gaps between the western hills, thus enhancing their rampart effect. It should also be emphasized that the geomorphological history of the Yom River shows much shifting of course, and erosion of banks. It seems inconceivable that when Wat Mahathat was begun the river formed such a narrow loop around it as is seen today; and proof of shift in the river course there is in old wells now revealed right

22

MICHAEL VICKERY

in the river bank, indicating that when the wells were dug the river was some distance away. 5 ~ Within this larger area of old Sawankhalok there are edifices which follow at least two distinct orientations, undoubtedly indicating different periods of construction. There is a row of large temples built over and among smaller edifices along the ridge line of hills extending from west of the walled part of the city, through its northern sector, and on to the hills across the river, all following the orientation of the ridge line, roughly west to east, with a slight deviation northeastward. Besides the large temples on the hills, there are numerous, mostly ruined, small buildings, both within and outside the existing walls on the west, which also follow this orientation. These small structures consist of a place for an image with a small hall or vihlira in front of it on the east, but the vihlira are too small for a congregation, and the ensemble looks more like a temple for devotion to a god than the standard view of a Theravada wat in Thailand. They would seem to represent a type of Buddhism in which Buddhist images were offered devotion as Hindu gods, or else they were all small neighborhood wats, each serving a very small population, as the number of such constructions could easily indicate. More such small edifices, apparently of similar style, but now almost totally ruined and forming shapeless mounds covered with earth and brush, are found extending from just beyond the northern wall through the pottery area and beyond Ban Koh Noi. Their orientation, approximately north-south, is parallel to the river and thus nearly perpendicular to the ridge line and the temples followng that orientation. Two of them, known as Wat Kuti Rai, just north of the city wall, have been reconstructed to their presumed original form. Ten more, 5-7 km farther north in Ban Koh Noi, were surveyed, and eight of them excavated, by the Australian architect Dr. Zig Kapelis in 1985; and it was determined that they most probably had been, in fact, small wats of a type like Kuti Rai. 59 The other main set of large edifices within the walls is oriented almost perpendicularly to the first, and thus face east southeast, and are nearly parallel to the river, like the small wats north of the city wall. Along this axis are all the large temples within the walls, Chang Lorn, Chedi Chet Theo, Uthayan Yai, Nang Phaya, etc., except those on the crest of the hills, which belong to the first axis. Outside the walls on the west and southwest there are other edifices larger than the small ruined wats described above, and which stylistically seem to belong to very different periods. One of them is of the type of Wat Sri Chum at Sukhothai, though smaller.60 Pending art historical and archaeological study which, I emphasize, has never been undertaken, nothing more may be said about them. Also outside the walled area, and extending eastward from it, are four more structures which deserve notice. First, approximately one-third of the way from the walls to Wat Mahathat is Wat Khok Singkharam, which appears to be an early 17th century construction, and which Phongsawadan Noa in one context describes as located in the center of the city. 61

Then there is Wat Cau Cand, a Khmer edifice of the time of Jayavarman VII (1181-1220?), Wat Chom Chi.in, perhaps late Ayutthayan or even post-Ayutthayan, and last, the now largest of all, Wat Mahathat. In considering the history of the old city of ChaliangSawankhalok it must be emphasized that Wat Mahathat as it appears now did not yet exist in the period of relevance for the present discussion. It is an Ayutthayan edifice probably attributable to King Trailokanath with further work carried out in the 18th century." 2 According to current theories the original construction was Khmer, although nothing of it is visible; then Ram Khamhaeng added "the two storeys of the square basement, which are still visible, [but) are not at all typical of a prli11g, ... of the same design as at Chang Lom ... "."J As we shall see below, however, if the earliest visible structures of Wat Mahathat are really of the style of Wat Chang Lorn they cannot have been built by Ram Khamhaeng; and this means that since the putative early Khmer construction is only theoretical, not demonstrated, perhaps Wat Mahathat in its entirety dates only from the 14th century and later."•

Art history and archaeology So far art historians and archaeologists have focussed their interest on the constructions within the walls and on Wat Mahathat at Chaliang, the largest structure in the area, with some notice given to Wat Cau Chand." 5 There is no certain documentation about the history of this area. With the possible exception of no. 9 no inscriptions from Sawankhalok have been discovered, and what has been written about its history, like most other aspects of early central Thai history, has been based on the Ram Khamhaeng inscription. In inscription no. 1 Ram Khamhaeng is said to have buried relics (bra/1 dhtitu) in the middle of Sri Satchanalai with a chedi built on top of them, and this has been interpreted as "almost certainly the stupa now called Jan Lorn (Chang Lom ... )". 66 The same passage of inscription no. 1 continues, "a wall of rock enclosing the Brah Maha Dhatu was built ... ", and this has been interpreted as the large wall around the Mahathat (Wat Phra Prang) of Chaliang, without regard for the context of the inscription which indicates that the wall should be understood as around the relic (braf! dhtitu) which Ram Khamhaeng buried. 67 The dating of the other large monuments within the walls has followed from this interpretation of the origin of Wat Chang Lorn as seen through inscription no. 1. With Chang Lorn taken as the original central temple, the others had to come later, and the one directly in front of Chang Lorn, Chedi Chet Thaev, has been attributed to Ram Khamhaeng's grandson Lithai. 68 Little has been wirtten about the other Sri Satchanalai monuments, although Griswold attributed Wat Nang Phaya to the 15th or 16th centuries.69

'CHALIANG'-'SRI SATCHANALAI'-'SA WANKHALOK Even ignoring the arbitrary attributions based on inscription no. 1, there is little in that treatment which helps in understanding the history of the city of Sawankhalok. Implicitly the city within the walls originated with Wat Chang Lorn, and temple construction continued in the same axis through Chedi Chet Thaev and Wat Nang Phaya from the 13th to 16th centuries. This is acceptable as a relative sequence, but then all of the edifices along the crest of the hills and the associated small wats are left out of consideration, while their different axis indicates an entirely different period and view of city planning, which given a sequence Chang Lorn-Nang Phaya, can only have been earlier than the latter. A new interpretation of some of these structures has appeared during the last few years in the work of Dr. Piriya Krairiksh. Although strangely silent in his History of Art in Thaifa lid about the Sawankhalok monuments, he did in general attribute the temples with surrounding elephants to early 15th century; and in an article in Mumzg Baran, he expressed strong reservations about the traditional dating of Sukhothai and Sawankhalok art, as well as of the Ram Kharnhaeng inscription, on which much of the periodization of Sukhothai art has been based. 7u Finally, though, there has been a beginning of real objective study of the monuments through archaeology, an excavation of parts of Wat Chang Lorn. The report of the Fine Arts Department excavations at Wat Chang Lorn in 1984-1985 has presented what are really revolutionary conclusions about the history of that edifice, and which, although not stated in the report, impose revisions in a wide area of Sukhothai Sawankhalok art history. 71 As noted above, the modern standard interpretation of the Ram Kharnhaeng inscription holds that Wat Chang Lorn was the edifice built for the relic which Ram Kharnhaeng deposited in the center of Sri Satchanalai, and that it was the oldest of the major temples in that old city. Although doubts had occasionally been expressed by art historians on stylistic grounds, a first archaeological probe in 1969 seemed to offer a way around them by revealing a hitherto hidden inner construction behind the wall of the processional gallery, which would have been the original Ram Kharnhaeng edifice, even if convincing evidence for later dating of the visible construction were demonstrated. 72 Among the conclusions of the latest excavations, however, is the assertion that the, now three, different layers of construction in the processional gallery and elephant terrace were all parts of an original continuous process, with the builders changing plans as they went along, for "Thai artisans did not work from drawn plans, but built straight away, making alterations when the results seemed unsuitable in any way". 73 Although this explanation may seem unconvincing to some readers, we must be cognizant of the constraints under which Thai scholars may have to work in areas touching 'Ram Kharnhaeng', and this conclusion at least has the utility of elirni-

23

nating the possibility that the inner layer could date from Ram Kharnhaeng if the outer one were shown to be later. And indeed, the most interesting, and revolutionary conclusion is that Wat Chang Lorn as a whole was not built, not even begun, until the 1370s, the reign of King Lithai, and nearly 100 years later than Ram Kharnhaeng. Test pits around and under the outer edges of the platform revealed three habitation layers, on top of the latest of which Wat Chang Lorn was built. In these habitation layers were burials,"and post holes indicating earlier constructions, probably of wood, which were removed for the construction of the Wat. A similar succession of three buried habitation layers has been discovered at Wat Mahathat, and the lowest, showing an earthenware pottery industry, has been carbon dated to the 8th century. The next level is that on which the now buried base of Wat Mahathat was built, according to current assumptions in the 12th-13th centuries, but not carbon-dated, and as we have seen of altogether uncertain date? 4 The latest habitation layer at Wat Chang Lorn was dated by the presence of Yuan (Mongol) dynasty (ended 1368) ceramics, which fix the end of that habitation layer and construction of Wat Chang Lorn after that date, but, inferentially before ceramics of a later date had been imported. Eventually more precise dating may be possible from locally-made ceramics and bullet coins which were also found, but unfortunately not depicted, nor discussed in detail, in the report.7 5 Moreover, if specialists eventually reach the reasonable conclusion that the three stages of construction were not part of an uninterrupted plan, the date of the final form of Chang Lorn will be even later. Another archaeological concluswn was that the small wats just behind Chang Lorn, belonging to the roughly eastwest orientation parallel with the line of hills behind them, indeed predated Chang Lorn, the rear wall of which deviated slightly from a right angle because of them, but still cut off part of the outer wall of one? 6 Since the position of Wat Chang Lorn suggests that it was the first of the large temples which extend southeastward from it in a line, the others must be dated much later than traditionally has been done. The major works of construction at Sawankhalok would have been later than the Sukhothai high classic, and in particular there can be no more speculation that the lotus bud towers of Sawankhalok (Chedi Chet Thaew), Sukhothai, and Karnphaeng Phet were the work of early Sukhothai kings. 77 There are also important implications for the Ram Kharnhaeng inscription. First, Wat Chang Lorn cannot be the place where Ram Kharnhaeng deposited a relic; second, if inscription no. 1 is genuine, Sri Satchanalai, where the relic was deposited, cannot have been the walled city of Sawankhalok; and third, if the earliest visible parts of Wat Mahathat are really of Chang Lorn style, as Griswold described, they can no longer be attributed to Ram Kharnhaeng. The Chang Lorn report does not hesitate to draw the first conclusion; as for the second and third, it contradicts hitherto current art historical opinion and suggests the Mahathat at Chaliang on the river bend as

24

MICHAEL VICKERY

the place mentioned in no. 1, saying the situation of Satchanalai in the time of Ram Khamhaeng is not known and that temple might then have been in its center. This is special pleading, but the report is certainly correct in asserting that the wall around the Mahathat fits the inscription's depiction of a "wall of rock enclosing" it better than Wat Chang Lom.'H That interpretation of inscription no. 1 was already a case of extreme special pleading, and, as has been noted above, two constructions in the deserted old city on the Fa Kradan two-thirds of the way from Sukhothai to Sawankhalok have surrounding walls like the one at the Mahathat of Chaliang and which fit the description in no. 1. Of course if inscription no. 1 is a much later work of conjectural history these details may have no relationship to 13th-14th-century reality, and its author may indeed have had in mind a situation like that of the traditionalist interpretation as depicted by Griswold and Prasert in their EHS 9. Finally we must emphasize that attention to the other examples of such megalithic walls noted above contradicts Betty Gosling's assertion that "(t]he wall [around Wat Mahathat] is unique ... it is the only wall anywhere that fits Inscription I's specification of phii in the construction", and these other constructions help to cast doubt on the authenticity of Inscription 1,79

In any case it seems safe to dissociate study of old Sawankhalok from inscription no. 1 and the activities of Ram Khamhaeng, and also to dissociate it from the Satchanalai of the epigraphic corpus. The proximity of Sukhothai-Satchanalai which the records imply suggests the latter was the site of the deserted temples and habitation areas on the Fa Kradan some 20 km south of Sawankhalok. Hi11261located there could well have been the sacred mountain associated with Sri Satchanalai, and with the Wat Mahathat at the river bend viewed in its greatly reduced probable 14th-century dimentsions it does not merit, on grounds of size, priority over either Wat Bot or Wat Yai in the now deserted area.

Conclusions The foregoing epigraphical, textual, and architectural evidence indicates that Chaliang and Sri Satchanalai were separate locations, that the earliest recorded name for the area comprising the old city under discussion was the non-Thai and still not understood 'Cha!iang'/jalyan, and that by the first half of the 15th century the same area had also acquired the name Sawankhalok/ savarggalok. The last two names are solidly linked in chronicles which give evidence of being the earliest and most complete records of political relations among the central Menam basin polities. The original ChaliangSawankhalok comprised the entire plain surrounded by hills on its southwest, west, and north, and bounded by the Yom to the north and north-east, as well as the major kiln area extending for some 10 kilometers northward along the river beyond the northern ridge of hills. 80

Inscription no. 2, in spite of damage and lacunae, shows definitely that in mid-13th century Sri Satchanalai and Chaliang were quite separate places and that the former, at least was already believed to be ancient. Since Sri Satchanalai, therefore, must be dissociated from Chaliang-Sawankhalok, the most likely location is some 20 km to the south, where remains of old wats, including walls of the type surrounding Wat Mahathat in Chaliang and mentioned in Inscription no. 1, as well as signs of ancient habitation sites, were first described by Prince Vajiravudh. Although Inscription no.9,Mz1/aSifsmzii and Jinakii/amii/1 are in most details compatible with the assumption that Sri Satchanalai was the same place as Chaliang-Sawankhalok, they do not require it; the text of Mfilasasmzli, written a century later than the crucial story, has been considered corrupt in some of its details, and the allegedly more accurate Jinaka/amii/1, written nearly 200 years after the event, contains architectural detail which can now be understood as either wrong or in contradiction with an assumption that Sri Satchanalai was located at Chaliang-Sawankhalok.H 1 Moreover, since the sections of those two chronicles relevant to the discussion concern a quite fictitious event, supernatural revelation of a magic relic, the details surrounding it may not be of the greatest accuracy. The only sources which seem to require an identification of Sri Satchanalai and Sawankhalok are Hierarchy Law and Phongsawadan Noa, both of which are compilations of records or tales from diverse epochs set down in their present form in the early 19th century. Thus they may only reflect a then current belief which, like the now current one, may be based on a misapprehension. The inscriptions give Sri Satchanalai great importance as a sort of twin city with Sukhothai, located not far away, and treated in some inscriptions as a joint city. Chaliang is given notice only briefly and without detail. The latter was obviously of little importance to Sukhothai in the 14th century. While Sukhothai developed as a political center, it seems that the importance of Sri Satchanalai declined. There is no record of a prince ruling there after Lithai took power in Sukhothai in 1347. Chaliang, on the other hand, continued to develop after the end of the 14th century. Eventually the true location of Sri Satchanalai was forgotten, and its name, in some late compilations, was associated with the still flourishing city of ChaliangSawankhalok which by the 15th-16th centuries had come to rival, if not outshine, Sukhothai in size, economic importance, and political hegempny. 8 2 The first use of the name 'Sawankhalok' is unknown. It is not found in Sukhothai epigraphy, which might suggest that it was post-14th century, but those inscriptions in any case give little attention to the area. 'Chaliang' is a name whose meaning and origin are unknown, but it is certainly non-Thai and is evidence that the population was of some other ethnicity. The structure of the word suggests Man-Khmer, and I have earlier shown the population involved in the ceramic industry of Chaliang/Sawankhalok was probably Mon. That is, the only two ancient ceramic-

CHALIANG'-'SRI SATCHANALAI'-'SAWANKHALOK' associated terms which have been preserved, sun, 'hole in the ground'= 'kiln', and /thuriang/ (durimi 13 Les deux petits dessins qui se trouvent a cote de l'esquisse du bonnet ne sont autre que la figuration de face et de profil d'une de ces fleurs fragiles qui servaient ala decoration de certaines couronnes des coiffures d'apparat; pas toutes car, par exemple, le troisieme ambassadeur n'avait a son bonnet «qu'un cercle d'or large de deux grands doigts, et cisele.>> 14 Enfin, ce verso de la feuille de croquis comporte trois etudes de babouches et une esquisse du dessin de la broderie du dessus de l'une d'elles. Ces babouches etaient bien sur celles des ambassadeurs siamois. Ce detail de leur costume ne fut que diversement interprete par les artistes qui les representerent. Void ce que dit S. de La Loubere de cette piece d 'habillement: «Les Mores leur ont porte l'usage des babouches, espece de souliers pointus sans quartier ni talon.>> 15 L'origine more de cet element du costume siamois, toujours porte par le souverain thai:lors de certaines ceremonies, serait exacte. La chose est confirr.aee par un chroniqueur iranien du XVIIe siecle, Ibn Muhammad Ibrahim, qui fut en 1685-86l'un des ambassadeurs envoyes au pres du roi Phra Naral par le shah Sulaiman (1666-1694). On trouve dans le compte-rendu de son ambassade le detail suivant: «11 [Phra NaraY] a abandonne son ancien style de vetement et a commence a porter des habits iraniens, notre sorte de longue tunique brodee, nos pantalons, nos chemises, nos chaussures et nos babouches.» 16 11 apparait done que tousles dessins rapides de cette feuille de croquis de C. Le Brun sont relatifs a des elements du costume des ambassadeurs siamois. Sans doute faut-illes lier a la preparation d'un ou de deux tableaux de grandes dimensions dont les deux dessins mentionnes precedemment etaient peut-etre les esquisses preparatoires. 11 se pourrait que celui de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts ait ete a l'origine d'une toile aujourd'hui disparue d'un collaborateur du peintre; en effet, on trouve dans les notes de Nicodeme Tessin le Jeune, architecte suedois qui visita Paris en 1687, le detail selon lequel ReneAntoine Houasse, designe par lui comme , > oil ils 20 On ne leur en laissa rien ignorer. De cet endroit on les conduisit aux Gobelins oil Le Brun, qui les y avait precedes, les accueillit et leur fit visiter les lieux21 • J. Donneau de Vize precise que le peintre not sufficient to explain this pattern.

2

This describes 1975-76, just before government promotion of the Thai movie industry changed the kind and cost of available films and thereby eroded some old status distinctions. Of course status did not die. Video parlors appeared, keeping pre8tige as vivid in the city's image as it was in the mid-70's when first-class theaters showed first-run films in elegant buildings often in fashionable shopping malls. In contrast, secondclass theaters showed second-run films in ordinary buildings often set amid the dirt and smell of markets. First-class theaters cost more and presumed educated patrons as they did not dub their foreign films. They 3

In letters to Phraya Thewet, King Chulalongkom observed that no one used the royal name of a particular bridge (3 Sep 1899, NAB R5 YgThq 9/38), and he urged posting the name of a new road quickly before people coined a popular name that would then be hard to change (25 Aug 1902, NAB R5 YgThq 9/83).

5

6 I am assuming that the Silk-Cotton Tree Temple actually had silk-cotton trees. Whether or not it did, there are many instances where a socially significant royal name replaced or at least competed with a physically apparent popular one. The royal name of nearby Khlqng Phadung Krungkasem meant, roughly, the Canal Sustaining

the Prosperous Capital, while its popular name Khl9ng Khut or the Dug Canal referred to the frequent dredging it required. The giant gold-plated stupa at Wat Saket had the popular Thai name "the Golden Mount" (Phukhao Th9ng) before it was even finished and given the royal Pali-Sanskrit name "the Highest Mountain" (Bqrombanphot [in Thai]) to commemorate a royal funeral pyre. While this name never caught on, King Chulalongkom did issue a proclamation explaining why this was the proper name and correcting those who had coined a Pali-Sanskrit rendering (Suwanbanphot [in Thai]) of the popular name (Somphong 1975:55-57). 7 Letter from Phraya Wichit to King Chulalongkorn, 24 Apr 1910, NAB R5 S9 6/31 (Thq). An interesting exception on the list of 133 is the two pawnshop owners who are identified by the names of their shops.

"Letter from Phraya Sukhumnaiwinit to King Chulalongkorn, 9 May 1908, NABR5 No 4.4/ 7. 9

Ibid. See also O'Connor 1981.

Here Tai refers to the many branches of the Southwestern Tai (Lao, Lue, Shan, Yuan, Siamese, Ahom and the upland Black, Red and White Tai) which include most Thai (citizens of Thailand under a largely Siamese culture), whether by ancestry or assimila10

72 tion. What follows largely excludes the heavily Hinduized modem Ahom. ''One can argue that this order requires that place have powers that people, in their own realm of power, can never quite escape. How else could house and village keep their integrity within a ruling mvang? After all, if people stood entirely apart from place, then as the little must defer to the big, house and village would soon lose all but de facto powers to the lnlfang. Indeed, Tai can talk like that to honor higher-ups, but they need never live like that so long as place has its own powers that defy the ruler's centralizing grasp. "This is also true for the city name itself. Luang Prabang refers to a Buddha image all

RICHARD A. O'CONNOR can see, and two of its earlier names (Chiang Khong Chiang Th9ng [City of the River Khong, City of the Th9ng Tree]; Mqang Luang Lan Chang [Capital of the Land of a Million Elephants]) are equally physically vivid. In contrast, some gloss Bangkok's short name (Krungthep) as the City of Angels, and its full name makes it Ayutthaya, Dvaravati and probably Angkor all rolled into one. While one might see these earlier cities, I suspect the name evokes their glories, not their ruins.

both towns use ban more than one finds in Bangkok. 1t does, however, tell you something about how Bangkok was perceived. In 1822 Crawfurd (1967) collected a mapofBangkokdrawn by a native. It depicts the capital as rectangular and crosscut by canals aligned with the cardinal points, a reasonable image of Ayutthaya and cosmologically 'correct,' but rather far off for the more circular Bangkok.

14

"Judging by Wijeyewardene (1986:34, 138) wat are as, if not more, prominent in the images of Nan and Chiang Mai, two Tai Yuan cities. He reports that Nan's municipality favors identifying local areas by wat, and

REFERENCES CITED

AKIN RABIBHADANA 1969 The Organization of Thai Society in the Early Bangkok Period 1782-1873. Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program. 1975 Bangkok Slum: Aspects of Social Organization. PhD thesis, Cornell University.

CRAWFURD, JOHN 1967 Joumal of an Embassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China. London: Oxford University Press.

ANUVIT CHARERNSUPKUL AND VIVAT TEMIYABANDHA 1978 Northern Thai Domestic Architecture and Rituals in House-Building. Fine Arts Commission of the Association of Siamese Architects.

DEGEORGE, J-B. 1927-28 "Proverbes, maximes et sentences Tays." Anthropos 22:911-32;

CHAMPASAK CHRONICLE 1969 R1;1ang Ml}ang Nakhon Champasak. Prachum Phongsawadan part 70, v 43:147-279. Bangkok: Khurusapha. CHARPENTIER, SOPHIE AND PIERRE CLEMENT 1978 Elements comparatifs sur les habitations des ethnies de langues thai. Paris: Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Architecturales. CHULALONGKORN,~NG

Phraratchaphithi Sibsgng Dljan. Bangkok: Khurusapha v. 2. CONDOMINAS, GEORGES 1980 L'espace social tl propos de I'asie de sud-est. Paris: Flammarion. 1963

DANG NGHIEM VAN 1972 "An Outline of the Thai in Viet Nam." Vietnamese Studies 32:143196.

GOSLING, ELIZABETH 1983. The History of Sukhothai as a Ceremonial Center: A Study of Early Siamese Architecture and Society. PhD thesis, University of Michigan. GRISWOLD, A. B. AND PRASERT NA NAGARA 1971 "The Inscription of King Rama Gamhen ofSukhodaya (1292 AD):" Epigraphic and Historical Studies. Journal of the Siam Society 59, 2:

23:596-616.

DURAND-LASSERVE, ALAIN 1977 "Bangkok et Kuala Lumpur : Aspects de l'espace social." Asie du sud-est et monde insulindien 8,2:105128.

EMBREE, JOHN R. 1950 "A Note of the Vertical and the Horizontal as Cultural Traits in Asia." Man 50:24. EVERS, HAN5-DIETER AND RUDIGER KORFF 1982 Urban Subsistence Production in Bangkok. Bielefeld: University of Bielefeld Sociology of Development Research Centre, Working Paper no. 25. FOUCAULT, MICHEL 1973 The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books ..

179-228.

GROSLIER, BERNARD-PHILIPPE 1973. "Pour une geographic historique du Cambodge." Cahiers d'OutreMer 104:337-379. HANKS, LUCIEN M. 1962 "Merit and Power in the Thai Social Order." American Anthropologist 64:1247-61. 1975

"The Thai Social Order as Entourage and Circle." In Change and Persistence in Thai Society: Essays in Honor of Lauriston Sharp. G. William Skinner and A. Thomas Kirsch, eds., pp. 197-218. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

INDORF, PINNA 1982. "Study of the Ordination Hall (Bot) in the Context of the Thai Monas-

THE THAI IMAGE OF BANGKOK tery (Wat)." Souti1 East Asia11 Re-

view 7:43-62. LECLERE, ADHEMARD 1899 Le Bouddhisme au Cambodge. Paris: Ernest Leroux. LYNCH, KEVIN 1960. The Image of the City. Cambridge: M. I. T. Press. MOGENET, LUC 1972 "Notes sur Ia conception de l'espace a Louang Phrabang." Bulletin des Amis du Royaume Lao 7-8: 166-196. MONGKUT, KING 1961. Prac/wm Prakat Ratchakan thi Si. Bangkok: Khurusapha. v. 4. MUS, PAUL 1975. India Seen from the East: Indian and Indigenous Cults h1 Champa. I. W. Mabbett, trans!. Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies. NADER, LAURA 1974 "Up the Anthropologist-Perspectives Gained from Studying Up." In Rehwenting Anthropology. Dell Hymes, ed., pp. 284-311. NYBERG,TOVE 1976. "Positions of Temples in Chiengmai and Lampang: A Contribution to the Interpretation of City Plans." In Lampang Reports. S. Egerod and P. Sorensen, eds. pp. 27-42. Copenhagen: Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies. O'CONNOR, RICHARD A 1981 "The Image and Economy of Thai Urbanism." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Toronto. 1983 A Theory of Indigenous Southeast Asian Urbanism. Singapore: !SEAS. 1985a "Enduring Realities and Persistent Change in Early Southeast Asian Polities." Paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies meetings, Philadelphia, March 22nd. 1985b "Centers and Sanctity, Regions and Religion: Varieties of Tai Bud-

dhism." Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Dec 5th. 1987 "Cultural Notes on Trade and the Tai." Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Boston, April 10th. 1988a "Siamese Tai in Tai Context: The Impact of a Ruling Center." Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, San Francisco, March 25th. 1988b "The Dialectic of Hierarchy and Community in Urban Thai Culture." In Urban Society in Southeast

Asia. Volume II: Political and Cultural Issues. G. H. Krausse, ed. pp. 251-266. Hong Kong: Asian Research Service. PARMENTIER, HENRI 1954. L'art du Laos. Paris: L'Ecole Franc;aise d'Extreme-Orient. Publications v. 35. PRACHAKITKQRACHAK 1961 Phongsawadan Yonok. Bangkok: Sinla pa bannakhan. RHUM, MICHAEL R. 1987 "The Cosmology of Power in Lanna." Journal of the Siam Society 75:91-107. RICOEUR, PAUL 1979 "The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text." In Interpretive Social Science: A Reader. P. Rabinow and W. M. Sullivan, eds. pp. 73-101. Berkeley: University of California Press. RISPAUD, JEAN 1937 "Les noms a elements numeraux des principautes Tai." Journal of the Siam Society 29,2:77-122. Rl,JTHAI CHAICHONGRAK 1976 "RI.Jan Thai nai Phak Khlang." In R1;1an Thai Doem. Bangkok: Siam Society. SAHLINS, MARSHALL 1976 Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

73 SCOTT, JAMES C. 1976 The Moral Economy of the Peasant:

Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. SOMPHONG KRIANGKRAIPHET 1975 Puchaniasathan Boramvatthu Thai. Bangkok: Phraephitthaya. STERNSTEIN, LARRY 1971 "The Image of Bangkok." Pacific Viewpoint 12,1:68--74. TAILLARD, CHRISTIAN 1977 "Le village lao de Ia region de Vientiane: un pouvoir local face au pouvoir etatique." L'Homme 17,23:71-100. TAMBIAH, S. J. 1976 World Conqueror and World RellOtlllcer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. TERWIEL, B. J. 1975 Monks and Magic: An Analysis of

Religious Ceremonies in Central Thailand. Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series, no. 24. WATN9RANAT 1963 Thiral!tk nai Ngan Chal9ng Waf Pi thi 88. Bangkok: Privately published. WATPRADUSONGTHAM, KHUNLUANG 1969-70 Khamhaikan Khunluan~. Wat-

praduspngtham: Ekkasan Chak H9 Luang. , Thalaengngan Prawatsat 3,1:51-66; 3,2:19-36; 4,2:67-78; 4,3: 21-35. WENK,KLAUS 1968. The Restoration of Thailand under Rama I 1782-1809. Greely Stahl, trans!. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. WHITE, LYNN JR. 1968. Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered:

Essays in the Dynamism of Western Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press. WIJEYEWARDENE, GEHAN 1986 Place and Emotion in Northern Thai Ritual Behaviour. Bangkok: Pandora.

PLACE, POWER AND DISCOURSE IN THE THAI IMAGE OF BANGKOK RICHARD A. O'CONNOR UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH SEWANEE, TENNESSEE

Acknowledgments An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in San Francisco, March 25-27, 1983. I am indebted toM. R. Rujaya Abhakorn, Kevin Lynch, Sumitr Pitiphat, Sharon Siddique, Nikki Tannenbaum and Pinyo Teechumlong for their comments and advice. My research was supported by an SSRC-ACLS Foreign Area Fellowship (197576) and Postdoctoral Research Grant (1978-79), a Mellon Summer Stipend from the University of the South (1982), and a grant from the Lee Foundation in Singapore (1982). I gratefully acknowledge this financial support and the assistance of the National Archives and National Research Council of Thailand and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and its director K. S. Sandhu. I am solely responsible for interpretations and errors.

Abstract Bangkok's natives see their city less as a grid of streets than as a patchwork of named places defined by activities, communities and historic events. This pluralistic popular image once competed with a single-centered royal image, and today it challenges a bureaucratic official image legitimated by modernity. Thai urbanization is the triumph of the royal and official images. These ruling images are effectively as fixed and given as texts, while the popular image arises from a discursive culture of place that is fundamental to not just the Thai but their larger family of Tai peoples. [Thailand (Bangkok), urbanization, urban administration, modernity, Tai culture of place, discourse.]

Introduction Sitting in Bangkok traffic I often wondered, was the Marquis de Sade the first foreign traffic adviser? "No," I would recite, "there's order to this, there is an indigenous order .... " This mantra passed the time and helped meet my professional obligations as an anthropologist. It also 'worked,' at least on me. I discovered a Thai Bangkok. Yet why was it so hard for me to 'find' this huge city? I had a handicap. I used

a map. It was not a map of Bangkok. In fact, so far as I know, there is no map of Bangkok. There are only maps of Bangkok's streets. Here I freely admit that for some well-tutored people- mostly social scientists, foreign tourists and government officials - a street map is an authentic image of Bangkok. But the ordinary people I knew never used street maps. Of course they did use the streets, but their daily travels left only a vague notion of where the thoroughfares went and met. Can we conclude that these people had no clear idea of Bangkok's overall physical order? Sternstein (1971) did. He interviewed 193 people and found that their shared public image of Bangkok was "virtually formless" and showed "a profound lack of appreciation of the component parts of the city and their coherence" (Sternstein 1971:74, 68). Like me, Sternstein wanted to replicate Kevin Lynch's (1960) Image of the City to see how urbanites saw their city. Like him, I found my questions answered as though people were strangers to the city. But something was wrong. So vague an image should have left them feeling lost, ill-at-ease (Lynch 1960:46), and yet the people I knew were very much at home in Bangkok. So I stopped asking and started listening. How did people talk about the city? Here I found clarity and consistency. Bangkok was not a city of streets but a patchwork of named places. 1 A person went from Banglamphu to Bangkhunphrom to Thewet to Si Yan. Now a well-traveled road joined all of these places, but few mentioned it and not everyone knew its name. Asked for directions, most named a string of places, not streets pure and simple. Often they simply told you what bus to take. Bus lines, not streets, connected places. Even the buses slighted streets. As their route signs told you, they went from place to place, not street to street (e.g. Bus 9's posted route was the places Talat Phlu, Wongwianyai, 5anam Luang, Banglamphu, Si Yan-none of these were the eight major streets it actually traveled on). 2 Finally, when you got to the place you wanted, lesser places appeared. Your friend lived across from (trongkankham) the market, behind· (lang) the temple, one bus stop past (/oei) the gas station, and so on.

RICHARD A. O'CONNOR

62

Were we to call this hodgepodge of places the mental map of Bangkok, it would be less like a city map woven together by roads than a national one cut up into towns and provinces. Yet a map is a poor metaphor. Its order is simultaneous, physical and flat. A single glance shows each place amid the others. You see the whole. But Bangkok is lived more like a poem is heard- a line at a time. Just as one verse leads to another and then fades away, so too do people move from one place to another without, as Sternstein (1971) shows, keeping all of the places in mind. True, whether it is lines in a poem or places in Bangkok, the physical links are key, but at any moment their order is sequer,tial, not simultaneous like a map's; it is local, not total. And beyond that moment, if we turn to the total, the larger order is not simply physical but symbolic. Here ~gain a map fails. Its flat surface joins the city's places physically, not socially and culturally where their deeper unity lies. In sum, a map does to Bangkok what Ricoeur (1979) says writing does to speech: it denies discourse and context to create its own meanings. That gives us two Bangkoks: an everyday living one and a map-like textual one that, as we shall see, scholars and officials favor. We must understand both, resisting the populist tendency to take the everyday as the 'real' and make the textual the 'ideal.' As Ricoeur (1979) shows, each has its own meanings that cannot be reduced to the other, and as Nader (1974) argues, we should study both 'up' and 'down. This paper describes both Bangkoks. I begin with the ropular image and then consider the text-like royal and offi:ial images. From there I explore the larger space (a "culture of place") wherein these three images contend and argue that it is fundamental to not just Bangkok and the Thai (peoples of Thailand) but the Tai (the larger family of people that includes ethnic Thai) and their urban order.

The Popular Image Named places make up Bangkok's popular image, but what makes an area into a 'place'? In a word, activity does. Let me give some examples. Key intersections like Sam Yan and busy thoroughfares like Sukhumwit are not just roads but well-known places that name their environs. Major hotels, markets, hospitals, temples, schools, police stations and almost any official site are not just buildings but named places and often local social centers. Once bridges were monuments to the city's progress that named neighborhoods; later movie theaters became popular signposts that also signified modernity; and now, amid these earlier names, shopping malls are the bright stars. Whereverpeoplecongregate-whetherto live, work, shop, play, travel or make merit- that area is a noted place. It is not that activity comes first and prominence later, but that the two feed on each other and so make places busy, active and alive. When Sternstein (1971 :72) asked people what came to mind when they heard the word Bangkok, he found that '·their 'instant' image sprang ... from activities." Of course activities are as social as places are physical, and so Thai society enters Bangkok's image.

Is Thai culture there too? At first glance it seems not. Surely Bangkok is not a cosmological city orchestrated into a neat circle or square. To the contrary, its roads seem to run at random. Within this tangle, it is simply practical to name and note those places where the streets force people to congregate anyway. All of this is true, although it does not make the pattern any less cultural. Traffic alone does not give a place a name. Naming shows significance, and it is Thai culture that deems where significance lies. Going to a movie is a culturally significant activity, and so theatet:s are duly noted. But why is it that first-class theaters (e.g. the President) often name a neighborhood while second-class ones (e.g. the Si Yan) are usually named by their neighborhood? The distinction is not simply the number but the kind of patrons. It is a cultural concern for the status of the theater. 3 Wecanputthisanotherway. Bangkok is made up of not just places but particular places. Culture confers particularity. It notes, names and weighs activities, differentiating places. So, for example, in Thai culture a temple's activities differ from a shopping mall's. Within this, what one temple does differentiates it from others. Thus Wat Bowonniwet's serene merit-making sets it apart from Wat Mahathat's bustling religious marketplace. By the same token you do not just go shopping; rather you go to Siam Square to buy, say, the latest imported shoes, or you go to Banglamphu to pick up the cheaper local copies. Such distinctions make each place unique and vivid within the city's image even as they impose a cultural order of prestige and propriety. Thus shared meanings tie Bangkok's many places together in ways the tangled streets cannot. So far I have shown how society and culture underlie the activities that animate Bangkok's image, but all of this hinges on the priority of place. Why is place so significant? Admittedly, every city has distinct places. Washington, D.C., for example, has Georgetown, Capital Hill and Foggy Bottom but these are not the city's basic grid. A stranger could get almost any place knowing only a street address. Try that in Bangkok! Houses can be numbered by when they were built, not where they are; major streets can change names between blocks; lesser lanes may have no name; some streets have popular as well as official names, and English or Chinese names as well as Thai ones; and finally, there is no overall grid-like naming that tells you where one street fits amid others, as with Second Street being between First and Third. Faced with this maze, named places are a remarkably effective way to order the city. Practicality thus guarantees the significance of places. Again, being practical does not make this any less social or cultural. What makes places practical is not just the absence of a street grid but the presence of a Thai social and cultural order that presumes the prominence of place. To understand these social and cultural roots of place, imagine Bangkok as a collectivity of real and fictive kin communities. It is easy to do. Thai do it whenever they cultivate connections or explain events as an outcome of who knows whom. Now this social plane of communities is structurally similar to the spatial plane of named places. Both communities and named places are the everyday conceptual entities that make up Bangkok. Both are distinct wholes. Each is, in its own way, irreducible. A community reduced to its indivi-

THE THAI IMAGE OF BANGKOK

Map of Bangkok and its districts, 1931. Thewet is just above the center.

63

64

RICHARD A. O'CONNOR

duals would not be a community just as a named place reduced to its streets and buildings would have no identity to merit a name. A Bangkok without communities would be simply five million monads, not the city of intrigues and factions that everyone knows; and without named places it would be an endless urban blob, not a mosaic of distinct parts. Is this structural similarity fortuitous? Hardly. Consider its cultural expression in the words ban and m11ang, the very building blocks of traditional society. Ban means house, house compound or village, while mlJang means city either by itself or together with its hinterland. Both are at once social and spatial units, ideally communities and usually named places. Early Bangkok was a conglomeration of villages, palaces and temples, each a social community and a named place within the larger city. From princes and nobles to abbots and headmen, patriarchs governed localities from their homes, fusing place and community. Of course the two did not match perfectly. Surely some named places, say a city gate, had no surrounding community and clearly many effective communities, say a faction of nobles, were too dispersed to identify with any one named place. Even so, communities created places while places defined communities. Thus a Vietnamese community created the place known as Ban Yuan ('the Vietnamese Village'), while the Thewet bridge provided the name and center for a surrounding merchant community. Even today a new school or temple can tum a vacant lot into both a named place and a community; or a budding group can give their alley's name a place in the local urban image. Here those who know Bangkok may object, "Each place a community, each community a place- it's all too neat." Indeed it is. It is an ideal. Real communities overlap and fall apart. Yet 'real' social and spatial planes are still parallel. To say "I'm going to Thewet," presents this named place as a single whole, just as the ideal community is supposed to be a unity. When you get to Thewet, however, you find its actual boundaries are vague, just as an actual community has people who drift in and out. You find Thewet's fringes overlap with Bangkhunphromand other named places, but then actual communities overlap whenever individuals cultivate several patrons. Finally, within Thewet you find many lesser named places, such as Si Sao Thewet and Thewarat Market. In a like manner, actual communities encapsulate lesser ones whenever a client is the patron of his own following. Are these structural similarities simply fortuitous? I doubt it. They arise not by chance, but as a common consequence of shaping society to a ruling center. Traditionally commoners looked to nobles who looked to the king, just as villages copied towns that copied the capital (cf. Tambiah 1976:ch.7). Ideally major communities encapsulated lesser ones, just as today Bangkok includes Thewet which includes Si Sao Thewet. Of course this ideal order did not seek the blurred boundaries and mixed loyalties that actually arose (Akin 1969), but it got them in part by seeing all 'civilized' order in the center and leaving the peripheries open. After all, the center's importance presumed the triviality of all else, and so the further you went towards social or physical peripheries, the less anyone cared what you did or said. So today ambiguous edges to named places trouble no one. Thewet' s center is clear; that is order enough.

How is Thewet a center? It is an intersection at a bridge that names the larger area. So main roads make it a center. Side streets sustain its eminence. Many deadend. Few interconnect. That funnels traffic into main arteries so that to move about Thewet one moves into or towards the center. This physical order sustains a social one. Without a secondary grid, neighbors must go like ways. Channeled towards a center, they see and meet each other. Comings and goings catch the eye, making grist for gossip. So communities can and often do coalesce, if only along lesser lanes where factionalism keeps them little but lively (e.g. Akin 1975; Evers and Korff 1982). Of course no one quite intended vivifying streets. Acting as centers unto themselves, earlier communities cut roads to serve their own not the city's interests. A patriarch had only to cut a drive to his house and settle his dependents along it and one had a community (cf. Durand-Lasserve 1977:121). It is no surprise then that these side streets are physically what the patron-client entourage (Hanks 1975) is socially. It is not just that each channels everyday life within a larger official order, but that structurally both branch off from a center and, as few branches connect, they remain tied to it. So, like many named places, Thewet's roads tell a Thai social tale of communities oriented to a center. How else is Thewet a center? Consider the culture of naming. Thewet was first a bridge that became the center of the larger area it now names. Within Thewet, a pier on one edge (Thanam Thewet), an insurance company on the opposite edge (Prakanphai Thewet), and stores (e.g. Si Thewet), schools (e.g. Thewet S~ksa) and lanes (e.g. Soi 1 Thewet) all carry the name Thewet. This is the same center-oriented pattern whereby a capital names its province and a city's central district (i.e. Amphoe M~ang) carries the city's name. 4 Thus the pervasive cultural concern for centers complements Bangkok as a patchwork of places, each its own little center within the city. To sum up this popular image ~e can say it focuses on activities and places which echo and acquire meaning from Thai social and cultural life. Yet clearly this is not the whole image. Indeed, it is not even an image of Bangkok but rather its pieces. What ties these pieces together to make a city? Hierarchy. It sets a great center above lesser ones. Let me now tum to this once royal, now official image of the city as a whole.

The Royal Image Let me begin with the traditional city or m11ang. Earlier we noted it was both social and spatial, being at once a community and a place; now consider that as it meant city by itself or encompassing its hinterland, it was two places, one (the city itself) within and yet above the other (the whole realm) in an elementary center-periphery hierarchy of place. Such a city properly had at least three particular places: a royal palace, for a m'fang had to have a ruler; a shrine to the supreme spirit of the m11ang, perhaps associated with a mountain or the pillar of the city (lakm!fang); and a temple housing a Buddha relic or image that was the palladium of the m11ang. Like the mt;ang, each of these three had its own center-periphery hierarchy of place. For example, a Buddha relic and its temple were a place that stood above all lesser

THE THAI IMAGE OF BANGKOK relics and their temples. Also like the m~ang this spatial order matched a social one. The people's respect and the relic's protection joined everyone in a single great moral community that subsumed all lesser communities dedicated to their own relics and temples. We could repeat this for palaces and spirit shrines where, socially and spatially, the greatest of each was at once the head of a hierarchy and a center that subsumed the whole. In short, a hierarchy of places and communities made the traditional m!Jang a city. Bangkok was built on this sense of urban hierarchy. As traditionally this was a royal lndic hierarchy, we can call it the royal image of Bangkok. How did this image relate to the popular one I described earlier? Ideally they were distinct yet complementary. Consider naming. Important places had precise Pali-Sanskrit names that described their unique place in the royal order, while common places had simple Thai names that often described some ordinary physical feature. In this royal-popular duality, place names mirrored the clear social distinctions between elite and commoners (~ao vs. chaoban) and between the royal and the popular order (luang vs. rat from ratsadon). Symbolically, of course, the two images were not just distinct but opposed. The strict royal hierarchy clashed with the popular hodgepodge, but then their tension dissolved so long as popular names filled in the hierarchy's bottom where their disarray highlighted, indeed justified, the top's precise 'civilized' order. But popular names were, in a word, popular. Some did not stay at the bottom, but stuck to places with proper royal names. This was no trifle. Social order hinged on such distinctions. So kings issued edicts to keep popular names in their place (e.g. Mongkut 1961:113-117), and KingChulalongkorn bemoaned the difficulty of establishing royal names once popular ones were accepted. 5 In one instance even royal officials 'lost' a particular Bangkok temple when their lists gave its long forgotten royal name (Chulalongkorn 1963: 115-116). Often, however, this opposition settled into a comfortable duality whereby a place had two names, such as the royally named Wat Phrasirattanasatdaram and Khlqng Phadung Krung Kasem that were popularly known as Wat Phrakaeo and Khl9ng Khut (or Khl9ng Khut Mai) respectively. Thus, just as within society an important abbot had both a royal name (ratchathinanam) and a popular fictive kin title (e.g. luangphq, luangpu), so too did his temple have both royal and popular names. Whether it was people or places, each name was real in itself and yet distinct from the other. This royal-popular dualism was clear but not static. Consider the naming of Thewet. In early Bangkok it was sparsely settled. Its orchards and gardens grew amid jungle. If the spot had any marked identity it probably came from the local temple, popularly known as Wat Chimphli or the SilkCotton Tree Temple (Wat Noranat1963:5). In the Fourth Reign (1851-1868) a major canal, Khl9ng Phadung Krung Kasem, was cut through one side of the temple. Sam Sen Road cut through another side and crossed this canal at the temple's corner. Here the bridge came to name the place. By the Fifth Reign (1868-1910), if not before, people called it Saphan Hok Khl9ng Khut, or just Saphan Hok, The Draw Bridge. Later in that reign, Phraya Thewet replaced the old bridge with a major new one. The king named the bridge (Saphan Thewetr9narumit) after the Phraya and, shortened, it became the name for

65

the intersection and indeed the whole neighborhood. Today Saphan Hok and Wat Chimphli are long forgotten but Thewet is a well-known named place in Bangkok. What changed? An obscure, largely rural site became a thoroughly urban and distinct part of Bangkok. We can quite properly call this urbanization although the key shift was cultural, not demographic. What was this cultural urbanization? Most obviously a royally awarded Pali-Sanskrit name (Thewet [in Thai]) replaced popular Thai ones (Wat Chimphli, Saphan Hok) and thereby symbolically tied the area into the larger urban order. Yet this was only the surface. In itself this simple change embodied three deeper changes. First, a physical image was changed into a social one. Thewet's original popular names described the physical appearance of a temple with silk-cotton trees and a draw bridge.6 Its subsequent royal name described not physical features but the social significance of the bridge as a royally named structure built by a particular nobleman. This urbanizing, physical-to-social shift suggests why Sternstein (1971:74, 73) found Bangkok's public image was "virtually formless" and its people had "an abyssal disinterest in form." He asked about physical not social form. So interviewees who de:cribed Wat Saket rarely noted its giant gold-plated stupa (chedi), its most prominent physical feature. Instead they spoke of the temple's Buddha relics and former Supreme Patriarch (Sternstein 1971 :75). As true urbanites they 'saw' social significance, not physical features. Of course today many noted places take Western not Pali-Sanskrit names, but this merely marks their social significance as modern. A name like the Coliseum or Hollywood is prestigious, but it has no more connection to physical appearance than the royal name of Thewet' s bridge. Today as in the past, simple, physically apparent Thai names characterize the countryside (e.g. Bang Chan means "the elevated village"), not the city. If Bangkok's important places had peasant names, then it would not be the civilized and sophisticated capital that it is. Thus naming embodies the hierarchy that sets the city above the countryside, important places above ordinary ones, and the elite above commoners. So in Thai urbanization social images swallow physical ones. Now this change implies a second one: the local was lost in the urban. Thewet' s silk-cotton trees and draw bridge were local in origin and impact. They stood out within the locality, not the city. When the locality's own features defined it, that made it a center unto itself. In contrast, the name Thewet was royal in origin and meaning. It defined the locality not by its internal features but by its external tie to a great, intrinsically urban center. Of course a royal name was an honor, not an imposition, and the king did not name the locality but simply the bridge that became its center. Popularly, however, the bridge's name was shortened to Thewet and extended to the whole neighborhood. Why? A royal name was prestigious and urban, while a purely local name was common and· rural. This popular orientation to the royal center brought localities into a larger urban order, and so helped to make a collectivity into a hierarchy. Well beyond naming, this was the very status structure of society. A nobleman and his palace or an abbot and his temple marked centers of local communities within the city, but as great men their status came from links beyond the local to the great royal

66

RICHARD A. O'CONNOR

and monastic urban centers. Thus a royal title superseded a local identity as in Wat Thepthidaram's 1910 list of donors which identified people by their locality unless they had a royal title or position? Obviously the elite had to live somewhere but their local identity was overshadowed by their royal-which is to say urban-identity. To move up in society one moved beyond one's locality and out into the city, from the common to the royal domain. Third, these physical-to-social and local-to-urban shifts complemented an urban centralization of power that eroded local autonomy. Consider Wat Chimphli. When it was just a little local temple half hidden by jungle, neither the king nor the Supreme Patriarch particularly cared or perhaps even knew about its abbot. If tradition is any guide, he was chosen by monastic seniority and local popularity. Yet as Bangkok grew and the new canal brought commerce, the temple rose in stature. A wealthy nobleman, Phraya Nc;>ranat, developed business interests near Wat Chimphli, and he and his wife took an interest in the temple (Wat N 9ranat 1963). Early in the Fifth Reign they rebuilt the temple and offered it to the king who accepted it into his patronage as a royal temple and renamed it Wat N9ranatsuntikaram. Now it mattered who was abbot. If the local people and monks still had some say in running the temple, it had to fit with what the king, Phraya N9ranat, government religious officials (Krom Thammakan) and monastic leaders all said. When Wat Nc;>ranat lost its local name, it also lost local autonomy. Being 'in the city' took the temple ·out of its neighborhood. True, this ruling hand was not heavy. It did not need to be. Prestige worked well enough. To enhance or even keep its high position, the temple had to be attuned to the royal urban order, not just the commoner local one. Of course this was not unique to temples. From cremations to corvee, the closer one came to the royal center, the tighter the regulation. Ultimately it was this urban centralization of power that set Bangkok above its hinterland and the urban elite above local commoners. Taken together these three processes show the urban differentiation of place. Once Thewet was nowhere; later activity appears to have made it first a place within Bangkhunphrom and finally the place apart that it is today. A royal name facilitated the break. Bangkhunphrom, on the other hand, shrunk. Nor was this just the loss of Thewet. Where once Bangkhunphrom named a local temple (Wat Bangkhunphrom Nc;>k), a palace (Wang Bangkhunphrom) and a canal (Khlc;>ng Bangkhunphrom), their modern successors (Wat Intharawihan, The Bank of Thailand, and several roads) now bear royal or official names stripped of the old local reference. Like other named localities in Bangkok, the rise to urban significance of the places within it shattered Bangkhunphrom's wholeness, its integrity as a center. Of course this did not undo the order of place; it merely created new smaller places as local centers. Thus the local temple now names several nearby lanes (Soi Wat In, Tr9k Wat In) as Bangkhunphrom once named it. To sum up, let us look at Thai urbanization from yet another angle. Consider Embree's (1950) insight that what the Japanese elaborate horizontally the Thai express vertically. Clearly this simple contrast says nothing of the origin and little of the impetus behind these two styles of orienting life. It can, however, orient us as it does the Thai. Let us say the Thai value

the vertical to express status, a point evident from architecture to interaction. Now consider two implications of this choice. First, while the horizontal relates places to each other, a vertical display can occur only within a particular place either that or upland peasants would rank above the lowland king. It fits then that particular places make up Bangkok's popular image. Second, unlike the horizontal, if you go up you can only go so far. Then the physical must become social -and that is the essence of the royal image: Hence today the most meaningful bond between Bangkok's places is not 'out' along the roads that link them but 'up' into Thai society; and for the past we may doubt the cultural depth of Tambiah's (1976) galactic polity, a horizontal rendering of a more deeply vertical society. Of course the contrast is relative, and we cannot deduce urbanization from a 'theme' itself shaped by urbanization, but playing between the two shows.the coherence of Thai urban life. Earlier we asked what tied Bangkok's jumble of places together. Now we have the traditional answer. A royal center made Bangkok a city and ordered its many local places into a single urban hierarchy. Culturally, urbanization meant urban eminence and power grew at the expense of local distinctiveness and autonomy.

The Modern Official Image What about today? A center still binds Bangkok together, but where once it was royal and Indic, now it is bureaucratic and modern. Urbanization still centralizes power, but modernization takes it far further in breaking up localities. True, traditional Bangkok was never just a collectivity of local communities, but effective local administration often came down to local patriarchs, whether they were princes, noblemen, abbots or the petty officials and headmen formally charged with these duties. Even as late as the end of the Fifth Reign many deputy district officers (palat amphoe) still governed from their homes, a tradition that joined place and community.8 Of course this was not modern and so it could not be. Local administrators were taken out of their homes and put into offices, while a modern police force took over what had once been largely local patriarchal powers.9 Today local urban life falls under a plethora of competing government agencies, each too jealous of its powers to cede any to a locality and its would-be patriarch. Take the bus system for example. Until the mid-70's twenty-six companies split up the city's ninety odd routes. Each company was a little barony with its own blood enemies and palace politics. Each had its own distinct colors, logo and equipment. If some European factory conspired to make two buses alike and then sell them to rival companies, when they hit the streets they differed sharply. Mechanics did their part. They outfitted and then bandaged buses to fit their company's unique ways. One company (Me Daeng) seemingly set up its fleet to cater to midgets, while another (Me Khao) favored basketball players. Drivers helped too. Some lines favored truly rapid if random transit (e.g. Samut Prakan Khonsong), while others kept to the leisurely pace of an earlier day (e.g. some lines of the misnamed Express Transport Organization

THE THAI IMAGE OF BANGKOK [R9 Sq Ph9]). On some lines well disciplined drivers rarely breezed by waiting passengers, while on others getting on was as hard as getting off. On such lines free competition so fired the drivers that they sought to catch and pass buses further up the line to sweep up waiting fares. Then they could display their talents at slalom driving to stay in front. And finally the conductors helped to keep each line distinct. Uniforms varied in color, neatness and style. One company's conductors seemed to be straight out of the rice paddies, sometimes still without shoes (Samut Prakan Khonsong), while another recruited a surprising number of attractive young women who did their nails when traffic was slack (Si Nakh9n's line 14). Into this feudal chaos leapt the government. In the name of order and efficiency, it bought up the companies and pooled their equipment to make a single mass transit organization. Diversfty dissolved into a single set of uniforms, identical colors and a standard logo. We can call this modernization. Modem administrators conceived and carried out this transit coup. Why? It gave them power to manage the buses efficiently and plan the city effectively. Of course their standards of efficiency and effectiveness were modem and, like their logo, largely borrowed from the West. We can also call this traditional Thai urbanization. After all, just as the traditional royal center brought order to the popular patchwork of places and communities, so too did the modem bureaucratic center bring order to a quirky lot of bus companies. In both instances the center's proper and civilized way was culturally the only alternative to popular chaos. Both traditional and modem urbanization broke down lesser communities, centralized power, and changed physically vivid images into socially coherent ones. In this last change lay the greatest cost to what Lynch (1960:9-13) called the imageability of the city. The diversity of the old bus system, its premier virtue, struck the eye and snared the mind. Bus lines were easily seen and separated lineal links between places that wove the city together like multicolored threads. Buying up the buses and painnng them all alike thus erased an effective popular map of the city. True, they left the old bus numbers, and so people had clues to where they were going, but learning bus numbers is now a difficult task that diversity once made easy. Today the most vivid distinction is, as any hierarchy would have it, one of status between ordinary buses and the higher-fare air conditioned ones. Of course what Bangkok lost in native imageability it gained in modem meaning. Like the traditional royal order, a single government-run bus company is proper, prestigious and meaningful. Losing vivid distinctions between bus lines mirrors the way Thewet lost its physically apparent name for a more socially significant and meaningful one. Here modem urbanization follows traditional lines. But there is an essential difference. Traditional royal naming made each spot unique, while modem administration demands the uniformity that ensures its own efficiency. This modem quest for homogeneity threatens. the diversity that makes Bangkok lively and liveable. What has this done to Bangkok's modem image? Hollowing out local or just autonomous communities and hardening bureaucratic control has sharpened the official image. Today almost everyone knows their district (khet),

67

subdistrict (khwaeng), police district, postal zone and so on. Yet is this one image or many? Each bureaucratic agency draws and enforces its own map ofthecity, and where once the king symbolized and enforced a single higher order, today agencies often act autonomously. So the surface is fragmented, but then the solidarity of the official image lies in the deeper acceptance of the government as both a single entity and the only alternative to the even more fragmented popular order. Here modem symbols act as Indic ones once did. They create' and legitimate a governing center that makes Bangkok a single city, often administratively and always symbolically. Yet this single city still harbors a patchwork of places. This popular image fills a void left by an official image that unapologetically ignores everyday life. Thus the Thewet everyone knows is officially unknown. It may be a signpost for many and home to a few, but to the government this mural scene is just graffiti on its wall. So what some call Thewet is 'actually' only where three subdistricts in two districts meet. No one denies this official image of arbitrary lines, and yet everyone ignores it when they say where they live or where they are going. The old royal-popular duality lives on in modem Bangkok. So now we have three ways to see Bangkok: popular, royal and official images. To set them out clearly we have set them well apart, yet we should not make too much of how they differ when what they share is so profound. Their common question, "how will place be defined?," presumes the answer matters and, by the shared fact of differing, they keep the answer open and invoke debate. Such debate demands-creates-its own space. So the outcome is not just three differing images, but a larger domain that lets them differ, what I shall call a culture of place.

The Culture of Place Here 'culture' is discursive. It is not, then, a 'code for living,' nor even three contending codes, but an arena defined by an issue, a domain open to discourse. As everyday discourse it cannot be a 'text' (Ricoeur 1979), though rulers would rather it were. Then it would be their text, the royal or official one, and their way would be more fixed and universal than discourse allows. Of course, as we have seen, here they fail. Yet they have succeeded in one way: their sense of place-a ruling center-approximates what Sahlins (1976:211) calls a "privileged institutional locus" that orders the rest of life (O'Connor 1983). If nothing else they have made place a determining issue. To explore this we shall focus less on what it is possible to 'say'- Foucault's (1973) question- than on how what gets 'said' echoes widely. We can show this prominence of place in two interwoven ways. One way looks at power. As we shall see, the discourse on place goes deeper than answering "how will place be defined?;" it asks who and what will rule, a question posed by the rise of powerful cities and kings. Another way widens our focus from the Thai to their larger family, the Southwestern Tai.10 In principle, whatever these historically related but now diverse peoples share is either ancient or

68

RICHARD A. O'CONNOR

essential to Tai life, and probably both. We shall begin with this Tai perspective and let power enter as it will. Place is a pivot of Tai life. All Tai organize society in an inclusive hierarchy of social 'boxes:' house (rLfan), village (ban) and m11ang (Condominas 1980). Each is a social entity that defines, and is defined by, a place. Of course within this Tai vary in both the level (e.g. house vs. village) and locus (edge vs. center) each people stresses (O'Connor 1988a), but all combinations tie society tightly to places. Note: to tie is not to fuse. What is tied can come untied. People and place stand apart even if never finally parted. So Tai must always ask, "how are people and place related?" This query recurs because in an animate world neither side can be reduced to the other. It is not, as our disenchanted world has it, that people are real and chthonic powers imagined. No, for Tai each side has a say. So they negotiate the bond, aligning people and places presuming the integrity of each. On the place side this is well expressed in animism where territorial spirits give each significant place a character as quirky as a person. Here negotiation flourishes. In building a house or a m11ang, rituals help align people and these places to a still greater order of place. Here, especially where Indic texts enter, negotiation can give way to conformity. Place becomes prior. After all, great or little, places last longer than people. That commands respect in a region where permanence partakes of sanctity (O'Connor 1985a). Besides, as people come and go that leaves places like shells, real in themselves, awaiting people. Thus Tai Yuan tales tell of cities built by hermits and only laterfilled by people (Prachakitkqrachak 1961). Still, the shell of place is not the only reality. People come not one by one, wanderers and strangers sharing only a place, but as groups already united under leaders. People take even more prominence in the Champasak Chronicle (1969) that relates a Lao group's quest for a place. Indeed, where ethnicity (Rhum 1987:103) or vassalage (Degeorge 1927-28:606-607) defines the mlfang, a people can endure in an alien place (e.g. Rispaud 1937:117; Mogenet 1972:171 ). In sum, Tai distinguish people from place, value both, and yet align the two. Let us label this localism. People and place negotiate a balance, not once and for everywhere, but again and again, spot by spot. It is an orientation that lets life unfold locally, not a full plan for society. Of course kings, modernizers, and cities propagate just such plans. Their centralizing powers deny localism. In principle, they would define all places by their relation to the ruling center, shifting 'place' from localism's discourse between people and chthonic powers to a lecture from ruler to ruled. Yet the ruled can 'reply.' If they add the new but keep the old, then the one plan becomes many, and the lecture turns into a debate. However unwittingly, the ruled thereby keep the symbolic means of asserting local autonomy, a key to what Scott (1976) has called their moral economy. If peasants everywhere have such refuges, imbuing place with power has a particular Tai twist embedded in a specific Southeast Asian history. The Tai aspect is that, as 'boxes,' house, village and mlfang are all alike and selfcontained.11 Hence lower levels have a potential autonomy that has withstood even centuries of urban rule (e.g. the Lao village [Taillard 1977]). At the same time an acceptance of local powers reflects an apparent historic compromise be-

tween Tai and neighboring peoples they rose to rule. As Tai spread across Southeast Asia (c. 10th cent. AD on) their polities recognized that earlier peoples had the fiivor of local spirits of place that controlled fertility. In effect Tai rulers accepted a regional dualism, taking the conqueror's pole with its skylinked ancestral spirits and leaving their predecessors the earth-linked spirits of the place (Mus 1975). As ritual efficacy demanded both poles, this balanced ruling center and local powers of place. Of course great capitals and powerful kings tilted this balance}oward the ruling center. Indeed, as Universal Monarchs (Chakkraphat) they proclaimed an ultimately monistic order where all revolved around the center, what Tambiah (1976) rightly calls a galactic polity. As ideology this was to the polity what the royal image would later be to Bangkok. Now if many Tai rulers aspired to this ideal, it was the Siamese who went furthest in actually eroding the power of local places. Consider how they differfrom the Tai Yuan (O'Connor 1985b). Where Yuan myths weave history into a landscape of sacred sites, Siamese chronicles see great rulers who shape space to their order. For Yuan major m11ang have relics fixed in space by the Buddha's visit whereas the Siamese stress images linked to rulers and peoples, not places. Where Yuan relics are outside the mlfang on mountains once honored by fertility cults, the Siamese bring great relics into the city, cutting links to autochthonous cults and denying any tension between sanctity and the royal center (i.e. the mlfang as the king;s city). Overall, we might call this a shift in the goal of traditional rites. Where all Tai seek prosperity, Yuan and many others focus on fertility. Their cults thus grant power to places if only to tap it. In contrast, the Siamese subsume this animistic fertility in a Buddhist quest for 'order' or discipline. In the end this 'order' arises from royal rule, not sacred places. So it neutralizes or at least subordinates every place but one - the royal center. Note, however, that this does not dissolve the people-place nexus; it simply replaces the autochthonous or just local with the royal. That is exactly what the Siamese polity did and Thai urbanization still does. Now let us put this culture of place in Tai cities.

Tai Cities Before and Beyond Bangkok All Tai have mlfang. All proper mlfang have rulers, although unlike island Southeast Asia where the traditional city is culturally almost the ruler's shadow, the Tai mljang has a life of its own (O'Connor 1983). Thus upland animist Tai often have two spirits of the muang, an ancestral one of the ruling line and another seemingly for the place or land itself. In these petty polities the m~mng's two sides remain culturally similar, but in the lowlands where empires arose, one side, the ruling center, diverges from the other side's more collective sense of place. An alien idiom sets rulers above commoners and city above countryside. So the cultural urbanization we saw in Bangkok occurs among other Tai. Its background is the same. Apparently many Tai commonly name villages by some physical feature (e.g. upland Tai [Dang 1972:160], Yuan [Anuvit and Vivat 1978:46]). That lets the city's social and

69

THE THAI IMAGE OF BANGKOK royal naming stand apart. It also stands above, being borrowed from a foreign civilization. What it stands close to matters less than that it is not Tai. So Lao, Yuan and Lue call a great city a chiang or wiang, a Chinese borrowing, whereas the Siamese use nakh9n, from Sanskrit. Tai also vary on how far cultural urbanization goes. Consider the Lao city of Luang Prabang as Mogenet (1972) describes it. Like Bangkok it is a city of fluid boundaries and distinct named places, many known popular!y, not officially. What makes a name is also similar: physical features, ethnicity, activities, historic events, temples, and so on. Yet the two differ in three fundamental ways. First, unlike Bangkok, Luang Prabang's image emphasizes villages (ban). That shows continuity with the countryside and implies local integration. Second, Luang Prabang's popular image includes the official one. Apparently the two do not clash or stay a plane apart as in Bangkok. Certainly that fits the two societies historically. Where the Lao kept close to a simple ruler-ruled split and all focused on fertility, the Siamese interposed an elaborate social hierarchy that created a world apart, driven by status competition and focused on trade (O'Connor 1987). Third, Luang Prabang's image appears far more physical than Bangkok'sP Certainly it has but a fraction of the royal and foreign terminology that dot Bangkok. In essence the Lao official image has not left the highly physical popular one that is common to everyday Tai life. By this measure, then, Luang Prabang shows far less cultural urbanization than Bangkok. Of course less is still some. Using Mogenet'slist of 87 toponyms, roughly 43 out of 51 purely popular names (84%) are clearly physical and visible while only about 20 out of 36 official names (56% ) fall. in the same category. Part of this comes down to temples (wat). The popular image notes more of these physically imposing buildings than the official image (19 of 51 [37%] vs. 5 of 36 [14%])_13 Significantly, temples ideally define local communities. Instead of temples, the official image gives prominence to a higher level of integration. Thus, visible or not, if we consider names that indicate glory, prosperity or the city itself- all associated with urbanism and the king- these make up 11 of the 36 official names (31 %) but a mere 4 of 51 purely popular ones (8%). All of these differences show Tai urbanization, even if Luang Prabang falls far behind Bangkok. Now that we have set Bangkok in the context of Tai cities, let us look at its own Siamese tradition that dates from 13th century Sukhothai. While this city was once Khmer, Tai eyes saw their own order, judging by King Ramkamhaeng's inscription (Griswold and Prasert 1971). He describes his city as so many distinct places, never mentioning any connecting or even noteworthy roads. Apparently mid-18th century Ayutthaya looked like that to a native. Consider how a member of the elite described this capital to his Burmese captors (Watpradusongtham 196970). He lists places (weirs, landings, markets, gates, bridges, palaces, sacred entities, etc.). In itself, listing lends each prominence. True, perhaps the Burmese asked for a list, but then why is his memory for places so sharp that he can name 91 markets? In any case, how these many places fit together physically is often unclear. Significantly, the city's many canals do not appear as a distinct list, but mostly in listing bridges. A word for road (thanon) recurs in listing markets, but

as it is paired with another that indicates an area (yan), they are less pathways than places. Yet while the actual links are vague, an overall physical order prevails. Roughly, the author's narrative moves inward. After the realm's boundaries and vassals comes what physically surrounds the city. Then come the walls, gate by gate, followed by bridges, markets, royal stables, palaces and so on, all inside the city. Later two exceptions occur: he lists palaces outside the city and then sacred entities both in and outside; and finally he abandons place altogether to describe royal rites and laws. Does this break the periphery-to-center movement? Physically, yes; socially, no. We saw the same in Bangkok and dubbed it Thai urbanization. Its final step takes it beyond place altogether, up into the royal order, and so it is not surprising that this account of Ayutthaya does the same. Of course this is an elitist view. It focuses on royal life (palac.es, ceremonies) and places linked to trade (a royal monopoly), if not simply taxation (markets; possibly landings and bridges). Yet an everyday image peeks through. Itfocuses on temples and villages, judging by how frequently these name or locate other places (e.g. the list of 30 land markets outside the city uses wat 26, ban 12, canal6 and road 4 times). Given their popular prominence, why did thesenotmerittheir own list? Were they too numerous- or just too common? Apparently his list of palaces gives the communities that count, and the roll of sacred entities mentions the major temples, first to locate the great images and relics and then to specify the administrative structure of the Sangha. Two centuries later Sternstein's (1971:75) respondents 'saw' this same social image - a relic and a titled monk, not the physically imposing temple. The Siamese built Bangkok as a model of its predecessor, Ayutthaya, and so their likenesses hint at how these two capitals were perceived two hundred years ago. Clearly it was not in a strict lineal sense. A map of Ayutthaya's streets and canals says little about Bangkok.14 What mattered were the palaces and temples and their particular names (Wenk 1968: 17-22). Rebuilding these rebuilt Ayutthaya. Often it meant simply changing a name. Later King Mongkut (1961 :113-117) observed that a Tai capitai had to have three temples of particular names. Named places thus made a capital. Since then Bangkok has grown many fold, but it has not outgrown this past.

Texts in Context Of course some see that past as cosmological (e.g. Tambiah 1976), and surely that is nearly gone. But it is not quite clear where the change lies: have the Siamese become more modern or have we made their past more mystical? Actually one often defines the other. Calling the past mystical or traditional makes modernity appear 'rational' and 'universal.' Yet this mirror game masks a deep similarity: just as writing alters speech (Ricoeur 1979), so too do these ruling texts remake everyday life and deny discourse. Each is its own monologue. True, as we live between traditional and modern texts, today they must 'talk' to each other, but then all other discourse disappears into the gap between them, becoming

70

RICHARD A. O'CONNOR

not an authentic voice but a simple failure to change, a fault of the speaker. Here we see why the past must be traditional: cosmological cities must be made for modernity to destroy them. So an everyday guerrilla struggle against the text's domination gets lost in the larger war between old and new texts. The everyday does not lose, it simply disappears. It follows then that to open the present, we must free the past from the textualism once imposed by administrators and now beloved of scholars. So let us ask a naively empirical question: just how 'textual' were Tai? If we put faith in legitimating texts and rites, then clearly the cosmos ruled all, just as kings and priests said it did. Against these texts stand a few clues that Tai were never rigorously cosmological anyway. Let us begin where the Siamese did-with the Khmer. They imitated the Khmer, and so if here the Siamese differ it hints at what they valued. Now for the Khmer under Angkor cosmological texts clearly ruled - or at least they aligned buildings precisely to the cardinal directions and willfully cut their order into the land, denying the vagaries of local terrain (Groslier 1973). Were that to describe the Tai, then particular places would have less local power than we have claimed. Still, among the Tai it might describe the Siamese- if we went only by texts. But actual practice shows they adjust to the exigencies of the place. How do Siamese orient a house? Texts tell the auspicious directions but local factors often get the final say (Terwiel1975:162). So they set a house to face a road or waterway (Rl}thai 1976:14), orienting it to activity, turning the compass to suit the site. Similarly, Lao villagers orient their houses to rivers that follow the lay of the land, not the points of the compass. Within a village newcomers build downstream from earlier houses, and flip entrance and sleeping area around so that adjoining houses do not juxtapose one sleeper's head with another's feet (Charpentier and Clement 1978:38-75). So the site is both physical and social, and its magnetism moves the compass so that north is upstream, south downstream.(Mogenet 1972:177). True, one might call this cosmological, but its pivot is not textual, royal or urban but local. But perhaps today's house is the wrong place to look. Surely it is the temple that sets the cosmological in stone. It did for the Khmer. They stuck to the texts and built the temple's main building facing exactly east. The Siamese knew east was 'correct,' but in Bangkok by Indorf's (1982:47) data only 75% face this way, and the supposedly more cosmological Ayutthaya got it 'right' only 64% of the time. While the Lao vary by region, overall Parmentier (1954:185) found only 31% of 110 temples faced east. Lao kept an eye to the compass, but aimed to face river or road (Leclere 1899:434 fn 1). The same compromise orients Tai Yuan temples in Lampang (Nyberg 1976:30). Why compromise with the cosmos unless other forces are afoot? Finally, consider Siamese cities. They too follow their site, not just a cosmological text. True, Sukhothai's walls make a rectangle where each side faces a cardinal direction, but then this was first a Khmer city. Even so, as Gosling (1983:141) argues, Sukhothai's major monuments appear oriented to a nearby ridge, and at neighboring Si Satchanalai and Kamphaeng Phet both "cities and monuments ... conform with major [natural] landmarks that were oriented- more or less -towards one of the cardinal points." For the Khmer 'more

or less' would hardly do, but for the Tai the site has a say. That also describes both Ayutthaya and Bangkok where only a leap of faith can make them into cosmological cities anywhere near as perfect as their neighbors built. Of course the larger point is not that Tai miss textual perfection, but that a study of texts alone misses traditional Tai discourse. By reifying the past, it justifies the present's apparent pragmatism, an ideology we can now question.

Conclusion So the prominence of place in Bangkok's popular image is at the core of not just Thai but Siamese and even Tai culture. Will it endure? It is too late to ask. Bangkok can never pause to fulfill planners' dreams. So we might better ask will it live?- will the popular sense of place keep its meaning? Here two threats loom. One threat comes from the withering of local communities, places that once Thai could assume were social shells. Long ago the city abandoned the village as an administrative unit, severing the official link between place and community. Now what remains faces growing numbers who live within a locality but look to the wider city's jobs and connections. Is this just the triumph of self-interest? No, the old local communities knew self-interest aplenty, but when residence and rule went together the ambitious almost had to have local roots. Today urbanization strips away what neighborhoods can offer as it opens up opportunities that ignore place to honor wealth and education (O'Connor 1981). Yet the withering of local communities does not spell community's end. To the contrary, breaking down localities simply favors the supralocal or dispersed city-wide communities that flourish within and between bureaucracies. So Bangkok's popular image- a patchwork of places, not a city of streets- still reflects social life, and that makes it meaningful, not just practical. The other threat comes as pre-packaged progress. It is the official image. It too is necessary if anyone is to plan and run the city, but will it be Thai or just mindlessly modern? Will it incorporate the popular image creatively as the royal image once did whenever it honored the past and accepted practice, or. will it destroy all that differs from its way? If we see the city past or present as a text, then there is little hope. If, on the other hand, we hear its discourse, then its people might reason out its problems. Consider roads. Modern administration presumes the importance of streets. It covets efficiency in moving people and goods. It tallies time and cost. All of this clashes with Bangkok's popular image where streets make social, not economic sense. Deadends that tie neighbors together snarl traffic. Some see these chopped up and tangled roads as a lack of order and so want to get on with straightening them out, but as I have tried to show their order lies in culture and society. True, Bangkok's streets are largely afterthoughts, unintended consequences of the way Thai society works. But change is risky, especially when its goal cuts so close to the cultural core. Society creates roads that re-create society in its own distorted image. Making Bangkok more efficient could end up making urban life meaningless.

71

THE THAI IMAGE OF BANGKOK Clearly Bangkok must live with its past, not in it. No one likes the traffic or finds much meaning in chaos. Change is necessary, but does modern or at least Western-oriented administration hold the answer when it has helped make the very problems it now offers to solve? Here the bureaucracy is the struggling sorcerer's apprentice. As it asserts central control to solve problems, it breaks down local communities and so furthers modernity. Where once home and workplace were one and localities largely governed the!llselves, today people must move out into the city where its administration must furnish facilities and governance. Each step towards modernity may be necessary and meaningful in itself, but what about the journey? Simply dissolving the diversity that gums up central administration will only make it harder for people to carve out niches within the city. Should moderniza-

tion ever reach its homogenizing end point, then Bangkok will be as modern cities are thought to be: a mass of solitary individuals facing a monolithic administration. The planners' dream could turn into the people's nightmare if none will study the popular image of Bangkok. To conclude, let me return to the Marquis de Sade. It is too bad he was not the first foreign traffic advisor. If ill intentions scrambled Bangkok, then good ones might be remedy enough. It is not that easy. Bangkok is too complex to understand fully, much less control. For better or worse, modern administration is predicated on simplifying this complexity and the danger lies in its believing its own simplifications. Certainly the image of Bangkok is anything but simple. To grasp it, remember its cognate: imagination.

ENDNOTES

1People usually refer to a place by name rather than generically, but ·when such a need arises major urban places are often called yan. Here yan is both a noun and a classifier for a district or local area within the city. Other more general words used in this context include thi (place), thaeo (section or district) and haeng (place).

drew patrons from throughout the city and too~ Western or urban names (e.g. the Lido or Charoenkrung), while most second-class theaters served local clienteles and, appropriately enough, took local place names (e.g. the Ratchawat). See O'Connor (1988b:260265) for details. In the Fifth Reign upcountry districts (amphoe) were even renamed to correspond to the subdistrict (tambon) where the district office (thiwakan) was located. See the letters from Phraya Sisahathep and Prince Damrong to Prince Sommot, 29 Sep 1903 and 26 Mar 1907, National Archives Bangkok [hereafter NAB] R5 M92.5/3.

4

0bviously this was practical. For some routes a list of streets would have covered the side of the bus (e.g. Route 53 ran along 17 streets), and many passengers did not know street names anyway. Remembering bus numbers and place names was easier and clearer than untangling streets. Of course, as we shall see, such practicality by itself ·> not sufficient to explain this pattern.

2

This describes 1975-76, just before government promotion of the Thai movie industry changed the kind and cost of available films and thereby eroded some old status distinctions. Of course status did not die. Video parlors appeared, keeping pre8tige as vivid in the city's image as it was in the mid-70's when first-class theaters showed first-run films in elegant buildings often in fashionable shopping malls. In contrast, secondclass theaters showed second-run films in ordinary buildings often set amid the dirt and smell of markets. First-class theaters cost more and presumed educated patrons as they did not dub their foreign films. They 3

In letters to Phraya Thewet, King Chulalongkom observed that no one used the royal name of a particular bridge (3 Sep 1899, NAB R5 YgThq 9/38), and he urged posting the name of a new road quickly before people coined a popular name that would then be hard to change (25 Aug 1902, NAB R5 YgThq 9/83).

5

6 I am assuming that the Silk-Cotton Tree Temple actually had silk-cotton trees. Whether or not it did, there are many instances where a socially significant royal name replaced or at least competed with a physically apparent popular one. The royal name of nearby Khlqng Phadung Krungkasem meant, roughly, the Canal Sustaining

the Prosperous Capital, while its popular name Khl9ng Khut or the Dug Canal referred to the frequent dredging it required. The giant gold-plated stupa at Wat Saket had the popular Thai name "the Golden Mount" (Phukhao Th9ng) before it was even finished and given the royal Pali-Sanskrit name "the Highest Mountain" (Bqrombanphot [in Thai]) to commemorate a royal funeral pyre. While this name never caught on, King Chulalongkom did issue a proclamation explaining why this was the proper name and correcting those who had coined a Pali-Sanskrit rendering (Suwanbanphot [in Thai]) of the popular name (Somphong 1975:55-57). 7 Letter from Phraya Wichit to King Chulalongkorn, 24 Apr 1910, NAB R5 S9 6/31 (Thq). An interesting exception on the list of 133 is the two pawnshop owners who are identified by the names of their shops.

"Letter from Phraya Sukhumnaiwinit to King Chulalongkorn, 9 May 1908, NABR5 No 4.4/ 7. 9

Ibid. See also O'Connor 1981.

Here Tai refers to the many branches of the Southwestern Tai (Lao, Lue, Shan, Yuan, Siamese, Ahom and the upland Black, Red and White Tai) which include most Thai (citizens of Thailand under a largely Siamese culture), whether by ancestry or assimila10

72 tion. What follows largely excludes the heavily Hinduized modem Ahom. ''One can argue that this order requires that place have powers that people, in their own realm of power, can never quite escape. How else could house and village keep their integrity within a ruling mvang? After all, if people stood entirely apart from place, then as the little must defer to the big, house and village would soon lose all but de facto powers to the lnlfang. Indeed, Tai can talk like that to honor higher-ups, but they need never live like that so long as place has its own powers that defy the ruler's centralizing grasp. "This is also true for the city name itself. Luang Prabang refers to a Buddha image all

RICHARD A. O'CONNOR can see, and two of its earlier names (Chiang Khong Chiang Th9ng [City of the River Khong, City of the Th9ng Tree]; Mqang Luang Lan Chang [Capital of the Land of a Million Elephants]) are equally physically vivid. In contrast, some gloss Bangkok's short name (Krungthep) as the City of Angels, and its full name makes it Ayutthaya, Dvaravati and probably Angkor all rolled into one. While one might see these earlier cities, I suspect the name evokes their glories, not their ruins.

both towns use ban more than one finds in Bangkok. 1t does, however, tell you something about how Bangkok was perceived. In 1822 Crawfurd (1967) collected a mapofBangkokdrawn by a native. It depicts the capital as rectangular and crosscut by canals aligned with the cardinal points, a reasonable image of Ayutthaya and cosmologically 'correct,' but rather far off for the more circular Bangkok.

14

"Judging by Wijeyewardene (1986:34, 138) wat are as, if not more, prominent in the images of Nan and Chiang Mai, two Tai Yuan cities. He reports that Nan's municipality favors identifying local areas by wat, and

REFERENCES CITED

AKIN RABIBHADANA 1969 The Organization of Thai Society in the Early Bangkok Period 1782-1873. Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program. 1975 Bangkok Slum: Aspects of Social Organization. PhD thesis, Cornell University.

CRAWFURD, JOHN 1967 Joumal of an Embassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China. London: Oxford University Press.

ANUVIT CHARERNSUPKUL AND VIVAT TEMIYABANDHA 1978 Northern Thai Domestic Architecture and Rituals in House-Building. Fine Arts Commission of the Association of Siamese Architects.

DEGEORGE, J-B. 1927-28 "Proverbes, maximes et sentences Tays." Anthropos 22:911-32;

CHAMPASAK CHRONICLE 1969 R1;1ang Ml}ang Nakhon Champasak. Prachum Phongsawadan part 70, v 43:147-279. Bangkok: Khurusapha. CHARPENTIER, SOPHIE AND PIERRE CLEMENT 1978 Elements comparatifs sur les habitations des ethnies de langues thai. Paris: Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Architecturales. CHULALONGKORN,~NG

Phraratchaphithi Sibsgng Dljan. Bangkok: Khurusapha v. 2. CONDOMINAS, GEORGES 1980 L'espace social tl propos de I'asie de sud-est. Paris: Flammarion. 1963

DANG NGHIEM VAN 1972 "An Outline of the Thai in Viet Nam." Vietnamese Studies 32:143196.

GOSLING, ELIZABETH 1983. The History of Sukhothai as a Ceremonial Center: A Study of Early Siamese Architecture and Society. PhD thesis, University of Michigan. GRISWOLD, A. B. AND PRASERT NA NAGARA 1971 "The Inscription of King Rama Gamhen ofSukhodaya (1292 AD):" Epigraphic and Historical Studies. Journal of the Siam Society 59, 2:

23:596-616.

DURAND-LASSERVE, ALAIN 1977 "Bangkok et Kuala Lumpur : Aspects de l'espace social." Asie du sud-est et monde insulindien 8,2:105128.

EMBREE, JOHN R. 1950 "A Note of the Vertical and the Horizontal as Cultural Traits in Asia." Man 50:24. EVERS, HAN5-DIETER AND RUDIGER KORFF 1982 Urban Subsistence Production in Bangkok. Bielefeld: University of Bielefeld Sociology of Development Research Centre, Working Paper no. 25. FOUCAULT, MICHEL 1973 The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage Books ..

179-228.

GROSLIER, BERNARD-PHILIPPE 1973. "Pour une geographic historique du Cambodge." Cahiers d'OutreMer 104:337-379. HANKS, LUCIEN M. 1962 "Merit and Power in the Thai Social Order." American Anthropologist 64:1247-61. 1975

"The Thai Social Order as Entourage and Circle." In Change and Persistence in Thai Society: Essays in Honor of Lauriston Sharp. G. William Skinner and A. Thomas Kirsch, eds., pp. 197-218. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

INDORF, PINNA 1982. "Study of the Ordination Hall (Bot) in the Context of the Thai Monas-

THE THAI IMAGE OF BANGKOK tery (Wat)." Souti1 East Asia11 Re-

view 7:43-62. LECLERE, ADHEMARD 1899 Le Bouddhisme au Cambodge. Paris: Ernest Leroux. LYNCH, KEVIN 1960. The Image of the City. Cambridge: M. I. T. Press. MOGENET, LUC 1972 "Notes sur Ia conception de l'espace a Louang Phrabang." Bulletin des Amis du Royaume Lao 7-8: 166-196. MONGKUT, KING 1961. Prac/wm Prakat Ratchakan thi Si. Bangkok: Khurusapha. v. 4. MUS, PAUL 1975. India Seen from the East: Indian and Indigenous Cults h1 Champa. I. W. Mabbett, trans!. Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies. NADER, LAURA 1974 "Up the Anthropologist-Perspectives Gained from Studying Up." In Rehwenting Anthropology. Dell Hymes, ed., pp. 284-311. NYBERG,TOVE 1976. "Positions of Temples in Chiengmai and Lampang: A Contribution to the Interpretation of City Plans." In Lampang Reports. S. Egerod and P. Sorensen, eds. pp. 27-42. Copenhagen: Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies. O'CONNOR, RICHARD A 1981 "The Image and Economy of Thai Urbanism." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Toronto. 1983 A Theory of Indigenous Southeast Asian Urbanism. Singapore: !SEAS. 1985a "Enduring Realities and Persistent Change in Early Southeast Asian Polities." Paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies meetings, Philadelphia, March 22nd. 1985b "Centers and Sanctity, Regions and Religion: Varieties of Tai Bud-

dhism." Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Dec 5th. 1987 "Cultural Notes on Trade and the Tai." Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Boston, April 10th. 1988a "Siamese Tai in Tai Context: The Impact of a Ruling Center." Paper presented to the Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, San Francisco, March 25th. 1988b "The Dialectic of Hierarchy and Community in Urban Thai Culture." In Urban Society in Southeast

Asia. Volume II: Political and Cultural Issues. G. H. Krausse, ed. pp. 251-266. Hong Kong: Asian Research Service. PARMENTIER, HENRI 1954. L'art du Laos. Paris: L'Ecole Franc;aise d'Extreme-Orient. Publications v. 35. PRACHAKITKQRACHAK 1961 Phongsawadan Yonok. Bangkok: Sinla pa bannakhan. RHUM, MICHAEL R. 1987 "The Cosmology of Power in Lanna." Journal of the Siam Society 75:91-107. RICOEUR, PAUL 1979 "The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text." In Interpretive Social Science: A Reader. P. Rabinow and W. M. Sullivan, eds. pp. 73-101. Berkeley: University of California Press. RISPAUD, JEAN 1937 "Les noms a elements numeraux des principautes Tai." Journal of the Siam Society 29,2:77-122. Rl,JTHAI CHAICHONGRAK 1976 "RI.Jan Thai nai Phak Khlang." In R1;1an Thai Doem. Bangkok: Siam Society. SAHLINS, MARSHALL 1976 Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

73 SCOTT, JAMES C. 1976 The Moral Economy of the Peasant:

Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. SOMPHONG KRIANGKRAIPHET 1975 Puchaniasathan Boramvatthu Thai. Bangkok: Phraephitthaya. STERNSTEIN, LARRY 1971 "The Image of Bangkok." Pacific Viewpoint 12,1:68--74. TAILLARD, CHRISTIAN 1977 "Le village lao de Ia region de Vientiane: un pouvoir local face au pouvoir etatique." L'Homme 17,23:71-100. TAMBIAH, S. J. 1976 World Conqueror and World RellOtlllcer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. TERWIEL, B. J. 1975 Monks and Magic: An Analysis of

Religious Ceremonies in Central Thailand. Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series, no. 24. WATN9RANAT 1963 Thiral!tk nai Ngan Chal9ng Waf Pi thi 88. Bangkok: Privately published. WATPRADUSONGTHAM, KHUNLUANG 1969-70 Khamhaikan Khunluan~. Wat-

praduspngtham: Ekkasan Chak H9 Luang. , Thalaengngan Prawatsat 3,1:51-66; 3,2:19-36; 4,2:67-78; 4,3: 21-35. WENK,KLAUS 1968. The Restoration of Thailand under Rama I 1782-1809. Greely Stahl, trans!. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. WHITE, LYNN JR. 1968. Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered:

Essays in the Dynamism of Western Culture. Cambridge: MIT Press. WIJEYEWARDENE, GEHAN 1986 Place and Emotion in Northern Thai Ritual Behaviour. Bangkok: Pandora.

MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING (MCDM) AND THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION IN CHINESE, THAI AND JAPANESE THOUGHT S.J. TOROK MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL THE SIAM SOCIETY

I. Introduction With such an ambitious title, it may well serve to delineate the epistemological outlook of the author before embarking on the treatise proper. Since he is a physicist, for the author the expansions of the World View of the physics profession from Laplace's mechanics of the 19th century to the geometrodynamics and quantum theory of the 20th century basically spelled the death-knell of a completely materialistic World View, since even the definition of what is meant by matter had become problematical. 1 At the same time, studies of the human consciousness both individually2 and in groups (culturally)3 have led to alternative phenomenological descnptions concerning what is meant by "reality."4 Thus the World Views of major (and minor) religions have acquired an alternative (and primary) significance in what would be considered epistemologically "reality." This has not only rendered a deeper ecumenism feasible, but also allows us the practical application of a holistic but multidimensional approach to resolving problems about issues in the modem world, such as the ends of development, the aims of existence, and the role of the environment.5• 6• 7

This paper was orginally prepared for delivery at the Fourth International Conference on Thai Studies, Kw:uning, 1990.-Ed.

In this respect, the great religions of China (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism)8• 9 as well as the culturally related thought-patterns of Japanese Shintoism,10 are at one end of a scale, and Thai Buddhism is at the other, and may be especially illuminating. 11 • 12• 13 An attempt was recently made by the author to apply such thinking to current world problems.

II

Chinese value-systems and the role of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism In what follows I shall largely follow Harris, 15 Benedict16 and EtiembleP To start with, an understanding of the nature of the reality of consciousness at the individual human level through psychology points to the triple identity of "superego," "ego," and "id" as making up the "personality," utilized in transactional analysis to understand human behaviour. At the cultural level, different cultures can be considered the "home" of various aspects of this complex personality, suppressing, perhaps, other aspects. The great religions, similarly, can be considered as various codifications of this cultural identity. The great strength of Chinese civilization is that in its long evolution it has evolved patterns of culture consonant with each of

MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING these aspects of the personality (the "parent," "self" and "child" of transactional analysis from Harris, or the above-mentioned "superego;' "ego" and "id" of a neo-Freudianism). Then it codified these cultural patterns in three great religions: Confucianism for the "father," Buddhism for the "self' and Taoism for the "child." It does not matter at the moment that Buddhism was transmitted to China from India, since the original Hinduism of India (as well as the Trinity concept of Catholicism in the Christian tradition) accommodates all three personality types, without, however, allowing us to analyse each in its relatively "pure" form. The Buddhism found in Thailand, on the other hand, allows us to study the "ego" or "self," while the Shintoism of Japan (related to the Taoism of China) lets us look at the "id" or the "child" in the treble identity of human personality. To complete the picture, perhaps surprisingly, the authoritarianism of both Confucianism and Islam is, perhaps, most in tune with the "superego" (the legendary "father," or the codified authoritarian "wisdom of ancestors"). How such "wisdom" is "codified" can be seen in Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture, where she gives examples of societies where one or the other of the above three personality types are dominant (the "authoritarian," the "rational," or the "artistic" or "child-like") as exemplified in some ancient tribal cultures of North America and the Pacific. The actual stimulation for writing this paper came from some recent issues of the Journal of the Siam Society (JSS) discussing modern Thai thought and the role of Buddhism. In particular, the role of Buddhadasa as described by Peter Jackson, 12 the thoughts of Sulak Sivaraksa as described by David L. Gosling (JSS, Vol. 71, pp. 236-239) and, finally, the role of religion in the Thai marketplace as described by Richard A. O'Connor (JSS, Vol. 74, pp. 62-80) as well as its social-psychological aspects described by Durrenberger and Tannenbaum (JSS Vol. 77, Part 1, pp. 83-90), provide the background for the next few paragraphs. We may start, however, with William J. Klausner's Reflections on Thai CultureP In its last few pages (pp. 380-385) Klausner paints a picture of the delicate balance between individualism and group orientation in Thai society. This is even more vividly described by O'Connor, where he describes three kinds of "transactions" in what is basically individualistic Thai secular and religious behaviour when describing the daily life of a Royal Temple in Bangkok. His analysis gives a unique understanding of Thai society, where the paternal (the "father" figure of the king) elicits loyalty for protection, is linked with the "spiritual," exchanging "good deeds" for "merit" (at the temple), and the "material," exchanging money for goods or services in the "marketplace." The individual is simultaneously maximizing his expected benefits (of "protection," "merit" and "wealth") in all three of these "transactions." Sulak Sivaraksa's thoughts, on the other hand, ~ould reject these individualistic optimizations, and would emphasize the rationality~ of a tempered "middle way," "compassion" and "helping the disadvantaged." This would als0, indeed, be the ideal for the "paternal," "wisdom of the ages," as personified by the royalty in Thailand, and by Confucianist traditionalism in Chinese thought. This also allows us to emphasize

75

the unity of the three personalities (the father, the rational individual and the child), since Gosling can also refer to Taoist influences of "non-action" in Sulak Sivaraksa's thought. In the social psychology of religion the balance is important: I claim that in Thai Buddhism individualism is dominant; thus a certain "adult rationality" of a high-level civilization allows also for the indulgencies of the "paternal" and "child-like" elements of the personality, in a very attractive synthesis.

Japanese Shintoism and the "id" Paradoxically, in Japanese Shintoism the Taoist contemplative innocence of the "child" dominates. This can be seen in the emphasis on direct experience (chokkan in Japanese) and a group-oriented outlook, very much like the Hopi culture described by Ruth Benedict.3 This can lead to both irrational individual fears of "not acting like the group" (and thus becoming an outcast) and to occasional child-like megalomania and complete identification with the "power" of the group, be that the myth of the "invincibility of the race," or the faith in the superiority of the group's own cultural tradition over that of all ather groups. Perfection is achieved via incessant practice of the "way of the group" and any individualist personality would forever be doomed to be an "insensitive outcast." Paradoxically, even the "economic animal" aspect of individual commerical beheavior is also adopted as a "group" norm. It is difficult to bring the tempering rationality of the Buddhist "middle way" to this; however, the Japanese managed to synthesize such a personality by keeping a separate "place" (bas/to in Japanese) for each of the three aspects of their personality, as described very ably by Ruth Benedict (in another book besides the one mentioned here, namely The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, written during the Second World War as an attempt for the United States military to understand their foes). The point to be made about Japanese "group consciousness" is that the Japanese suffer acutely when outside of the group, and they feel they are "right" only when part of the group. It is a "shame" culture, rather than a "guilt" culture, with childlike innocence on the one hand and a mania for perfect conformity, "perfection through practise," till approval of the "group" is achieved. It is a dichotomy of the "child" and the "parent," where the role of the "parent" is played by the "group" (by the cultural, national, social or religious traditions) accepted (and loved) by the pure and innocent "children."

The "superego" and other systems of thought: Confucianism, Islam, etc. It is obvious, we trust, from the above Japanese dialectics, that the "child" requires a "father;" thus the father figure of other religions such as, for instance, Islam and Judaism. In Confucianism the father figure is implicitly codified as the "wisdom of the race," leading to reverent behaviour towards ancestors in a more measured way than the child-like acceptance of the "wisdom of the race" in the former two religions (through the Koran or the Bible).

II

76

II

S.J. TOROK

In Catholicism all three exist, but the "child" is emphasized through Christ, while the rationality of Buddhism would be approached by the wisdom achieved through "grace," given by the Holy Spirit. The "father" or "superego" still looms in the background, but a child-like acceptance through the imitation of Christ could be compared to the Japanese devotion to perfection and the "group" in Shintoism. The point is that there is a balance again of all three personality traits, with different emphasis on each. Why have I bothered to describe the social psychology of these major religions? I run the risk of being designated blasphemous by all zealots - an unenviable fate! However, there is a noble purpose in such a "new ecumenism." This is because usually it is useless for authoritarian fathers to argue with each other. It would only be a shouting match. It would also be useless to argue about the "direct experience" of children: the group they belong to will have different "truths" held dear to their hearts, according to the traditions held by their "fathers" (or "the wisdom of the race") they love and try to emulate. The only creative discussion possible is among adults, or the "enlightened," "rational" individualists of Buddhism,

some Christians tempered to enlightened compassion by the Holy Spirit, or those of "tolerance and sympathy" among the ones revering the ways of their ancestors as the Confucianists do. The point is, however, that the ultimate nature of things encompasses all these three personalities, and in disputes over, for instance, environment versus development issues, there could be progress only through an awareness of the multitude of values and objectives held dear by the "parent," the "adult" and the "child" in each of us, religiously adhered to, but, hopefully, tempered by wisdom. Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) is just a method for resolving the paradigm conflicts described in the World Bank monograph. Where we intend to add to it in this treatise is in identifying the paradigm conflict of major religions as basically different dimensions of the same reality, and, thus, in principle, resolvable. Such a process may be transferable to the religions of "environmentalism" and "development economics" (as discussed at the recent MCDM Conference at the Asian Institute ofTechnology in Bangkok). With this hopeful thought I close, summarising the essence of the paper in four self-explanatory figures.

ENDNOTES

1. BOSLOUGH, J. :Beyond the Black Hole- Stephen Hawking's Universe, Fontana/ Collins, Glasgow, 1984. 2. HARRIS, T.A. : I'm O.K., You're O.K. Pan Books, London and Sydney, 1969. 3. BENEDICT, R. :Patterns of Culture, A Mentor Book, The New American Library, N.Y., 1953. 4. VON GLASENAPP, H. : Die fiinf Weltreligionen, Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Diisseldorf-Kiiln, 1972. 5. COLBY; MICHAEL G. : The Evolution of Paradigms of Environmental Management in Development (Strategic Planning and Review, Discussion Paper No.1) The World Bank, Washington, October, 1989.

6. Culture and Environment in Thailand (A Symposium), The Siam Society, Bangkok, 1989.

7. NAKAMURA, T. : "Bonenkai and Entropies," The East, Vol. XXIV, No.3, SeptOct 1988. 8. ETIEMBLE: Connaissons-nous Ia Chine? Gallimard, Paris, 1964. 9. ZHANG WEIMIN: "Taoist Priests Keep Alive the Ancient Beliefs" : The East, Vol, XX, No. 2 Nov. 1989.. 10. ISHIKAWA, T. : "The Mysteries of the Ancient Japanese Religions", The East, ibid. 11. The Journal of the Siam Society, Vols.

71 (1983), 72 (1984), 74 (1986), 76 (1988) and 77 (1989). 12. JACKSON, PETER: BuddhadasaA Buddhist Thinker for the Modern World. The Siam Society, Bangkok. 1988. 13. KLAUSNER, W.J.: Reflections on Thai Culture, The Siam Society, Bangkok 1987. 14. TbROK, S.J.: "Entropic Processes in Open Steady-State Systems and MultiCriteria Approaches to Coping with the Environmental Effects of Energy" in Tabucanon, M.T. and V. Chamkong, Multiple Criteria Decision Making, AIT, Bangkok, 1989. 15. HARRIS: op. cit. 16. BENEDICT: op. cit. 17. ETIEMBLE, op. cit.

MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING

77

SUPEREGO ORDER

EGO

t! !1

((CON:=:~)SS) ~(WORLD)

ID

CHAOS

I WILL, THEREFORE I AM. I THINK, THEREFORE I AM. I FEEL, THEREFORE I AM.

Figure 1

PSYCHOLOGY

Figure 2

PARENT

CONFUCIANISM

tt tt

lt rl

Figure 3

EPISTEMOLOGY

ADULT

BUDDHISM

CHILD

TAOISM

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS

Figure 4

SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGIONS

ALLAH

--

PARENT

DOGMATIC AND "WISE" (STATESMAN)

BUDDHA

--

ADULT

RATIONAL AND "ENLIGHTENED" (SCIENTIST)

CHRIST

--

CHILD

CREATIVE AND "DESTRUCTIVE" (CHILD)

MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING (MCDM) AND THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION IN CHINESE, THAI AND JAPANESE THOUGHT S.J. TOROK MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL THE SIAM SOCIETY

I. Introduction With such an ambitious title, it may well serve to delineate the epistemological outlook of the author before embarking on the treatise proper. Since he is a physicist, for the author the expansions of the World View of the physics profession from Laplace's mechanics of the 19th century to the geometrodynamics and quantum theory of the 20th century basically spelled the death-knell of a completely materialistic World View, since even the definition of what is meant by matter had become problematical. 1 At the same time, studies of the human consciousness both individually2 and in groups (culturally)3 have led to alternative phenomenological descnptions concerning what is meant by "reality."4 Thus the World Views of major (and minor) religions have acquired an alternative (and primary) significance in what would be considered epistemologically "reality." This has not only rendered a deeper ecumenism feasible, but also allows us the practical application of a holistic but multidimensional approach to resolving problems about issues in the modem world, such as the ends of development, the aims of existence, and the role of the environment.5• 6• 7

This paper was orginally prepared for delivery at the Fourth International Conference on Thai Studies, Kw:uning, 1990.-Ed.

In this respect, the great religions of China (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism)8• 9 as well as the culturally related thought-patterns of Japanese Shintoism,10 are at one end of a scale, and Thai Buddhism is at the other, and may be especially illuminating. 11 • 12• 13 An attempt was recently made by the author to apply such thinking to current world problems.

II

Chinese value-systems and the role of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism In what follows I shall largely follow Harris, 15 Benedict16 and EtiembleP To start with, an understanding of the nature of the reality of consciousness at the individual human level through psychology points to the triple identity of "superego," "ego," and "id" as making up the "personality," utilized in transactional analysis to understand human behaviour. At the cultural level, different cultures can be considered the "home" of various aspects of this complex personality, suppressing, perhaps, other aspects. The great religions, similarly, can be considered as various codifications of this cultural identity. The great strength of Chinese civilization is that in its long evolution it has evolved patterns of culture consonant with each of

MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING these aspects of the personality (the "parent," "self" and "child" of transactional analysis from Harris, or the above-mentioned "superego;' "ego" and "id" of a neo-Freudianism). Then it codified these cultural patterns in three great religions: Confucianism for the "father," Buddhism for the "self' and Taoism for the "child." It does not matter at the moment that Buddhism was transmitted to China from India, since the original Hinduism of India (as well as the Trinity concept of Catholicism in the Christian tradition) accommodates all three personality types, without, however, allowing us to analyse each in its relatively "pure" form. The Buddhism found in Thailand, on the other hand, allows us to study the "ego" or "self," while the Shintoism of Japan (related to the Taoism of China) lets us look at the "id" or the "child" in the treble identity of human personality. To complete the picture, perhaps surprisingly, the authoritarianism of both Confucianism and Islam is, perhaps, most in tune with the "superego" (the legendary "father," or the codified authoritarian "wisdom of ancestors"). How such "wisdom" is "codified" can be seen in Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture, where she gives examples of societies where one or the other of the above three personality types are dominant (the "authoritarian," the "rational," or the "artistic" or "child-like") as exemplified in some ancient tribal cultures of North America and the Pacific. The actual stimulation for writing this paper came from some recent issues of the Journal of the Siam Society (JSS) discussing modern Thai thought and the role of Buddhism. In particular, the role of Buddhadasa as described by Peter Jackson, 12 the thoughts of Sulak Sivaraksa as described by David L. Gosling (JSS, Vol. 71, pp. 236-239) and, finally, the role of religion in the Thai marketplace as described by Richard A. O'Connor (JSS, Vol. 74, pp. 62-80) as well as its social-psychological aspects described by Durrenberger and Tannenbaum (JSS Vol. 77, Part 1, pp. 83-90), provide the background for the next few paragraphs. We may start, however, with William J. Klausner's Reflections on Thai CultureP In its last few pages (pp. 380-385) Klausner paints a picture of the delicate balance between individualism and group orientation in Thai society. This is even more vividly described by O'Connor, where he describes three kinds of "transactions" in what is basically individualistic Thai secular and religious behaviour when describing the daily life of a Royal Temple in Bangkok. His analysis gives a unique understanding of Thai society, where the paternal (the "father" figure of the king) elicits loyalty for protection, is linked with the "spiritual," exchanging "good deeds" for "merit" (at the temple), and the "material," exchanging money for goods or services in the "marketplace." The individual is simultaneously maximizing his expected benefits (of "protection," "merit" and "wealth") in all three of these "transactions." Sulak Sivaraksa's thoughts, on the other hand, ~ould reject these individualistic optimizations, and would emphasize the rationality~ of a tempered "middle way," "compassion" and "helping the disadvantaged." This would als0, indeed, be the ideal for the "paternal," "wisdom of the ages," as personified by the royalty in Thailand, and by Confucianist traditionalism in Chinese thought. This also allows us to emphasize

75

the unity of the three personalities (the father, the rational individual and the child), since Gosling can also refer to Taoist influences of "non-action" in Sulak Sivaraksa's thought. In the social psychology of religion the balance is important: I claim that in Thai Buddhism individualism is dominant; thus a certain "adult rationality" of a high-level civilization allows also for the indulgencies of the "paternal" and "child-like" elements of the personality, in a very attractive synthesis.

Japanese Shintoism and the "id" Paradoxically, in Japanese Shintoism the Taoist contemplative innocence of the "child" dominates. This can be seen in the emphasis on direct experience (chokkan in Japanese) and a group-oriented outlook, very much like the Hopi culture described by Ruth Benedict.3 This can lead to both irrational individual fears of "not acting like the group" (and thus becoming an outcast) and to occasional child-like megalomania and complete identification with the "power" of the group, be that the myth of the "invincibility of the race," or the faith in the superiority of the group's own cultural tradition over that of all ather groups. Perfection is achieved via incessant practice of the "way of the group" and any individualist personality would forever be doomed to be an "insensitive outcast." Paradoxically, even the "economic animal" aspect of individual commerical beheavior is also adopted as a "group" norm. It is difficult to bring the tempering rationality of the Buddhist "middle way" to this; however, the Japanese managed to synthesize such a personality by keeping a separate "place" (bas/to in Japanese) for each of the three aspects of their personality, as described very ably by Ruth Benedict (in another book besides the one mentioned here, namely The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, written during the Second World War as an attempt for the United States military to understand their foes). The point to be made about Japanese "group consciousness" is that the Japanese suffer acutely when outside of the group, and they feel they are "right" only when part of the group. It is a "shame" culture, rather than a "guilt" culture, with childlike innocence on the one hand and a mania for perfect conformity, "perfection through practise," till approval of the "group" is achieved. It is a dichotomy of the "child" and the "parent," where the role of the "parent" is played by the "group" (by the cultural, national, social or religious traditions) accepted (and loved) by the pure and innocent "children."

The "superego" and other systems of thought: Confucianism, Islam, etc. It is obvious, we trust, from the above Japanese dialectics, that the "child" requires a "father;" thus the father figure of other religions such as, for instance, Islam and Judaism. In Confucianism the father figure is implicitly codified as the "wisdom of the race," leading to reverent behaviour towards ancestors in a more measured way than the child-like acceptance of the "wisdom of the race" in the former two religions (through the Koran or the Bible).

II

76

II

S.J. TOROK

In Catholicism all three exist, but the "child" is emphasized through Christ, while the rationality of Buddhism would be approached by the wisdom achieved through "grace," given by the Holy Spirit. The "father" or "superego" still looms in the background, but a child-like acceptance through the imitation of Christ could be compared to the Japanese devotion to perfection and the "group" in Shintoism. The point is that there is a balance again of all three personality traits, with different emphasis on each. Why have I bothered to describe the social psychology of these major religions? I run the risk of being designated blasphemous by all zealots - an unenviable fate! However, there is a noble purpose in such a "new ecumenism." This is because usually it is useless for authoritarian fathers to argue with each other. It would only be a shouting match. It would also be useless to argue about the "direct experience" of children: the group they belong to will have different "truths" held dear to their hearts, according to the traditions held by their "fathers" (or "the wisdom of the race") they love and try to emulate. The only creative discussion possible is among adults, or the "enlightened," "rational" individualists of Buddhism,

some Christians tempered to enlightened compassion by the Holy Spirit, or those of "tolerance and sympathy" among the ones revering the ways of their ancestors as the Confucianists do. The point is, however, that the ultimate nature of things encompasses all these three personalities, and in disputes over, for instance, environment versus development issues, there could be progress only through an awareness of the multitude of values and objectives held dear by the "parent," the "adult" and the "child" in each of us, religiously adhered to, but, hopefully, tempered by wisdom. Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) is just a method for resolving the paradigm conflicts described in the World Bank monograph. Where we intend to add to it in this treatise is in identifying the paradigm conflict of major religions as basically different dimensions of the same reality, and, thus, in principle, resolvable. Such a process may be transferable to the religions of "environmentalism" and "development economics" (as discussed at the recent MCDM Conference at the Asian Institute ofTechnology in Bangkok). With this hopeful thought I close, summarising the essence of the paper in four self-explanatory figures.

ENDNOTES

1. BOSLOUGH, J. :Beyond the Black Hole- Stephen Hawking's Universe, Fontana/ Collins, Glasgow, 1984. 2. HARRIS, T.A. : I'm O.K., You're O.K. Pan Books, London and Sydney, 1969. 3. BENEDICT, R. :Patterns of Culture, A Mentor Book, The New American Library, N.Y., 1953. 4. VON GLASENAPP, H. : Die fiinf Weltreligionen, Eugen Diederichs Verlag, Diisseldorf-Kiiln, 1972. 5. COLBY; MICHAEL G. : The Evolution of Paradigms of Environmental Management in Development (Strategic Planning and Review, Discussion Paper No.1) The World Bank, Washington, October, 1989.

6. Culture and Environment in Thailand (A Symposium), The Siam Society, Bangkok, 1989.

7. NAKAMURA, T. : "Bonenkai and Entropies," The East, Vol. XXIV, No.3, SeptOct 1988. 8. ETIEMBLE: Connaissons-nous Ia Chine? Gallimard, Paris, 1964. 9. ZHANG WEIMIN: "Taoist Priests Keep Alive the Ancient Beliefs" : The East, Vol, XX, No. 2 Nov. 1989.. 10. ISHIKAWA, T. : "The Mysteries of the Ancient Japanese Religions", The East, ibid. 11. The Journal of the Siam Society, Vols.

71 (1983), 72 (1984), 74 (1986), 76 (1988) and 77 (1989). 12. JACKSON, PETER: BuddhadasaA Buddhist Thinker for the Modern World. The Siam Society, Bangkok. 1988. 13. KLAUSNER, W.J.: Reflections on Thai Culture, The Siam Society, Bangkok 1987. 14. TbROK, S.J.: "Entropic Processes in Open Steady-State Systems and MultiCriteria Approaches to Coping with the Environmental Effects of Energy" in Tabucanon, M.T. and V. Chamkong, Multiple Criteria Decision Making, AIT, Bangkok, 1989. 15. HARRIS: op. cit. 16. BENEDICT: op. cit. 17. ETIEMBLE, op. cit.

MULTI-CRITERIA DECISION MAKING

77

SUPEREGO ORDER

EGO

t! !1

((CON:=:~)SS) ~(WORLD)

ID

CHAOS

I WILL, THEREFORE I AM. I THINK, THEREFORE I AM. I FEEL, THEREFORE I AM.

Figure 1

PSYCHOLOGY

Figure 2

PARENT

CONFUCIANISM

tt tt

lt rl

Figure 3

EPISTEMOLOGY

ADULT

BUDDHISM

CHILD

TAOISM

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS

Figure 4

SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGIONS

ALLAH

--

PARENT

DOGMATIC AND "WISE" (STATESMAN)

BUDDHA

--

ADULT

RATIONAL AND "ENLIGHTENED" (SCIENTIST)

CHRIST

--

CHILD

CREATIVE AND "DESTRUCTIVE" (CHILD)

78

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO

ARABIAN SEA

Fig. 1. The Ba nbh ore area, after Pakistan Archaeology, no. 1, 1964.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORTANT RIVER PORT ON THE CERAMIC AND GLASS ROUTES A Transit Area for Art Styles from the West to Thailand and Burma circa 1st c. B.C. - 13th c. A.D. VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO CHULALONGKORN UNIVERSITY (RETIRED)

Banbhore is the present name for an early port of importance on a branch of the Indus River, in the Sind region of Pakistan (Fig. 1). It is forty kilometres east of Karachi. Excavations there have revealed the remains of a considerable settlement divided into tw o parts: the fortified citad el area of the mound itself measuring about 2,000 by 1,000 fee t, and the lower unwalled city round the water at the foot of the mound, extending fa r outside and including an industrial area and also an ancient graveyard (Pl. 1). Som e scholars have identified Banbhore w ith Debal, the fam ous H indu port w hich fell to the young Arab general, Mohammad bin Quasim, in the early 8th c. A.D. In its heyd ay it must have served as a trading center fo r both the interior of the country and fo reign m erchants. The city now is situated on the north bank of Gharo Creek, which once for med the westernmost branch of the Indus. The grea t ri ver changed its course in 1250 A.D., bringing about the port's demise. Excavations conducted at Banbhore since 1954 have revealed the remains of three distinct periods: Scytho-Parthian, Hindu-Buddhist and Islam ic, datable from the 1st century B.C. to the 13th century A.D. At a depth from 25 to 30 feet from the surface, archaeologists from the Department of Archaeology, Pakistan, discovered artifacts dated by them to their ScythoParthian Period, circa the 1st century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D. The artifacts consist of finely polished and burnished pottery w ith bright red and d ark brow n surfaces (Pl. 2) (The Department of Archaeology, Pakistan, 1964, pp. 50 and 53). Of special significance to Burma and Thailand is the appearance among the artifacts of very delica te pedestal ves-

Pl. 1

Part of the ancient ruins at Ba nbhore.

sels (kuzas), each having a spout w ith a pointed pouch-like bulge at its base and a long neck surmounted by a flanged knob above w hich is a vertically perforated nipple (Pl. 3). The nipple of each specimen is short, w hile the top of the flange may be fl at or somewhat convex. The bod y is V-shaped w ith high should ers, echoing that of the basin fo und in the same phase of

80

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO excavation (see Plate 2). Similar high-necked vessels were unearthed in 1912 by Sir John Marshall in the 1st century B.C. levels at Taxila (ibid.). Dr. Phasook Indrawooth (Indrawooth p. 50) ascribes the origin of the vessels to the Mediterranean world. She says the vessel type was introduced to India as a flagon for wine by Roman traders who settled down on the coast of India during the period 200 B.C. to 100 A.D. The shape became popu lar, especially among the Buddhist community, where the ·vessel was used in ceremonies, hence it has been dubbed a "sprinkler." Many sherds of this type of ware have been found at Buddhist cave sites to the east of Banbhore; for example, Kanheri, Karle and Ajanta. Hilary Adamson and Isobel Shaw (Adamson and Shaw pp. 305-6) concur with the identification of a Mediterranean origin but prefer a Greek attribution. A Greek origin is inferred by Y.D. Sharma (Sharma pp. 126-8) in comments about such wares found at Rupar in Northwestern India, somewhat southeast of Taxila. He writes that "a vast variety of sophisticated types emerges in the early centuries of the Christian era. Some of these bear the imprint of Greek context, notably the footed goblet."

Pl. 2.

Pottery, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, dated 1st c. B.C. to 2nd c. A.D. .

Pl. 3.

Ku za, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, dated 1st c. B.C. to 2nd c. A.D.

Another "foreign" type, he writes, appears to be the long-necked, narrow-mouthed "sprinkler." Two "sprinkler" fragments were reportedly found at Rupar. Both are neck and flanged-knob elements. On both, the flanges appear to have a flat surface. One knob still retains a perforated nipple on top. The nipple is short as at Banbhore (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

"Sprinkler" fra gment, Rupar (after Sharma), dated to the early Christian era.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORT ANT RIVER PORT

81

At Hastinapura in North Central India, to the southeast of Rupar, fragments of "sprinkler" vessels have been excavated as well. Three have either flat or slightly convex flange knobs surmounted by short nipples while the fourth has a much thicker flange knob than the others and no nipple extant (Fig. 3). They were found in Period IV of the excavation in which artifacts have been dated from the early second century B.C. to the end of the third century A.D. (Lal pp. 23 and 64). Evidence of "sprinkler"-type vessels has been found at archaeological sites in India's Deccan Plateau and the east coast; for example, excavations at Brahmapuri on the western edge of the Deccan Plateau yielded fragments of the vessel type in its strata dated to the Satavahana Period, i.e. circa 106 to 130 A.D. At Yeleswaram, not far from Nagarjunakonda in the southeastern sector of the Indian subcontinent, "sprinkler" sherds were excavated and dated to the first and second centuries A.D. (U Myint Aung p. 49). Evidence for the spread of vessels of the kuza design to the Burma-Thailand region has been found at archaeological sites in both countries . Four "sprinkler" necks were excavated at Winka, north of Thaton, on the Tenasserim Coast of presentday Burma. All four necks have flat flange knobs. Two have fairl y intact nipples. Like those at Banbhore and other sites on the Indian subcontinent mentioned above, they are short and vertically perforated (Fig. 4). Three of the necks reportedly are of a very fine fabric and have a red slip. The four th is "finished " in brown clay and has no slip. In the same excava tion

Pl. 4.

O ne of the two spouts w ith pointed p ou ch-li ke bulges, Beikthano, 1s t c. B.C. to 2nd c. A.D. (U Aung Tha w) .

Fig. 3. "Sprinkler" fragm ents, Hastinapura (after La!), dated 2nd c. B.C. to 3rd c. A.D.

Fig. 4.

"Sprinkler" fragments, Winka (after U Myint Aung), circa 2nd c. A.D.

Pl. 5.

Mould ed kuza wi th design in hig h relief, Archaeologica l Mu seum, Banbhore, dated 3rd-4th c. A.D.

82

Pl. 6.

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO

Roman-style lamp and other artifacts, Archaeological

Pl. 7.

Roman-style lamp, Paga n Museum, circa 6th c. A. D.

Pl. 9.

Fragment of a large Sassania n tourquoise-green vessel with applied d ecoration, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, dated 8th c. A. D.

Museum, Banbhore, dated 2nd-7th c. A. D.

Pl. 8.

One of the large Sassa nian-type green alka line-glazed wa ter jars, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, dated 8th c. A.D.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORTANT RIVER PORT

83

Pl. 10. Tourquoise sherds. Top and bottom left, Sassanian sherd s from Banbhore; top center and top and bottom right, sherds from Paga n; bottom center, two Sassanian sherd s from Laem Pho, 8th-9th c. A.D.

Pl. 11. Abbasid period lead, tin and lustre-glazed fragments, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore.

Pl. 12. Green monochrome jar, Chinese, Archaeological Museum, Banbh ore. 9th-10th c. A. D., with the Chinese character::$=( va riant of on its side.

Pl. 13. Seljuk-type plate with splashed glazes over a sgraffito design, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, late 12th-early 13th c.

Pl. 14. Seljuk-type plate with sgraffito decoration, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, late 12th-early 13th c. A.D.

-*)

84

Pl. 15.

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO

Yellowish Phayao bo w l w ith sg raffito d ecoration around th e center, 12th c. A. D.

Pl. 17. Sisa tchanalai plate w ith sgra ffit o d ecoration on the well (H ein and Barbetti, p. 14, pl. 7), 13th c. A.D.

Pl. 16.

Sisa tchanalai p late w ith sgraffito decoration around the center, 13th c. A.D.

Pl. 18. Green monochrome plate with sgraffito d ecorati on on the well and center, from lower Burma, late 13th c. A.D.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORTANT RIVER PORT

two spou ts with a pointed bulge at the base were fo und, plus other frag ments. One of the spouts is of finely leviga ted red clay and the other of brown clay (ibid. pp. 48-9, 53). How the in fl uence of Mediterranean vessels or possibly Mediterranean vessels themselves came to the area is un known . Probably the type came via eastern India. Noting the 1st to 2nd century A.D. date given the "sprinkler" fragments in Yeleswaram and the fir m Satavahana (beginning of the 2nd century A. D. ) date at Brahmapuri, those found at Winka would seem not to be earlier than the 2nd century A.D.

85

Pl. 19. Bowls and fragm ent wi th fi sh at the centre, Banbhore, third p hase.

In Beikthano in Central Burma one "sprinkler" type knob wi th a short vertically perforated nipple was excava ted at site KKG-2. The flange, w hich is convex at the top, and the size of the nipple indica te a d ate similar to the Banbhore kuzas (Fig. 5). Others from the site are later, suggesting a longterm use of the type of vessel. Two spouts w ith pointed pouchlike bulges were found at the sam e site and again appear to be of an ea rly period (U Aung Thaw, p. 133, Fig. 66, No. 45 and p. 198, Pl. XLIV, b) (Pl. 4). "Sprinker" vessel fragments have been reported in Central Thailand a t Inburi in Singburi Province and Chansen in Nakhon Sawa n Province, and in Sou theastern Thailand at Chaiya in Surat Thani Province. A fragment, the top portion of a "sprinkler" from Ban Ku Muang, Inburi, bea rs a shape close

'' Fig. 5. "Sprin kler" frag m ent, Beikthano (after U Aung Thaw), 1st c. B.C. to 2nd c. A.D.

86

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO

,.

Pl. 20. Persian glass, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, dated 8th-13th c. A.D.

Pl. 21. Bottle, brown monochrome glaze over amber slip, from Southern Burma, circa 9th-13th c. A.D.

Pl. 22.

Bottle, yellow-brown glaze over amber slip, from Southern Burma, circa 11th c. A.D.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORTANT RIVER PORT

87

to those from the Indian subcontinent dated to the ea rl y Christian era and probably is not later than 2nd c. A.D. (lndrawooth, p. 50 and Fig. 10.9) (Fig . 6). Other "sprinkler" fragments reported are later stylistically; for example, a "sprinkler" knob from Chansen has a rather long nipple. It is from Phase III-IV of the excava tion (Bronson 1976, p. 535); Phase III has been dated 200 / 250-450/500 A.D. and Phase IV 450/500-600/650 A.D. (Bronson 1979, p. 317). The "sprinkler" knob from lnburi, Singburi Province (lndrawooth, Pl. 28), has a very long extended nipple and has been dated to the Dvaravati Period (7th to 11th centuries A.D.). Related to the above "sprinkler"-type vessel but from a slightly later period in Banbhore excava tions is a moulded kuza with a design in high relief and a spout with a pointed bulge at the bottom and a pha llic-shaped nozzle (Pl. 5) . The kuza is described by the excava tors as Sassanian, 3rd-4th century A.D. The type of moulding on the kuza suggests a close relationship to Roman Arretine wares. No kuza of the type has been reported in Thailand or Burma but spouts with phallic-shaped nozzles ha ve been excavated at Chansen and Dong Khan (Chainat Province) in Cen tral Thailand (Bhumadhon 1987, p. 35, Fig. 7) (Fig. 7). Yet another Mediterranean-influenced artifact discov" ered is a terracotta Roman-style lamp. It has been placed at the Banbhore Museum in a grouping of artifacts found in the Buddhist-Hindu period of the excavation dated 2nd -7th c. A.D. (PI. 6). A nozzled lamp of this type was excava ted at Ban Tha Khae, Lopburi Province, Central Thailand, in 1983, and has been dated to the 6th century A.D . (Brown p. 7). A similar one was found in Pagan, Burma, and is on display at the Pagan Museum (Pl. 7). When in the 8th century A.D. the Muslim expedition of Muhammad ben Quasim shattered the power of the local Hindu rulers, the country was overrun within three years and Muslim rule of the area was firmly established . The earliest phase, circa 8th-9th c., has been assigned to the Umayyad period. The new rulers brought with them turquoise, turquoisegreen and green alkaline glazed wares of Sassanian origin. On exhibit at the Banhbore Museum are large circa 8th century wa ter jars (Pl. 8). Also on display is a fragment of a turquoisegreen vessel with applied decoration (Pl. 9). Sherds of such type Sassanian wares with white paste have been found at various sites in Thailand: Koh Kho Khao (Phang-nga Province) on the west coast of Thailand; Laem Pho on the east coast; and at Dong La Khan (Nakhon Nayok Province), U Thong (Suphanburi Province), and Lopburi (Lopburi Province) in Central Thailand (Di Crocco 1987 p. 13). Sherds with turquoise and turquoise-green glazes have been discovered in many sectors of Pagan and appear on the basis of their paste (orange-red with w hite intrusions, which is typical of local wares) and kiln finds to have been mad e in the area (Di Crocco and Schulz p. 9) (PI. 10). Their presence, however, bears witness to a connection with the Middle East. Many of the sherds are fragments of jars or basins with heavi ly thickened mouth rims (Pl. 9). The second phase of Muslim rule corresponds with the . Abbasid period covering the 8th to 11th centuries A.D. The

Fig. 6.

"Sp rinkl er" fragment, lnburi (after lndrilwooth), circa 2nd c. A.D.

' ·\ \

\ I

I

I

I ,/

Fig. 7. Phallic-shaped nozzle from Dong Khan (after Bhumadhon), circa 3rd-4th c. A.D.

loca lly produ ced glazed pottery resembles Persian materials of the time, especially specimens from Nishapur. The wares include slip-painted wares, splashed and mottled lead -glazed wares, and delicately painted tin-glazed and luster-glazed wares (Khan, p. 31) (Pl. 11). It is possible that some of the Middle Eastern type glazed sherds of the period found in Thailand may have been made in Banbhore. Also reported as present at Banbhore in the excavations of the period were Chinese wares, including finely painted stoneware of the Tang period and a few celadons (ibid.). On exhibit at the Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, is a large green monochrome jar; on its sloping shoulder the Chinese character~ (variant of* ) has been incised (Pl. 12). A frag-

88

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO

ment of a similar jar is also on display. This type of jar has been dated by Sumarah Adhyatman and Abu Ridho to the 9th-10th c. A.D. (Adhyatman and Ridho p. 89) and identified as a "Guangdong type." Banbhore wares of the 11th-13th centuries bear influence from Seljuk Persia. The period is distinguished by the introduction of glazed sgraffito wares which almost totally replaced other types of pottery. Among them are many large plates decorated with bright green glaze or glazes of green, yellow, aubergine and cream splashed over sgraffito decoration (pl. 13). Designs often are incised within bands around the center, on the well, and on the rim. Among the designs used on the well is one consisting of a series of vertical striations which encircle the well and give the appearance of having been rouletted (Pl. 14). The center often has a design of its own. The sgraffito designs on ceramics were influenced by those engraved on large bronze plates and trays in 12th c. Seljuk Persia (Rice 1979 pp. 74-75). It is interesting that sgraffito wares using Seljuk designs are presently made in Pakistan (Yoshida Pl. 33). Wares influenced by Seljuk sgraffito designs have been found in Northern Thailand and have been attributed to Sankamphaeng and Phayao kilns. Many have a broad base and high sides, probably influenced by Guangdong wares from the 11th to 12th c., but have sgraffito decorations in the center and on the well which appear to be variants of those on Seljuk wares. A bowl of this type, probably from Phayao, has a simple sgraffito design at the center consisting of a zigzag line within two circles. The interior is covered with a yellowish glaze and the exterior is brown (Pl. 15). Green monochrome wares produced at the Sisatchanalai kilns also have sgraffito designs bearing an affinity to those from Seljuk Persia and Banbhore (Hein and Barbetti, p. 14, Pis. 9 and 7). The shape of the specimens in Plates 16 and 17 is somewhat later than that of the bowl attributed to Phayao and therefore they may be dated to the 13th c. Ceramic wares arriving in Thailand from Southern Burma also bear sgraffito designs; among these is a green monochrome plate with vertical striations on the well and an incised lotus design at the center; this too when compared with Banbhore wares may be dated to the late 13th c. Among the Seljuk period wares at Banbhore are small bowls, conical, with sides turning in at the top (Pl. 19). Bowls of this type have been excavated at Sisatchanalai and constitute further evidence linking ceramic styles in Thailand with those of the Middle East.

Excavations have revealed that glass from the Middle East was imported at Banbhore. Especially significant are two bottles with long necks, one brown/black and the other green (Pl. 20). They are displayed at the Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, within a grouping dated 8th-13th c. A.D. Shinji Fukai (Fukai pp. 34-35), however, dates a Persian glass bottle in his collection which is like the green one to the 3rd-7th c. A.D. Thus the glass bottles of that type at Banbhore should date to at least the 8th c. A.D. That bottle type seems to have greatly influenced potters in Thailand and Burma over several centuries. Bottles of globular form from Northeastern Thailand using· related forms have been dated as early as the 11th century. Recently wares in the tradition of the glass bottle at Banbhore have reached Bangkok from Burma. On the basis of its similarity to the first millennium glass bottles at Banbhore and a comparison of its glaze with other ceramics from Burma, a bottle with a dark brown monochrome glaze over an amber slip may be dated circa 9th-13th c. A.D. Another, with a yellow-brown glaze over an amber slip, is similar to versions of Banbhore bottles found in Buriram Province, Northeastern Thailand, and may be dated circa the 11th c. A.D.

Conclusion Banbhore served as a link between the Mediterranean, Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and China. A comparison of artifacts excavated at Banbhore with ceramic and glass objects from Thailand and Burma indicates that Mediterranean ceramic and Middle Eastern ceramic and glass designs imported via transit points such as Banbhore had an impact on local design in Southeast Asia. Study of Banbhore artifacts suggests that while her trade was primarily with the countries to the west, she also was an early recipient of goods from China.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The author wishes to thank the Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, for granting permission to photograph artifacts on display in the museum.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORTANT RIVER PORT

89

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADAMSON, HILARY AND !SOBEL SHAW. A Trm•l'llcr's Guide to Pnkista11. Lahore: Lion Art Press (Pvt.) Ltd., 1981. ADHYATMAN, S. AND ABU RIDHO. Martavnns in Indonesia. Jakarta: The Ceramic Society of Indonesia, revised 2nd ed. 1984. AUNG THAW, U. Excavations at Beikthano. Rangoon: Archaeological Survey, 1968. BRONSON, BENNET. Excavations at Chansen and the Cultural Chronology of Protohistoric Central Thailand. Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. _ _ "The Late Prehistory and Early History of Central Thailand with Special Reference to Chansen," Early South East Asia, R.B. Smith and W. Watson, eds., New York and Kuala Lumpur: Oxford:University/Press, 1976, pp. 315-336. BROWN, ROBERT L. "The Pong Tuk Lamp: A Reconsideration," JSS, vol. 77, pt. 2, 1989, pp. 8-17. DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY, PAKISTAN. "Excavations: (vi) Exca-

vations at Banbhore," Pakistan Archaeology, no. 1, 1964, pp. 49-55.

ment of Archaeology & Museums, 1986, reprint, pp. 29-33.

DI CROCCO, VIRGINIA M. "Finds of 8-11 th c. Persian-type Ceramics and Metal Artifact in Central and Northern Thailand," The Siam Society Newsletter, vol. 3, no. 3, 1987, p. 13.

LAL, B.B. "Excavation at Hastinapura and Other Explorations in the Upper Ganga and Sutlej Basins 1950-1955," Ancient India, Bulletin of the Archaeological Survey of India, nos. 10 & 11, 1954 & 1955, pp. 5-151.

AND DORIS SCHULZ. "Burmese Mon Tin-glazed Wares in the Tak Finds and Influences from the Middle East," The Siam Society Newsletter, vol. 1 no. 4, 1985, pp. 6-13. FUKAI, SHINJI. Persian Glass. New York, Tokyo and Kyoto: Weatherhill/ Tankosha, 1973. HEIN, DON AND MIKE BARBETTI. "Sisatchanalai and the Development of Glazed Stoneware in Southeast Aisa," The Siam Society Newsletter, vol. 4, no. 3, 1988, pp. 8-18. INDRA WOOTH, PHASOOK. Index Pottery of Dvaravati Period. Bangkok: Department of Archaeology, Silpakorn University, 1985. KHAN, GULZAR MUHAMMAD. "Pottery & Metal Ware in Muslim Sind," Archaeology of Sind. Karachi: Depart-

MYINT AUNG, U. 'The Capital of Suvannabhumi Unearthed?" Shiroku, vol. 10, 1977, pp. 41-53. RICE, DAVID TALBOT. Islamic Art. London: Thames and Hudson, revised ed. 1979. SHARMA, Y.D. "Exploration of Historical Sites," Ancient India, Bulletin of the Archaeological Survey of India, no. 9, 1953, pp. 116-169. STOCK, DIANA, ed. Khmer Ceramics 9th14th Century. Singapore: Southeast Asian Ceramic Society, 1981. YOSHIDA, MITSUKUNI. In Search of Persian Pottery. New York, Tokyo and Kyoto: Weatherhill/Tankosha, 1972.

78

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO

ARABIAN SEA

Fig. 1. The Ba nbh ore area, after Pakistan Archaeology, no. 1, 1964.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORTANT RIVER PORT ON THE CERAMIC AND GLASS ROUTES A Transit Area for Art Styles from the West to Thailand and Burma circa 1st c. B.C. - 13th c. A.D. VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO CHULALONGKORN UNIVERSITY (RETIRED)

Banbhore is the present name for an early port of importance on a branch of the Indus River, in the Sind region of Pakistan (Fig. 1). It is forty kilometres east of Karachi. Excavations there have revealed the remains of a considerable settlement divided into tw o parts: the fortified citad el area of the mound itself measuring about 2,000 by 1,000 fee t, and the lower unwalled city round the water at the foot of the mound, extending fa r outside and including an industrial area and also an ancient graveyard (Pl. 1). Som e scholars have identified Banbhore w ith Debal, the fam ous H indu port w hich fell to the young Arab general, Mohammad bin Quasim, in the early 8th c. A.D. In its heyd ay it must have served as a trading center fo r both the interior of the country and fo reign m erchants. The city now is situated on the north bank of Gharo Creek, which once for med the westernmost branch of the Indus. The grea t ri ver changed its course in 1250 A.D., bringing about the port's demise. Excavations conducted at Banbhore since 1954 have revealed the remains of three distinct periods: Scytho-Parthian, Hindu-Buddhist and Islam ic, datable from the 1st century B.C. to the 13th century A.D. At a depth from 25 to 30 feet from the surface, archaeologists from the Department of Archaeology, Pakistan, discovered artifacts dated by them to their ScythoParthian Period, circa the 1st century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D. The artifacts consist of finely polished and burnished pottery w ith bright red and d ark brow n surfaces (Pl. 2) (The Department of Archaeology, Pakistan, 1964, pp. 50 and 53). Of special significance to Burma and Thailand is the appearance among the artifacts of very delica te pedestal ves-

Pl. 1

Part of the ancient ruins at Ba nbhore.

sels (kuzas), each having a spout w ith a pointed pouch-like bulge at its base and a long neck surmounted by a flanged knob above w hich is a vertically perforated nipple (Pl. 3). The nipple of each specimen is short, w hile the top of the flange may be fl at or somewhat convex. The bod y is V-shaped w ith high should ers, echoing that of the basin fo und in the same phase of

80

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO excavation (see Plate 2). Similar high-necked vessels were unearthed in 1912 by Sir John Marshall in the 1st century B.C. levels at Taxila (ibid.). Dr. Phasook Indrawooth (Indrawooth p. 50) ascribes the origin of the vessels to the Mediterranean world. She says the vessel type was introduced to India as a flagon for wine by Roman traders who settled down on the coast of India during the period 200 B.C. to 100 A.D. The shape became popu lar, especially among the Buddhist community, where the ·vessel was used in ceremonies, hence it has been dubbed a "sprinkler." Many sherds of this type of ware have been found at Buddhist cave sites to the east of Banbhore; for example, Kanheri, Karle and Ajanta. Hilary Adamson and Isobel Shaw (Adamson and Shaw pp. 305-6) concur with the identification of a Mediterranean origin but prefer a Greek attribution. A Greek origin is inferred by Y.D. Sharma (Sharma pp. 126-8) in comments about such wares found at Rupar in Northwestern India, somewhat southeast of Taxila. He writes that "a vast variety of sophisticated types emerges in the early centuries of the Christian era. Some of these bear the imprint of Greek context, notably the footed goblet."

Pl. 2.

Pottery, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, dated 1st c. B.C. to 2nd c. A.D. .

Pl. 3.

Ku za, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, dated 1st c. B.C. to 2nd c. A.D.

Another "foreign" type, he writes, appears to be the long-necked, narrow-mouthed "sprinkler." Two "sprinkler" fragments were reportedly found at Rupar. Both are neck and flanged-knob elements. On both, the flanges appear to have a flat surface. One knob still retains a perforated nipple on top. The nipple is short as at Banbhore (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.

"Sprinkler" fra gment, Rupar (after Sharma), dated to the early Christian era.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORT ANT RIVER PORT

81

At Hastinapura in North Central India, to the southeast of Rupar, fragments of "sprinkler" vessels have been excavated as well. Three have either flat or slightly convex flange knobs surmounted by short nipples while the fourth has a much thicker flange knob than the others and no nipple extant (Fig. 3). They were found in Period IV of the excavation in which artifacts have been dated from the early second century B.C. to the end of the third century A.D. (Lal pp. 23 and 64). Evidence of "sprinkler"-type vessels has been found at archaeological sites in India's Deccan Plateau and the east coast; for example, excavations at Brahmapuri on the western edge of the Deccan Plateau yielded fragments of the vessel type in its strata dated to the Satavahana Period, i.e. circa 106 to 130 A.D. At Yeleswaram, not far from Nagarjunakonda in the southeastern sector of the Indian subcontinent, "sprinkler" sherds were excavated and dated to the first and second centuries A.D. (U Myint Aung p. 49). Evidence for the spread of vessels of the kuza design to the Burma-Thailand region has been found at archaeological sites in both countries . Four "sprinkler" necks were excavated at Winka, north of Thaton, on the Tenasserim Coast of presentday Burma. All four necks have flat flange knobs. Two have fairl y intact nipples. Like those at Banbhore and other sites on the Indian subcontinent mentioned above, they are short and vertically perforated (Fig. 4). Three of the necks reportedly are of a very fine fabric and have a red slip. The four th is "finished " in brown clay and has no slip. In the same excava tion

Pl. 4.

O ne of the two spouts w ith pointed p ou ch-li ke bulges, Beikthano, 1s t c. B.C. to 2nd c. A.D. (U Aung Tha w) .

Fig. 3. "Sprinkler" fragm ents, Hastinapura (after La!), dated 2nd c. B.C. to 3rd c. A.D.

Fig. 4.

"Sprinkler" fragments, Winka (after U Myint Aung), circa 2nd c. A.D.

Pl. 5.

Mould ed kuza wi th design in hig h relief, Archaeologica l Mu seum, Banbhore, dated 3rd-4th c. A.D.

82

Pl. 6.

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO

Roman-style lamp and other artifacts, Archaeological

Pl. 7.

Roman-style lamp, Paga n Museum, circa 6th c. A. D.

Pl. 9.

Fragment of a large Sassania n tourquoise-green vessel with applied d ecoration, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, dated 8th c. A. D.

Museum, Banbhore, dated 2nd-7th c. A. D.

Pl. 8.

One of the large Sassa nian-type green alka line-glazed wa ter jars, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, dated 8th c. A.D.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORTANT RIVER PORT

83

Pl. 10. Tourquoise sherds. Top and bottom left, Sassanian sherd s from Banbhore; top center and top and bottom right, sherds from Paga n; bottom center, two Sassanian sherd s from Laem Pho, 8th-9th c. A.D.

Pl. 11. Abbasid period lead, tin and lustre-glazed fragments, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore.

Pl. 12. Green monochrome jar, Chinese, Archaeological Museum, Banbh ore. 9th-10th c. A. D., with the Chinese character::$=( va riant of on its side.

Pl. 13. Seljuk-type plate with splashed glazes over a sgraffito design, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, late 12th-early 13th c.

Pl. 14. Seljuk-type plate with sgraffito decoration, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, late 12th-early 13th c. A.D.

-*)

84

Pl. 15.

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO

Yellowish Phayao bo w l w ith sg raffito d ecoration around th e center, 12th c. A. D.

Pl. 17. Sisa tchanalai plate w ith sgra ffit o d ecoration on the well (H ein and Barbetti, p. 14, pl. 7), 13th c. A.D.

Pl. 16.

Sisa tchanalai p late w ith sgraffito decoration around the center, 13th c. A.D.

Pl. 18. Green monochrome plate with sgraffito d ecorati on on the well and center, from lower Burma, late 13th c. A.D.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORTANT RIVER PORT

two spou ts with a pointed bulge at the base were fo und, plus other frag ments. One of the spouts is of finely leviga ted red clay and the other of brown clay (ibid. pp. 48-9, 53). How the in fl uence of Mediterranean vessels or possibly Mediterranean vessels themselves came to the area is un known . Probably the type came via eastern India. Noting the 1st to 2nd century A.D. date given the "sprinkler" fragments in Yeleswaram and the fir m Satavahana (beginning of the 2nd century A. D. ) date at Brahmapuri, those found at Winka would seem not to be earlier than the 2nd century A.D.

85

Pl. 19. Bowls and fragm ent wi th fi sh at the centre, Banbhore, third p hase.

In Beikthano in Central Burma one "sprinkler" type knob wi th a short vertically perforated nipple was excava ted at site KKG-2. The flange, w hich is convex at the top, and the size of the nipple indica te a d ate similar to the Banbhore kuzas (Fig. 5). Others from the site are later, suggesting a longterm use of the type of vessel. Two spouts w ith pointed pouchlike bulges were found at the sam e site and again appear to be of an ea rly period (U Aung Thaw, p. 133, Fig. 66, No. 45 and p. 198, Pl. XLIV, b) (Pl. 4). "Sprinker" vessel fragments have been reported in Central Thailand a t Inburi in Singburi Province and Chansen in Nakhon Sawa n Province, and in Sou theastern Thailand at Chaiya in Surat Thani Province. A fragment, the top portion of a "sprinkler" from Ban Ku Muang, Inburi, bea rs a shape close

'' Fig. 5. "Sprin kler" frag m ent, Beikthano (after U Aung Thaw), 1st c. B.C. to 2nd c. A.D.

86

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO

,.

Pl. 20. Persian glass, Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, dated 8th-13th c. A.D.

Pl. 21. Bottle, brown monochrome glaze over amber slip, from Southern Burma, circa 9th-13th c. A.D.

Pl. 22.

Bottle, yellow-brown glaze over amber slip, from Southern Burma, circa 11th c. A.D.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORTANT RIVER PORT

87

to those from the Indian subcontinent dated to the ea rl y Christian era and probably is not later than 2nd c. A.D. (lndrawooth, p. 50 and Fig. 10.9) (Fig . 6). Other "sprinkler" fragments reported are later stylistically; for example, a "sprinkler" knob from Chansen has a rather long nipple. It is from Phase III-IV of the excava tion (Bronson 1976, p. 535); Phase III has been dated 200 / 250-450/500 A.D. and Phase IV 450/500-600/650 A.D. (Bronson 1979, p. 317). The "sprinkler" knob from lnburi, Singburi Province (lndrawooth, Pl. 28), has a very long extended nipple and has been dated to the Dvaravati Period (7th to 11th centuries A.D.). Related to the above "sprinkler"-type vessel but from a slightly later period in Banbhore excava tions is a moulded kuza with a design in high relief and a spout with a pointed bulge at the bottom and a pha llic-shaped nozzle (Pl. 5) . The kuza is described by the excava tors as Sassanian, 3rd-4th century A.D. The type of moulding on the kuza suggests a close relationship to Roman Arretine wares. No kuza of the type has been reported in Thailand or Burma but spouts with phallic-shaped nozzles ha ve been excavated at Chansen and Dong Khan (Chainat Province) in Cen tral Thailand (Bhumadhon 1987, p. 35, Fig. 7) (Fig. 7). Yet another Mediterranean-influenced artifact discov" ered is a terracotta Roman-style lamp. It has been placed at the Banbhore Museum in a grouping of artifacts found in the Buddhist-Hindu period of the excavation dated 2nd -7th c. A.D. (PI. 6). A nozzled lamp of this type was excava ted at Ban Tha Khae, Lopburi Province, Central Thailand, in 1983, and has been dated to the 6th century A.D . (Brown p. 7). A similar one was found in Pagan, Burma, and is on display at the Pagan Museum (Pl. 7). When in the 8th century A.D. the Muslim expedition of Muhammad ben Quasim shattered the power of the local Hindu rulers, the country was overrun within three years and Muslim rule of the area was firmly established . The earliest phase, circa 8th-9th c., has been assigned to the Umayyad period. The new rulers brought with them turquoise, turquoisegreen and green alkaline glazed wares of Sassanian origin. On exhibit at the Banhbore Museum are large circa 8th century wa ter jars (Pl. 8). Also on display is a fragment of a turquoisegreen vessel with applied decoration (Pl. 9). Sherds of such type Sassanian wares with white paste have been found at various sites in Thailand: Koh Kho Khao (Phang-nga Province) on the west coast of Thailand; Laem Pho on the east coast; and at Dong La Khan (Nakhon Nayok Province), U Thong (Suphanburi Province), and Lopburi (Lopburi Province) in Central Thailand (Di Crocco 1987 p. 13). Sherds with turquoise and turquoise-green glazes have been discovered in many sectors of Pagan and appear on the basis of their paste (orange-red with w hite intrusions, which is typical of local wares) and kiln finds to have been mad e in the area (Di Crocco and Schulz p. 9) (PI. 10). Their presence, however, bears witness to a connection with the Middle East. Many of the sherds are fragments of jars or basins with heavi ly thickened mouth rims (Pl. 9). The second phase of Muslim rule corresponds with the . Abbasid period covering the 8th to 11th centuries A.D. The

Fig. 6.

"Sp rinkl er" fragment, lnburi (after lndrilwooth), circa 2nd c. A.D.

' ·\ \

\ I

I

I

I ,/

Fig. 7. Phallic-shaped nozzle from Dong Khan (after Bhumadhon), circa 3rd-4th c. A.D.

loca lly produ ced glazed pottery resembles Persian materials of the time, especially specimens from Nishapur. The wares include slip-painted wares, splashed and mottled lead -glazed wares, and delicately painted tin-glazed and luster-glazed wares (Khan, p. 31) (Pl. 11). It is possible that some of the Middle Eastern type glazed sherds of the period found in Thailand may have been made in Banbhore. Also reported as present at Banbhore in the excavations of the period were Chinese wares, including finely painted stoneware of the Tang period and a few celadons (ibid.). On exhibit at the Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, is a large green monochrome jar; on its sloping shoulder the Chinese character~ (variant of* ) has been incised (Pl. 12). A frag-

88

VIRGINIA M. DI CROCCO

ment of a similar jar is also on display. This type of jar has been dated by Sumarah Adhyatman and Abu Ridho to the 9th-10th c. A.D. (Adhyatman and Ridho p. 89) and identified as a "Guangdong type." Banbhore wares of the 11th-13th centuries bear influence from Seljuk Persia. The period is distinguished by the introduction of glazed sgraffito wares which almost totally replaced other types of pottery. Among them are many large plates decorated with bright green glaze or glazes of green, yellow, aubergine and cream splashed over sgraffito decoration (pl. 13). Designs often are incised within bands around the center, on the well, and on the rim. Among the designs used on the well is one consisting of a series of vertical striations which encircle the well and give the appearance of having been rouletted (Pl. 14). The center often has a design of its own. The sgraffito designs on ceramics were influenced by those engraved on large bronze plates and trays in 12th c. Seljuk Persia (Rice 1979 pp. 74-75). It is interesting that sgraffito wares using Seljuk designs are presently made in Pakistan (Yoshida Pl. 33). Wares influenced by Seljuk sgraffito designs have been found in Northern Thailand and have been attributed to Sankamphaeng and Phayao kilns. Many have a broad base and high sides, probably influenced by Guangdong wares from the 11th to 12th c., but have sgraffito decorations in the center and on the well which appear to be variants of those on Seljuk wares. A bowl of this type, probably from Phayao, has a simple sgraffito design at the center consisting of a zigzag line within two circles. The interior is covered with a yellowish glaze and the exterior is brown (Pl. 15). Green monochrome wares produced at the Sisatchanalai kilns also have sgraffito designs bearing an affinity to those from Seljuk Persia and Banbhore (Hein and Barbetti, p. 14, Pis. 9 and 7). The shape of the specimens in Plates 16 and 17 is somewhat later than that of the bowl attributed to Phayao and therefore they may be dated to the 13th c. Ceramic wares arriving in Thailand from Southern Burma also bear sgraffito designs; among these is a green monochrome plate with vertical striations on the well and an incised lotus design at the center; this too when compared with Banbhore wares may be dated to the late 13th c. Among the Seljuk period wares at Banbhore are small bowls, conical, with sides turning in at the top (Pl. 19). Bowls of this type have been excavated at Sisatchanalai and constitute further evidence linking ceramic styles in Thailand with those of the Middle East.

Excavations have revealed that glass from the Middle East was imported at Banbhore. Especially significant are two bottles with long necks, one brown/black and the other green (Pl. 20). They are displayed at the Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, within a grouping dated 8th-13th c. A.D. Shinji Fukai (Fukai pp. 34-35), however, dates a Persian glass bottle in his collection which is like the green one to the 3rd-7th c. A.D. Thus the glass bottles of that type at Banbhore should date to at least the 8th c. A.D. That bottle type seems to have greatly influenced potters in Thailand and Burma over several centuries. Bottles of globular form from Northeastern Thailand using· related forms have been dated as early as the 11th century. Recently wares in the tradition of the glass bottle at Banbhore have reached Bangkok from Burma. On the basis of its similarity to the first millennium glass bottles at Banbhore and a comparison of its glaze with other ceramics from Burma, a bottle with a dark brown monochrome glaze over an amber slip may be dated circa 9th-13th c. A.D. Another, with a yellow-brown glaze over an amber slip, is similar to versions of Banbhore bottles found in Buriram Province, Northeastern Thailand, and may be dated circa the 11th c. A.D.

Conclusion Banbhore served as a link between the Mediterranean, Middle East, India, Southeast Asia and China. A comparison of artifacts excavated at Banbhore with ceramic and glass objects from Thailand and Burma indicates that Mediterranean ceramic and Middle Eastern ceramic and glass designs imported via transit points such as Banbhore had an impact on local design in Southeast Asia. Study of Banbhore artifacts suggests that while her trade was primarily with the countries to the west, she also was an early recipient of goods from China.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The author wishes to thank the Archaeological Museum, Banbhore, for granting permission to photograph artifacts on display in the museum.

BANBHORE, AN IMPORTANT RIVER PORT

89

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADAMSON, HILARY AND !SOBEL SHAW. A Trm•l'llcr's Guide to Pnkista11. Lahore: Lion Art Press (Pvt.) Ltd., 1981. ADHYATMAN, S. AND ABU RIDHO. Martavnns in Indonesia. Jakarta: The Ceramic Society of Indonesia, revised 2nd ed. 1984. AUNG THAW, U. Excavations at Beikthano. Rangoon: Archaeological Survey, 1968. BRONSON, BENNET. Excavations at Chansen and the Cultural Chronology of Protohistoric Central Thailand. Unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. _ _ "The Late Prehistory and Early History of Central Thailand with Special Reference to Chansen," Early South East Asia, R.B. Smith and W. Watson, eds., New York and Kuala Lumpur: Oxford:University/Press, 1976, pp. 315-336. BROWN, ROBERT L. "The Pong Tuk Lamp: A Reconsideration," JSS, vol. 77, pt. 2, 1989, pp. 8-17. DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY, PAKISTAN. "Excavations: (vi) Exca-

vations at Banbhore," Pakistan Archaeology, no. 1, 1964, pp. 49-55.

ment of Archaeology & Museums, 1986, reprint, pp. 29-33.

DI CROCCO, VIRGINIA M. "Finds of 8-11 th c. Persian-type Ceramics and Metal Artifact in Central and Northern Thailand," The Siam Society Newsletter, vol. 3, no. 3, 1987, p. 13.

LAL, B.B. "Excavation at Hastinapura and Other Explorations in the Upper Ganga and Sutlej Basins 1950-1955," Ancient India, Bulletin of the Archaeological Survey of India, nos. 10 & 11, 1954 & 1955, pp. 5-151.

AND DORIS SCHULZ. "Burmese Mon Tin-glazed Wares in the Tak Finds and Influences from the Middle East," The Siam Society Newsletter, vol. 1 no. 4, 1985, pp. 6-13. FUKAI, SHINJI. Persian Glass. New York, Tokyo and Kyoto: Weatherhill/ Tankosha, 1973. HEIN, DON AND MIKE BARBETTI. "Sisatchanalai and the Development of Glazed Stoneware in Southeast Aisa," The Siam Society Newsletter, vol. 4, no. 3, 1988, pp. 8-18. INDRA WOOTH, PHASOOK. Index Pottery of Dvaravati Period. Bangkok: Department of Archaeology, Silpakorn University, 1985. KHAN, GULZAR MUHAMMAD. "Pottery & Metal Ware in Muslim Sind," Archaeology of Sind. Karachi: Depart-

MYINT AUNG, U. 'The Capital of Suvannabhumi Unearthed?" Shiroku, vol. 10, 1977, pp. 41-53. RICE, DAVID TALBOT. Islamic Art. London: Thames and Hudson, revised ed. 1979. SHARMA, Y.D. "Exploration of Historical Sites," Ancient India, Bulletin of the Archaeological Survey of India, no. 9, 1953, pp. 116-169. STOCK, DIANA, ed. Khmer Ceramics 9th14th Century. Singapore: Southeast Asian Ceramic Society, 1981. YOSHIDA, MITSUKUNI. In Search of Persian Pottery. New York, Tokyo and Kyoto: Weatherhill/Tankosha, 1972.

NOTE

90

!_,

/ I

t

'· f

"; \

"'·, ..