University of Virginia Library

THE CARAVANS OF HISTORY

The village of Phraan Muan is in North-east Thailand and is situated
a few miles from the western bank of the Mekong River. The geographical
location of the north-eastern region is such that from the beginnings
of Siamese and Laotian history it constituted an outlying `frontier'
province which was frequently forced to change its political affiliation.
It passed into and out of the control of waxing and waning kingdoms
whose capitals were Wiangchan and Luang Phrabang; Chiengmai, Ayudhya
and Bangkok; Angkor and Pnom Penh. In terms of modern political
entities, we can say that the North-east was a frontier region to which
there were multiple claimants, namely Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and
sometimes even Burma.

Precisely because of its frontier location, the north-eastern region
appears to have had a colourful and chequered political and religious
experience. I can only roughly paint here the outlines of the caravans of
history that have passed through its territories. This sketch should be
regarded as a backdrop to the contemporary scene which is our real focus
of interest. But it is a peculiar kind of backdrop: it both does and does
not give context to the present in the same way the medieval English
village can be said to provide background for the observation of contemporary
village life in East Anglia. In any case, the historical sketch
that follows will make plausible the backward glances into the past that
will be made at various points in this book.

It is probable that the Thai have been in mainland South-east Asia
for a long time; they made their first appearance on stage in political
garb, however, only in the thirteenth century when suddenly Thai
principalities and kingdoms mushroomed. Rather than talk of the invasion
of the Menam basin by the Thai, it is perhaps more correct to view their
political emergence less as the result of sudden mass influx than as the

consequence of progressive migration over time and the gradual engulfing of
the Mon-Khmer and Tibeto-Burman speaking sedentary valley populations.

The fact that the emergence of the Thai as political collectivities took
place in the thirteenth century is important. In this century revolutionary
changes shook the politics of mainland South-east Asia and sounded the
death knell of the older Indianized Mon and Khmer polities. At this
time was felt the thrust of the Mongols southwards, especially under and
after Kublai Khan who ascended the Chinese throne in 1260; the Thai
may have felt added pressures to move southwards themselves by virtue
of this thrust. Whatever the strength of this push, the Thai in fact took
control of such small principalities as Lamphun, Sukhothai, Lavo (Lophburi),
Swanalok, which were then under Mon or Cambodian control.

Before this political dominance of the Thai manifested itself, the
territory which is presently called Thailand was, up to the thirteenth
century, in the divided possession of the Mons who controlled the upper
Menam and the Khmers who dominated the lower Menam and the upper
Mekong (in which region our north-eastern village is located).

The Mon dynasty which controlled the upper Menam was based at
Haripunjaya (Lamphun); it was a champion in the twelfth century of
Buddhism (of the Theravada kind). The history of the Mons in Thailand,
of course, stretches farther back; the Mons of southern Burma adopted
Buddhism at an early date, expanded into the central valley of the Menam,
and set up the famous kingdom of Dvaravati (third to seventh centuries);
they left numerous Buddhist monuments and images; and upon the
historic ruins and location of the Mon capital was to grow up much later
the Thai city of Ayudhya.

The religious components of the Khmer civilization, one of the greatest
of further India and which controlled lower Menam and upper Mekong,
were somewhat different from those of the Mon. Khmer culture had
been heavily influenced by Sanskritic brahmanical forms, especially
Saivism and, to a lesser extent, Vaishnavism. Apart from this, Khmer
civilization had by the eighth century also been affected by Mahayana
Buddhism through the Srivijaya and Sailendra dynasties of Sumatra.

Whatever the particular differences between the Mon and Khmer
civilizations, they had a much more general characteristic in common which
Coedès has aptly conveyed in the appellation `Indianized Kingdoms of
Southeast Asia'. Historians of further India assert that the great kingdoms
of South-east Asia, both on the mainland and in the Indonesian Islands,
were the product in earlier times of Indian cultural `colonization', which
did not mean military occupation or political domination by the parent
Indian states. `Indianization', says Coedès (1968), `must be understood

essentially as the expansion of an organized culture that was founded
upon the Indian conception of royalty, was characterized by Hinduist or
Buddhist cults, the mythology of the Puranas, and the observance of the
Dharmasastras, and expressed itself in the Sanskrit language' (pp. 15-16).

Although these indigenous Indianized Mon and Khmer civilizations
lost their political control over Thailand, they left behind them cultural
imprints which became the legacy and heritage of their successors.

Let us therefore return to the Thai on the eve of their political appearance.
They had for a long time been established in Yunnan which lay within
the orbit of Chinese civilization; according to Eliot (1954, Vol. II, p. 81),
it is likely therefore that they were aware of Chinese Buddhism. Placed
on the route from India to China, the Yunnan Thai must also have had
contact with Indian culture and Buddhism stemming from Indian centres.
But perhaps more importantly, the Thai of upper Menam obviously were
influenced by the Hinayana Buddhism of their Mon masters. Nor must
we overlook the influences radiating from Burma: King Anawrata of
Burma captured Thaton in A.D. 1057, and from there he carried to his
capital at Pagan a number of monks of the southern school together with
the Pali Canon (Wells 1960, p. iv). He became an ardent Hinayanist and
spread the faith in the wake of his military excursions. `After the reign of
Anawrata Pali Buddhism was accepted in Burma and in what we now call the
Shan States as the religion of civilized mankind and this conviction found
its way to the not very distant kingdom of Sukhothai' (Eliot 1954, p. 82).

In Siam the first Thai breakthrough was in the form of the displacement
of the Mons of upper Menam by the Thai chief of Chiengrai, who
founded the kingdom of Lan Na with its capital at Chiengmai (A.D. 1296).
But more importantly, the kingdom of Sukhothai arose vigorously farther
south, having displaced the Khmers, with all the vitality of a new bloom.
The most famous of Sukhothai's kings was King Ramkamhaeng, who
claimed in an inscription that the borders of his domain were Luang
Phrabang in the north-east, Sri Dharmaraja (Ligor) in the south, and
Hamsavati (Pegu) in the west.

From our point of view what is of prime importance is that Sukhothai
enthusiastically espoused and was transformed by Sinhalese Pali Buddhism
(with which, as we have seen, it had already made contact via the Mons
and Burmese).[2] Sinhalese Buddhism had undergone a phase of revival and
efflorescence in the twelfth century under Parakrama Bahu I; from Ceylon
it had penetrated into the Mon polities of Burma and from there it
radiated all over the Indo-Chinese peninsula. It is possible that Ligor

in Southern Thailand was another centre of Pali Buddhism, which was
brought to its shores from Eastern India and Ceylon.

The famous Sukhothai inscription of Ramkamhaeng states that the
court and the inhabitants were devout Buddhists and that they observed
the season of Vassa (rain retreat) and celebrated the festival of Kathina
with processions, concerts and readings of the Scriptures. In the city
were to be seen statues of the Buddha and scenes carved in relief, as
well as large monasteries (Eliot 1954, p. 81).

The significance of this religious espousal of Pali Buddhism—especially
in the form that was propagated from Ceylon—cannot be exaggerated
either for Thailand or for that matter for South-east Asia. Coedès (1968,
p. 253) evaluates the event thus:

In accepting this formulation one should not confound the popularization
of Pali Buddhism with the spread of the `pure' religion of the Pali Canon,
for even in Polonnaruwa, the seat of Sinhalese Buddhism, Mahayanist
and Hindu influences were present (Rahula 1956), and in Thailand the
cross-currents of the Mon-Khmer civilization were too rich and varied
to permit a puritanical narrowing of cultural traditions.

The kingdom of Sukhothai was superseded by the kingdom of Ayudhya,
which was founded farther south in A.D. 1350. The waning of Sukhothai
also coincided with the rise of Thai-Laotian polities in the north-east,
which event has a direct implication for our area of ethnographic interest.

It is not at all clear from the available evidence whether or not the
Sukhothai kingdom actually controlled the eastern provinces of present-day
Thailand; King Ramkamhaeng's claim lacks independent confirmation
from Vietnamese or Cambodian sources. It is certain that up to the
twelfth century, at least, Khmer domination extended up the Mekong
to Wiangchan, and that even with the possible loss of Wiangchan to
Sukhothai the Khmers remained for a long time—at least well into the
fourteenth century—masters of the country situated downstream from
the great bend of the Mekong River. In the light of this we might say
that the region around our village of Phraan Muan was subject to both
Khmer and Sukhothai influences concurrently, although we do not know
who exactly was its political overlord.

The situation suddenly changed radically, for in the fourteenth century
there was a political explosion from the locally established Thai. The
Thai principalities of Muang Chawa (modern Luang Phrabang) and of
Wiangchan joined hands and drove the Cambodians south, thereby
claiming the regions populated by the Thai. No doubt the birth of the first
Laotian state was facilitated by the fall of Sukhothai. The kingdom of
Lan Chang (Wiangchan) was probably founded in 1353 by Fa Ngum
four years after the submission of Sukhothai to Ayudhya.

Laotian historical tradition actually begins with the legendary Khun
Borom who led the first Lao-Thai into the area; Fa Ngum is an historical
successor of the line said to have begun with Borom, and he is thus
described as reclaiming his paternity. According to the Laotian chronicle
Nithan Khun Borom, Fa Ngum was brought up at the Cambodian court,
was taught there by a monk of Theravada persuasion, and when he came
of age, the King of Cambodia not only gave his daughter in marriage to
him, but also provided him with an army to reconquer the kingdom of
his fathers. It appears that Fa Ngum captured Luang Phrabang and
Wiangchan, and even advanced on Lan Na and the Korat plateau; and
that the other Thai principalities, including Ayudhya, were forced to
negotiate with him and seek his friendship (Coedès 1968).

Three essential features may be inferred from this account: the Laotian
kingdom of Wiangchan was a power in its own right; it was culturally
influenced by Khmer civilization; it also, like other Thai polities, espoused
the cause of Sinhalese Buddhism. `The accession of Fa Ngum is important
not only because it marks the establishment of a state destined to play
a major political role in the central Indo-Chinese peninsula, but also
because it resulted in the introduction into the upper Mekong of Khmer
culture and of Singhalese Buddhism through the intermediary of Cambodia.'
(Coedès 1968, p. 225.)

Contemporaneous with the Laotian kingdom of Lan Chang was the
powerful and politically even more important kingdom of Ayudhya on
the lower Menam. This kingdom too was raised on twin pillars which
carried the weight of the total culture. These were a keen sponsorship
of Theravada Buddhism, which represents the carrying on of Sukhothai
traditions, and, at the same time, an enthusiastic acceptance of certain
Khmer cultural elements and patterns which constituted a reversal of
earlier Sukhothai orientations. While in the Sukhothai era the Siamese
showed a marked and perhaps deliberately antagonistic contrast to the
then dominant Khmer civilization, notably in political organization and
art, in the Ayudhya phase they borrowed in an uninhibited manner from
Cambodia its political institutions, vocabulary, system of writing and

art forms (which the Siamese genius transformed). In the initial stage
of political upsurge, the Siamese needed to establish their identity through
differentiation; once established, they wanted now to be as great as the
Khmers, and succeeded. In this sense Ayudhya became the true heir of
Khmer civilization in its elaboration of divine kingship adapted to Buddhist
Canons, in its transformation of Khmer and U Thong art styles, and in
its literary efflorescence.

Now to return to the Laotian kingdom of Lan Chang (`country of a
million elephants'). From the mid-fourteenth century to the mid-sixteenth
century it flourished and established its identity. While no doubt heavily
influenced by Ayudhya, it threw out another arm to link up with the
kingdom of Lan Na (Chiengmai), which in turn had important links with
Burma, both as a victim of its aggression and as a receiver of its religious
influences. During this period Wiangchan had important diplomatic
contacts with Lan Na; Laotian princes married Chiengmai princesses and
a Laotian prince once even successfully claimed the throne of Lan Na.

But in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the scourge of the
various Siamese and Laotian kingdoms was Burma. From around 15501650
the Burmese successfully invaded Chiengmai and occupied Lan Na;
they then successfully extended their control over Wiangchan and the
North-east. By the eighteenth century the Laotians were able to reassert
their independent political existence, but at the cost of fragmenting into
the two independent kingdoms of Wiangchan and Luang Phrabang. The
strong links with Chiengmai, however, continued. It is by virtue of this
historical connection with Chiengmai that the Udorn region of North-east
Thailand (where our Phraan Muan village is located) manifests a religious
and linguistic feature which distinguishes it from Central and Lower
Siam: the sacred Buddhist writing of North-east Thailand and Laos is
in a script called Tham, which is a Shan script influenced by Mon writing
(see Tambiah 1968c). For Central Thailand the corresponding script is
the Korm (Khmer) script, which traditionally, since the days of Ayudhya,
has been the script in which Buddhist literature was written there.

The next historical landmark in the fortunes of North-east Thailand
and Laos was the late eighteenth century. The Burmese at the height
of their power had invaded and laid waste in 1767 the city of Ayudhya.
The Thai soon afterwards, in an upsurge of new-found vigour and
solidarity under Phaya Tak Sin, recovered Ayudhya and pushed the
Burmese back. The Burmese had also occupied Luang Prabang in 1752
and imposed their protection on it. The success of the Thai against the
Burmese also meant the extension of their umbrella of influence over the
Laotians. The Thai in fact took Wiangchan in 1778, and held it until

1782 when the first king of the present Chakri dynasty handed it back.
The Thai, now based in Bangkok, also exerted influence over Luang
Phrabang, which was reduced to the status of a dependency.

Thus it could be said that from the last quarter of the eighteenth century
until the end of the nineteenth, both North-east Thailand and the Laotian
kingdoms came under the cultural and political influence of the Central
Thai of Siam. But already the European colonial powers were opening
their voracious jaws at the borders of Siam. In 1893 the Franco-Siamese
Treaty was signed by which Siam agreed to withdraw from the left bank
of the Mekong and to recognize Laos as a French protectorate. North-east
Thailand, the site of Phraan Muan village, finally passed into the undisputed
political control of Thailand.

I have presented in brief outline some of the grand events that were
staged on location in North-east Thailand, as well as others which, by
virtue of their happening in its vicinity, must have affected it. North-east
Thailand, the home of `Laotian' Thai, was originally a part of and
influenced by Khmer civilization; it was affected by Burmese politics;
it was later a part of the Wiangchan kingdom, which was a counterpart
and equal of the Thai polities of Chiengmai and Ayudhya. It is difficult
to say who at any particular period owned the region in which today lies
the village of Phraan Muan; it is less difficult to guess what were the cultural
and religious elements deposited in it by the parade of historical events.

It is not my intention at all to explain the religious institutions of the
villagers, as I observed and studied them in 1961-2, in terms of the deposits
and debris of history. I am not interested to trace the path along which
a particular item travelled from one date to another date. The outline has
been given to sensitize the reader to the historical backdrop, and to make
him appreciate that when, in elucidating a feature or a pattern in the
village, a comparative reference is made to India, Burma, Ceylon, Cambodia
or Laos (or rather, to some place or event in these countries fixed in time
and place) it is not at all arbitrary but can be illuminating. For while
the features that compose the culture of the village of Phraan Muan
were in a sense `arbitrarily' deposited by history, a major task of the
anthropologist is to see the logic and structure behind the manner in
which these elements combine today to form a coherent whole. In elucidating
this, the coherent structural patterns of a previous historical era or a
contemporary neighbouring society can be appropriately invoked to appear
before us to aid our understanding in terms of similarity or contrast. It is
in this sense that I shall invoke the past whenever so warranted.