Organizer and Chair: Constance M. Wilson, Northern Illinois University
Discussant: M. R. Rujaya Abhakorn, Chiang Mai University
New areas for research in Thai History have recently appeared. The opening of the People's Republic of China, including its southwestern province of Yunnan, has encouraged contacts between the Tai peoples who live in the area and the Thai of Thailand. As a result, sources from Sipsong Panna are now available for study. Ratanaporn Sethakul is using the legends of the Tai-Lu as sources for the history of Lan Na. Her paper will be the first to present these materials to an international audience.
For the past several years, Chiang Mai University and other Thai institutions have been seeking old Northern Thai manuscripts for microfilming and preservation. These are now available for use. David K. Wyatt presents an overview of these materials and comments on their significance for historical research. In the process, he challenges some of the earlier interpretations of their texts.
Comparisons of sources written during different periods can yield unusual results. Thongchai Winichakul has uncovered startlingly different treatments of the Ayutthayan king Mahathammaracha in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. His exploration of these differences illustrates how the modern use of history for nationalistic purposes has changed the presentation of an historical figure.
Textual analysis continues to be a major tool of the historian. Lorraine Gesick supplies these skills to an examination of Thai records from the early Bangkok period as possible sources for a cultural history of that time.
There has not been a panel in Thai History at the AAS for several years. We hope that this proposal will not only refer to a topic that has been neglected, but also contribute to a better understanding of the potential for future research in the field of Thai History and the new contributions that scholars are making.
Lan Na History in Lu Legends
Ratanaporn Sethakul, Payap University
A deep and sympathetic study of local legends can yield many historical facts. The Tai states in Southeast Asia, especially those in what is now modern China, Vietnam, Burma, and Northern Thailand, have long had a very close relationship. Each possesses its own legends which overlap or intertwine with one another. Historians who are studying the early history of Lan Na should not overlook the legends of the Lu, a Thai-speaking people in southwestern Yunnan. The Lu state of Sipsong Panna used to be a brother state of the Lan Na kingdom. King Mangrai, the founder of Chiang Mai, 700 years ago, was a grandson of the Lu king. Even now, the Lu people still recognize him, and in one village near Chiang Hung he is an important guardian spirit.
My paper examines Lu legends, both Tamnan Ban (Legends of the Village) and Tamnan Muang (Legends of the State), as sources for the history of Lan Na. I will classify and evaluate them in order to point out their strengths and weaknesses as historical sources. Examples of Lu legends appropriate for the study of the history of Lan Na and its relationships with other states will be presented.
Palm-Leaf Manuscripts and History-Writing in Premodern Northern Thailand
David K. Wyatt, Cornell University
The richest and least-used of the premodern historical materials of Thailand are the old manuscripts of what is now northern Thailand (and adjacent areas of Burma, Laos, and southern China). There are thousands of these old manuscripts, the earliest dating back to the early 1500s and the latest from as late as the 1970s. Many, but not all, have been microfilmed and are available for consultation at central depositories in Chiang Mai, Thailand. All are written in the old northern Thai alphabet. Most are inscribed on palm-leaves, but some are written on folding mulberry-paper books. Probably ninety percent of the surviving manuscripts are religious in content, but that still leaves thousands of historical manuscripts, including histories and laws.
This paper begins by describing the corpus of manuscripts in general, and then moves on to consider a sampling of historical texts (usually called tamnan or phün) from Chiang Mai, Nan, Keng Tung, and Chiang Rung (in the Sipsong Panna of China). Based on my previous work on Nan and Chiang Mai, I particularly am concerned to explore how these texts were written. By showing how their (anonymous) authors used their sources, I argue that at least some of them ought to be called "histories," not the pejorative "chronicles."
I have already dealt with similar questions in dealing with the 1894 The Nan Chronicle of Saenluang Ratchasomphan, and I will not repeat that material here except in passing. I will, however, expand upon remarks on the subject made in the September 1995 The Chiang Mai Chronicle. In both cases, of course, I will be arguing that the conventional titles of these books are misnomers!
If opportunity permits, I ought to have the opportunity to tie the subject of this paper to the paper of my colleague Thongchai Winichaikul, who is dealing with the Ayutthaya Chronicles (on which I just happen to have another book in press).
A Villain in Thai History Who Was Framed by the Plot of Historians
Thongchai Winichakul, University of Wisconsin, Madison
The role of King Mahathammaracha in sixteenth-century Siam was ambiguous. He was a close associate of Bayinnaung, the greatest king in Burmese history, in the fall of the Siamese kingdom at Ayudhya in 1569. He then became the king of Ayudhya. Nonetheless, the struggle to end Burmese overlordship began in his reign and was led by his son, Naresuan, who later became the greatest hero in Thai history.
In historians' view, Mahathammaracha was a traitor who later became a heroic patriot. But they have to provide an explanation for his conversion, while the chronicles do not mention any change in his stand at all.
The paper argues that our understanding of the chronicles is inadequate. We assume it a historical source but overlook its literary characteristics, conventions, traditions and other devices. They may be more fictional and less historical than we thought.
In this case, a chronicle simply informs a chain of events without marking the beginning or the end of a story, and never tells how to read the story. Modern historians who look for the stories of struggles for independence, have emplotted a narrative of national defeat and liberation into the chronicle. This was done by imposing an order onto a group of story units, marking the start and the end in one way rather than another.
In another literary work from the eighteenth century, the same historical episode was told in a different plot. The result is an opposite story of Mahathammaracha. It is a story of meritful kingship, in which Mahathammaracha appears to be a great king since he was a "helper" of the two most righteous Buddhist kings, Bayinnaung and Naresuan. In this eighteenth century plot, he needed not revert his position since he was on the good side on both occasions. His role was not ambiguous and needed no extra explanation.
His treason charge has been framed by the nationalist plot of modern historians.
[First published in Thai in Thai Rhadi Suksa: the volume in the Honor of Professor Ni-on Sanidhwongse, ed. Kanchanee La-ongsri et al. Bangkok: Ammarin Group Printing, 1990, pp. 173-196.]
Chotmaihet Revisited: An Assessment of Early Bangkok Manuscript Sources
Lorraine Gesick, University of Nebraska, Omaha
Manuscripts of the early Bangkok period (1782-1824) in the National Library of Thailand will be examined to assess their value as sources for cultural history. The discussion will begin with an exploration of the history of the manuscripts themselves as far as can be known-how they came to be written and preserved-to assess how representative of the period they are. A sample of the manuscripts will then be examined to see how both their content and their more purely textual properties-style, spelling, layout, etc.-might reveal something of the Thai cultural preoccupations of the time they were written.