Journal of the Siam Society; 61

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JOURNAL OF THE SIAM SOCIETY .

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4

JANUARY 1973

volume &1 part 1

THE SIAM SOCIETY PATRO:'I

His Majesty the K ing

VJCE-PA'l'RO:'IS

Her Majesty t he Queen Her Majesty Queen Rambai Barni Her Royal Highness the Princess of S or. g~::::2 H. H. Prince Dhanin iva t, Kromamun Bid ) al:!c:, H.S.H. Prince Ajavadis Disku l H.E. Monsieur Ebbe Munck Mr. Alexander B. Griswold

HO:'I. PRESJDE:"''1' 110:'1.

YI CE -PHE~IDE:-hongsawadan chabap ph rarli tchahatl~kha (Chonburi, 1968). All references are to this edition .

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David K. Wyatt

of the Old Capital" on May 18, 1850.1 This would a ppear to be that king's only expressed interest in Siamese history as such, alth ough he is known frequently to have been concerned for the fate of mu ch of Si amese culture in the face of the changes rapidly engulfing th e kingdom in the course of his reign.2 Perhaps, slightly less than a year before his own death, the king was beginning to consider his own place in history. When invited to compile the chronicle, Prince Parama nuchit was approachicg his sixtieth birthday. By then he was the eldest surviving v

son of King Rama I, having been born of 't: haochqm mandii C bai {later thao Songkandan) on December 11, 1790. He bad entered the Bud dhist monkhood as a novice in 1802, and was ordained a monk in 1810. Remaining at Wat Phrachetuphon (Wat Ph6) throughout his long career, he beca me abbot of that monastery as early as 181 4. Rama III later gave him charge of a ll the monasteries in Bangkok and ecclesiastical rank eq uivalent to that of a deputy patriarch of the Siamese Sangha, and under King Mongkut he became Supreme Patri arch from 1851 until his death on December 9, 1853. The stron gest early influence on the prince's life was his preceptor at Wat Phrachetuphon , Somdet Phra Phonnarat (1735-ca. 1814), who was unquestionably the leading historian of his day, quite apart from his ecclesiastical responsibilities. Shortly after the great Buddhist Council of 1788 'Nben the Pali canon was revised under Rama J's sponsorship, this monk had written in Pali a learned history of all the Buddhist Cou ncils from earliest times, including in his account a short I)

The orig inal p re fa ce is repr oduced in the onl y modern ed ition of this work, in PhrarutchnphDngsawadcm Kru 11 g S i Ayutthaya (ch abap luang Siinj;rasuet lae chabaj; hnmph ra Paramfinuchitchinorot ) lae phougs{nc·ulan niia . .. (2 vvols .. Bangkok:

Kh urusapba, 1961 ), vol. 1, p . kh . The date is printed here as Ch .S. 1202, Year of the Dog, second of th e decade, Saturday the seventh day of the waxing mo on of the se venth month ; but 120 2 was a Year of the Ra t, not the Dog ; a nd "Saturday the seventh etc." did not occur in 1202. It did, howeve r, occur in 12 12, which was a Yea r of the Dog, second of the decade. 2) See H. H. Prince Dhani Nivat, "The Inscr ip tions of Wa t Phra Jetubon ," .ISS xxv r, pt. 2 o 933) , 14 3- 70. 3) Biographical details are taken fr o m R"atchasakula zuong (8th ed itio n , Bangkok, 1969 ), pp. 12-13; Prince So mmo t Amoraphan and Prince Damrong Rajanubha b, Riiang tang phrarar.haM ana ph uyai nai krung rattanakosin (Bangkok, 19 2 3), pp. 96-102. An extensive biography is provided in Nattha wut Sut thisongkh ra m, Phraprawat lae phraniphon kh ~ng somd et p hramahiisamanaUwo kromphra Pm·amanuchitchinorot (Bangkok, 1962) .

+ HE ABRIDGED ROYA L CHRONICLE OF AYUDHYX

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history of Siam. 4 At some time during the same period he wrote a Pali chronicle of the Mons, the Mahayuddhakarava'!lsa (apparently never published) and a Pali chronicle of Ayudbya and its antecedents, the Ctdayuddhakara va f!1sa. 5 It was undoubtedly th is proven historiographical skill that com mended him to King Rama I, who in 1807 entrusted the revision of the Ayudhya chronicles to Somdet Phra Phonnara t and the prince-novice Paramanuchit, then only seventeen years of age.6 As the successor of Somdet Phra Phonnarat at Wat Phrachetuphon, Prince Paramanuchit must have fallen heir to that monk's papers, and he certainly maintained his early interest in Thai chronicles. The version of the chronicles they prepared in 18077 became, in a sense, definitive, and served as the basis for all subsequent versions. It was this version which Prince Paramanuchit provided the American missionary Dan Beach Bradley for printing in the 1850s or 1860s, together with two abridged versions, the longer of which is presented heres. Prince Para manuchit's "Abridged Royal Chronicle"9 is an original piece of work, different in some respects both from the 1807 "British Museum Version" and from the "Two-volume Printed Version" with which it was first published. Like the 1807 version, and unlike Bradley's, it includes a lengthy section dealing with Siamese history prior to the fo unding of Ayudhya in 1350. The tales related here, however, are not the same as those related in the 1807 version, but rather more like those related by Somdet Phra Phonnarat in his Culayuddhakarava'!lsa.IO Similarly, the "Abridged Royal Ch ronicle" has several points of d ifference in chronology with both other versions. 4) Sai, gitl.ym·at;lsa (Bangkok, 19 2 3) . 5) Only two por tions of which have survived, one published under the orig inal t itle (Bangkok, 1920), and ano ther in P,·aclwm phcngsawadan, pt. 66 (Bangkok, 196C), pp. 4 1-83. 6) Tri Amatyakul, " Phlitaeng nangsti phraratchaphongsawadan chabap phim 2 lem," Sinlap!ikon Vi: 1 (May 1962), 33. 7) The "B ritish Museum Version," Phmrlitchaplwngsawad-;ir; K•·ung Sayam (Bangkok , !964) . See Busakorn Lailert, " Phraratchaphongsawadan krung si ayutthaya," S inlapui