Bangkok Kingship: the Role of Sukhothai

Bangkok Kingship: The Role of Sukhothai Hiram Woodward The subject of Sukhothai in Thai consciousness, 1800 to 2000, is vast and complicated.1 Certain parts of the story have already been told well by others, and there is a good deal that is beyond my competence to deal with. This lecture presents bits and pieces, souvenirs from months of unsystematic research, rather than a distillation of one section of a comprehensive study. There is a limited amount of art and architecture—despite my background—but a fair amount about texts, including an extended discussion of the Ten Royal Virtues, although the virtues are, in fact, only a small part of the total picture. Among the themes I shall touch on as well are the importance of paternalism and of royal lineage. King Rama I In 1808, according to the memoirs of Princess Narintharathewi, not long before the death of King Rama I in 1809, there was a royal order that a monastery be built right in the middle of the city, as tall as Wat Phanan Choeng in Ayutthaya.2 This was to become Wat Suthat. Phra Phirenthonthep was sent to bring down a big image (phra yai) from Sukhothai. This is usually thought to have been the principal image at Wat Mahathat in the center of the city, and is sometimes identified with the image founded by King Li Thai in 1361, according to inscriptions.3 The most treacherous part of the trip must have been the very first portion, overland. Surely, in 1808, Wat Mahathat at Sukhothai was as nearly overrun with vegetation as it was at the end of the century. The image arrived in Bangkok intact, it seems, for King Chulalongkorn relates that it was too big to fit through the river gate, which was then torn down and subsequently reconstructed. Along the route to its new site, offerings were displayed in front of the palaces, houses, and shops, and the king, then quite 1 This was an address to the Thailand-Laos-Cambodia Committee, Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, 28 March 2009. I thank Justin McDaniel for the invitation to give this talk, which is presented annually by a senior scholar. In preparing the text for publication, minimal changes have been made (aside from the loss of illustrations). 2 Chotmai het khwam song cham khong Kromma Luang Narintharathewi (Bangkok, 1973), p. 26 and p. 306 (with commentary by King Chulalongkorn). 3 A. B. Griswold, Towards a History of Sukhodaya Art (Bangkok: Fine Arts Department, 1967), p. 58. Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 103, 2015 184 Hiram Woodward ill, followed. Once installed and restored, it was dedicated and given the name Śrī Sākyamuni. Narintharathewi describes a stone inscription attached to it that says, “in the future, the uncle will be loyal to the nephew, the junior will become the senior (the phu yai), and the senior the junior.” King Chulalongkorn speculated that the author was the army commander, Prince Mahasak Phonlasep, addressing King Rama II. An indication of the continuing importance of the image is that the ashes of King Ananda were installed in the pedestal.4 Of course it was not really necessary for the kings of Bangkok to transport a large image all the way from Sukhothai. Large images could be found in Ayutthaya, and for that matter it was possible to cast a new image. The largest intact Ayutthaya image in Bangkok is the Phra Lokkanat, brought to Wat Pho from Wat Phra Si Sanphet. Not just large images were brought to Bangkok. According to the Wat Pho inscriptions, during the reign of King Rama I, a total of 1,248 images were brought from Phitsanulok, Sawankhalok (today we would call this Si Satchanalai, Sukhothai’s twin city), Sukhothai, Lopburi, and the Old Capital.5 Most of these were installed in galleries at Wat Pho and Wat Saket. They must have come from monasteries with galleries, given their uniform size, and therefore most are unlikely to have come from Sukhothai itself. Their faces were “made beautiful,” that is, covered with plaster to make them look new, like the new gallery images at Wat Suthat. They have been uncovered in modern times, beginning in the 1950s. Sukhothai, for the people of Ayutthaya, was not a place of historic origins. Ayutthayans traced their roots to the place from which Prince U Thong came, prior to the founding of the city in 1351. Maybe this was a site in the Suphanburi region, maybe it was Phetchaburi, but it was never Sukhothai, even after there was an intermarrying of the descendants of the Sukhothai royalty with the kings of Ayutthaya. After Sukhothai was abandoned, in the 17th century, there was still no interest in bringing Sukhothai Buddha images to Ayutthaya. On the other hand, Dvaravati-style images in Nakhon Pathom were taken to the capital, as were bronze sculptures from Angkor, and one report states that in the second half of the 17th century, an especially sacred image in Chiang Mai, the Sihing Buddha, was seized and carried to Ayutthaya. The bringing of so many images to Bangkok, and in the case of the Śrī Sākyamuni image at Wat Suthat, the purposeful quest for an image from Sukhothai, resulted in a concentration of sacred power, of course, but it was a sacred power that had a somewhat different shape from that seen at Ayutthaya. I can think of two reasons. One is that the administrative relationship between the capital and Phitsanulok (Siam’s second city in Ayutthaya times) had changed. The other is one to which the writings of King Mongkut provide a clue: King Rama I’s father had 4 Sinlapa watthanatham thai lem 1 (Bangkok: Fine Arts Department, 1982), pp. 226-29. 5 Prachum charuek Wat Phra Chettuphon, 2 vols. (Bangkok, 1930), vol. 1, p. 3; also Hiram W. Woodward, Jr. et al., Sacred Sculpture of Thailand (Baltimore and Bangkok, 1997), n. 46, p. 300. Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 103, 2015 Bangkok Kingship: The Role of Sukhothai 185 been an official in Phitsanulok at the time of the Burmese invasion in 1767, and his safety was secured by the presence of the Chinnarat Buddha and by his worship of this image.6 We do not know the extent to which Mongkut’s grandfather, King Rama I, had the same opinion, but it is certainly possible. Therefore, the family lineage could be traced back to north-central Siam and to the Buddha images that helped protect it during the Burmese wars. The Phaisanthaksin Throne Hall and the King’s Coronation Turning away from Sukhothai, it is possible to get a sense of the king’s spatial position in the early Bangkok period by studying the layout of the primary audience hall. Most of what follows comes from an article published in 1985.7 The Emerald Buddha, the Phra Kaeo, had almost no connections with Ayutthaya or Sukhothai. True, before it became manifest in Chiang Rai in the middle of the 15th century, it had resided, according to its history, at Angkor, Ayutthaya, and Kamphaeng Phet, but it is possible that the people of Ayutthaya had very little consciousness of it. It was seized in 1779 in Vientiane by the future King Rama I, who came to the throne in 1782. In 1784 it was installed in the royal chapel. In Lao texts, the Emerald Buddha is called the khwan—the soul, or butterfly soul—of the mueang, the principality. But I have not seen this term used in a Bangkok text. Therefore, I think it would be fair to say, the significance of the image is more dynastic than territorial. Again, the writings of King Mongkut may provide a clue. If the Lao had more assiduously worshipped the Emerald Buddha, he might have said, his grandfather would not have been able to defeat them militarily.8 The primary audience hall, the Amarinwinitchai, forms the northernmost part of the complex known as the Mahamonthian. The king, in audience, faces north. Behind him, however, is a longitudinal hall with an east-west axis; east-west, that is, like the Chapel of the Emerald Buddha nearby. From the outside, as well as in the plan, the throne hall on the northern side, the Amarinwinitchai, seems to flow seamlessly into the longitudinal east-west hall behind. This east-west hall, the Phaisanthaksin Throne Hall, is crucial because it is here that the coronation takes place. Furthermore, two adjoining chapels add yet another layer of significance. The one on the western side is called the Ho Phra That Monthian, and the other chapel of the same type (the Ho Phra Suralaiphiman) extends symmetrically on the east. The plane of the northern 6 In his history of the Chinnarat Buddha, cited Hiram W. Woodward, Jr., “Monastery, Palace, and City Plans: Ayutthaya and Bangkok,” Crossroads 2 (1985), p. 50 (23-60). 7 Woodward, “Monastery, Palace, and City Plans,” pp. 23-60. 8 What King Mongkut said in his history of the Emerald Buddha was that King Taksin had not paid sufficient devotion to the image, hence he was deposed. Cited Woodward, “The Emerald and Sihing Buddhas,” in Living a Life in Accord with Dhamma, ed. Natasha Eilenberg et al. (Bangkok: Silpakorn University, 1997), p. 506; for khwan, the same page. Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 103, 2015 186 Hiram Woodward façades of the two chapels bisects the longitudinal Phaisanthaksin Hall. Therefore the king, when he sits facing north on the raised throne at the southern end of the Amarinwinitchai Hall, has behind him the coronation throne hall as well as the two chapels.

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