|
Thailand THE AYUTTHAYA ERA, 1350-1767
Unavailable
Figure 4. Origin and Range of the Tai Peoples in Southeast Asia,
Thirteenth Century.
Unavailable
Figure 5. Centers of Power, Thirteenth to Eighteenth Centuries.
The kingdom of Ayutthaya was founded by U Thong, an
adventurer allegedly descended from a rich Chinese merchant
family who married royalty. In 1350, to escape the threat of an
epidemic, he moved his court south into the rich floodplain of
the Chao Phraya. On an island in the river he founded a new
capital, which he called Ayutthaya, after Ayodhya in northern
India, the city of the hero Rama in the Hindu epic
Ramayana. U Thong assumed the royal name of Ramathibodi
(1350-60).
Ramathibodi tried to unify his kingdom. In 1360 he declared
Theravada Buddhism the official religion of Ayutthaya and brought
members of a sangha, a Buddhist monastic community, from
Ceylon to establish new religious orders and spread the faith
among his subjects. He also compiled a legal code, based on the
Indian Dharmashastra (a Hindu legal text) and Thai custom,
which became the basis of royal legislation. Composed in Pali--an
Indo-Aryan language closely related to Sanskrit and the language
of the Theravada Buddhist scriptures--it had the force of divine
injunction. Supplemented by royal decrees, Ramathibodi's legal
code remained generally in force until the late nineteenth
century.
By the end of the fourteenth century, Ayutthaya was regarded
as the strongest power in Southeast Asia, but it lacked the
manpower to dominate the region. In the last year of his reign,
Ramathibodi had seized Angkor during what was to be the first of
many successful Thai assaults on the Khmer capital. Thai policy
was aimed at securing Ayutthaya's eastern frontier by preempting
Vietnamese designs on Khmer territory. The weakened Khmer
periodically submitted to Thai suzerainty, but efforts by
Ayutthaya to maintain control over Angkor were repeatedly
frustrated. Thai troops were frequently diverted to suppress
rebellions in Sukhothai or to campaign against Chiang Mai, where
Ayutthaya's expansion was tenaciously resisted. Eventually
Ayutthaya subdued the territory that had belonged to Sukhothai,
and the year after Ramathibodi died, his kingdom was recognized
by the emperor of China's newly established Ming Dynasty as
Sukhothai's rightful successor.
The Thai kingdom was not a single, unified state but rather a
patchwork of self-governing principalities and tributary
provinces owing allegiance to the king of Ayutthaya. These states
were ruled by members of the royal family of Ayutthaya who had
their own armies and warred among themselves. The king had to be
vigilant to prevent royal princes from combining against him or
allying with Ayutthaya's enemies. Whenever the succession was in
dispute, princely governors gathered their forces and moved on
the capital to press their claims.
During much of the fifteenth century Ayutthaya's energies
were directed toward the Malay Peninsula, where the great trading
port of Malacca contested Thai claims to sovereignty. Malacca and
other Malay states south of Tambralinga had become Muslim early
in the century, and thereafter Islam served as a symbol of Malay
solidarity against the Thai. Although the Thai failed to make a
vassal state of Malacca, Ayutthaya continued to control the
lucrative trade on the isthmus, which attracted Chinese traders
of specialty goods for the luxury markets of China.
Data as of September 1987
|
