Southeast Asia “Inside out,’ 1300-1800: A Perspective from the Interior David K. Wyatt Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, Special Issue: The urasian Context of the Early ‘Modem History of Mainland South East Asia, 1400-1800 (Jul., 1997), 689-709. Stable URL: Lhtp:flinks,jstor-org/sici?sici~0026-749X%28 19970796293 1463 A3%3CGB9EIASAZIIOLAGIED.0,.CORIBI-3 Modern Asian Studies is currently published by Cambridge University Press ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at htp:fukjstor-orp/aboutferms html, ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have ‘obtained prior permission, you may not download an entite issue of a joumal or muluple copies of aticles, and you ‘may use content in the ISTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher cegarding any Further use ofthis work. Publisher contact information may be olained at ipa jstor-or/jourmalscup.htcal. Each copy of any part ofa JSTOR transenission must contain the same copyright tice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transtnission, ISTOR isan independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive ot scholarly journals. For more information regarding ISTOR, please contact suppom@jstor org. hupsfuk.jstor.org/ Sat Mar 19 13:59:56 2005Modern Anan Sues $4.3 (4997), pp 689-709, Printed in the United Kingdon: ‘© 197 Caabridge University Bess Southeast Asia ‘Inside Out,’ 1300-1800: A Perspective from the Interior DAVID K. WYATT Cornell University Despite the serious studies of the past century, the history of Main- land Southeast Asia is still poorly understood. This is not to say that we do not have numerous studies of particular countries and events in individual countries; but, despite the efforts of Victor Lieberman, Anthony Reid, and others, we still lack a comprehensive sense of the dynamics of the premodern history of long periods on a region-wide basis What we are attempting to understand is exceedingly complex, for it involves numerous political units that coalesce into a much smaller grouping of states by the nineteenth century. How can we understand the process by which this occurs? Lieberman has adopted an externalist approach, looking especially at politics and economics, and attempting to discern general patterns of change. This approach is both necessary and useful; but we need also to look at the ‘internal’ aspect of change, atid to raise some fundamental. philosophical issues. What I am ultimately arguing for is an approach to the period through cultural and intellectual history—examining (or at least thinking about} what was happening inside people’s heads This approach comes out of the indigenous sources for this period dealing with the interior of Mainland Southeast Asia, especially in the northern parts of what is now Thailand, and the adjacent por- tions of Burma, southwest China, and northern Laos. For the mast part, these take the form of what has been called ‘chronicles,’ includ- ing both the ‘dynastic’ chronicles (phongsaxwadan) of places like Siam and the ‘historical legends’ (tanmuan) of places like Nan, Chiang Mai, Nakhon Si Thammarat, and Luang Prabang.' The distinction is prob- \ CE David K. Weate, “Chronicle Traditions in Thai Historiography," im Southeast Asian Hisery and Hisuriegrapis, ed. C.D. Cowan and O.W. Wolters Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), pp. 107-24; reprinted in the same author's Studis in Thai Hilvag: Citsead Articles (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1994), pp. 1-21. For a gen eral survey of the history of Chiang Ma and Lar Na, the reader will ind useful Hane Penth, A Brigg Hatoy of Lan Na (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1994) 0026-749X/g7/87 5044.10 689fg0 DAVID K. WYATT ably meaningless, for, as I have argued in introducing the Chiang Mai ‘Chronicle,’ such sources surely are worthy in many cases of the appellation ‘histor We must begin by admitting that the local sources surely lend them- selves much more readily to the ‘externalist” than the ‘internalist” approach. The ‘local’ and ‘national’ chronicles rarely concern them- selves direcrly with religion, culture, ot the subjective aspects of his- tory: at times they even explicitly eschew such concerns. Take, for example, The Chiang Mot Chronicle (CMC). Best-known from Camille Notton’s 1932 French translation,’ or from the 1971 ‘Thai edition published by the Thai Prime. Minister’s Office,’ this lengthy and substantial work attempts to encompass all of Chiang Mai’s history fram the time of the Buddhist equivalent of Adam and Eve down to the time when the manuscript was composed in 1827. Based both upon an impressive range of manuscripts dating back pethaps to the sixteenth century (or before), upon the memories of those still alive when the anonymous historian wrate in 1827, and pethaps upon some contemporaneous sources, the author used his sources intelligently and critically. Where the author had to eely upon single sources, he seems (0 have atternpted but misimal edit- ing, and therefore the earlier portions of the CMC reflect early sources—that is, sources that were written long before 1827. His accounts of the fifteenth-century Lan Na (Chiang Mai) wars with the Chinese of Yunnan, for example.‘ are much like similar accounts in the earher versions of the Nan chronicles, and the language of earlier portions of the CMC is archaic when compared with the Jan- guage of the portions of the CAC dealing with the eighteenth and carly nineteenth centuries. More to the point, the CMC is sufficiently detailed for us to be able to say that the values—even the culture ® Camille Noxon, Chronique de Xiong Mat (Annaler du Sina, IM; Patis: Geuthnen, ‘9 "nan pin tng Cheng Mo (Te Chiang Ma Chronic] el Sangvan Cot soliharas hangs Erne Minacer's Ofc, tg) “David K. Wyatt ard Aronrat Wiehlenkeca The Chiang Mii Cherie (CMC] {ning Mas 4995), 8 sew etn and eraslcion a hs chee, based on 2 palovlea? maniac tn the election of Hans Penth. References ar to flias oF the orignal apustrpt, which ze mated inthe new Engh rcdion 3 Ge tog 2 "rea tg my on Hino the Foundation ota, PTA unpbh Ms. (9 SRI Sa-to7.o5.4, Socal Research Institute, Chtng Ma. ois tet is deseribed and discued is David K Wy, The Nan Choe (tha: Cornell Southeast Aula Prograta, 1994), pp. 14-28,SOUTHEAST ASIA INSIDE-OUT,' 1390-1800 6h and the thought—attributed to the early centuries (a good example is the warfare of the fifteenth century) are very different from the values, culture, and thought with which he describes and analyzes the warfare of later periods (like the warfare of the late eighteenth century through which he lived). ‘The point is neither irrelevant nor inconsequential, and has 4 great deal (0 do with che phenomena with which Lieberman is con- cerned—the growth and elaboration of political communities, and the interrelations between them, over the half-millennium between about 1900 and 1800. Just how the CMC and similar sources shed light upon such developments cannot easily be traced by looking at the single, isolated episodes of which the chronicles are composed. Instead, we have to examine broader contrasts and comparisons; par- ticularly the contrasts and comparisons between the foucteenth- century world depicted in the sources and the cighteenth- or early- nineteenth-century world in which they are set. For these purposes, let us examine three sets of contrasts, involving the following themes: the world, neighboring non-Tai polities, and nearby Tai principalities, all generally falling under the rubric of ‘inter-polity relations’; then a group of themes all involving the definitions of the various socio-political groups of local society; and finally religious contrasts hetween the earlier and the later chronicles. (There are numerous other themes which might be examined here, but for the sake of economy we must confine ourselves to these.) The two periods defined. The two periods with which we are concerned were both periods of almost-constant warfare. The first of these extends roughly from the death of the great King Mangrai (r. 1259- 1917)" to the advent of the great warrior-king Tilokarat (r. 1442~ 1487). ‘This was a troubled period of nine monarchs during which only gradually the kingdom of Lan Na took shape, centered on Chiang Mai, The second, later period extends from the Burmese invasion of Siam and Lan Na in the 1760s through the Lan Na revolt (1775) to the reconstitution of the Lan Na kingdom by the end of the century, the re-foundation, strengthening, and expansion of Chiang Mai, and the end of the wars with Burma (3804). Because the author could have written much of what he has to say on this later period out of his remembered experience, his treatment of this 7 Hans Penth gives King Mangrai the dates 1261-1311. [Jinatalamali Index: Ae Annotated Inder tothe Thailand Part of Raterapesta’: Chenice jinakalamali (Oxford, 1994), P10692 DAVID K. WYATT is much fuller and more detailed than the shorter section dealing with the early period; but there is stil] much on each: roughly one and one-half fascicles (or ‘chapters') dealing with the earlier period, and two and one-half chapters dealing with the latter. Let us exam- ine the periods separately. The Earlier Period ‘On the whole, the fourteenth century is treated in a way not mack- edly different from the treatment accorded the preceding century, the era af Mangrai and Mangrai’s father.* (Indeed, much of what applies here could be said as well of the succeeding reign.) The world of the chronicles. Supetficially, the CMG seems to he thor- oughily imbued with a. classical Buddhist view of the world with, of course, India at its center. J say ‘superficially’ because we need to remind ourselves that the chronicle was actually written only in the carly nineteenth century, not in the fourteenth. Thus, although the chronicle as a whole is structured by Buddhist mythology,’ and the text itself seems to be modeled in part on the Makaaarsa chronicle of Sri Lanka, one might dismiss these as later accretions. From what we have been able to sec of the original sources on which the CMC might have been based, one notices that Buddhism—and specific Buddhist monks in particular—are very rare in the early fascicles of the CMC. The only consistent and frequent references to the Indic Givilizational context have to do with Indic ideas of kingship, and to a world in which only a few kings have fully undergone Indic corona~ tion. In chapter three, there is present the Indic conception (and rituals) of kingship, and the idea of legitimacy through royal descent: that is, the idea that only the descendants of kings could be ‘real? kings.!° ‘The best examples of this actually come from the reign of King Mangrai, although similar ideas undergird the succeeding period. " GMO, fascicle 1. The same period is treated in, for example, Tannen Mangras Chiang Mat, Chiang Tung (Cisoncle of Mangres, Cheng Mi, and Reng Tung, THCMCT), ced, Thiu Wichaikhacthaklea and Phaithun D2kbuskaea (Chiang Mai, 1993) ® Such a mythic base ofthe chronicle’ argument forma the eesterpicee of fascicle 8 (P. 8.17 8.26). See belose. © People are said ta have come from Keng Tung ta segue that ‘As Pha Thao Nam Thuam was born fom the flesh of King Chevyatonguhram, whe has great majesty, we should make him our lord,” and he thereupon became king of Keag ‘Tung. CMC, 3.4.1. (be thied numeral is che line number.)SOUTHEAST ASIA “INSIDE.OUT,’ 1500-1800 693 Sometime in the early 1270s, for example, King Mangrai is visite by a distant relative, Thaa Kaen Phongsa, from che Tai polities of the Black Tai region of what is now northern Viet Nam, Thao Kaen Phongsa, stressing their common descent from a ‘real,’ consecrated king, administered the sacraments of coronation upon Mangrai, which then were maintained ‘down to the present day." The twin themes of descent and coronation thereafter are repeatedly stressed in the EMC. Similar sacrality is not attributed to places in the CMC, with the sole exception of places of ceremonial importance, such as the moun- tain upon which some early kings were consecrated. The regalia, however, especially the Royal Sword, not only follows the Indie for- mulas but even bears Sanskrit names, and has that enduring import- ance from earliest times down to the most recent.'? The earlier portion of the chronicle therefore defines kingship in terms both of the hereditary descent of rulers, and of the Indic (but ot specifically Buddhist) rites of coronation. It is this latter aspect which distinguishes some kings from others. The chronicle makes it quite plain that there are numerous kings in ‘the world —that is, the world known to the people who are the subject of the chronicle (who are usually termed ‘Lao’ in earlier portions). This was a poly- centric, or poly-royal, structure of authority, in which it was held to be natural that there should be innumerable rulers. In a passage which I would take to be a later addition (that is, a bit of prose added by the nineteenth-century historian), the historian explains why the number of monarchs was reduced—and, incident- ally, the importance of Indic coronation and regalia: After King Mangrai had been consecrated king, he learned that rulers of the countries adjoining his own were fighting over manpower and land, each claiming that they belanged to him, which was a. souree of great suffering to the people of the domain. The lord (Mangrail thought, ‘Any land with multiple rulers is a source of great suffering to its people. Furthermore, imuich anxicty arises {from such situations). All these [contending] rulers, \ GG, #. 1.32. E have not found the inscriptions of the period to be af ruck use in this current enterprise, Curiously, the frst such coronation mentioned in the CMC—hat of King ‘Chang-—is given with a cazelul descriptian of the ceremony, but na mention of the specific royal regalia (P. 1.16), which begin ta be mentioned only it connection with, the reign of King Mangrai: the Sri Kafjeyya Sword then is mentioned (7. 2.90) a5 having been ‘a very ancient sword of [King] Lawacangkarat, a distant ancestor of King Chang, The sword is twice subtequensiy mentioned by name 4. 7.7 and 8.28}, but only in the last partian of the CAC:694 DAVID WYATT even though they be of the same lineage [as I]—the tine of King Lawacang- karat, descendants of Lao Kap and Lao Chang—not a single one of them has been duly consecrated a king. Only my paternal grandfather, King Lao Kao, who was the younger sibling of Cao Lao Khop and Lao Ghang, was consecrated a king, continuing the lineage down to me today. Furthermore, the regalia of coronation—for example, the Sword of Victory, the Spear, the Srikwfijayya Dagger, and the Anspicious Gems—are things chat have come down (o me from Grandfather Lao Cong (CangkarachaJ, and [ have maintained them down t9 the present day, every one of thei. All of those sho are my neighbor kings have not undergone coronation bike me, not ote of them, and they [therefore] cannot withstand me. I should attack and take those domains.”* Which, of course, he then proceeded to do, his efforts culminating in the capture of Hariphunchai (old Lamphun) and the subsequent foundation of Chiang Mai in 1296. ‘My inclination to take this passage as a later insertion, or inter- pretation, is strengthened by two considerations. First, the section of the GMC dealing with the period following the death of King Man- arai (15172) shows us litele of what we might call “empire-building.” That is, that section of the CMC is little concerned with justifying rulers’ expeditions to subdue their neighbors or even with their place in a wider world. Second, a chronicle text recently has come to light which deals exclusively with the reign of King Mangrai; and it justi- fies Mangrai’s conquest of his neighbors only in the following words, which form the first sentences of the first page: Here we shall tell of Lan Na. King Mangrai ruled just Chiang Rai, Fang, Hang, Sat, Neven Yang, and Chiang Ria, in succession to his father. Ruliog these, he took troops to capture Phayao, Phao, Thoeng, Lamphun, Chiang Khong, M. Luang, and M. Nan. Some he conquered and some he did not, taking one domain in some years and none in others; sometimes taking two or three years for one; sometimes taking one without a hattle. Those be took, he ruled, killing the culers he conquered. When he killed the rulers, he would have one of his officers govern there, and sometimes he would maintain [the previous ruler] in charge."* I would judge this text fo be representative of the sorts of evidence upon which the anonymous author of the 1827 CMC based his history. This makes sense. when we consider the world in which Mangrai’s successors lived and reigned. To begin with, Mangrai’s son and suc- 2 OMG, 1an.g " PMCMCT, p. 1. Tt is clear that chis text is io fact two separate chronicles, Joined on Ps 28SOUTHEAST ASIA INSIDEOUT,’ 1900-1200 695 cessor Chaiyacongkhram did not even remain in Chiang Mai: he parceled his kingdom out among his sons, probably awarding the tichest to his eldest son and progressively less-rich principalities (or domains’) to his second and third sons: they were given Chiang Mai, Fang, and Chiang Khang, while Chaiyasongkhram himself went to rule in Chiang Rai.'® This pattern persisted for a long time there- after. Mangrai’s descendants controlled a few of the most important places, while other domains were controlled by local rulers who only gradually were displaced by Mangrai’s line, For example, when Chai- yasongkhram fell out with his son Nam Thuam in 1324, that son was sent to become the first ruler of Keng Tung (Chiang Tung in the Lan Na sources)."® What was to become the Kingdom of Lan Na was gradually expanded, sometimes by founding new domains and cities (as Chiang Saen in 1329), sometimes by conquest, and some times by replacing local rulers with members of Mangrai’s lineage. For a long time, the royal city was to the north, often at Chiang Saen; and it was not until the reign of Phayu (r. 1345/46-1 67/68) that the paramount rulers reigned from Chiang Mai. The querulousness of this ‘bedlam of snarling states’ (to borrow Harvey's memorable phrase) is suggested by a passage that indicates what happened when King Saen Phu fell ill around 1396: Cao Saen Phu had ruled for seven years when he fell il, and a physician was fetched to a secluded place. The physician said chat the prince's age was advanced, and would reach its end within thar very year. All the eonn- Me, 7ang-3a98. % Perbaps the dula (Indians) and the Lawa? % I think this refers to the ‘White Turban of YunnanSOUTHEAST ASIA “INSIDE-OUT,” 1300-1800 yor ‘ever; any such person, whatever they do, however successful they may be, may they be destroyed utterly and die, ike the banana tree dies when its fruit are picked or the reeds wilt when cut, and fall into Hell for 2 hundred- thousand cons, never to be reboro or arise again, As for you lords, all my younger siblings, you must love one another and live in concord like the strands of a rape, Do not quarrel. Help one another. Doa’t criticize each ‘other, When the elder knows, he helps; and when the younger knows, he helps. When the enemy invades, help one another. Don’t betray the Great King of ours. Whoever lives in accordance with these [words of] advice from me, your elder, may you age and prosper and wisely rule, and may you be blessed with maajesty and power and extinguish your enemies; may you have Jong age and long lives. Whoever does not follow these your elder’s {wards of] advice, may he be destroyed and perish,” His Majesty the Elder Brother gave these royal [words of] advice to his six younger siblings and children and grandchildren, his civil and military officials in the three domains, in front of the Great Reliquary of Lampang ins, 1168, a ruai yi year, on the fallemaan day af the second month, a Mon Thursday (Tuesday 13 November 1806). Virtually every sentence of this speech betrays the sort af world- view to which I have been alluding, There is a new consciousness of ethnic or culeural identity (Tai versus Burmese, Vietnamese, etc.) which does not extend to distinctions between various Tai groups (Shan, La, Khoen, Kao fof Nan], Lao, etc.). Kavila clearly prescribes a hierarchy in which the ‘Great King’ (i.c., the kings of Siam) are above Lan Na, and various other Tai groups and non-Tai groups (Lawa, Wa, Karen, etc.) ate below them, but are part of the same structure as Chiang Mai, and all are opposed together to the Bur- mese, Vietnamese, and others. ‘There is one apparently glaring omission in Kavila’s depiction of the world: not once does he even allude to the West. For that matter, the West is still completely absent from the CMC right down (0 its composition in 1827. I find it impossible to believe that the Chiang Mai people were unaware of the defeat of the Burmese by the English East India Company, and the Treaty of Yandabo, in early 1826." I suspect that, in at feast one important sense, the Burmese defeat is present throughout the CMC, and that in fact it is one of the reasons why the CMC was written. In fact, I think there. are (wo events which motivate the composition of the CMC in 1827: the 2 EMC, HF, 8.03.5-B.05 4. This date is mentioned exslier in the text a8 being a ‘Tuesday. I have retained that weekday here. We know, for example, that the Siamese learned of Yandabo within a few weeks of the event: sce The Burner Paper, val, pea Bangkok, 1gio: reprinted Faraborough, Hants, 1971), p. 200.yor DAVID K. WYATT Burmese defeat, and the defeat of Gao Anu of Vientiane at the hands of Siam (and a small Lan Na contingent). The former marks the end to an era in Lan Na’s history, while the latter underlines King Kavila’s comments about the ‘Great King’ quoted earlier—whoever of our descendants might revolt against the Great King of Ayutthiya, they will become slaves of the Burmese ... Vietnamese ...”. Here wwe have, then, a new definition of international order; a hierarchy that is hardly present in the immediate post-Mangrai period of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is a hierarchy that is based, in the first instance, upon sheer physical power. Bat what of the internal hierarchy of Lan Na-—what the Chronicle calls the ‘fifty-seven domains’ of Lan Na? (The phrase comes from Burmese usage, a relic of the lang, two-hundred-year period of Bur- mese domination of Lan Na.) The Burmese had encouraged a divi- sion of Lan Na into two halves, centered on Chiang Mai and Chiang Saen; but particularly in the chaos of the last half of the eighteenth century, Lan Na’s integration had completely fallen apart, By the 170s the region was very badly depopulated, to the point where ‘even Chiang Mai itself was abandoned for more than twenty years; and when Lan Na was reconstituted, Kavila. and his brothers did so on the basis of the manpower and resources of Lampang and, to a certain extent, Lamphun, Lan Na was reconstituted under the hege- mony of Ghiang Mai by physical pawer: early by, especially, Kavila’s ability to enlist Siamese military support, and later by Chiang Mai’s long, systematic effort to repopulate the region with manpower snagged from, especially, the Shan and Khoen and Lii regions to the west, northwest, and north. This means that not only was the new Tai population of Lan Na firmly under Chiang Mai’s control, but also that local and even village power structures were under Chiang Mai’s control, Thus, the warfare and repopulation efforts had given Chiang Mai an opportunity to reconstitute a new hierarchy of power in Lan Na Sacial organization. The social organization of the Kavila period of Lan Na history was considerably more complex than it had been in the post-Mangrai period, One indication of this fact is that there are so many more names mentioned in the CMC than in earlier periods, and that those names are prefixed by a bewildering array of designa- tions of social and political/bureaucratic rank, as well as of function Although the countryside now, as earlier, was considerably atora- ized, village-by-village, those villages now were linked directly to che royal capital in Chiang Mai much more strongly than they had beenSOUTHEAST ASIA “INSIDE-OUT,” 1300-1800, 703 a few centuries earlier. Their discrete atomization stemmed from the fact that the region now was composed largely of ‘immigrant? villages farcibly captured and resettled in Lan Na, signaled by the fact that they often brought the old names of their villages with them to their new location. The CMG of this later period seems not to mention slaves, nor traders; but it often mentions villagers, One curious reference even ‘mentions lesbians, and the power of rumor as 2 means of social com- munication.®* When the Kavila portion of the CMC mentions ‘court? society, it does so in a more extended and more complex fashion. (For example, a prince, ‘the royalty, rulers, civil and military officials, ministers, priests, and teachers’ all are mentioned among those who participated in the raising of a new royal palace in 1827.) ‘Two new groups ate now prominent, though in very different ways. Individual Buddhist monks and ecclesiastical dignitaries often are named, together with the names of the monasteries with which they are associated; usually but not always in Chiang Mai city itself. The second new group is composed of non-Tai peoples, especially the Lawa but also including Karen and Wa. The Lawa in particular are given special ceremonial roles surrounding the installation of new rulers of Chiang Mai. There are no mentions of traders or merchants in the Kavila period.2° Religion, Although animism and elements of Brahmanical ritual appear frequently in the last section of the CMG, the dominant reli- gious expression here is of Theravada Buddhism. Buddhism is voiced here in two ways First, in the eighth and final chapter of the CMC there is a long passage (ff, 8.17-8.25) which amounts to an insertion of an entire text, the ‘Chronicle of the Reclining Buddha.’ This is the tale of 4 particular Buddha image located just north of the present city of Chiang Mai, which, the story tells us, was erected on a site where the Buddha himself (and one of his predecessor buddhas) once vis- ited and prophesied the fucure of Lan Na and Ghiang Mai.” This 3 Gas, B27 54 3 CMG, 0. 8.50.3 CMC. ® 8385, 2 One tantalising view of the nineteenth-centucy economic envitonment of the area in Katherive A. Bowie, ‘Unraveling the Myth of the Subsistence Economy: ‘Tentile Production in Nineteeuth-Ceneury Northern Thailand, Joureal of Asian Stud= iengu (agg2), 797-835. PP rhis passage inexplicably is omitted in Sanguan’s 1971 edition of the CMC,704 DAVID K. WYATT might seem to be a gratuitous insertion; but its purpose is indicated bby the fact that the sentence immediately following the ‘Chronicle of the Reclining Buddha’ ties the chronicle to the whole eight chapter text, explaining that King Kavila—who is the real subject, of chaptets seven and eight—had arisen in Chiang Mai to fulfill the Buddha's prophecy.” Without this ‘sub-chronicle,’ the CMC still takes narrative sense; but the CMC makes new sense when the sub-chronicle is considered. With it, not only does Lan Na’s history seen from 1827 affirm retrospectively a Buddhist view of human history, but by implication (from the traditional Buddhist idea that Buddhist would endure for five thousand years) it links 2.340 years of a Buddhist past to 2,660 years of a Buddhist future still to come. ‘That is, the historian who wrote the CMG tells us that the recent past and the present were foretold long ago by the Buddha himself, so that therefore what the Buddha said and did several thousand years ago remains relevant to the people of today and tomorrow. Second, in editing the new translation of the CMC J frequently inserted italicized sub-headings in order to make the text more read- able (and in order to make it easier to find things in the table of contents); and I find that T used the sub-heading ‘Pious Works’ (or similar phrases) no fewer than ten times in the final two chapters. In addition, there are numerous other episades dealing with individual Buddhist monasteries, or ordinations, ot alms-givings. This means that thete are about as many references to Buddhist activities in the final two chapters as in all six of the chapters that precede them. All of these, of course, refer to royal religiosity: there is no mention of religious life in which the king was not directly involved. I suspect that we are dealing here at least in part with an author who was essentially secular, little interested. in religion for its own sake, at Jeast whete history-writing was concerned, I believe that the 1827 author was himself responsible for all the eighteenth- and nine- teenth-century portions of his work, and did not base them on prev- ious chronicles. His copious references to the religious activities of recent kings do not mean that he was eager to privilege the Buddhist aspects of Lan Na life. He simply is pointing out that che then- current dynasty of rulers was attentive, where their predecessors had not been, ta the primacy of Buddhist piety and its necessity for the proper functioning of the state. He was, therefore, very much like the King Rama [about whom I have written at length elsewhere, OMG, P. 8.26.1.SOUTHEAST ASIA ‘INSIDE.OUT,’ 1300-1800 705 whom one would not call a ‘religious’ man, but rather a ‘moral’ one, at least where state or public morality was concerned.” Buddhism had provided for these men 2 moral order—a moral order which accounted for the terrible times through which they recently had lived—but, while they were surely Buddhists, they were also Tai (or Siamese or Tai Yuan) and human beings, and none of those labels would suffice alone to describe them. ‘There is a very strange episode that took place in Chiang Mai in 1823 that serves in many ways to underline the contrasts we have. seen between the age of Mangrai's successors and the. age of Kavila."® In 1822, the pemultimate king of Kavila's generation died and was succeeded by his brother, who was confirmed as king in January of 1823, Royal dissension almost immediately broke out in Chiang Mai, Jed by the new king’s nephew, even to the point where, in February, troops came up from Lampang and Lamphun to encamp by the bridge crossing the river in order ‘to forbid quarrels between the two princes’ (that is, the king and his Bangkok-named heir presumptive [uparaja] nephew). Following a royal convocation, two months later the king abdicated and was ordained as a Buddhist monk The historian of 1827—for whom these events must have been fresh in his mind—desctibes the crisis that ensued and how it was resolved: ‘At that time, a misfortune arose to portend the calamity of a Kali Age. ‘The wo princes, namely the king Maha Suphathra and the Ratchawong Suwanaa Kham Mun, quarreled, and threatened to fight each other. The civil and military officers of our country wanted a prince who lived by the eight royal precepts to rule the country to be the lord and master of all of us, and worthy of all our respect and obedience, past and future. Sa the Gao Ha Kham was pleased to say that we should sacrifice to the city spirits and other] spirits, and to Indra and Brahma and cake an oath and release 4 royal chariot to seek a lord who had merit and mercy. Animism and Brahmanism were pressed into service.”? After extens- ive and lavish preparations, a special horse-drawn chariat was led % See ay The “Subtle Revaltion” of King Rama I of Siam in Moral Order and 1 Qenition of Change, ed. DC. Wyatt and A‘. Woodside (New Haven, 1982), PP: ‘gsi feprtted in Stes in Tht Mistry op. 131-73 ‘cide, 1P- By-8-41. This pie ass is confirmed independently in TMCMCT. © CHC, 857-858. “9 Why should they have turned to animism and brakamaniam in an age which was supposedly piously Buddhist Because, as Kiesch explaies (A. Thomas Kirsch,706 DAVID K. WyaTT around the city and then turned loose to seek a ‘lord who had merit and mercy’ to be the new king, The horse ‘chose’ none other buit the abdicated monk-king, Suphathra, who re-ascended the throne and reigned until his death in February 1825 at the age of seventy-one, years. ‘There is little explicitly Buddhist about this episode (the ‘eight royal precepts’ would have been defined in Buddhist terms); but the whole is framed in an Indic context (signaled by the ‘Kali Age’) medi- ated and maintained through Buddhist institutions, The Hindu gods Indra and Brahma are invoked on the same level with the local guardian spirits. One of the functions of this paragraph is to identify for us the supramundane powers that upheld the moral order. The paragraph is almost telling us that Lan Na or Chiang Mai was not a ‘barbarian’ polity: it was subordinate to greater, eternal forces, But there is one aspect of this paragraph that lies almost unno- ticed in the narrative, It atises when we ask, ‘ “Our country"? Whose. country? Which “country” and again when we ask ‘Who are the “us! who seck a “lord and Master” and ‘Why must “we” have a king “worthy of all our respect and obedience” ‘These are powerful questions because they bring us directly to the question of the differences between 1317 and 1827. There is no question that Chiang Mai is the ‘capital’ of Lan Na in the seventh and eighth chapters of the CMC, In the first century after King Mangeai that issue was still unresolved; but in the seventh and cighth chapters, even when King Kavila had his ‘temporary cap- ital’ at Pa Sang, south of Lamphun, he was just waiting for the right time to re-establish the capital at Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai’s central- ity had been established, and only in part by physical force Te was Lan Na of which Chiang Mai was the center. In contradis- tinction to the usual stereotypes," the Lan Na of the last portion of the CMC did not include Nan and Phrae, who had their own kings.** (On the other hand, i¢déd include, at least in 1827, portions of Burma and the Sipsong Panna, Not least because the Chiang Mai region by “‘Gomplexicy in the Thai Religious System,’ Joursal of Asian Saudis 38 (1977), 241~ 66), Buddtisin can provide no certainties in exisis situations, and these must be sought in the surviving syncretic elements of pre-Buddhist Thai teligion “A mistake which my Thosland: A Short History (New Haven, 1984) 16 nat alone fn having committed “On which sce my ‘Five Voices from Southeast Asia's Past) Journal of Asion ‘Stade 53, no. 4 (Nov. 1994), 1076-g13 and Téa Naw Choice (Ithaca, 1994), which fs not to be confosed with my 1968 Book by the same tileSOUTHEAST ASIA “INSIDE-OUT," 1300-1809 707 1827 included many thousands of settlers from those regions, the ‘us! of the quoted paragraph included this broad range of people. Chiang Mai and Lan Na were hardly homogeneous! And yet it was a single ‘country,’ peopled by a single ‘us.’ ‘This was a profound change over these several centuries, yet it was one that occurred almost imperceptibly, without the slightest explicit notice, We notice it here only by comparing widely-separated times (and, implicitly, widely disparate texts, though those latter are for the most part incorporated into a single CMC). We have noted already the considerable social (and political and economic) change over the period, and the intellectual change and religious change upon which the latter is partly based. What we have failed so far (0 do is to account for how and why those changes occurred, and it is to those changes that we must now turn, Part of the difficulty in unraveling the change of this ‘middle? period stems from an essential philosophical issue, It is not in the essential nature of things that changes inherently and necessarily are ‘polit= ical’ or ‘economic’ or ‘cultural’ or whatever. Those. particular names are labels that the later historian attaches to what he or she thinks he sees. Just as a king making a pious donation to Buddhist monks, for example, might conceive his action as having been ‘religions’ and the later historian might deem that action to have been ‘political’ or ‘economic,’ $0 too are the analytical labels which we place on past, events necessarily arbitrary constructions. Lieberman rightly has forewarned the reader about some of the dangers which his approach entails, as when he (under ‘Criticisms’) worries that ‘this approach reads history backwards as prelude to an inevitable culmination’ in ‘reifying and eternalizing “nations”. Similarly, he adds that ‘the preoccupation with centralization privil- eges the views of capital elites and victorious cultures’. But the problem is deeper than this: The problem is not just that nations have been reified or eternalized, or that centralization privik eges the position of one group versus that of another. The problem is that all the various units of analysis have tended to became tanto logical. That is, when we apply labels like ‘political’ and ‘economic? to the past, we tend thereby to arate ‘political’ and ‘economic’ phe- nomena. What we need to be doing is not to identify, ta categorize, or to analyze the past in terms of these very handy and powerful categories, but rather to devise means ¢o think about the past in ways that do not, in spite of ourselves, create in the past those items708 DAVID K. WYATT at which we are interested in looking. We need, if you will, a more supple and abstract way of looking at the past in a way which will preserve and defend the reality of the Past as it really was to those who lived in that past. All of this is very absteact. Let me get rather more concrete by using some hypothetical examples from the phenomena at which have been looking.” Those who were involved in the curious 1823, episode. involving the ‘chariot’ to choose a new king carried with them ‘in their heads’ a certain vocabulary—a set of words, concepts, sounds-—which they would have employed in that situation. That set of symbols was, in turn, based both upon their own personal experi ence within their own lifetimes, and upon the collective historical experience of the society in which they had been born and lived. It is important to remember that the ‘vocabulary’ they carried around was not something that at any time was complete, but rather it was something that had developed and changed over the generations, ‘The symbol-set which that 182g generation employed, however, probably had undergone significant changes in the previous halt century of chaos. In particular, the limits of what they could and could not accept as ‘acceptable’ behavior by a king or other royals had been transformed. I find it doubtfal, for example, that an earlier gencration would have been as critical of the grasping greed of Kav- ila's descendants as the CMG is. In her summary of the proceedings of this workshop, Mary Eliza- beth Berry identified five general changes thar are charactetistic of this premodern period: @ the development of mercantile groups within societies; © the refashioning of the status order of societies to include new groups; @ the movement towards bureaucratic regimes and away from personally-based systems; ‘@ the redefinition of the spaces which societies deemed to be ‘theirs’ or relevant (o chem; and @ the increasing circulation of ideas. ‘These qualities all are characteristic of Japan, and of the countries on which Lieberman concentrates most fully; but they are also char- acteristic even of the upland interstices hetween such major polities * In writing what follows, I have been particularly stimulated by David Care, Tene, Narrative, and History Bloomington, Ind., 1986). CMC, P B.ga,SQUTHEAST ASIA ‘INSIDE. OUT,’ 1800-1800 709 as Burma and Siam in che period between the thirteenth century and the nineteenth, as we can see in the case of Chiang Mai and Lan Na. Such changes are hest thought of as processes, rather than as the final accomplishment of particular transformations; and in these terms we can think even of Lan Na as having been involved in the same sorts of global transformations as the major empires that surrounded it. All these changes ultimately involved ‘subjective? transformations—changes in the ways in which people thought. Ger- tainly Lieberman is investigating a profoundly important set of developments that involve the world in his period; but it would be useful to conceive of those changes in ways that go to the intellectual ‘heart’ of developments, rather than to stop short at the ‘objective’ changes which are but symptoms of the transformations that under gitd them,