Lai Su Thai

SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI
Essays in honour of E.H.S.Simmonds

Collected Papers in Oriental and African Studies
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI

Essays in honour of E.H.S.Simmonds
Edited by
Jeremy H.C.S.Davidson
Lecturer in Vietnamese
School of Oriental and African Studies
SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
Malet Street, London WC1 7HP
1987
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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© School of Oriental and African Studies, 1987
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Laī Sū’ Thai: essays in honour of E.H.S.
Simmonds—(Collected papers in Oriental
and African studies).
1. Thai language
I. Davidson, H.C.S. II. Simmonds, E.H.S.
III. University of London. School of Oriental
and African Studies IV Series
495.9′1 PL4158
ISBN 0-203-99058-7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN - (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0-7286-0142-7 (Print Edition)
CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTORS vii
LIST OF PLATES viii
PREFACE ix
EDITOR’S NOTE x
E.H.S.SIMMONDS: A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE— 1

C.D.Cowan
PUBLICATIONS OF E.H.S.SIMMONDS— 6
Helen Cordell
FACTORS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS IN THAI TONAL ANALYSIS— 8
†P.J.BEE
THE PHONOLOGY OF THAI PET NAMES— 29
Karnchanā Nacaskul
A PHONETIC ODDITY IN THAI— 37
Eugénie J.A.Henderson
ANOTHER SOURCE FOR INFORMATION ON AYUTTHAYĀ THAI— 44
THAI POETRY: PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION— 50
Manas Chi takas em
THE LATER SHORT STORIES OF SĪBŪRAPHĀ— 66
David A.Smyth
THE SUDDHANA-MANOHARĀ TALE IN THAI— 78
Henry D.Ginsburg
THE ORIGINS OF NONTHUK AND THE IMPORTANCE OF HIS MYTH— 87
Maneepin Phromsuthirak
APPENDIX: THE STORY OF THE NANDAKA, GUARDIAN OF THE GATE OF 94
IŚVARA—
Judith M.Jacob
vi
THE SIAMESE ADMINISTRATIVE ELITE IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY AND 109
THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN SIAM—
Ian G.Brown
CONTRIBUTORS
C.D.Cowan, Professor of Oriental History in the University of London, Director of the School of Oriental
and African Studies
Helen Cordell, Principal Assistant Librarian, South East Asia, School of Oriental and African Studies
†Peter J.Bee, Lecturer in Tai (1966–1982), School of Oriental and African Studies
Karnchanā Nacaskul, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
Eugénie J.A.Henderson, Professor Emeritus of Phonetics in the University of London
Jeremy H.C.S.Davidson, Lecturer in Vietnamese, School of Oriental and African Studies
Manas Chitakasem, Lecturer in Tai, School of Oriental and African Studies
David A.Smyth, Lecturer in Tai, School of Oriental and African Studies
Henry D.Ginsburg, Consultant, British Library
Maneepin Phromsuthirak, Thammasart University, Bangkok, Thailand
Judith M.Jacob, Lecturer in Cambodian, School of Oriental and African Studies
Ian G.Brown, Lecturer in Economic History with reference to South East Asia, School of Oriental and
African Studies
PLATES
E.H.S.Simmonds
1. Replica of stele of the inscription of King Ramkamhaeng the Great, presented to SOAS by xi
Chulalongkorn University in 1983
2. Face 4 of the stele xii
PREFACE
Sū’ Thai is a collection of articles written to be presented to Professor E.H.S.Simmonds in appreciation

of his valuable contributions to Thai studies. Concentrating principally on Thai language and literature, the
fields in which Stuart Simmonds is particularly interested and into which he put most of his attention, the
contributions are by his former students and certain of his other colleagues with an interest in the areas
discussed.
Peter Bee, who sadly died in 1982, opens the collection of papers with an amusing analogical argument
concerning tonal analysis—provoking acoustic phonetics—much of which demands detailed critical
response, which is exactly why he wrote the article. The two on Thai language, by Karnchanā Nacaskul and
Professor Eugénie Henderson, add new information to our understanding of the phonetics, phonology, and
vocabulary of Modern Standard Thai, the result of impressive study; and then the book fairly naturally
divides itself between linguistic and literary topics, being split by the presence of an introductory study by
Jeremy Davidson of the Lockhart Chinese-Thai , which dates from the mid-Ayutthayā period.
Manas Chitakasem follows this with a neatly argued article concerning the problems of translating Thai
poetry, and as they apply to poetry in particular, followed by David Smyth who draws us quickly
into the 20th Century with his enlivening critical discussion of the late short stories of . Then,
Henry Ginsburg presents the reading public with a thorough analytical description of the Sudhana-
Manoharā legend, which brings most sharply to mind the probable links with the Chinese Sipsongpanna
area stories of the ‘Swan Maiden’ that wait to be widely researched. Such a passionately loyal love story is
disputed by the next. Nonthuk glowers despisingly at us through the presentations of his origins by
Maneepin Phromsuthirak, thrusting the Kathakali dance drama of Bhamasura and to the front of
the stage, where enchantment leads to self-destruction, and her paper is supported in a lucid translation by
Judith Jacob from the Khmer of Gatilok in which the Nandaka story, appended to Maneepin’s, appears.
The book closes with a stimulatingly informative paper by Ian Brown who shows us the value of
knowledge of the Thai language in documentary research and highlights the increasing importance of Thai
for all areas of study relating to Thailand, a country which interests so many and which certainly captivated
Stuart Simmonds.
Jeremy H.G.S.DAVIDSON
EDITOR’S NOTE
Certain technical details found in this book may need clarification.

Romanizations: Languages which are not normally written in roman alphabets are romanized. The
systems used are: Thai follows that of the Library of Congress, 1966, Cataloguing Service Bulletin 76, 6–
7; Chinese is given in unless especially indicated in an article; while Khmer is written in
accordance with the transliteration used by Saveros Lewitz, 1969, Bull.Ec.fr. Extr.-Orient 55, 163–9.
Sanskrit and Pāli follow the traditional systems.
Scripts: Phonetic transcriptions are into IPA. Thai, where it occurs, has been written by Dr Manas
Chitakasem, and Chinese characters in the texts are by Jeremy Davidson.
Translations: Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are by the authors of the articles in which they
appear.
I should like to thank all those who have helped to make the task of editing the twelve contributions
lighter. Special thanks are also due to Dr Manas Chitakasem who provided regional expertise to me for this
book. I wish to thank the Publications Committee of S.O.A.S., (especially its two consecutive Chairmen,
Professors J.C.Wright and C.Shackle, and its Secretary Mr Martin Daly) for their help and support.
Finally, I owe a particular debt to the staff of the S.O.A.S. Support Section, to that of the Print Room, and
to the photographer Mr Paul Fox for the production of the present volume.
Jeremy H.C.S.DAVIDSON
The photograph on the cover is by Hans Hinz and is reproduced by permission from Thai Painting
published by Office du Livre, Fribourg.
E.H.S.SIMMONDS: A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
C.D.Cowan
Stuart Simmonds, as he has for many years been known to his friends and colleagues, was born at
Littlehampton, Sussex, on 7 August 1919, and christened Edward Harold Stuart. The family home was in
Warminster, and from the age of eleven he was sent as a weekly boarder to Lord Weymouth’s s School,
Warminster.
Throughout his Wiltshire boyhood Stuart was exposed to two distinct family traditions. His father came
from Oxfordshire farming stock, and had retained close links with the countryside whilst building up a
prosperous business in the distribution of agricultural machinery and farming supplies in the southern
counties. He expected that his son would succeed him in the management of his business, and was
concerned to pass on to him his own interests as a naturalist, a sportsman (he was a keen golfer and
horseman) and in the literature of the countryside. He was a devotee of Matthew Arnold. Stuart’s mother, on
the other hand, came from an Indian Army family. She herself had been born in India, and her father and
her brothers were all military men. She would have been happy for her son to maintain this tradition, and to
her influence in this direction was added that of his school where there was a strong military connection and
amongst the boys a high percentage of the sons of army families.
When he left school in 1937 there were, therefore, conflicting views within the family as to his future.
These were resolved by his father who, wishing to secure for his son a commercial training which would
equip him for the management of the family business, enrolled him in a course sponsored by the Institute of
Bankers. Stuart does not seem to have found this congenial. Eventually he extricated himself from the
situation by enlisting in the ranks of a Royal Horse Artillery unit attached to the local Yeomanry regiment,
and after the outbreak of war with Germany was commissioned in 1940.
As an artillery officer Stuart Simmonds was involved in the disastrous campaign which followed the
Japanese attack on Malaya at the beginning of December 1941. He took part in the fighting in north—west
Johore and the retreat and withdrawal into Singapore itself until, soon after the British forces surrendered on
15 February, he became a prisoner of war.
The next four years, spent initially in Singapore, but for the most part in southern Thailand in the labour
camps of the notorious Burma railway, were an experience which made a deep and lasting impression on
Stuart, and in one way or another were to condition the rest of his life. His army service, with its successive
phases of training in England, the long voyage in a troop-ship around the Cape and across the Indian Ocean,
and fighting in Malaya, had familiarised him with the bureaucracy, cynicism and comradeship of ordered
military life, and the fear, excitement and confusion of action. He was no stranger to death and the infliction
and suffering of pain in hot blood. He had emerged from it all strong and healthy. Now he was to live with
death and suffering on a larger scale and in a different guise, from cholera, dysentery, malaria, malnutrition
and starvation, and the considered inhumanity of man to man. But the ordeal also brought its own bounty.
The birds, flowers and plants of Thailand offered a rich store of material to the English naturalist; contact
2 E.H.S.SIMMONDS: A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
with the Thai people in the areas around the camps, and with their way of life, nurtured the development of
a new f ield of interest; above all, immersion in the daily miseries and struggle for survival of himself and
his fellow prisoners of many nationalities presented all too many opportunities for the exercise of
sympathetic understanding of, and charity towards, the troubles and idiosyncrasies of others.
In many of the camps in which Stuart was kept, officers, as distinct from other ranks, were not compelled
to work. In the time between morning and evening roll-call there was scope for other activities. One such
was the planning of escape. In truth this seems always to have been impracticable because of the
geographical remoteness of the camps from any area still under the control of the western powers, the
difficulties of the terrain and the lack of provisions. In investigating the feasibility of escape, nevertheless,
on some days Stuart became a daytime escaper, making his way into the nearest village in order to establish
contact with the local people and to obtain information about the area and the routes out of it. In the process
he gradually obtained some familiarity with the language and the ways of the people. At one stage he was
caught at this by the Japanese, and sent to a camp for ‘incorrigibles’, specially used to accommodate
potential escapers. On other days there was time to benefit from the varied experience and professional
expertise of other men from many walks of life, thrown together by the chances of war. One of these, J.G.de
Casparis, a member of the archaeological service in Java and a Sanskrit scholar, was later to be Stuart’s
colleague in London. And there were times simply for reflection and for taking stock.
All these experiences were reflected in the poetry which Stuart wrote in these years. These poems spin
their webs out of material drawn from nature, from peasant life, from aspects of Thai Buddhism, and from his
observation of life and death in warfare and captivity. But their themes were almost all variations on the
insubstantial nature of human life; the reader must always
‘Remember that a tear

Hangs secret at the core
Of all the world.’
The surrender of Japan in 1945 freed him to return to England and to the family home, which by now had
shifted to Oxford. In 1946 he was admitted to Keble College to read for a degree in English language and
literature. At Keble Stuart’s interests, and the main emphasis of his work, were initially very much in
literature. For the study of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English texts, however, Stefanyja Ross was his tutor. The
facility with which he mastered the phonology and grammar of an unfamiliar language impressed her, and
through. her Stuart made the acquaintance of her husband, Alan Ross, then Professor of English language in
Birmingham. Two things flowed from this connection. The Rosses, seeing in Stuart a future philologist and
rather regretting the emphasis on the literary side of his studies, were concerned to reinforce his interest in
linguistics and phonetics. Alan Ross, through his family connections with the School’s first Director, Sir
Denison Ross, and his professional contacts with Sir Ralph Turner and J.R.Firth, was aware of the new
developments on foot at the School of Oriental and African Studies following the Scarbrough Report of
1946. As he became aware of Stuart’s interest in the Thai people and their culture Ross was thus able to put
him in touch with the new opportunities opening up in South East Asian studies in London. A visit to the
School in July 1948 to discuss the prospects for the development of Tai studies with Professor Eve Edwards
decided him to apply for a post there, and in October of that year he was offered and accepted an
appointment as Lecturer in Linguistics.
The Scarbrough Commission had recommended that as part of the general programme of growth in all
fields of study relating to Asia and Africa, work on the languages of South East Asia should be concentrated
at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and Stuart Simmonds’ appointment was part of this
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 3
development. There had been a short-lived department of South East Asia and the Islands at the School
between 1933 and 1935, staffed by a Reader in Malay and a Lecturer in Burmese, but that had been
dissolved in 1936. It had now to be recreated from scratch. It was, therefore, decided that the training of
Stuart and four other colleagues who were appointed at about the same time should take place initially
within the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, under the direction of Professor J.R.Firth.
As part of this training it was decided that Stuart should spend a year in Thailand, and this visit was
arranged for 1950. He sailed from Southampton in the Dutch liner Oranje on 14 January 1950, and after
spending a few days in Singapore revisiting the scenes of some of his earlier experiences he arrived in
Bangkok on 10 February. Stuart had been fortunate in that in the autumn of 1949 he had met in London
M.L.Pin Malakul, the Under-Secretary of State for Education in Thailand. His influence was an important
factor in assisting Stuart to establish himself in Bangkok. He was able to set himself up in a small bungalow
with Thai servants, and the ability to live in a Thai community almost from the beginning of his stay and to
entertain all kinds and conditions of people was a great help in his work. M.L.Pin was also helpful in providing
him with introductions to Rong Syamananda, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts in Chulalongkorn University,
and to senior officials in several provincial centres. It was fortunate also that Nai Singto Pukahuta, who had
been a Tai language assistant in the Department of Linguistics during Stuart’s early days in the Department,
returned to Bangkok during 1950 and was put in charge of setting up a small language laboratory in the
Ministry of Education there, in which Stuart was able to work. For part of his time in Bangkok he was
joined by H.L.Shorto, and was able to help him in recording Môn material. This must have been one of the
earliest examples of a joint research project at SOAS. When Stuart Simmonds returned to London in April
1951 he had not only a very solid command of the standard spoken and written language used in Bangkok
and for all official purposes, but had also done a good deal of work in provincial dialects. He brought back
with him a large number of language recordings, which were of immediate use in teaching. Perhaps most
important of all, his first post-war visit to Thailand had confirmed the affection for the country and its
people which he had first felt as a prisoner of war, and the conviction that the study of its language and
culture would be an important and rewarding enterprise.
In 1951 Stuart was transferred to a Lectureship in Tai in the Department of South East Asia. For the next
fifteen years his efforts were directed to the task of developing the study of Tai languages, literatures, and
culture, and establishing these studies at university level in Britain. For most of this time, like several of his
colleagues in the Department, he worked alone. The demands made upon him were many, and covered a
wide range of activities. Every year there was a beginner’s language course to be given to diplomats and
other government servants, students embarking on research in history and the social sciences in Thailand,
businessmen and others requiring a knowledge of the language for their work. More advanced courses were
sometimes wanted, and as his reputation grew Thai graduate students began to be sent by their universities
to undertake research in Thai literature under his supervision. Examining for outside bodies soon became a
regular annual task; in 1951 the Scottish Universities’ Entrance Board, the Civil Service Commission and
the Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate all called upon his services, and the list grew from year to
year. So did the list of broadcasts made in the Overseas Service of the BBC, and of public lectures in many
aspects of Thai culture and current affairs which he was called upon to give. ‘Consultative work’ (as the
School’s Annual Report somewhat unimaginatively called it) covered an extraordinary variety of tasks, from
advising Pitmans on a system of Thai shorthand to cataloguing the Thai manuscripts in the Chester Beatty
Library in Dublin. And above all he worked constantly to extend and deepen his own mastery of Tai
languages and cultures, which increasingly made him the foremost scholar in this field in the western world.
Stuart’s travels throughout Thailand had interested him in the study of dialects from the beginning, and
he was particularly concerned to extend his knowledge of Lao. When, therefore, in 1956 he was granted a
4 E.H.S.SIMMONDS: A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
year’s research. leave he took the opportunity to spend the major part of it in Laos. He was now married and
together, he and his wife flew to Bangkok before setting off by Land Rover for Vientiane. They arrived
there in mid-February and spent the remainder of the year in Laos. For most of this time they were mobile,
moving about the country and living in the Land Rover, which Stuart had equipped with a lean-to tent;
during the rainy season from June to October, however, they were forced to settle into a rented house in
Vientiane since, with most of the bridges washed out, travelling was out of the question. They returned to
Bangkok by way of Cambodia and Angkor Wat during December, and after renewing Stuart’s contacts with
members of Chulalongkorn University and other Thai scholars in Bangkok, and a visit to Sukhothai and
Chiengmai in the north returned to London by sea in April 1957.
The wide range of Stuart’s scholarly interests and the day-to-day demands of his work in London had led
to a certain slowness in his contributions to knowledge appearing in published form. From 1957 onwards,
however, a steady stream of journal articles and contributions to books began to appear in print, as different
projects came to fruition. Some were bibliographical, such as the section on Tai linguistics in
Bibliographies of Mon-Khmer and Tai Linguistics, published in the London Oriental Bibliographies series
in 1963. But for the most part his work fell into two categories, language and literature, and modern
political developments. His literary and linguistic work covered topics such as Thai shadow-play, poetry,
prose fiction, eighteenth-century history, linguistic structure, and Tai dialect studies. On the political side he
was constantly in demand as an authority on the contemporary scene in Thailand and Laos in a period in which
the Vietnamese crisis kept mainland South East Asia in the public eye. In 1966 his status as a world
authority in these fields was recognised when the University of London conferred on him the title of Reader
in Tai Languages and Literatures, and in 1970 he was appointed to the Chair of the Languages and
Literatures of South East Asia.
As the School of Oriental and African Studies expanded and its national role grew, and as Stuart’s own
experience widened, he was inevitably involved in administration and committee work of many kinds. This
side of his responsibilities took on a new dimension when in 1966 he was asked to act as Head of the
Department of South East Asia and the Islands; he was confirmed in this position in 1969. It fell to him to
preside over the Department’s work at a time when its teaching activities were expanding. Up till this point
only Burmese and Malay had been available as full-time degree subjects, and student numbers had been
small. It was largely Stuart’s doing that new degree structures were now introduced which made it possible
for undergraduates to offer one of the whole range of South East Asian languages in combination with
Anthropology or History. His influence too ensured that language work was introduced almost from the
beginning into the new M.A. Area Studies programme, and that members of the Department played a full
part in the co-operative research and seminar work of the newly established Centre of South East Asian
Studies at the School. Under Stuart’s leadership the Department grew both in numbers and in vigour in
these years. After carrying the banner of Tai studies alone for so long, he was now able to secure the
appointment of Peter Bee and Manas Chitakasem to reinforce his work. The Department as a whole, which
in 1966 had contained twelve full-time teachers, had grown to a lively group of sixteen strong ten years
later.
Stuart also made a large contribution to the development of Asian studies outside the School, at both the
national and international level. He had long been involved in the work of the School’s Extramural
Committee, which was concerned to extend knowledge of Asian and African affairs and awareness of their
importance within British society as a whole. From 1969 to 1979 as the Committee’s chairman he devoted
much of his time and energy to fostering extra-mural work in schools and colleges of education, and to
developing special courses and seminar programmes for businessmen and senior members of Government
departments. The outstanding success of the Extramural programme in enhancing interest in, and
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 5
understanding of, Asia and Africa, as indicated for instance in the steady increase of students wishing to
study them in British universities, was largely due to Stuart’s efforts. He was prominent too in the affairs of
the Royal Asiatic Society, where he served in succession as the Society’s Director, as a Vice-President, and
as its President.
In all these capacities (and many others too numerous to record in this short note) Stuart Simmonds
brought a matter-of-fact commonsense approach, tolerance and wide experience to bear on the problems of
organisations and people. His natural modesty, tact, and ease of manner, which secured the confidence and
co-operation of his colleagues, were allied unobtrusively with a willingness to invest time in mastering the
elements of projects and problems, many of which were far removed from his own subject and from
scholarship. In 1974 when the office of Dean fell vacant at the School it was without hesitation that the then
Director, Professor Sir Cyril Philips, turned to Stuart to fill it. It was the same six years later, when the new
office of Pro-Director was created. Someone was needed who enjoyed the trust of his colleagues, had the
confidence of the School’s Governing Body, and the experience and capacity to act as Director at need.
Stuart once more was appointed without question.
When he retired in 1982 Stuart Simmonds could look back on a working-life as a scholar spanning nearly
thirty-five years, and a connection with Thailand going back to 1942. Virtually single-handed he established
the study of Tai languages and literatures, and of Thailand itself, in Britain, a unique contribution to the
academic life of this country. In 1983, to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the development of Thai script
in the reign of King Ramkamhaeng, Chulalongkorn University had made a number of replicas of the
Ramkamhaeng Stone inscription. It presented one of these to the University of London in appreciation of
the work done there in Thai studies. There could be no more striking testimony to Stuart’s achievement.
PUBLICATIONS OF E.H.S.SIMMONDS
Helen Cordell
1957 The independent state of Laos. World today 13, 432–41.

1959 Thailand, Britannica book of the year. An article on Thailand was contributed every year
up to 1965.
1961 A cycle of political events in Laos. World today 17, 56–68.
New evidence on Thai shadow-play invocations. Bull. Sch. Orient. Afr. Stud. 24, 542–59.
Laos. Britannica book of the year. An article on Laos was contributed every year up to
1965.
1962 Power politics in Laos. World today 18, 514–23.
1963 Asia and Africa: a select bibliography for schools. (comp. 2nd ed.) London: Sch. Orient.
Afr. Stud.
Bibliographies of Mon-Khmer and Tai linguistics; comp. H.L.Shorto, J.M.Jacob &
E.H.S.Simmonds. London: Oxford Univ. Press (London oriental bibliographies; 2).
Epic-romance poetry in Thailand. Sangkhomsāt parithat 1, 100–06.
Independence and political rivalry in Laos 1945–61. In Politics in Southern Asia, Saul
Rose (ed.) London Macmillan. 164–99.
Thai and Vietnamese: some elements of nominal structure compared by P.J.Honey &
E.H.S.Simmonds. In Linguistic comparison in South East Asia and the Pacific,
H.L.Shorto (ed.) London: Sch. Orient. Afr. Stud. (Collected papers in Oriental and
African Studies; 4), 71–8.
Thai narrative poetry: palace and provincial texts of an episode from ‘Khun Chang Khun
Phaen’. Asia major (N.S.) 10, 279–99.
Thailand—a conservative state. In Politics in Southern Asia, Saul Rose (ed.) London:
Macmillan. 117–42.
The Thalang letters, 1773–94: political aspects and the trade in arms. Bull. Sch. Orient.
Afr. Stud. 26, 592–619.
1964 Breakdown in Laos. World today 20, 285–92.
Laos: a renewal of crisis. Asian survey 4, 680–85.
Some aspects of narrative prose fiction in Thai. Proc. 25th Internat. Congress
Orientalists, 1960. Moscow: Izdat. vostoch. lit., 4, 337–43.
What is Laos? New society 18 Ju., 11–12.
1965 An 18th century travel document in Thai. In Felicitation volumes of Southeast-Asian
studies presented to Prince Dhaninivat… Bangkok: Siam Soc. 157–65.
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 7
Francis Light and the ladies of Thalang. J.Malaysian Br. Royal Asiatic Soc. 39, 213–28.
Notes on some Tai dialects of Laos and neighbouring regions. In Indo-Pacific linguistic
studies; 1, G.B.Milner & E.J.A.Henderson (eds.) Amsterdam: North-Holland [Uniform
with Lingua 14], 133–47.
Siamese dawn poetry. In Eos, A.T.Hatto (ed.) The Hague: Mouton. 186–95.
Tai literatures: a bibliography of works in foreign languages. Assoc. of British
Orientalists Bulletin (N.S.) 3, 5–60.
1966 Laos and the war in Vietnam. World today 22, 199–206.
Vietnam’s neighbours III: Thailand. Listener 76, 446–48.
1967 Asia and Africa: an introductory bibliography. London Sch. Orient. Afr. Stud.
Keeping in with the people next door. The Times, supplement on Thailand 8th Aug. 1967.
Mahōrasop in a Thai-Manōrā manuscript. Bull. Sch. Orient. Afr. Stud. 30, 391–403.
Shan language. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Chicago, London.
Tai languages. Encyolopaedia Britannica. Chicago, London.
1968 The evolution of foreign policy in Laos since Independence. Mod. Asian stud. 2, 1–30.
1969 Articles on Siamese and Lao literature. In The Penguin companion to literature vol.4:
Classical and Byzantine, Oriental and African, D.R.Dudley & D.M.Lang (eds.)
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Laos: historical and economic survey. The Far East and Australasia yearbook. London:
Europa.
1970 The problem of Laos. World today 26, 189–96.
1971 Mahōrasop II: The Thai National Library manuscript. Bull. Sch. Orient. Afr. Stud. 34,
119–31.
1973 Laos and Cambodia: the search for unity and independence. Internat. affairs 49, 574–83.
1978 Observations on folk taxonomy in Thailand. In Nature and man in South East Asia,
P.A.Stott (ed.) London: Sch. Orient and Afr. Stud. 128–141.
1979 The Royal Asiatic Society: its history and treasures, E.H.S.Simmonds & Simon Digby
(eds.) Leiden; London: Brill.
1982 Bangkok: celebrations of a dynasty. Asian affairs 13, 274–80.
Forthcoming
A letter in Thai from Thalang in 1777. Bull. Sch. Orient. Afr. Stud. 50, [1987].
FACTORS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS IN THAI TONAL
ANALYSIS
†P.J.Bee
An attempt to state possible discrete factors in the analysis of basic tones in Thai is bound to make certain
initial assumptions. For instance, it will be taken for granted that the Thai tonal system resembles that of
Chinese and, in a most general sense, that of Burmese, or Vietnamese. It will be taken for granted that the
problem of tone in the ‘tonal’ languages of South East Asia is, at heart, a common one and that disparities,
such as actually occur in present-day speech are attributable to processes of change not so much in the
nature of the basic tones themselves as in their environment within the syllable. A brief explanation of the
influences due to syllable environment must. be given, of course, but the main point in this paper is to focus
attention on the basic, tonal, phonematic units that persist even after the various levels of conditioning due
to surrounding ‘extra-tonal’ factors have been allowed for.
Levels of influence in tonal analysis1

(i) At the deepest level of influence there is a dichotomy imposed by syllable-finals. Syllables closing in an
unexploded occlusive (-k, -t, -p and -?) constitute a totally different system from that of continuant-final
syllables.2 In the latter case, there are three members of the system that commute in a prosody of tone. This
holds true for old Chinese and old Thai. In the former case, stop-finals—since there is a system of one—it
could be argued that this is not a tone at all since it is non-contrastive. Issue will not be taken here, though,
on a terminological point. Suffice it to say that three tones always were (and still are, in a deferred,
analytical sense) clear and contrastive in the continuant-final system: these will be the central topic of
further enquiries—our ‘basic’ tones.
(ii) One stage up from the base, we can discern the influence of syllable quantity. In Thai, but not in
Chinese, the stop-final syllables usually have their tonal inventory doubled (i.e. pitch now becomes
contrastive in a new system of two) by distinguishing short and long quantities by complementary pitch
phenomena. In the continuant-final system of three, quantity is phonemic but is not accompanied by special
pitch exponents at all. The neatest solution, therefore, is to acknowledge the primacy of syllable length by
assigning the distinguishing feature to the phoneme ‘quantity’ and to interpret the stop-syllables’ pitch
exponents as secondary features. Thus, although pitch in stop-final syllables behaves in a ‘tonal’ manner, it
is not the obvious, prime factor in phonemic distinction. Note that we cannot say in these cases that pitch
features (the two ‘tones’) are allophones of quantity since the phone of long vowel or short vowel is not
replaced. We can, however, argue the merits of quantity as being the stable and most easily accountable
distinguishing feature of an apparently composite phoneme. This becomes clear when comparisons between
dialects are undertaken.
Even though the whole problem of analysing stop-final syllables is, by this argument, not central to the
issue of basic tones, the natural and analytically justifiable preference for discrete factors (is the syllable
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 9
short or long?) is symptomatic of linguists’ aversion to pitch phenomena, which vary so startlingly from
dialect to dialect and which take on the characteristics of a continuum divided into ranges rather than on/off,
yes-or-no, type of assessment. Whilst it has become fashionable to reduce all processes to ordered binary
oppositions in emulation of the computer, there is no gainsaying the simple truth, that it is easier to work
with a limited number of ‘hard’ factors than to characterize things, e.g. tone classes, by a bundle of pitch-
contour graphs representative of dialect and idiolect samples, many of which show only the vaguest
resemblances in shapes and levels. More will be said on this point when the general theme of these
speculations is set forth.
(iii) The stage of development which is uppermost, because it is demonstrably the most recent in time for
both Thai and Chinese, is the displacement of levels of pitch in all tonal phenomena, basic and secondary
‘stopped’ tones alike. The effect is rather akin to the moving of a kaleidoscope out of focus: the image
becomes a multiple one, often with some overlapping which produces what appear to be areas in common.
If the images were interpreted as sets, one might be tempted to think that the common areas would yield
some common factors, since they were shared between two or more sets. The overlapping images would, in
other words, be regarded as Venn diagrams.* A moment’s thought, however, will make it clear that the all-
important factor is how much the kaleidoscope is moved: this is the actively controlled ‘input’, whilst the
degree of displacement of image is its direct consequence. For tonal displacement, therefore, we might
expect to find that the reason that caused the shift in levels would be more useful in accounting for the actual
tonal picture as it is today than a set-diagram style of analysis (superimposition of the pitch-contours of one
‘tone’ as found in various dialects, for instance). It is commonly held that the reason for the displacement of
levels is to be found in a reduction in the inventory of features (consonant types) in syllable-initial prosody.
In Thai and Chinese it is the loss of voice from initials (in Chinese usually agreed to have been originally
voiced aspiration viz. stop +/ / or / / alone), the conflation being either with unvoiced aspirates or, as in
many dialects of North Thailand and the Shan States, with unvoiced non-aspirates. Of course, other features
of initial prosody such as the pre-glottalization of voiced initials, may also have played a part, but this
merely adds one more dimension to what is a clear, underlying general statement, namely, that initial
phoneme depletion is reflected in increase of tone-level phonemes.
By great good fortune the rules of Thai orthography for ‘spelling’ these new levels caused by
displacement find their traditional expression in the categorizing of all syllable initials as High, Mid and
Low class consonants. It is also interesting to speculate that the choice of terms to describe these classes
must originally have had some mnemonic value, High class consonants presumably yielding a ‘high’ band
in pitch,3 Mid a ‘mid’ and Low a ‘low’ band, but both time (successive developments within a given dialect
tending away from neat correspondences for rules laid down at an earlier stage) and geography (the
whereabouts of the dialect upon which these early correspondences were based4) have rendered the names of
these consonant classes quite arbitrary today. The procedure, however, of spelling tones by a combination
of consonant class and tone class-mark is certainly not arbitrary. It reflects the stages of which we have been
speaking: the tone class-marks represent our concept of basic tone, and the consonant classes represent the
later displacement phenomenon due to loss of distinctive features in the initials, the burden of maintaining
these distinctions now being a tonal one.
* Venn diagrams, named for the British logician John Venn (1834– 1923) who devised them in 1880, are a means of
depicting mathematical sets and subsets, a graphical aid in the study of Boolean algebra. (Ed.)
10 FACTORS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS IN THAI TONAL ANALYSIS
Diagram I: Continuant and stop finals in Thai
Theorizing about tones

The following sequence of diagrams shows the steps or strata referred to above in a purely statistical way,
indicating the possibilities of tonal items as one passes from stage to stage. The fulfilment of these
possibilities in actual tone phenomena, however, is not represented nor even attempted. No language has a
one hundred per cent tally between possibilities, probabilities, and actualities. Conflation, attrition,
assimilation by analogy, and so forth, are typical forces at work to perturb the calculation of predictable end-
product items (i.e. the probabilities are not equally weighted). Nevertheless, for inclusive, cross-dialect
purposes and for the upholding of an argument that all these stages may be set aside from the problems of
basic tones, the straightforward mathematical count will be allowed to stand.
Having come up, as it were, by reasoning through successive stages, can we try to go down—in reverse—
using the same arguments that tones tend to be derived from other, say crassly segmental features, and break
down the basic tone barrier? In other words, can we extrapolate backwards and postulate a ‘pre-basic’ stage
represented thus:
All continuant finals All stop finals
where further factors can be presumed to have existed, non-tonal in character (i.e. where such pitch
phenomena as may have existed were not phonemic), whose disappearance produced a threefold
classification of syllables of a certain kind, the distinctive features now being transferred to and
incorporated in three derived tones? Note that all our effort and ingenuity must be concentrated on the
continuant-final set, recalling that it has already been admitted that a stop-final set can be accounted for
without resorting to tone distinction at all on this basic level.
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 11
The similarity between our new hypothesis challenging the primal nature of the three basic tones and the
accepted fact that initial-phoneme prosodies have influenced dispersal of pitch-levels encourages
speculation which probably springs from the mind’s fascination with symmetry. If we can reconstruct initial
phonemes along the lines of
k kh g
t th d
p ph b
? h (or p-)
can we not balance these by assuming some similar inventory for archaic finals, like:
-X -θ (or -s) -f -h
-γ (or -z) -v
in addition to the
-k -t -p -?
that we do, in fact, find to occur. This temptation is made all the stronger by the fact that the nasal consonants
are subject to both initial and final placement.
Yet most scholars reject this. It seems too facile and, furthermore, no evidence of these elusive finals has
been found in any reflexes of any dialect. More promising is the line of argument that presumes
morphological residues (suffixes or possibly infixes) to be embodied in the basic tones. If this were the
case, however, we might expect to find indication of morphological distribution in the three basic tones—
one tone predominantly one word class, say, or one tone predominantly characterizing one set or bundle of
grammatical categories— for instance, a ‘tone-set’ of all plural nouns, all passive verbs and all locative and
instrumental function—words against another tone-set of singulars, actives and function-words of motion
and intention. Whilst it is true that word-families in Chinese do often show what are apparently
grammatical or morphological relationships within the coverage of one referential sememe, and whilst the
same kind of relationship might be demonstrated in minimally contrastive tone pairs in Thai such as, for
example:
Transcription Initial consonant Tone class mark Pitch contour* Word class Meaning
class
/baaŋ/ Mid zero midlevel numeral-term ‘some’
(partitive)
/bâaŋ/ Mid 2 falling pronoun (partitive) ‘some’
/muan/ Low zero midlevel nounclassifier ‘enumerator for
rollshaped objects,
e.g. cigarettes’
/múan/ Low 2 high verb ‘to roll something,
to curl’
High zero rising noun ‘flat, sheetlike layer,
e.g. map, plan’
Transcription Initial consonant Tone class mark Pitch contour* Word class Meaning
class
High 1 lowlevel nounclassifier ‘enumerator for flat
things e.g. sheets of
paper, gramophone
records’
Fig.1: Thai contrastive tone-pairs by referential sememes
* Pitch contours given for the Bangkok dialect which might well be termed Siamese R.P. nowadays.
The number of examples is small, the set of morphological or grammatical properties subsumed under
one tone is hard to imagine, and there is evidence that morpho-syntactical relationships are reflected in
many ways other than those which might be supposed to lead to an embodied tone differentiation. Initial
features such as prefixation or clustering as against simple initials clearly betray morphological family
connections. For example, the trio:
/râap/ /kràap/ /pràap/
probably belong together, the first meaning ‘flat, level, as of a plain’, the second meaning ‘to make oneself
level, i.e. to prostrate oneself’ and the third meaning ‘to raze or level down’, with its extended meaning ‘to
subjugate, subdue, wipe out’. What tone differences there are stem from the prefixing of the first cluster-
element and not from any latent or embodied quality. To a Thai scholar they are quite regular and
predictable. Final alternations also offer food for thought. The two words:
/hàak/ and /hàaŋ/
seem bent on preserving the same pitch contour and to show a relationship peculiarlybyhomorganic final
alternation between stop and nasal. They both. mean ‘to be apart, separate’ and are both verbs.
Collocational distribution is the criterion for the use of one rather than the other. It is even possible to find
something akin to ablaut—in Thai it appears as quality —in a pair like:
/râap/ and /rîap/
wherein the ‘levelness’ of the first seems to apply to large tracts (‘no hills and hollows’) whereas the second
serves on a more delicate, aesthetic scale to mean ‘without roughness or ragged bits’, hence ‘smooth, neat
and tidy’.5 The evidence for all this morphological activity on the segmental phoneme-strings is at least as
sure and as plentiful as it is for tonal pairings. If tone has failed to swallow some morphology, then we may
fairly ask whether we ought to believe that it has swallowed any?
A great number of linguists, therefore, are content to settle for the assertion that three basic tones existed.
Obviously they must have been mutually contrastive, but the features that made them so have to be left
unspecified. Thai orthography shows the three as unmarked (here termed zero, or Tone ), Tone 1 and Tone
2, which is the reading code.
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 13
Tone Tone 1 Tone 2

Dialect A high mid low
Dialect B mid low high
Dialect C low high mid
Fig.2: Tone distribution by dialect
Distributions and comparisons

Turning back to earlier remarks about the difficulty of finding a ‘common denominator’ for the Thai basic
tones, the hopelessness of deciphering any common feature by superimposing pitch-contour graphs showing
the ways a certain basic tone is realized in different dialects has been admitted. In any array of such graphs
it will be normal to find any name we might choose to give to a ‘basic’ contour made inappropriate by
contradictions from among the various samples. In many dialects, the general pitch-blend may be high but
there will usually be some dialects having the same basic tone low in pitch. Many samples of a tone may be
rising in contour but some will be level and, perhaps, falling. Some, in another basic tone, will arch up,
whereas other dialects will make it dip down or stay level. Whilst comparative procedures on every other
level — regular segmental phoneme correspondences and semantic identity —guarantee that we are dealing
with cognate words, the tonal correspondences are regular only in a statistical way. They might more
properly be called frequencies of co-incidence rather than linguistic correspondences, for, as yet, no
convincing argument has been brought forward to explain how a distribution such as the following might
plausibly be found where no common linguistic factor can be abstracted under the vertical column entries
other than the capacity for being distinctive when read across as sets listed in horizontal rows:
Such changes could occur on any three contours—rising, falling, arching—but this conclusion demanded
by comparative methods peculiar to linguists is dismally unsatisfactory to me. It is as if we were to agree
that the phonemes of quinque, pente and fünf had to be corresponding because all three words meant ‘five’,
but at the same time insist that further enquiry about the nature of the correspondences was inadmissable.
Tonal comparison is still waiting for its Lautgesetze (‘Sound laws, phonetic laws’ (Ed.)): we are still relying
on distributional tabulation in which the filling in of the entries seems to be more important than pondering
the implications of our headings and listings. If they are not entirely arbitrary or heuristic, they must point to
a line of attack—a possibility for abstraction and reconstruction.
Input and in-built conditioning

Tone displacement has earlier been compared with the unfocusing of a kaleidoscope (p. 12 above). The
suggestion was made that the ‘controlled input’ (the distance the image was moved out of focus) would give
a discrete code-type number, much handier to work with than a series of descriptions of the visual
impressions received at each interval of viewing whilst the unfocusing was going on (overlap, darkening,
lightening, neutralization and so forth). Can this comparison be applied to basic tones as well as derived—
that is, displaced—tones? Clearly, it will only be viable if some simple factor (or factors, discrete and few in
number) can be found that will be on a par with the initial-prosody feature (loss of voicing). which yielded
such a complex stratification of pitch bands and contours in the different dialects. What possible input can
there be, that makes a tone what it is, other than the pitch function of the vocal cords? And, if this is the
case, what possible output can be monitored other than the pitch behaviour of the voice? This will arrive at
the impasse we are at present trying to avoid, namely, the comparison of representational data obtained from
pitch-measuring and pitch-delineating machines. we are back with our sheaf of pitch-contour graphs that
never throw up a common factor.
However, recalling that the loss of voicing brought about tone-displacement, might we not rephrase the
matter to our advantage by abandoning the concepts of phonemic or prosodic analysis and putting the
emphasis on speech production as a machine-like operation? Could we not, for the sake of illustration, and
some incidental amusement too, imagine a speaker in possession of his speech-producing apparatus rather
like a driver owning a car? Let us make believe that a Thai speaker (of some 600 years ago!) takes his
machine to the speech-mechanic with the complaint:
My machine seems to be getting a bit out of control nowadays. All I have done is comply with the
new law banning voiced plosion but this seems to be affecting the whole syllable. Moreover, other
syllables seem to show signs of becoming infected, as it were, and, all in all, I cannot rely on it any
more. I’m turning it in for an overhaul.
In the report of his findings the mechanic explains the fault and suggests some possible repair-jobs:
The logistics for carrying out the articulation for starting syllables with a voiced plosion did not take
into account the possible withdrawal of voiced plosion from the availability list; even with its
legitimate goal removed, the programme went on as before, continuing to put in for forces and
supplies appropriate to its old objective. Thus, the evenly fed air-pressure suitable for voicing
throughout the initial stop became either (i) too great for unvoiced non-aspirates or (ii) too little for
unvoiced aspirates. In both cases the time this air-pressure was being extended was less (no air-
movement, i.e. wastage, until the release of the consonant) than that scheduled for the original voiced
plosive but, in the case of aspiration, the sudden air-loss after release could not be made up from the
amount of pressure originally indented for. Moreover, the original lenis closure was too weak to
withstand the relative increase in pre-release pressure. Without the accompanying voiced-setting of
the vocal cords, as used to be the case in voiced plosion, there was no cushioning effect. The access of
pressure directly to the bilabial occlusion demanded something more to hold it in than lenis tension.
To compensate by ordering a change to fortis tended to confirm the new situation as similar to normal
unvoiced aspiration. To compensate by having a simultaneous glottal release (keeping the pre-release
pressure sub-glottal) confirmed the new articulation as a non-aspirate and allowed lenis tension to be
maintained—the glottis having borne the brunt of the work. The original, unamended pressure supply,
however, still produced either a loud (overbreathed) vowel after non-aspiration or a soft
(underbreathed) vowel after aspiration-release. As for possible adjustments, one alternative is to keep
the original indent for breath-pressure and reduce overbreathing by lower pitch-resonators (cushiony
absorption) and assist under-breathing by higher pitch-resonators (highly strung and sensitive). The
other alternative is to scrap the old pressure order and re-indent for normal breath-pressures
appropriate to the new situation but mark the ‘old’ syllables, say, as high instead of loud and low
instead of soft.
Accompanying the report we may imagine three drawings, little more than histograms really, that put these
findings diagrammatically.
So far this interlude, though made to seem like a visit to a garage or a consultation with a time-and-
motion study expert, has at least got to grips with tonal displacement (acknowledged to be a derived
phenomenon) and has uncovered a possible determining factor—the amount and flow-type of breath-
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 15
Diagram 2: Articulatory histograms in Thai

pressure ‘put in for’—that offered an explanation for the ‘repair’ reactions thrown up by different dialects
facing the same problem. The rest of this disquisition will be devoted to an extended analogy, along similar
lines, in an attempt to find simple determining factors for basic tones. Before going on with this, however, it
is important to note that these factors are not directly susceptible to the recording instruments normally at
the service of linguists. They are far from being phonemes and only on the fringe of acceptability to main-
line prosodic analysis. They cannot be heard, logged on a graph or abstracted from the usual bundle of
qualities or characteristics familiar to phoneticians. They are emphatically input-orientated concepts. They
are not even the elements of a code, for if ouput is an encoded manifestation of message-units in specific
detail, then there is an intermediate level at which an analysis of the components of the units might take
place (distinctive features, say) which none the less remains an aspect of output. There is below all this an
input level which concerns itself in a pragmatic way with rendering the code amenable to the medium of
communication. It asks just what the medium can do and then puts in instructions to do this or do that. In a
case like this, ironically enough, the medium is more important than the message.
It is as if one group agreed to analyse the Morse code no further than the listing of all available minimal
units (the alphabet: here taken to be the phoneme inventory) without perceiving that another group was busy
analysing the units, in turn, in terms of sound, silence, duration and sequence (here representing the factors
analysable by prosodic analysis). For both groups the datum is the output—in the strictly mechanical sense
of the word, the emission of sounds. There is room for another group, however, who choose to deal with the
obvious. Given the final objective—some units of code to be transmitted that are known to us—and given
that all of the rules from the previous ‘prosodic’ abstractions are held over as conditioning environments for
a performative skill, then the final, actual input instructions are reduced to two: now press the key; now
release the key. With languages, tone languages no less than others, for sure, we are not dealing with the
obvious. Nor are we dealing with such a clear-cut system as a code. Nevertheless, that hand on the Morse-
key does remind us that we do speak with something other than our head: there is that necessary adjunct, the
rest of our body.
The limits of ‘Invention’

To repeat: from here on the intention is to offer an analogy between a machine and a speech production
process, which might explain how many factors and what kind of factors might be held to be common to a
basic tone and how a small number of input instructions might be listed, combinations of which might
produce a set of basic tones. The gist of the argument will be that the lung-air pressure-controls are of
overriding importance, Of these, the pair of intercostal muscles (or rather the instructions under which they
are made to operate) will be suggested as primary controls, whilst the glottis will be held to function as a
secondary control.
The machine, of course, will be an ideal one in the sense that it is devised to serve a specific purpose of
illustration only. I should like to call it a naïve analogical model; naïve in the sense that it is plausible as a
machine only as long as an engineer does not try to construct it. In other words, it needs to be consistent
within its own terms but not efficient—or even possible—in practical terms. It will be analogical for
reasons already stated. All that needs to be added on this score is the caveat: no analogy is perfect. It will be
a model in the sense that it might predict patterns and processes if allowed to run on in exhaustive
experimentation with its possibilities. Here, though, it must be admitted that it falls far short of the built-in
inexorability of a mathematical model. This machine functions well only if oiled by charity!
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 17
The model: normal functioning

Imagine a tall, narrow pressure-chamber with a small outlet at the neck. Inside it is a piston with the rod
passing through a pressure-tight seal in the base of the chamber. The piston-thrust comes from a mainspring
beneath the pressure-cylinder. Effort is required to wind the spring (contraction). Some sort of switch is
required to bring power to provide for the contraction of the spring at the proper time. Similarly, a trip
mechanism will be needed to cut off the power and release the spring at the proper time. Therefore, on
completing the up-stroke, the piston-head touches the shoulders of the chamber and this contact must be
imagined as the signal calling for work to be done on contracting the spring and drawing the piston down. At
the lowest point of the down-stroke, the contact between the chamber-base and the underside of the piston-
head must be thought of as the instruction for work to cease, thus allowing the spring to unwind (release)
sending the piston back up the chamber again. Notice that the spring is not programmed for stopping or
restraining itself of its own accord. There is no way, for instance, of stopping or changing direction
whilst the piston is in a mid-chamber position.
Such a simple regime will not work, however. One obvious necessity is to allow the piston to be drawn
down without generating pressure underneath itself. Without some provision for such a contingency, the
piston-head would never reach the base of the chamber at all. A valve in the piston-head must be supplied
such that sensitivity to pressure from below causes it to open in order to facilitate the downstroke. Pressure
from above has the opposite effect, ensuring that the piston-head fills to the maximum the chamber-space
and fits flush with the walls. This is like saying that the piston-head has two states, expanded (which we
now call P) and contracted (p) and these two states are normally coincident with the upstroke and the
downstroke respectively.
Short reflection will bring us to the conclusion that such a pressure-pump still would not work, however.
Having overcome the difficulty of pressure generated by the downstroke, we now face the difficulty of a
vacuum behind the piston-head at the beginning of the upstroke. Assuming a pressure-tight fit for both the
piston-head and the hole in the base through which the piston-rod passes, it will be seen that an equilibrium
between the mainspring’s effort and the braking effect of the vacuum in the piston-head’s wake must cause
the arrest of the upstroke after a very short time. Precisely at this point, just where the piston-head is
stopping, another valve must be imagined in the wall of the chamber, tensed so as to be opened only by
maximum negative pressure. Upon its opening, the rarefaction is relived, the piston proceeds upwards, the
valve closes once more until further rarefaction retards the piston, opens the valve again, and so on until the
piston has risen the whole height of the chamber. This crude, mechanical counterpart of a feedback control
represents the means whereby the power of the mainspring is moderated. It prevents, as it were, our pump
‘expiring’ with a bang.
Clearly, the positioning of the valve in the wall— its distance up from the cylinder base—is just as
important as the degree of its sensitivity to negative pressure. Both in fact are interrelated because both
depend ultimately on the force of the upthrust generated by the mainspring. The positioning and the degree
of sensitivity are empirically determined, we might say, always remembering, however, that we are dealing
with an ideal machine. We can also say, be it noted, that we can restrict our symbols to the P, p, a pair W, w
(standing for Wall-valve) with the two states valve-shut and valve-open respectively, and a position c
(which will be held as ‘crucial’ for the syllable both in quantity and in tone) at an empirically determined
distance up from the chamber-base. We have no need to refer to the operation or the force of the mainspring
at all, as long as we are dealing with normal performance. The downstroke is simply pW. The upstroke is
PW, except for Pw at c, then a further series of Pw intermissions within the general PW situation until the
state pW is again reached.
Thus far the model should have created the impression that its working is virtually automatic. The supply
of power to the mainspring should be taken for granted as should also the right degree of tension or
sensitivity in the valves. In other words, no ‘deliberate’ instructions need be given to carry out any stage of
the piston’s operation. In electronic terms, everything so far has been built into the circuit: there is as yet no.
need for a control panel nor for a choice of settings on the part of an ‘operator’.
The analogy we have made is of a machine to represent the normal breathing cycle, indulging our
tendency to the naïve in order to make the point that, so far as speech production is concerned, the breathing
apparatus and its functioning must be considered a datum: we postulate this to begin with. Whether
inspiration and expiration are, in fact, totally conditioned reflexes or innate systole, or not, is for the
physiologist to say. All we assert here is that, for our purposes, the process might as well be taken to be
automatic and self-perpetuating. So far we acknowledge no input.
Abnormal function
We ignore two possibilities. First, that the pistonhead valve might fail to open on the downstroke. This
would allow of no inspiration of air into the lungs for the simple reason that the piston would not overcome
the pressure built on behind itself (non-function). Secondly, we ignore the possibility that the mainspring
might fail to respond automatically to its contract/release cycle of instructions (laboured and self-conscious
breathing). Neither do we contemplate deliberate interference with these automatic reactions. (Our machine
is ideal: breakdown is impossible. Only deliberate contravention of the rules is imaginable.) We are left with
the chance that the two valves might ‘disobey’ their control-settings: they might be ordered to ‘refuse’ to
follow the promptings of their in-built sensitivity. As we have seen, the failure of the vacuum-relieving valve
in the chamber-wall would lead to the arrest of the piston. Diagrams 3 and 4 will make it clear how crude
our valve is imagined to be. They will also make clear, it is hoped, that no matter whether the abnormality is
in the overruling of the valve’s sensitivity, i.e. obstinate, complete closure leading to lack of feedback—just
as if there were no valve fitted in the chamber-wall at all—or whether the flanges of the valve simply swing
loose and uncontrolled, i.e. a temporary cancellation of all response and restraint, the result must be
envisaged as the same: the arrest of the piston.
In the latter case, of course, the flanges merely swing shut in the wake of the piston’s passing and are held
there by the rare-faction occasioned by the piston’s attempt to continue upward. Thus, the overall result of
abnormality in the valve at c will be to terminate the upstroke prematurely: to prevent the succession of
‘feedback’ Pw intermissions characteristic of normal performance once c has been passed. This, therefore,
is the malfunction that will be imagined as a deliberate device to attain syllabicity: one input and one event
only at c.
Turning to the alternative source of abnormality, a refusal of the piston-head valve to fill the chamber-
space on the upstroke would lead to multiple disaster. There would be a proportional drop in the pressure of
air pumped out of the chamber: the piston would ‘leak’. Worse still, the vacuum brake effect would be
absent. The piston would hurl itself upward with the full, unrestrained force of the released mainspring.
Two safeguards may be postulated to prevent this occurrence. First: suppose there is a rapport between the
two valves. Suppose that the piston-head is conditioned to expand fully on the upward passing of point c no
matter what the pressure situation be above and below the piston-head. This would reinforce the expectation
of normal conditions on the upstroke. It would be a sort of double-check. A cricketing enthusiast, for
instance, will always value a good stumper, particularly when the bowling is mediocre. Our machine,
likewise, leaves little chance for ‘byes’, even with faulty ‘delivery’. Second: if even this safeguard is
deliberately flouted, we can postulate —rather like a long-stop in cricket—one last resort: the emergency
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 19
Diagram 3: Speech valving
measure of peremptory closure of the neck-outlet, thus forcing up the internal chamber-pressure and
steadying the perverse piston-head in its upward career. (if you can put a finger over the hole of a bicycle
pump it will act out the effect of this emergency stop.) This procedure will later be interpreted as a stop-final
syllable of a certain kind. Once again, though, the passing of point c will be the triggering off of this
emergency reaction. The built-in programme would read:
‘Any lack of evidence of an abrupt reversal of pressure at c (positive to negative) means the piston has
bolted and the message to stop up the air-outlet will be sent immediately.’
The rules at c are ordered ones, then, and can be expressed thus:
Rule 1. On passing c, if state P, no instructions (=normal);

Rule 2. On passing c, if state p, first demand p→P;
Rule 3. On passing c, if Rule 2 disobeyed notwithstanding, then demand ? (emergency glottal occlusion).
The analogy here is obvious: the two valves and the rapport between them represent the intercostal pair
of muscles and the feedback relationship we suppose to exist between them. The emergency ‘long-stop’, of
Diagram 4 : Speech valving

course, is the glottis. Again we rely on our admission of naïveté to excuse the obvious short-comings of the
analogy in other respects; a cylinder with a piston and a side-wall valve makes a very odd looking lung!
This is really beside the point, however. What the machine is doing is to represent the counterpoise and
interplay of two valves which determine pressure supply as being analogous to the work done by the intercostal
muscles. We further arrange for these two valves to operate under abnormal conditions and perverse
instructions in order to generate a deliberate syllable rather than an ‘unconscious’ systolic process. Our model
emphasizes here that the input-points for discrete, deliberate control are the intercostals. The analogy implies
that evidence of ‘syllable pulse’ at the diaphragm or elsewhere is secondary, ‘referred’ or, more bluntly,
incidental. No detailed physiological substantiation of these claims is adduced because the analogy aims
only at the minimum number of factors of primary importance in respiration that are in any way viable for
syllable generation. Physiology may later tell us that there are more. What it tells us now (Greene 1964) is
that there cannot in all common sense be less. Three emerge as irreducibles: the two intercostals and, in
certain circumstances only, the glottis.
Syllable types
If we work out the possible combinations of our three deliberate-input chances, P or p, W-type α or W-type
β, and the presence or absence of ?, we must be careful to observe the limitations of our model. P for
instance, will never co-occur with. It is best done by diagrams showing the states of the valves (and the
glottis) and the input-instructions to be applied at the key points in the piston’s career. The one symbol not
found in our alternatives, namely w, can serve, when written in square brackets, to mean an intervening
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 21
open state of the wall-valve at c causing a momentary relief of rarefaction. This, for syllable production,
will only occur in course of proceeding from PW after c (Abnormal type α to PW after c (Abnormal type β)
or vice versa, i.e. the flapping over from one shut position to another. The symbol cannot now occur as a
simple w in its own right: w occurs normally in this way (i.e. not abnormally) during the upstroke and hence
is out of consideration. Syllables are abnormal and will not tolerate a w-setting which is to preserve
automatic systole.
Several observations might be helpful. We can, for instance, put in instructions only with respect to the
actual start of the upstroke and to the passing of point c. We cannot, for instance, expand the piston-head
during its course (p→P) without bothering to enquire what triggered off the sending of such an instruction
at that time. By the same token, we cannot fly in the face of reason (even with our ideal machine!) and, say,
open the wall-valve right at the commencement of the upstroke. Thus, if, in the diagrams, we read an entry
‘Input Abnormality β’ viz. no restraint or sensitivity at all at c, this does not mean that the valve opens: it
means that it goes where circumstances (in this case, pressure) dictate that it should go. It should also be
remembered that, whilst generating a syllable is a result of abnormal functioning, yet there is within the
abnormality a degree of regularity. All syllables have to begin with a W state. They all have to end with a
PW state. These appear to be normal. There will always be, however, some underlying, ‘latent’ instruction
(α or β in our diagrams) compelling the wall-valve to act abnormally as soon as circumstances allow (i.e.
when the piston passes point c). This co-existence of normality and abnormality is not surprising though we
want our machine to work oddly, we also need to have it work at all.
The diagrams
Only the Greek letters α, β and Π are actual inputs.
P means the state when the piston-head fills the chamber space.
p means the state when the piston-head is contracted and therefore ‘leaks’.
α means the input order: ‘Wall-valve performs abnormally in type α’, i.e. ‘Now shut!’
β means the input order: ‘Wall-valve performs abnormally in
type β’, i.e. ‘Be flaccid—do nothing’.
Π means the input-order: ‘Contract the piston-head’.
2 means Rule 2 for p→P is applied here (a built-in emergency circuit).
3 means Rule 2 has failed, therefore demand ? (an alternative circuit).
I1 means the first stage or opportunity at which input can be fed in.
I2 means the second stage where input can be fed in.
i means the initial run of the piston up to point c.
e means an episode to allow any operations directly occasioned by the passing of c to come into effect.
t means the tail-end of the syllable; in particular, the upshot of I2 input at c.
From the entries seen above it could be agreed that a handier description of each syllable-type would be
in terms of our chosen symbols rather than a mere enumeration (i), (ii), (iii), etc., so here are their suggested
‘names’. Reference to the diagrams will, it is hoped, again provide the commonsense argument for choosing
the naming symbols:
(i) will be called a Pe syllable;

(ii) will be called a Pt syllable;
(iii) will be called a Pi syllable
(iv) will be called a pα syllable;
(v) & (vi) will be called a pβ syllable; Diagram 5: Syllable samples

(vii) will be called a p? syllable.
Already it looks as if quantity might feature as a by-product of input-combinations. Pi looks very short; Pt
and all three p-syllables are long. A closer look—and a stricter argument—would lead us to expect three
lengths (as demonstrated by Pe) and not the usual two, but this argument can be countered by stressing the
nature of point c as a crux: quantity would be a before-c/after c dichotomy and not a question of linear
(chronological) measurement. On our diagrams’ showing, therefore, Pi is short and all other syllables are
long. It must be pleaded that one of the virtues of our machine is that it satisfactorily (at least, analogically)
explains why quantity is universally a two-way split wherever it is phonemic. There are no ‘medium-
lengths’ or super-longs or super-shorts phonemically because each syllable has but one crux. Quantity—in
the behaviour of the piston with respect to point c—becomes a discrete event rather than a relative scale of
performance. The relative aspect, as Daniel Jones (1967:124–34) saw in his chronemes, will always be in
evidence but it will always emanate from the fact of quantity. Objectively recorded length seemed to Jones
to be an accidental attribute of quantity but not an inherent definitive property of it. Phonemic ‘length’ and
phonetic ‘length’ seemed somewhat at odds. It is not too bold to claim that our machine resolves this
paradox: ‘length’, after all, turns out to be a question of whether something happened or not and is
irrespective of whether the speaker took a long time over it or not.
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 23
The diagram as it stands, however, gives a slightly misleading impression. We must not mistake the
length of a list for the length of time or distance that a piston moves in a chamber. While events are of prime
importance, duration, as we see, remains a factor to be considered.
Graphs
We cannot let the diagram of input-combinations be the sole source of our impressions about likely
syllables that are generated by our machine. We can, with reason and imagination, re-draw the tabulated
information as graphs which will show some linear manifestation of the effects of the chosen input in a
certain syllable. Time is an obvious ‘dimension’ for such a graph but, as we are dealing with a moving
piston, so are distance and speed. Since our machine is an analogy of syllable production, we must also not
lose sight of the continuum of pressure. After all, our model looks like a pump and works like a lung! There
is going to be an outflow of air at the chamber’s ‘glottis’, the regulation of which is bound to be central to
the problem of syllable utterance and, it will be argued, central to the characteristics of syllable tone too.
Perhaps the most straightforward and informative graph would be one of speed of piston as against
location of piston. P will be the state in which the piston is slowing (it is ‘striving’); P will be the state in
which the piston is hurtling along unchecked; and [w] offers the opportunity for the decelerated piston to
win back some momentum during the brief relief from the braking action of rarefaction.
Side by side with the speed graphs we can place an imaginative estimate of corresponding pressure-
readings for air being pumped out of the chamber. Note that a high speed (state p) gives a lower pressure
reading than deceleration (state P) for the beginning of each peak. Apart from this, however, the pressure
curves correspond generally in outline to the speed curves.
Modulations
The striking aspect of the graphs (Diagrams 6–9) is that they show such great disparity in overall lengths.
The piston, in other words, travels only a short distance in some but a very long distance in others. Now, whilst
the shorter distances will tend to take the longer times and the long distances in p-state will be covered
extremely rapidly, thus tending towards isochronism*, some adjustments must be envisaged as necessary to
achieve isochronism without such a wastage of space. Uniform syllable length will then be true of time—a
convenience for the speaker—and also of distance—a convenience for chamber-capacity.
A modulation, a ‘tempering’ of the speed and pressure rates will take place so that the speaker may
concatenate syllables with some degree of fixed but natural rhythm. The tail must be shortened, i.e. slowed
down or, if felt convenient, the slow speeds in P-state round about the crux may be accelerated a little. In
this fashion, not only will isochronism be the syllable norm demanded by the speaker but there will be a
driving motive to get the crux (point c) placed in the middle of all syllables (except, of course, Pi) rather
than to one extremity or the other as shown in the graphs in an unmodulated state.
A comment must be inserted here to answer the query as to whether isochronism is in fact a norm for the
syllable. Firstly, it must be re-emphasized that syllable quantity is not at issue here. For short syllables
specifically, we can either resort to Pi syllables, or have the point c in any type of syllable represent a
trigger which fires a message off to stop the syllable there and then by glottal or oral occlusion or partial
occlusion (consonantism). It is assumed, though, that there will be a tail-juncture (silence or held-over
consonantism) to even up the rhythm of short-stop-finals ready for the down-beat which ushers in a new
syllable-start. Secondly, it must also be pointed out that isochronism does not rule out overall speed
variations due to idiosyncratic style, emotional state or syntactic intonation-patterns. It merely means that,
Diagram 6: Graphing of syllable samples7

all other things being equal (viz. the things just mentioned), the natural tendency of the human body’s
functions is towards isochronism (walking, breathing, sleeping/waking metabolic rates, the heart-beat, etc.).
Between two peaks in a repetitive wave-trace there will be a striving towards maintaining a steady wave
length although item-distribution within the wave length is not, of course, rigorously scalar. A cycle is
symmetrical in its repetition; it is not a repetition of symmetrical units. So, if we do not take this for
granted, then the deliberate or conditioned variations aimed at in stylistic effect will be rendered unsubtle or
even null and void—a mere accretion of spasmodic rhythms because not offset by the expectation of a ‘line’
of homogeneous ‘feet’.
Time discrepancies, then, can not have been the missing factors that were embodied in our basic tones.
To reconstruct hypothetical phonemes of infinitesimal duration-differences will not do. Not only would they
be beyond the limits of natural performance and perception but they would also go against the best interests
of a speaker who seeks to use a comfortable and convenient reference-frame in which to assess the effects
of rallantando or accelerando.
* Isochronism is the character or property of oscillating or of taking place in equal spaces of time, therefore equal in
duration or in intervals of occurrence. (Ed.)
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 25
Diagram 7 Comparison of speed and pressure curves
Modulation in the model

Just before this brief discussion of isochronism, the likelihood of a need for pressure adjustments to slow
down piston-speed and on occasion, perhaps, to increase it, had been suggested. It now remains to supply
some sort of sensitive machinery for doing this. To resort to further adjustments of the two valves in our
model will get us nowhere. The whole point of abnormal functioning was to have minimal discrete
instructions (α, β, Π) in direct opposition to the normal homeostatic balance between states W and w in the
valve at c. We must at all costs preserve the peremptory ‘open-or-shut’ case for the valves’ operations
because they are being put forward as the prime factors, the real input-conditioning for our basic tones. The
only other site of pressure control we can appeal to is at the outlet—the glottis.
Once already the outlet has played a role in the abnormal functioning of our model—in the Pt syllable
whereby an abrupt closure of the outlet on emergency instructions from the valve at c (Rule 3) stopped the
runaway piston. If the outlet could be modulated in size and shape so as to influence the extrusion-rate of
air pumped from the chamber, then we could once again ‘cushion’ the piston’s thrust, slow it down, or, by
widening the outlet we could help the piston on its way. The outlet would thus have to be sensitive to
pressure and—yet another tendency to homeostasis—would be programmed to operate in favour of
isopiestic* restraint. The attempt would be made—glottal tension and configuration is the last resort in this
matter—to control the outflow of air so as to achieve fairly uniform pressure during the syllable for the sake
of even voicing.
Glottal modulation
We have now arrived at a state of affairs not unlike the tone-displacement situation in which, it will be
remembered, ‘the withdrawal of voiced plosion’ from the consonant-input list left an inappropriate breath-
Diagram 8: Glottal modulation

pressure and flow. The solution suggested there was to re-interpret loudness and softness as high or low
pitches. This was brought about by a choice of two adjustments. Here the case is not one of inappropriate
pressure but one of intra-syllabic fluctuations in pressure (depending on what syllable type is chosen) which
must be evened out. The delicate sensitivity and the speed of response of the vocal cords make them ideally
suited to be the agents for modulating pressure-fluctuations of each syllable-type. There will, presumably,
be many solutions for each type. Some will reflect the pressure-variation directly as a pitch contour whilst
adjusting the voice quality to counterbalance the lapses from steady pressure-supply. There is a suggestion
here of the ‘clear’ and ‘muddy’ (zhuó ) terminology in Chinese, though their use in that
language is clearly applicable only to derived tones (post-tonal-displacement) and not to basic tones. Could
it be that the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ divisions of traditional lexicography reflect a Chinese typology conditioned
by P-state as against p-state syllables? Be that as it may, an imaginative portrayal of such modulations might
be as follows: Some will use the vocal cords to counterbalance the pressure fluctuations by pitch alone and,
to some extent, produce a mirror-image of the pressure-curve thus:
Without detailed physiological knowledge, abstracted on a multi-dimensional diagram or graph, it would
be rash to press further with an account of how the human body’s glottal equipment might be reduced to
terms amenable to our model. Indeed, it will be recalled that pitch and pitch-contours were acknowledged as
being subtle, non-discrete and difficult to account for. This very admission was one of the main motives for
imagining a model to investigate the possibility of less complex sub-glottal factors in tonal analysis. We
have succeeded in describing a model with three such factors (input instructions) and, not surprisingly, it
has in the long run led us back to the subtleties of glottal activity.
* Isopiestic means ‘denoting equal pressure’. (Ed.)

LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 27
Diagram 9: Comparison of pitch and pressure curves
Conclusion
In an attempt to escape from the impasse of unanalysable recorded data (pitch phenomena) to account for
basic tones, we looked for a few key factors. Granted that our machine analogy is informative, then these
will be found in the relationship between the intercostal muscles as they undergo adapted programming of
the work of expiration. We might expect to find in tonal languages of the South East Asian type not one
favourite arrangement for this intercostal relationship habitually relied upon to produce any syllable but a
choice of input instructions (α, β and Π in these diagrams) yielding a selection of syllable-types. Inherent
anomalies of duration and pressure were imagined which had to be modulated into a pressure supply that
the vocal cords could use to maintain a normal vocalism and syllable-quality. This modulation was done at
the sacrifice of freedom of pitch. In these languages, then, pitch became contrastive between syllables of
different types: it became an exponent of basic tone. The particular contour and pitch-band adopted to render
the syllable ‘comfortable’ to the speaker’s expectations of isochronism and isopiestic breath supply varied
from language to language and dialect to dialect, but it is implied that the sub-glottal input did not. These
intercostal syllabification schedules emerged as the common, stable basic tone factors. Their functioning
involved the glottis and, consequently, pitch phenomena.
Corollary
Can these speculations point to new departures in practice? Certainly, they re-inforce a demand for more
rigorous physiological investigation of the human body during the activity of speaking. To prove whether
the analogy presented in this paper was right or wrong or merely irrelevant, the nerveimpulses sent to the
intercostal pair of muscles would have to be monitored and interpreted alongside a record of lung pressure
and emergent (oral) pressure and glottal activity. Both voice quality and glottal occlusion must be seen as
likely concomitants, if not definitive characteristics, of certain tones. Some analyses should be attempted
which treat syllable-final, quantity, and voice quality (creak, reediness, final ‘crumble’, final
‘strangulation’, etc.) as at least the co-equals of pitch phenomena and rightly to be subsumed under the
single rubric ‘tone’. Field workers must therefore listen again—or, perhaps, record again with higher fidelity
—and be on the look-out for such features. They must also be prepared to dissect their recorded pitch-
contours into i and t sections and to note the presumed occurrence of e at c, especially if the contour shows
a curve or a hump. By doing this, they might find more stability between dialect samples of a tone in one
section, say, i, than the other.
Most of all, though, it is hoped that model-imagining and combinatorial tabular systems will encourage
attempts to see larger ‘wholes’ in human utterance. If we are happy now to have grappled with the syllable
as a whole because of our preoccupation with tone, perhaps we shall later be less daunted by the challenge
of rigging up a model in the mind to deal with concatenation of syllables in a phonologically and
physiologically integrated way.
NOTES
This paper was originally presented by Peter Bee several years ago to a staff seminar in the Department of
Phonetics and Linguistics of the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University. It was
rediscovered after his death in May 1982. On my request to include it in, and edit it for, this collection,
Peter’s family kindly gave me permission to prepare it for publication. Now, it can reach a wider public.
(Ed.)
1. I am greatly indebted to J.Marvin Brown (1965) in which tabular presentation of Tone-contours is particularly
compendious and clear.
2. Included in this term are zero-final syllables, the decisive factor being whether the syllable closes abruptly—by
an occlusion of the air-flow, a hiatus in the pressure gradient—or not.
3. The word ‘band’ here is used to avoid ambiguity: ‘level’ might be construed as a ‘flat, even contour’ whereas
‘band’ allows for contours to be of any shape so long as they are within the width defined.
4. Before the stabilization of effective, centralized statehood under Ayutthaya, the dialect groups are hard to
recognize and even harder to locate with any precision. It would be rash to suppose that the present inhabitants of
Sukhothai speak anything like the same dialect as that, say, of King Ramkamhaeng in the thirteenth century.
5. Disyllabism (syllabic infixation) has been omitted from consideration since it is most likely to be a trait borrowed
from Mon or Khmer morphology.
6. Syllables (v) and (vi) are so similar as to be classified as minor variants of the general input-family Π β, while
syllable (vii) is so tabulated to avoid uninformative repetition. The point is that with p throughout, it does not
matter what the wall-valve is doing. The final P? in this syllable (column t) means that the state P is consequent
upon the closure of the glottis. The piston-head is forced to expand by overhead pressure.
7. pα and pβ are similar. Whichever pattern of input instructions is chosen, the difference is simply one of when the
curve begins to go down. The pβ descent is obviously slightly later (or ‘further’) than pα because of the
additional [w] intermission, but there is no resemblance to the curve and distance of p? in the least,
REFERENCES
Brown, J.M. 1965. From ancient Thai to modern dialects. Bangkok: Soc. Sci. Assoc. Press of Thailand.
Greene, Margaret C.L. 1964. The voice and its disorders. London: Pitman Medical Publ., 2nd ed. (1st ed. 1957),
Jones, D. 1967. The phoneme: its nature and use. Cambridge: Heffer, 3rd ed. (1st ed. 1950).
THE PHONOLOGY OF THAI PET NAMES
Karnchanā Nacaskul
Names of Thai people can be divided into the formal and informal, formal being first and family names,
while the informal ones are pet names and nicknames. Indeed, the Thai people have a widely popular
practice of informally addressing one another with names other than the legal first family name. These so-
called pet names and nicknames may have a meaning or may be onomatopoeic or just nonsense words;
those with. meaning conform to the general patterns of monosyllabic words, whereas those without possess
the phonological patterns of onomatopes or of English and Chinese loanwords.
Development of pet names

The first names of the Thai are those given to them by their parents in childhood. They are, it seems, legally
the equivalent of the Christian names of European and Christian people, but in reality they have little
connection with Buddhism, the state religion of Thailand. A Thai first name is not given to a baby at its first
religious ceremony, although in the majority of cases it is given to a baby either by a priest or a parent, or by
a respectable elder, in accordance with the baby’s horoscope, in order to bless the baby with luck, ability,
prosperity, wealth, honour, grace, or a combination of such blessings. There are also cases in which ugly
names are given to fool the devil who might take the child away if it were considered to be a good-looking
baby. The practice is possible because all Thai first names have a meaning. In olden days, such first names
were the only names given to Thai people; in the Sukhothai period, Thai names were mostly simple Thai
words, some loanwords from Khmer and Sanskrit. In the Ayutthayā period, however, more Sanskritic loans
were used as names, especially for members of the royal family. Traditionally, it is believed that the name
of a person has an effect on the ups and downs of its owner’s life. Generally, words which have a meaning
in accord with the blessing that should be due to a child as noted in his or her horoscope are used. A boy
named /mii/ ‘to have’ is expected to grow up rich or, at least, to know no poverty. Likewise, it is hoped that
a girl named /sŭaj/ ‘beautiful’ will grow up into a good-looking woman. In the context of such practices, a
person who becomes ill or poor may change his name if he thinks that the one he possesses does not fit well
with his horoscope and his expectations of life. In the early Ratanakosin period, the names of commoners
were still simple Thai words, with the inclusion of some short Sanskritic loans, whereas the names of
members of the royal family were made up of long coinages from Sanskrit.
In 1913 King Rama VI introduced family names into Thai law. The family names given by the King were
mostly Sanskritic words having a form and meaning related to the name of a particular ancestor of a given
person. Common people generally combined the names of their parents to make up their family names. In
such cases a family name could be, and usually, longer than the owner’s first name. First names at this time
also began to change their form from simple Thai words to more complex forms of Sanskritic origin. The
name /mii/ ‘to have’, for example, presents a variety of choices such as /sèet-thĭi/ or /sèet-thǎa/ ‘a rich man’
30 THE PHONOLOGY OF THAI PET NAMES
the second being used only as a name; /thanaa/ ‘money’ (Skt. dhana), /sáp/ ‘treasure’ (Skt.
dravya), and so on. With time, the first names of the younger generation seemed to become longer and
longer. Thus, one finds names of three, four or five syllables, all similarly related to ‘wealth’, as follows:
/sáp-praphaa/ ‘Radiant Wealth’

/thaná?-phan/ ‘Silvery Complexion’
‘Excellent Treasures’
/sèet-thaphoŋ/ ‘Wealthy Clan’
‘wealthy Glory’
/thaná-phát/ ‘Wealth Prosperity’
/thanawát-thaná?/ ‘wealth Prosperity’
‘Wealth Glory’
/sáp-moŋkhon/ ‘Lucky Treasures’
/sáp-thawii/ ‘Multiplying Treasures’
/sáp-manii/ ‘Precious Gems’
With the advent of family names and the consequent usage of Sanskritically-derived names for both first
and family names, it was natural that Thai people should revert back to the use of the simple name-words
with which they were more familiar in order to address one another. At first, only part of a polysyllabic first
name was used in addressing someone; for example, /phai-buun/ ‘abundance’ is shortened to /buun/ with a
virtual loss of the correct meaning of the original first name as used in full. In some cases, this shortening of
names can cause confusion, since there may be occasions on which more than one person with the same
shortened name is present; these people may all be called /buun/, for example, although their first names
may well be /sŏm-buun/ ‘perfect’, /thaná-buun/ ‘full of money’, /thiirá-buun/ ‘perfect as a sage’, /phátchara-
buun/ ‘full of diamonds’, and ‘full of fame’.
The problem of calling for someone by part only of the first name, combined with the familiar use of
simple Thai words signifying the particular characteristics of a person, was, in fact, the origin of the now
popular practice in family circles, among classmates, close friends and work colleagues, of using pet names
and nicknames to address one another.
Pet names are generally given to children by their parents and thus express fondness and affection, while
nicknames are generally created by and used among friends or classmates to express familiarity or friendly
mockery. However, some nicknames can be so widespread that their use is extended into wider circles of
friends and close acquaintances. Most Thai people nowadays have pet names, and a number of them have
both pet names and nicknames, which may last, and by which they may be addressed till the latter part of
their lives.
Grammatically, a pet name plays the role of a personal pronoun. For example, a person whose pet name
is ‘tiny’ may use the words in a sentence such. as ‘ wishes to have a birthday party
with friends, so please let have a new dress for the occasion’. A nickname may also play
the role of a personal pronoun but is rarely used as the first personal pronoun, since some people accept, but
do not particularly like, the nickname given to them.
Classification of pet names

Pet names can be classified semantically into three groups; namely, semantic pet names, onomatopoeic pet
names, and nonsense pet names.
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 31
(i) Semantic pet names make up the largest group. They are given, or used, to show special affection and
also for convenience in addressing one another. They are expressions of miniaturization, flowers, fruits,
vegetables, sweets, toys, pets, offspring, as well as descriptions of the appearances of the name-owners.
Nicknames are also grouped with semantic pet names since they all have meanings, generally used in
teasing or mockery of the person named. Examples of such pet names are:
Miniaturization: ‘tiny’
/lék/ ‘small’
‘a little’
/cĭw/ ‘very little’
‘very little’
Flowers: /bua/ ‘lotus’

‘name of a flower’ (Millingtonia hortensis)
‘name of a flower’ (Cratoxylon prunifolium)
‘name of a flower’ (Nerium oleander)
Fruits: /klûaj/ ‘banana’
/sôm/ ‘orange’
‘rambutan’
/khanŭn/ ‘jack-fruit’
‘sugar-apple’ (Annona reticulata)
/chom-phûu/ ‘rose-apple’ (Eugenia jambos)
Vegetables: ‘collective name for melons, etc
‘a kind of squash’ (Cucurbitaceae)
/fák/ ‘a king of squash’ (Cucurbitaceae)
/thùa/ ‘bean’
Sweets: ‘lollipop’
/lûuk-kwàat/ ‘candy’
/kŏo/ ‘a kind of sweet’
Toys: /lûuk-pòoŋ/ ‘balloon’
/lûuk-hĭn/ ‘marbles’
/wâaw/ ‘kite’
/túk-kataa/ ‘doll’
Pets: ‘cat’
/kaj/ ‘chicken’
/nók/ ‘bird’
/tàw/ ‘turtle, tortoise’
Animals: /mŭu/ ‘pig’

/pèt/ ‘duck’
/mĭi/ ‘bear’
/kòp/ ‘frog’
/cháaŋ/ ‘elephant’
/pák-kapâw/ ‘globe fish’
Offsprings: cíap ‘chick’
‘tadpole’
‘lamb’
/lûuk-náam/ ‘water nymph, larva’
Appearances: /tú?/ ‘chubby’
/?ǎn/ ‘chubby’
‘red (of the skin)’
/waj/ ‘alert, quick’
/kěe/ ‘smart’
(ii) Onomatopoeic pet names also make up a large proportion of pet names and are generally formed in
imitation of the cries of babies and animal offspring, other distinctive sounds, and words descriptive of
behaviour. Onomatopoeic words can be monosyllables, disyllables or polysyllables, but such pet names are
mostly mono-syllables, such as:
Cries of a baby: ‘cry of a baby’

‘cry of a baby’
‘a groaning sound’
Cries of animals and offsprings: ‘sound made by a mouse’
/mǐaw/ ‘meowing of a cat’
/cíp/ ‘sound made by a bird’
/?óp/ ‘cry of a frog’
/kúk/ ‘cluck of a hen’
/cíap/ ‘cheep of a chick’
Sounds: ‘sound of a solid body falling into water’

‘sound of a body splashing in the water’
‘sound made by a latch’
‘creaking sound of a door’
‘sound of wading through water’
Behaviour; ‘awkward’
‘bold (in speech and action)’
‘butting in’
‘intruding, obtrusive’
‘tip-top’
(iii) Nonsense pet names belong to the third group which appears to possess no meaning, nor to imitate the
sound or manner of anything. They serve only as pet names, are well accepted by Thai society, and can be used
as personal pronouns in just the same ways as pet names of the other groups. Examples of them are:
/?ét/
/tǔu/
/cǐŋ/
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 33
Phonological patterns of pet names

The pet names investigated here are mostly monosyllabic words, although. there are a few disyllabic
examples. The large number of semantic pet names can be phonologically analysed as, monosyllabic words,
having the phonological patterns of C(C)VV0–4, C(C)VN0–4, C(C)VS1,3, C(C)VVN0–4 and C(C)VVS 1,2
where C stands for consonantal phonemes, V for short vowels, VV for long vowels and diphthongs, S for
stops, N for nasals and semi-vowels, and figures 0 to 4 for the five tonal phonemes (Nacaskul 1977:106).
Those having two syllables can be analysed as two monosyllables or a disyllable of Cv’C(C)VV0–4, Cv’C(C)
VN0–4, Cv’ C(C)VS1,3, Cv’C(C)VVN0–4 and Cv’C(C)VVS1,2, with the additional unstressed syllable Cv
preceding. Those having more than two syllables, which are very rare, can be analysed as the combination of
mono-syllable and disyllables. The patterns of these pet names coincide with those of Thai words in
general.
Onomatopoeic pet names, on the other hand, are found to have some different patterns, in addition to the
ordinary ones. These patterns coincide with those of loanwords from English and Chinese (Henderson 1949:
195; 1951:142–3; Nacaskul 1979:113) and with those of special intensifiers to certain stative verbs
(Nacaskul 1972:6). The co-occurence of high tone in syllables with long vowels or diphthongs, and closed
by a stop, for example, is found only in English loanwords such as:
‘shirt’
/nóot/ ‘note’
/méet/ ‘metre’
Also, the co-occurence of rising tone or high tone with an unaspirated stop initial in Thai is found only in
onomatopes or loanwords from either Chinese or English, such as:
‘wantan’ (Ch. jiǎo )

/cóok/ ‘rice soup’ (Ch. zhōu )
/tǎw/ ‘dice’ (Ch. tóu )
/tŭn/ ‘steamed’ (Ch. dùn )
‘water pipe’ (Eng. pipe)
‘to act’ (Eng. to act)
‘water tap’ (Eng. cock)
/kĕe/ ‘gay, smart’ (Eng. gay)
/pǎa/ ‘father/ (Eng. papa)
/pám/ ‘pump’ (Eng. to pump)
‘boy, waiter’ (Eng. boy)
or in special modifiers* like:
(/prîaw/ + /prîaw príit/ ‘sour’ ‘extremely sour’)

/khŏm/ + ( /khŏm pĭi/ ‘bitter’ ‘extremely bitter’)
+ ‘red’ ‘very bright red’
Most onomatopoeic pet names appear to have the same phonological patterns as those of loanwords and
modifiers, as shown in the following examples:
High tone: CVVS3 ‘creaking sound of a door’

CVVS3 ‘cheep of a chick’
CVVS 3 ‘sound made by a horn, a loud cry of a
baby’
CVVS3 ‘creaking sound of a door’
/túk/ CVS 3 ‘sound made by a minicab’
CVN3 ‘cry of a pussy cat for its mother’
CVS3 ‘sound made by knocking at a head’
/cúp/ CVS3 ‘sound of a kiss’
Rising tone: CVN4 ‘sound of a body splashing in, water’
/tŭm/ CVN ‘sound of something fallen into the
water’
CVN4 ‘sound of something dropped and
disappeared in the water’
CVN4 ‘shining of the eyes’
CVN4 ‘a groaning sound’
CVN4 ‘cry of a hungry cat’
Nonsense pet names also seem to be confined to high and rising tones. Some of them conform to the
permissible patterns of simple monosyllables, especially when the syllable is either open or is closed by a
nasal or a semivowel, in which case high and rising tones are also preferred. Thus, we have these examples
/cóo/ CVV3 CVV4

CVV3 /tŭu/ CVV4
CVN3 CVN4
/púj/ CVN3 CVN4
CVVN3 /?ŭaj/ CVVN4
CVVN3 /bŭaj/ CVVN4
In the majority of Thai monosyllables, the syllable closed by a stop is found to occur only with low (1) and
high (3) tones if the syllable has a short vowel, and is found to occur only with low (1) and falling (2) tones
when the syllable has a long vowel. In nonsense pet names, however, the long vowel syllable closed by a
stop is found to accompany the high tone, hence the syllable structure of CVVS3, which is regarded as
irregular for the Thai phonological patterns of monosyllables. Example s are:
/krúak/ CCVVS3
/tíap/ CVVS3
CVVS3
/dúat/ CVVS3
* That is, intensifiers, (Ed.).

LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 35
Loan and newly-coined pet names

As the population grows in number, it appears that new pet names have to be found. It is conceivable that in
order to avoid repetition they have to be created and are, in fact, being constructed along the phonological
patterns described above. English and Chinese loanwords1 had been introduced as pet names in the past and
are increasingly used by Thai people of the younger generation. The majority of English-loan pet names
conform to the phonological patterns of onomatopoeic and nonsense ones, and only a minority of them
conform to the normal patterns of Thai words, as can be seen in the following examples:
(Eng. golf)
/nát/ (Eng. nut)
(Eng. knob)
(Eng. pop)
/dúk/ (Eng. duke)
/?óot/ (Eng. oat)
(Eng. bird)
/khéek/ (Eng. cake)
(Eng. Ann)
(Eng. John)
(Eng. boy)
(Eng. Joy)
(Eng. Ann)
(Eng. ma’am)
Conclusion
The majority of Thai people possess pet names and nick-names in addition to their legal first and family
names, and such names have grammatical functions as nouns and pronouns, and a number of them have
meanings. Pet names with meanings conform to the general patterns of monosyllabic words whereas the
onomatopoeic pet names have additional patterns which are the same as those for loanwords from English
and Chinese, while nonsense pet names have the phonological patterns of onomatopoeic words and
loanwords. More and more pet names are created for Thai people because, although formal first names are
longer and more poetic, they are neither practical for use in normal conversation, nor as pronouns. The
other reason for new pet names being introduced into the Thai language is that the Thai people like to have
unique names of their own. It is, therefore, unpredictable which names will be added to the existing list of
pet names and nick-names, and which types will become more popular. However, it is noted that the
phonological patterns of onomatopoeic and nonsense pet names of the types C(C)VV3,4, C(C)VN3,4 with
initial unaspirated stops, and the pattern C(C)VVS3, although alien2 to the Thai language, are widely
accepted, whilst other alien features are accepted with a certain reluctance. These pet names, together with a
large number of loanwords of the phonological patterns described above have now become the accepted
patterns of Thai words.
NOTES
1. Chinese words, several of which are used in Chinese as given names, or even surnames, are, however, also
treated as pet names since first names in Thai style do exist formally. Examples are:
(Ch. )
(Ch. )
/hǐa/ (Ch. xiāng )
/sòoj/ (Ch. )
(Ch. qiān )
(Ch. liáng )
(Ch. )
They are only used by people who, although Thai by nationality, are ethnically Chinese.
2. The other alien features which are still not accepted in the system of the Thai language are, for example, the
occurrence of the final /s/ to show excess or plurality as in /mâaks/ ‘very very much’, ‘extremely
crazy’, and the finals /l/, /s/, /f/ as in ‘ball’, ‘gas’, /phaf/ ‘puff’.
REFERENCES
Henderson, E.J.A. 1949. Prosodies in Siamese, a study in synthesis. Asia Major (N.S.) 1(2), 189–215.
…… 1951. The phonology of loanwords in some South-East Asian languages. Trans. Philol, Soc., 131–58.
…… 1977. rabop siang phāsā thai (The phonological system in Thai). Bangkok: Chulalongkorn Univ. Press.
…… 1979. A note on English loanwords in Thai. In Studies in Tai and Mon-Khmer phoneties and phonology in honour
of Eugénie J.A. Henderson (ed.) Theraphan L.Thongkum, et al. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn Univ. Press, 151–62.
A PHONETIC ODDITY IN THAI
Eugénie J.A.Henderson
Technological advances in phonetic research in recent years have greatly increased our understanding of the
production and perception of the tones of Standard Thai. From Abramson (1962) onwards there has been a
stream of publications on this topic. It is noteworthy, however, that apart from the examination of the voice
and aspiration distinction in initial plosives (see Lisker and Abramson’s important 1964 paper on Voice
Onset Time) research into the segmental elements of Thai has not availed itself of the resources of the
modern phonetics laboratory to anything like the same extent.1
The reason for this comparative neglect is not far to seek. To linguists in general, the phonological
treatment of the consonant sounds of Thai has seemed to present few problems. There has been some
disagreement over the most appropriate treatment of syllable final consonants, but broad general agreement
over the initials, which have in consequence not attracted much attention from laboratory phoneticians.
Details of pronunciation regarded as phonologically ‘redundant’ or ‘irrelevant’ have not been thought
worthy of serious attention. One such detail, which strikes the ear of any phonetician, is the velarisation by
Standard Thai speakers of certain consonant sounds before a following close front vowel. This is often
perceived as a very short on-glide to the vowel.
The phonetician Jimmy G.Harris has described this feature for initial t, s, and f. He describes unaspirated
velarised t as ‘the most common pronunciation syllable initially before close front vowels’ (Harris 1972:13),2
velarised f is described as occurring ‘usually before close front vowels’ (ibid., 17), but is also noted before
other vowels as an occasional variant for initial khw ‘in the speech of some speakers’ (ibid., 11),3 velarised
s is described as the common pronunc-iation ‘before close front vowels in emphatic speech’ (ibid., 17).
I have discussed elsewhere (Henderson 1985:11–12) the f~khw variation in Songkhla, a Southern Thai
dialect, and shall not be referring further to the velarised fricatives in this paper,
In 1976 an opportunity arose at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London to make
spectrograms of utterances by five Thai students (2 male, 3 female) of words containing denti-alveolar and
labial plosives before the vowel i, viz:
Set A: -pi: -phi: -bi:

‘year’ ‘fat’ (name of English letter B)
Set B: -ti: -thi: -di:
‘to beat’ ‘time’ ‘good’
Some of these spectrograms are shown in Figs.1–5.

Such a brief and limited investigation cannot, of course, claim to offer a definitive account of the acoustic
correlates of the perceived velarisation, but it is hoped that it may suggest the lines along which future
research might be conducted.
38 A PHONETIC ODDITY IN THAI
Thai presents special problems when one seeks guidance for comparative purposes from earlier
spectrographic work on initial plosives. The relevant publications in this field deal in the main with
European languages, e.g. English, Swedish, French. Such languages have only a twofold plosive contrast,
not a threefold one as in Thai, i.e. between voiceless aspirated versus voiced unaspirated in English and
Swedish, and between voiceless and voiced unaspirated in French. Nevertheless, we may reasonably expect
to find similar spectrographic markers of the place of articulation.
There is general agreement by phoneticians who have worked on the acoustic analysis of initial CV
sequences in European languages that the most important acoustic cues for the perception of the place of
articulation are to be found in the transitions to the second and third formants of the following vowel
(hereafter F2 and F3) (See, e.g., Liberman, 1954). Labials may ‘with a good deal of generality’ (cf. Fry,
1979:139) be expected to show rising F2 and F3 transitions. With dentialveolars the F2 and F3 transitions
may be expected to show a less rapid rise or none at all (‘zero’ transition), depending upon the quality of the
vowel. This correlation of vowel quality with the direction of the F2 and F3 transitions poses problems of
comparison with labials before close front vowels since the denti-alveolar transitions are regularly rising in
this context. In general, initial labial transitions tend to rise more rapidly than the denti-alveolars, with what
Fant in writing of Swedish has called ‘an emphasis on lower frequency’ in the formant pattern for the whole
stop plus vowel sequence (Fant 1969; repr. 1973:135).
Looking at the Thai spectrograms from the point of view of the place of articulation only, we might
therefore expect rising F2 transitions in all cases, with a relatively stronger rise in the case of the labials; and
a rising F3 transition for the labials, with a rising or zero F3 transition at a somewhat higher frequency for
the denti-alveolars. These expectations must, however, be modified to take account of features that may
be associated with velarisation. In considering the acoustic characteristics of French vowels, Delattre (1951;
repr. 1966; 230ff.) associates a lowering of F2 with the ‘tongue-backing’ of u as compared with y. This
accords with the research of Abramson (1962) on Thai and (1963) on Vietnamese; both have shown
that the close back vowel in these languages regularly has a lover F2 than the close front i. This relative
lowering of F2 is associated with the acoustic feature ‘flatness’, whose articulatory correlates may include
pharyngealisation or velarisation. A further factor that we might expect to be reflected in the acoustic
picture is that the velarisation quality observed for the unaspirated t is not perceived for the corresponding
aspirated and voiced plosives.
In Fig. 1 the most striking difference between the labials and the denti-alveolars appears to be in the
rising F3 for the former in all these types of plosive. F2 and F3 rise for t, but not for th and d. A similar pattern
is discernible for the second male speaker in Fig. 2. What is interesting in both cases is the absence of the
expected rising F2 transition in the labials. The male speakers do not bear out Delattre’s expectation of
strongly rising F2 and F3 for labials, nor Fry’s that the transitions will be smaller for denti-alveolars than for
labials. The picture we have is closer to that given by Fant for Swedish.
The female speaker at Fig. 3 showed marked rising F2 transitions for all labials and for t, with indications
of a rise during the aspiration phase of th, and a slight rise also for d. Fig. 5 shows quite marked rising F2 in
all three denti-alveolars, though the rise is steeper and longer for t. By contrast the labial F2 transitions are
not so steep.4 Fig. 4 presents a clear picture of a distinction in the transition patterns for t as against th and d.
In all the female speakers the F2 transition for t appears to start at a lower frequency than that for p. There is
thus a suggestion here that the velarisation of the t may be reflected in the steepness of the rise in the F2
transition as compared with p, and that the absence of such velarisation in th and d shows up in some
speakers as a zero or much weaker F2 transition.
It is emphasised, however, that before firm conclusions about the relations between the acoustic
characteristics and articulatory movements could be drawn, much more work needs to be done. We would need
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 39
Fig. 1 (Male Speaker: ST)

more spectrograms of a range of different CV combinations with measurements of the frequency of the stop
bursts and of formant frequencies. It would also be useful to confirm (or refute, as the case may be)
radiographically that tongue movement from back to front is indeed involved in what is here perceived as
‘velarisation’.
Linguists other than impassioned phoneticians may feel prompted to ask what relevance such research
could have for less specialised studies of the Thai language. It is suggested that such phonetic minutiae
cannot safely be ignored by, for example, dialectologists and historical linguists. Sub-phonemic features
may sometimes offer ‘phonetic explanations’ of sound changes and correspondences. A slight variation in
the timing of the tongue-tip and tongue-body movements in the pronunciation of a velarised apical
consonant followed by a front vowel might give rise to a diphthong, e.g. instead of ti. An
approximation of the acoustic features of labials with those of denti-alveolars, such as might arise from the
‘flattening’ effect of velarisation, might be expected on occasion to lead to their fusion, or indeed to their
confusion. The Latin and Greek correlation kw~p as in equus~hippos ‘horse’ (<PIE *ekwōs) is often cited.
Closer to Thai geographically, though probably not genetically connected, we find f~t cognates in some
Fig. 2 (Male Speaker: NP)

Tibeto-Burman languages, e.g. in Central Chin as contrasted with Northern Chin dialects. Compare fa~ta5
‘offspring, child’ (cf. Sino-Tibetan *za, Benedict 1972:27, n. 86), fa(:)r~tak ‘fir’, fi:m~ti:m ‘clear’, but
note thar~thak ‘new’.
It is, of course, not suggested that the origin and historical development of these Chin forms have any
direct connection with what has happened or is happening in Thai; the point of the example is to remind us
that sound correspondences which may be difficult to account for in purely articulatory terms may
nevertheless be entirely plausible when viewed in acoustic or perceptual terms.
NOTES
1. Since this paper was written, Professor Rischel has drawn my attention to an earlier paper which
mentions the ‘velarized quality’ of i: after both t and p (Egerod 1961: esp. 65, 75), and to two more recent
investigations of the same phenomenon by Gandour and Maddieson (1976) and by Rischel and Thavisak (1984).
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 41
Fig. 3 (Female Speaker: DC)

2. Unaspirated voiceless stops are also noted as being ‘glottal. ised’, i.e. pronounced with ‘simultaneous oral and
glottal closure’.
3. This pronunciation is, according to Harris (1972:11), regarded as ‘low class’ by most educated Siamese speakers.
4. In Fig. 5A, the spectrogram of -bi: does not show the expected voice-bar for the initial stop. It is assumed that
this was probably a chance rather than a characteristic utterance for this speaker, since in Fig. 5B we have a clear
voice-bar for the d.
5. Tone marks are omitted, since tone may vary from dialect to dialect.
REFERENCES
Abramson, A.S 1962. The vowels and tones of standard Thai: acoustical measurements and experiments. Internat. J.
Amer. Ling. 28 (2), Pt.III. (Indiana Univ. Res. Center in Anthrop., Folklore & Ling. Publ. 20).
Benedict, P.K. 1972. Sino-Tibetan, a conspectus (Princeton-Cambridge Stud. in Chinese Ling. 2). Cambridge: Univ.
Press.
Delattre, P.C. 1951. The physiological interpretation of sound spectrograms. Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc. America 66 (5),
864–75. (Repr. in Delattre 1966; page refs. are to this ed., 225–35).
Fig. 4 (Female Speaker: PT)
..... 1958. Les indices acoustiques de la parole: premier rapport. Phonetica 2, 108–18, 226–51. (Repr. in Delattre 1966,
248–75).
..... 1962. Le jeu des transitions de formants et la perception des consonnes. Proc. 4th Internat. Congress Phonetic Sci.
Helsinki, 1961 (Janua linguarum ser. maior 10). The Hague: Mouton, 407–17. (Repr. in Delattre 1966, 276–86).
..... 1966. Studies in French and comparative phoneties…(Janua linguarum ser. maior 18). The Hague: Mouton.
Egerod, S. 1961. Studies in Thai dialectology. Acta Orientalia 26, 43–91.
Fant, G. 1969. Stops in CV-syllables. Speech Transmission Lab. Quarterly progress and status report 4 (publ. 15 Jan.
1970, Stockholm), 1–25. (Repr. in Fant 1973, 110–39).
Fant, G. 1973. Speech sounds and features (Current Stud. in Ling. Ser. 4). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Fry, D.B. [1979]. The physics of speech. (Cambridge textbooks in Ling.). Cambridge: Univ. Press.
Gandour, J., & I.Maddieson 1976. Measuring larynx movement in Standard Thai using the Cricothyrometer. Phonetica
33 (4), 241–67.
Harris, J.G. 1972. Phonetic notes on some Siamese consonants. In Tai phonetics and phonology (ed.) J.G.Harris &
R.B.Noss. Bangkok: Central Inst. Eng. Lang., Mahidol Univ., 8–22.
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 43
Fig. 5 (Female Speaker: KU)
Henderson, E.J.A. 1985. Feature shuffling in Southeast Asian languages. In Southeast Asian linguistic studies presented
to André-G.Haudricourt (ed.) Suriya Ratanakul, D.Thomas, & Suwilai Premsrirat. Bangkok: Mahidol Univ., 1–22.
Liberman, A.M. 1954. (and P.C.Delattre, F.S.Cooper, L.J.Gerstman) The role of consonant-vowel transitions in the
perception of the stop and nasal consonants. Psycho-logical monographs 68 (8), 1–13. [whole no. 379, 13pp.]
Lisker, L., & A.S.Abramson 1964. A cross-language study of voicing in initial stops: acoustical measurements. Word
20, 384–422.
1963. A spectrographic study of the vowels of Northern Vietnamese. M.A. Thesis, Univ. London.
Rischel, J., & Amon Thavisak 1984. A note on work in progress: secondary articulation in Thai stops. Annual Report
Inst. Phonetics, Univ. Copenhagen 18, 243–54.
ANOTHER SOURCE FOR INFORMATION ON
AYUTTHAYĀ THAI
The , Chinese-Foreign language (bilingual) vocabularies, are a valuable

and interesting source of information for our knowledge of the earlier history of many Asian languages, the
major period of extant record being the míng (1368–1643) and Qīng (1644–1911) dynasties (Féng 1981).
These topically arranged word-lists have been well known to sinologues, and to Western ones since the late
eighteenth century (Davidson 1975:I, 296), the first of them being published, or ‘edited’, with translations in
1822 (loc.cit.). Of special relevance to South East Asia are the studies or annotated translations of the
relating to the Bā-yí (Yúnnán Tais) and Bābǎi (Chiengmai Tais) (Müller 1892); to Malacca Malay (Edwards
& Blagden 1931) and to Cham (Edwards and Blagden 1939), both of which are based on a manuscript, the
Gègúo (c.1549), in the archives of the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of
London; Vietnamese (Gaspardone 1953; Ch’en Chingho 1966–68; Davidson 1975), and Thai (Shintani
1974).
When describing a particular language these are, even so, not identical copies of one another, as
can be seen from the detailed survey conducted by Féng Zhēng (1981),1 hence this is definitely ‘indicative
of discontinuous compilation and of different periods and compilers’ (Davidson 1975:I, 299, n. 17), a point
of considerable importance when one is using one particular text as a source of definitive information in the
study of a given language (cf. Shintani 1974) The have, however, not been used extensively as a
means for the analysis of the foreign languages through a phonological study of the Chinese transliteration
characters used to represent those foreign languages, or, if it is present as well, an investigation of the
foreign languages’ script entries and a comparison of these with the Chinese transliterations as an additional
tool for interpretation. Phonological analysis has, none the less, been done in a thesis for Thai of the
fourteenth to sixteenth centuries (Shintani 1974) and also for Vietnamese (Davidson 1975).
Since it is obvious, therefore, that these for a certain language are not copies of one another, even
though some of the entries may be identical, their use is of increased interpretational value because they
provide a varied range of data for different periods in the historical development of the foreign languages
with which they are concerned. Thus, the Lockhart Chinese and Arabic Dictionary, which I found in
the SOAS Library archives through the interested assistance of our former Chinese Librarian, John Lust.,
led to my discovery of the unique Chinese-Thai in it, and has excited me to write this introductory
paper.2
This text is incomplete, comprising only six topical sections3 (cf. Davidson 1975:I, 299, n. 17), but has
505 entries (not all of which are in themselves complete, e.g. L.207). It is untitled, and has had additional
entries noted as such in margins made to its basic text; it is written in very clear major entry and Chinese
transliteration characters in míng style , above which is the Thai equivalent in an eccentric but
informative Thai script, for the word the Chinese transliteration is attempting to reproduce. This all suggests
that the manuscript is probably of late sixteenth to early seventeenth century (i.e. 1579–1630) date although
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 45
the fact that it has no title may speculatively imply that it was compiled before 1579, the date when the
Xiānluóguǎn (Siamese translation bureau) was established4 (Míngshĭ j. 324/19b1f.; note 19a10; Wild 1945:
625, 637; cf. j.12/14a7–8; cf. op.cit. j.7/13al and 15blf.) and that name was included in the titles
of the it prepared. Nevertheless, internal evidence proves the Míng Dynasty and Ayutthaya period
date of the manuscript (see L.88, 89; fig.) while external historical evidence supports this too.
The Thai script certainly differs from the standard form introduced from 1932, its eccentricity leading my
Thai specialist colleagues to maintain that it cannot have been written by a native Thai. Noted variations in
spelling may perhaps be indicative of changes in tones, and the entries also include a large Indic (Pāli?)
element,5 hence script and spelling are definitely worth further study.
The vowels recorded in the transliterations and in the Thai script range very widely, which is suggestive
of differing articulations, representing considerable change between the Ayutthaya and the Modern
Standard (=Central) Thai (MST=Th. in examples) forms, such changes requiring detailed investigation. Of
interest is the fact that the Chinese continue to use transliteration characters of the si/shi vocalics to describe
MST (cf. also Davidson 1975:I, 311) even though this is not always the case. There is, none the
less, a suggestion that a change from to a preferred more centralized was underway, since we find
it represented by in many cases of transliteration (e.g, L. 95 làng ‘waves’, Th. Ch.
kĕlĕng ; also L. 128, 158, 369, etc.), and we also find closed and longer (?because of
46 ANOTHER SOURCE FOR INFORMATION
the absence of a final consonant) in certain instances (e.g. L. 329 ‘to hold’, Th. Ch. tè
; note L. 95 above).
Consonantal changes taking place during and from the early Ayutthayā to the present MST period are,
however, more immediately obvious and of very great interest. Shintani Tadahiko (1974) has neatly
established the devoicing of sonorant occlusives6 in common Thai, dating that to the fourteenth to fifteenth
centuries; has shown that uvular occlusives also existed; that the passage from /r/ to /h/ was taking place in
the sixteenth century (though in an unspecified dialect); and that /b/ and /d/, were preglottalized by this time.
Few of these features are, on the other hand, apparent in the Lockhart . Where consonants are
concerned, evidence preserved in the Chinese transliterations and in those words in Thai script that are
identifiable is intriguing. The Lockhart tells us the following (and more) about Ayutthayā period Thai
of c. 1579–1630 (or, one hopes, even earlier!)
Finals
Stops: -p, -t, -k
-p: There is confusion over the -p, -t, -k final stops (e.g. L. 38) in many instances when they are
unvoiced, unaspirated plosives, though this is not a regular occurrence, and it is interesting to note that in
several entries, the final -p is actually transliterated by a separate character, bù (GSR 102a; e.g. L. 13
báo ‘hail’, Th. hèp, Ch. ; see also L. 12, 77, etc.), which suggests that on these
occasions it was distinctly more audible, perhaps indicating voicing and/or aspiration away from which the
language was developing at the time.
-t: In most cases the transliterations record this final accurately (e.g. L. 34 ‘to dry in the
sun’, Th. taàk Ch. GSR 291a-t; L. 194, 331, etc.) but, surprisingly, the entry for ?he Thai
word ‘preacher’ nák (L. 206, Ch. ‘eunuch’) finds both transliteration characters ending with -p. (GSR
695h, 618q). Could there be a reason for this? such as an attempt at euphony?.
-k: Normally the unaspirated velar final stop is recorded by such transliteration characters (e.g. L. 8, 17,
21, 49, etc.) but there is a suggestion that it may have been an aspirated plosive (like -p=bù?) in certain
contexts (e.g. L. 194 rùnyuè ‘intercalary month’, Th. , Ch.
cf. GSR 277).
Nasals:
-m: This seems to fall into three sets of either recipient awareness or of phonetic change—the latter
interpretation being my favourite—two of which suggest a shift from a softly articulated dental nasal final /-
n/ or velar nasal final /-ŋ/ in the Thai of this period to a bilabial voiced nasal final /-m/ in MST (=/-n/ e.g. L.
16 ‘dark’, Th. khâm, Ch. kàn ) or (=/-ŋ/, e.g. L. 7 fēng ‘wind’, Th. lom, Ch. lŭng
see also L. 30, 71, etc.). However, the velar nasal /ŋ/ is sensibly perceived as such in transliteration
throughout the manuscript (e.g. L. 10, 18, 54, 68, etc.) wherever it occurs as such in the Thai and so leaves
our intrigue with the final /-m/. Awareness of its presence, implying a growing establishment of it as a bilabial
final replacing /-n/ and /-ŋ/ in various words is made apparent by its repeated appearance in which it
employs a special Chinese transliteration character to represent it: mŭ, (e.g. L. 43, 73, 76, 92=
shŭi ‘water’, Th. Ch. nánmŭ , found again in L. 125–31, 202, 303, etc.) Changes in
articulation may well be developing here.
-n: This is recorded regularly by transliteration characters of the same dental nasal class (e.g. L. 5 yǔ
‘rain’, Th. fŏn, Ch. fěn while replacing /-m/ as well.
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 47
Initials
An initial excitement is the continuous Chinese transliteration (e.g. L. 10, 34, 182–93, 228, 319, 354, etc.)
of MST /d-/ by an initial /1-/, (e.g. L. 3 xīng ‘star’, Th. daaw, Ch. lǎo ; L.182 yuè ‘month (of
time)’, Th. Ch. lĭan ), which implies that in Ayutthayā Thai of this time the shift from /1-/ to /d-/
had not yet taken place.7 None the less, /1-/ exists in its own right in the Lockhart manuscript as a simple
initial lateral consonant as can be seen in L. 12, 305, etc.
Still relevant is the quality of the initial /r-/ in some Thai words because we find it transliterated mainly
by characters beginning with /1-/ (e.g. L. 249 wǒ ‘I’, Th. raw, Ch. lǎo ) but in a few other entries it
is very definitely an affricate or trill (roll) or tap probably alveolar in articulation /r-/, (e.g. L. 11 hóng
‘rainbow’, Th. ráŋ, Ch. rúng ),8 hence perhaps indicative of its increasing presence to replace the lateral /
1-/.
Furthermore, the possibility of the existence of a prelabialized nasal before the voiced initial /b-/,
(perhaps suggesting an implosive?), that is /mb-/, is indeed implied by the evidence supplied by examples
such as L. 109 cūn ‘village’ Th. tambon ‘group of villages’, Ch. dānmén (and L. 47, 363,
384). Similarly in the late sixteenth to early seventeenth century, Ayutthayā Thai seems still to have had a
voiced velar fricative /x/ which later developed into an unvoiced unaspirated velar plosive (/x/>/k-/) (e.g. L.
333 kuān ‘broad; to extend’, Th. kwǎaŋ, Ch. hèwǎng also L. 13), although in this
text it appears to be well on the wane. At the same time, unaspirated voicing remained dominant in words
that are now unvoiced unaspirated velar initials, /k-/ in MST (e.g. L. 103 ‘island’, Th. Ch. gè
), while the MST unvoiced aspirated velar /kh-/ is already thoroughly present in this (e.g.
‘water increases; tide rises’, Th. naām , Ch. nánmŭ kĕn ).
awareness of initial consonant clusters is naturally noticeable, as is shown by the regular use of two
transliteration characters to represent their occurrence in the Thai (e.g. L. 38 hūn ‘dusk’, Th. phlóp, Ch.
pólù ; see also L. 59, 181, 199, 268, 368, 408, etc.), with the practice where possible of vowel
euphonics in the transliterations (e.g. L. 59). The Lockhart , on the other hand, show us some things
that are no longer present in Modern Standard Thai. The /kr-/ initial consonant cluster is very obvious in the
representations in both languages, but it has definitely been dropped in some ‘modern’ words (e.g. MST
kàsàt ‘king’ is found in L. 198 ‘Emperor’, where the Thai is transliterated gélǎsà
(=kràsàt?)) while it has been reintroduced in others (e.g. L. 251 shéi ‘who?’, Th.
khray, Ch. kāi (=/khay?/)) once again suggesting that changes are underway while the word-list
preserves much valuable information on the pronunciation of its time.
/kh1-/ is frequently recorded (e.g. L. 65, 94, 133, 338, 417, etc.) but it is unfortunately not possible to
argue for the existence of a /t1-/ cluster which later develops into a /tr-/ as there is not adequate supportive
evidence. (And cf. /r-/ above).
In addition to such examples of phonetic information preserved in this and that are of relevance to
Thai of the Ayutthayā period, a few other notes of immediate interest are presented by the manuscript. Of
course, there are loanwords of Indic (e.g. L. 204=Th. mantrii; L. 269=Th. and of Khmer origin (e.g.
bureaucratic titles like L. 203, 205, 231) but a distinct Chinese presence is made clear., One example is
‘The Southern Dipper (Constellation)’ (L. 27 Nándŏu) which is transliterated as Ch. lǎo sōpǎo
to represent the Thai daaw samphaw ‘The Chinese Junk’. Another direct and forceful
example is L. 227 kè ‘guest; visitor’, Th. ‘visitor; Indian’ for which the transliteration character
is also kè!, while several others occur transliterated in the Thai as Sino-Thai pronunciations of the original
Chinese entries although they have not been identified by Thai colleagues (e.g. L. 234, 235, 255, 291) but
are indicative of a strong Chinese commercial presence during that time.
48 ANOTHER SOURCE FOR INFORMATION
Of further interest is the antiquated but societally and historically useful information provided by such
a vocabulary as this. For instance, the Buddhist monk (L. 287 sēng) becomes a luaŋ ‘royal official’ in the
Thai (Ch. transliteration luán (a fabulous bird associated with bells)) but the Buddhist nun (L. 289, Ch.
translit. luán qī ) has not been identified by any Thai colleagues via Thai script, despite the fact
that words like Th. (L. 85) ‘toll gate’, although no longer in use, are still recognizable.
Very revealing, however, are the two entries L. 213 shú ‘father’s younger brother’, Th. aa, Ch. ǎ
, and L. 218 gŭ ‘father’s elder sister’, Th. aa (both MST words meaning ‘younger paternal aunt or
uncle’), Ch. aò !9 This transcription in the Lockhart supports the existence of an early original
variant in the Middle Ayutthayā period of the pronunciation in the sixteenth century of a word now
pronounced aa in Modern Standard Thai and whose spelling with the cancelled /-w/ has been the subject of
considerable controversy,10 giving us a very early evidence that contradicts the standard Thai opinion, and
proving a change.
And so, from the preceding discussion of some of its contents, we can see that this Lockhart is of
immense importance for the information that it provides for the study of the Thai language (and associated
data to be learnt from the vocabulary) of the Ayutthayā period circa late sixteenth to early seventeenth
century (i.e. c. 1579–1630). More detailed research on the manuscript, and comparative study with other
míng Dynasty Chinese-Thai will thus undoubtedly prove of considerable value.
NOTES
1. qv. Féng, op.cit., 57; 59, pl. 5: Xiānlúo text with script; again, p. 60, pl. 31; cf. also p. 66.
2. A more detailed study of this will be published shortly.
3. These deal with: I. The Heavens; II. The Earth; III. Time; IV. People; V. Human Affairs; VI. The Human Body; a
selection that suggests considerable direct interest and involvement in terms of social, administrative, and
bureaucratic contact. I have numbered all the entries consecutively (L=Lockhart) from start to finish (1–505).
4. Interestingly, in 1511, during the míng Zhèngdé reign (1506–21), a Bābǎi guǎn was
established ( j. 13/l6a6; also Féng 1981:57).
5. Useful in this respect as an example is the transliteration of the Thai for L. 228 shén ‘spirit’, Th. (=MST)
‘benevolent spirit’, but Ch. tiĕpólǎ (=Th./theepoda/).
6. But what is the distinction between /s/ and /∫/? Most of the entries in the Lockhart manuscript record /s/ but there
are instances of /∫/, as in L. 310 dùng ‘to rouse’, Th. sàn ‘shake, tremble’, Ch. shān . Is this again the
devoicing that Shintani is discussing, from early /∫/ to modern /s/?
7. Müller (1892:2, 11) represents the same transcriptions for the word-list, with the Chinese 1- becoming a
n-. Does this mean that the Ayutthaya dialect still preserved elements of northern dialect form at the time
the was compiled? Of passing relevance, in reverse, is the fact that certain southern Thai dialect speakers
turn /d/ [?d] into /1/ [?1] (Egerod 1962:66).
8. Note, too, that some southern Thai speakers turn /d/ into [?r]. (loc.cit.).
9. Amusingly, in tai and the dialects of the Sipsongpanna, the orders are reversed, with shú (FyBro)
becoming /a:u/ and gŭ (father’s younger sister) /a/. (Yù 1980:117b, 118a).
10. Adding to this early Chinese evidence, my colleague Dr Manas Chitakasem found an interesting series of letters
between Prince Naris and Phraya Anuman discussing the topic which was most notably a subject of confusion in
the 1930s. Prince Naris (1963:3, 84) inquired about the truth of the proposition that aw was a term for a male and
aa for a female. Phraya Anuman investigated the question and replied (op.cit., 86) that in all Thai dialects with the
exception of Thai Nung both forms were used and he concluded that aw is the younger brother of the father and
aa is the younger sister of the father. Prince Naris recognizes this information in two letters (op.cit.,:3, 96;5, 211)
confirming that both terms are in use, although that the information is not usually accepted in Modern Standard
Thai (in which the spelling is standardised to make the sound identical: aa) nowadays. The Chinese entry in the
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 49
Lockhart is, therefore, probably the earliest record of these two distinct terms, adding further weight to the
value of such manuscripts in the study of South East Asian and other languages.
REFERENCES
Ch’en Ching-ho 1966–68. Annan yakugo no kenkyū. Shigaku 39 (3, 4); 40 (1); 41 (1–3).
Davidson, J.H.C.S 1975. A new version of the Chinese-Vietnamese vocabulary of the Ming dynasty, Pt.I. Bull. Sch.
Orient. Afr. Stud. 38 (2), 296–315; Pt.II. op.cit., 38 (3), 586–608.
Edwards, E.D. & C.O.Blagden 1931. A Chinese vocabulary of Malacca Malay words and phrases collected between
A.D. 1403 and 1511 (?). Bull. Sch. Orient. Stud. 6 (3), 715–49.
..... 1939. A Chinese vocabulary of Cham words and phrases. Bull. Sch. Orient. Stud. 10 (1), 53–91.
Egerod, S. 1962. Studies in Thai dialectology. Acta Orient. 26, 43–91.
Gaspardone, E. 1953. Le lexique annamite des Ming. J. Asiat. 241 (3), 355–97.
Gèguó yìyǔ c. 1549. SOAS MS 48363. 10 vols., nb. Vol. viii: yìyǔ
Karlgren, B. 1957. Grammata serica recensa (GSR). Bull. Mus. Far east. Antiq. 29.
Lockhart MS n.d. Chinese and Arabic Dictionary. CWM Collection deposited in the School of Oriental and African
Studies, London University, N3/32.
Müller, F.W.K. 1892. Vocabularien der Pa-Yi- und PahPoh-Sprachen. T’oung Pao 3, 1–38.
Naris Sarānuvathinvongs, Prince 1963. Banthu’k rū’ang khwāmrū tāngtāng (Notes on miscellaneous correspondence
“between Prince Naris and Phraya Anuman, 1936–41). Bangkok: Univ. Press, Soc. Sci Organ. Thailand, 5 vols.
Shintani Tadahiko 1974. Le vocabulaire sino-thai et son arrière-plan d’appès 1e Hūa Yŭ. Thesis, Paris,
Mémoire EPHE, VIe Section.
1675. guǎnzé comp. Lu wéiqí .
. Facsimile of 1675 ed., reprinted in Xuánlántáng cōngshū, 3rd. ser., běn 21–4. Nanking: Nánjīng
túshūguǎn, 1955. (Ed. by Zhèng Zhèndúo ).
Wild, N. 1945. Materials for of the Ssu i kuan (Bureau of Translators). Bul Orient. Afr. Stud. 11
(3), 617–40.
Yù Cùiyúng 1980. Da-yŭ (Zhōnggúo shǎoshù mínzŭ yŭyán
jianzhì, cōngshū ). Bĕijīng: mínzŭ chūbǎnshē.
THAI POETRY: PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION
Manas Chitakasem
Up till now, few people have undertaken the difficult task of translating Thai poetry into English. No
foreigner has as yet attempted to do for Thai literature what Arthur Waley has done for Chinese literature,
Donald Keene for Japanese literature, or Burton Raffel for Indonesian poetry. However, a number of Thai
intellectuals have selected their favourites to translate into English. The most popular collection of
translations is probably Seni Pramoj’s Interpretative translations of Thai poets, (1965). The book includes
examples of three main Thai poetic forms—the khlong, the and the rai—which the translator tried to
maintain in his English translation. Selected poems by some classical poets were also translated by Thong-
In Soonsawat in his small book The Thai poets (1968); Prince Prem Purachatra’s small booklet,
Introduction to Thai literature (1967) contains some good translations of poems by two great poets,
of the Ayutthayā period and Phū of the Bangkok period. Recently, the National Identity Board of
Thailand published articles on Thai poetry and translations by Prince Chand under the title Facets of Thai
poetry (Chand 1983). These authors, with the exception of Thong-In, have a near-native command of
English and should, in practice, counter Professor Echols’ remarks that much of what had been translated
into English by South East Asians was in unidiomatic English and, occasionally inelegant (Echols 1978).1
Western scholars who translate Thai poetry into English include James Mosel whose monograph Trends
and structure in contemporary Thai poetry contains helpful information on Thai poetry, especially the
, which is the most popular verse form (Mosel 1961). Among the seven poets Mosel chose to translate, only
Utcheni is regarded by the present literary community as prominent.2 Seni’s work has recently inspired
Joseph Cooke to work on Thai khlong poetry. Cooke’s article (1980) contains translations of some 13
stanzas of Thai khlong, 12 of which had earlier been translated by Seni. There is, therefore, a lot of scope
for improvement by Cooke on Seni’s work. Thomas Silcock has also produced some translations of Thai
poetry and, in 1976, undertook the courageous task of translating a full length poem called A village
ordination. In spite of the fact that this poem contains numerous technical Buddhist terms, the translator
produced a good quality translation and, in some places, managed to experiment with the special technique
of Thai internal rhymes. Egerod has also tried his hand at translating some Northern Thai poems,
called The poem in four songs, by a well known poet, Phraya Phrom (Egerod 1971). Recently, the Sathirakoses-
Nagapradipa Foundation produced a book of poetry in translation entitled Three Thai poets which contains
works by Angkarn, Naowarat, and Witayakorn, the three contemporary poets who took part in the ASEAN
Poetry festival in Jakarta in 1978 (Angkarn 1978). Translators for this volume include Sulak Sivaraksa,
Hiram Woodword, Vegn Plenge, and Michael Wright. In addition, The ELEK book of oriental verse, edited
by Keith Bosley (1979), includes a section on Thai poetry which contains translations of both classical and
contemporary poetry. This work is the result of a collaborative effort between a Thai and an English poet.
Professor E.H.S.Simmonds has also translated some classical poems both from the khlong and the
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 51
verse forms although his work is yet to be published. The present paper attempts to discuss some of the
problems of translation based on the work of translators mentioned above.
Although Thai classical poetry provides poets with five types of verse forms3, today only two, khlong and
are most commonly used. Both khlong and are believed to be a genuine Thai creation and Thai
translators are often at great pains to make them known to their foreign friends. This is true especially for
the khlong metre which both Seni and Prince Chand have been most insistent about imitating in their
English translations. The view that Thai poetry should be translated into English in verse which maintains
the original Thai verse form has been strongly advocated by Prince Chand (Chand 1977). Questions could
be raised in this context as to whether the Thai metre should be used at all, or whether a translator should try
in some way to convey to his readers some idea of a Thai khlong or , or ignore them completely and
use the nearest poetic form available in English.
The layout of the khlong metre is:
This is called khlong suphāp, the most common of the khlong metres. The minimum unit of a Thai
verse form is a bāt (stanza). A khlong stanza has four lines (bāt). Each line has two parts (wak) which
are separated by a space signalling a pause in recitation or a hum when sung. A khlong stanza is thus
written, purely for the eyes’ mind and the ears’ mind, in two blocks. Each line of the first block has five
syllables, whereas in the second block, the first three lines have two syllables each but the last line has four
syllables. Two optional syllables may occur in the first and third lines. Thus the number of syllables is
restricted to seven and nine syllables per line with a space between the fifth and sixth syllables. Eleven
syllables are placed with prescribed tone marks; four with a (mai thō), seven with a (mai ēk). These prescribed
tone mark syllables may be replaced by stopped ending syllables (often known as dead syllables) which do
not bear tone marks. However, a syllable with a mai ēk must be replaced by a dead syllable headed by a
high or mid class consonant, and a mai thō syllable must be replaced by a dead syllable headed by a low
class consonant.
Phonemically speaking, in modern Thai terms, the position in which a prescribed mai ēk syllable occurs
must be a syllable which has either a low tone or a falling tone, whereas the position prescribed for a mai
thō syllable must have either a high tone or a falling tone. Rising tones and mid tones may occur elsewhere
but never in the prescribed tone marked positions
Stanza 1:
(1) hahǎay kratàay tên chom can
excl! hare jump admire moon
(2) man ciam tua man tàm
it not know its place low base
(3) nók yuuŋ hàak krasǎn hǎa mêek
peacock if desirous seek cloud
(4) man ciam tua tàm diarachǎan
it not know its place low base beast
52 THAI POETRY: PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION
Stanza 2:
(1) hahǎay kratàay tên chom
excl! hare jump admire moon
sǔuŋ sòŋ sùt taa sùu fáa
high up out of reach towards sky
rádii sàt sùu kan naa
season heart content animal mate each other
yàa wâa raw câw khâa yùu din diaw
don’t say we’re high low at level ground, same
Above are the original Thai khlong stanzas laid out line-by-line with an English equivalent below each word
or ex-pression. These two khlong stanzas are probably the best known as well as best loved examples of
repartee in Thai because the most celebrated poet Sīprāt was one of the two participants. The first is the
address of a high-born court lady and the second is Sīprāt’s immediate reply. This kind of extemporised poetic
game was common in the 17th century during the reign of King Narai. khlong poetry competitions must
have been a fairly regular event at that time since the French envoy, Simon de la Loubère, who visited
Ayutthaya in 1678, did not fail to notice that ‘The Siamese do conceive easily and clearly, their repartees
are witty and quick’. (de la Loubère 1969:60).
Seni Pramoj is the first to stimulate the use of the Thai Khlong metre in an English translation. Here is his
translation of the above repartee:
Oho! Bunny loves High moon.

It will fall so soon From height.
As bees’ swarm will cool In clouds,
Such love fancy flight. It might not be.
Aha! How foolish Such care,
Reaching far out there The height.
Say I, who would dare To love lonely?
Ah, as if you might Walk this earth. alone.
(Seni 1965:23)
Both quatrains of the Thai begin with a seldom encountered word hahǎay. Although it is an exclamation,
the /y/ ending gives it a poetic quality pleasing to Thai ears. At the same time it carries a suggestion of
mockery indicating that the speaker wishes to ridicule the addressee. Whether the rather melodramatic ‘Oho!’
and ‘Aha!’ quite capture the subtlety of the Thai is some-what questionable. Questionable also, is the
translator’s choice of the word ‘bunny’ with its connotations of play-groups and playboys. Seni probably
wants a two-syllable word here in order to make seven syllables in the line but in satisfying the metrical
requirements, he has opted for a wildly inappropriate English word. He did succeed, however, in producing
the rhymes for moon-soon and cool although cool should be pronounced coon, in the Thai way of reading
the final -l if the true rhyme is to be obtained. Height and flight are also rhymed. His sacrifice of peacock
for bees is, however, unforgivable. Here, the Thai flavour which could have been conveyed in the
translation is totally lost. It is common knowledge among Thais that hares come out on nights of the full-
moon and peacocks are . seen more often on cloudy days. In Thai, the double meaning expressions kratàay
chom can (the hare admiring the moon) and nok yuuŋó kin mêek (the peacock eats the cloud) must have
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 53
stemmed from this. Thus, the Thai operates not only at a symbolic level but also at a quite literal level—a
fact quite unapparent in the English translation. Clearly, in insisting on the Thai khlong metre, the translator
has had to make considerable sacrifices to the meaning of the original, the result being a translation of very
dubious value.
Here are the remaining translations of this famous repartee:
(1) Au clair de la lune Moon’th hare

Low station unaware of self
Peacock cock’th eye where clouds ride
Low station, low shelf low underwear.
The hare at the moon doth aim

The hare do you blame him not
We tread this self same good earth
‘Tis spring, well you wot, when creatures wed.
(Chand 1977:349–50)
(2) Poor hare jumps at moon? Dotes so!
Does not see how low his place.
Like peacocks who’d know the clouds,
Does not see one ace his place, the rogue.
Poor hare dotes, jumps at high glow—
As far as eyes go in sky.
But at times hearts flow; then all beasts mate.
Queen, do not berate. My case fits you.
(Bosley 1979:114)
(3) Ha! Fie! Silly rabbit jumping. Eyes aglow
To catch the moon, knowing not how low Your humble state!
Vain flutt ‘ring moth, aspiring so To mate with flame.
Knowing not how low your true estate! Silly creature! Thing of nought!
Ha! Fie! Silly rabbit jumping. Eyes afire
To catch the lunar light shining high’r Up above.
Yet beats in season yield to their desire, Each to each.
Say not that slave and lady cannot love. We both are human, thou and I.
(Cooke 1980:430)
(4) Shall a bunny hare leap to kiss the moon,
Remembering not its own low degree?
Shall a vain peacock view with clouds so soon,
Khowing not its place, its base pedigree?
A bunny hare doth leap to kiss the moon,
When he aims high, and look into the sky,
And knows that mating season will come soon

Yet we both tread earth, thou as well as I.
(Prem 1967:4)
Translation 1 is by Prince Chand who had Seni’s translation before him. French is used in the first line of
stanza 1. He could not have been serious. Indeed, the poem as it stands makes little sense. What does he
mean by “moon’th hare”, “cock’th eye”, “low underwear”, and “wot”? Readers can only conclude that the
translator’s interest is simply to show off the khlong rhyme patterns of which he is so proud. Such a
translation can surely help prove that the old Italian expression ‘traduttore, traditore’ is true at least in
translating Thai khlong poetry into English.4 Translations 2 and 3 appear to be better than Seni’s and Prince
Chand’s, the translators doubtless being aware of the existence of these earlier efforts. They could hardly
fail to improve, but one still wonders at their adherence to the Thai khlong metre, although the rhyme does
not come off absolutely, nor does it produce any Thai flavour.
Prince Prem, whose translation is the fourth above, chose to ignore the Thai khlong metre. Being bilingual
as well as a student of English literature, he must have been aware of English ears in deciding on something
more acceptable to his audience with the familiar rhyme ABAB. Clearly, his translation is the more faithful
and few would doubt that it is more beautiful.
Seni’s reason for imitating the Thai metre is clearly a patriotic one. He knew that others before him had
translated some works of Thai poets but he said, ‘It seems a pity that they found it necessary to adopt not only
the English language but also the English poetic forms so that little is left in the translations of true Thai
art.’ (Seni 1965:1). He therefore tried to ‘retain the mono-syllabic characteristics of the Thai language and
to follow closely the system of internal and external rhymes’. By so doing, he hoped ‘the beauty of Thai
poetry may be better appreciated by our foreign friends’. (Seni 1965: 2).5
The belief that the form of the model must be imitated or copied is surely a mistake. The motive, like that
of Prince Prem, should be invention rather than imitation. Prince Prem produced a better translation as a
whole because he made no attempt to reproduce the Thai stanzaic structure but was able to reproduce the
essence of the poem in an acceptable English metrical form.
As far as Thai poetry is concerned, rhyme is an absolute necessity. And because Thai is a tonal language
(the obligatory placement of tones at particular syllables of obligatory tone placement in khlong metre is
still unclear), we can say with certainty that the basic forms are more like the underlining tempo and rhyme
scheme of a song than the structure of a poem in English. A tone melody has to be woven into the
basic rhythm and obviously, there is nothing anyone can put into an English translation to convey this.6 If
Seni, Prince Chand, Bosley, and Cooke wanted to use the Thai khlong metre, then English stress rhythm
ought to have been used to take the place of Thai tone melody. But tone melody and stress rhythm are so
different that the feeling of the original may not be conveyed at all.
When we turn to we see that it is much less complex than khlong. The rhyme scheme, as is
shown below, is an eight-syllable metre, with permitted variations from seven to nine syllables and with a
rhyming syllable at the end of every alternate line. The lines form a quatrain, with one rhyme zlinking each
quatrain to the next.
This really looks less complex, and is somewhat similar to the Malay and Indonesian pantun, but with a
tone, usually non-specified on every syllable, instead of four stresses on each line. There is certainly more
room to experiment and W.A.Graham (1924:284–5) has done just that. James Mosel (1961:19) later used
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 55
Graham’s translation to illustrate the rhyme but thought that the translation was too free and unfaithful
to the original and so tried his own version. It is interesting to compare the two translations.
For the Thai poem used by Graham, which was probably taken from an old song, see the following page.
nók khûn raw kàw

pay rûam kàp nók
châaŋ kraray náam cay
nók lǒŋ càak kroŋ
phǒo phlàt phlàt pay cay
ca may rúucàk thák câw
bun dâay rûam câw khûn
dâay khiaŋ kan thâwnán
(Chand 1977:332)
In these translations, A is Graham’s liberal rendering, in which he restricts himself on the rhyme, C
is Mosel’s more literal translation in prose. B is a close translation into English prose.
A B C
The Minah, once my pride, my own O my Minah bird from former time The Minah bird, mine from former
times
Has flown off with the Popinjay You have gone off to be on the same Has gone off with the parrot, and all
perch as the parrot
Ah me! what shall my poor heart Well, well, how heartless you are Alas! Damn my heart and character
say?
Left, for gay and gaudy parrot. You swallow that bird’s bait and stray You fell for that bird and so have
from your golden cage strayed from your golden so
Broken my heart, Oh cruel fate Soon you became addicted to your As soon as you fled my heart broke
newfound pleasure
Changed my state, we meet not You have so changed that you I’m almost changed beyond
again. couldn’t recognize your owner recognition, you’d not know your
owner
A B C
Luckless, all hope to hold vain. My merit is so small that I do not get My merit was so small, I didn’t get to
to share my life with you. dwell with you, Minah bird.
I feel your love is at an end. And to support you being together I only got to carry you carefully,
side by side close to me, and that was all,
(Graham 1924:285) (Chitakasem) (Mosel 1961:19)
Line 1: Both Graham and Mosel are reasonably close to the original,
Line 2: Graham had to use ‘flown’ in order to rhyme with ‘own’ and as a result left out ‘to perch’ and ‘to
share’. Mosel is slightly incomplete and incorrect.
Line 3: Both are wrong. The poet was not speaking to himself but was talking to the bird. is an
exclamation like ‘Well, well!’.
Line 4: Graham got his rhyme ‘gay’ with ‘say’ but the rest is not quite right. Mosel is correct.
Line 5: Both wrong. The expression cay is an idiom ‘to be spoiled, to develop a passion for’ and here
it is the bird that is the subject of cay , not the poet.
Line 6: Graham chose ‘state’ to rhyme with ‘fate’ and ‘again’ to rhyme with ‘vain’ but in so doing has
departed considerably from the original. Mosel is again well off the mark in wrongly identifying the
unmarked subject, as Graham had done; in fact, the poet is addressing the bird. Graham was forced to miss
a link rhyme—‘again’ should rhyme with ‘parrot’, the last syllable of the previous quatrain.
Line 7: Graham has ‘vain’ to rhyme with ‘again’ but his ‘luckless’ scarcely conveys the meaning of the Thai
Buddhistic term bun meaning ‘merit’. Mosel is good.
Line 8: Graham slipped here—‘feel’ should rhyme with ‘vain’. ‘I fain your love?’ Mosel seems all right,
although his attention to the Thai oei for the last word seems an incongruous and embarrassing finale.7
Apart from the verse forms, poetic diction is surely at the core of the difficulties and frustrations a
translator has to face when attempting to tackle Thai poetry. Thai poetic diction consists of mostly Pali-
Sanskrit or Cambodian sources as well as obscure and often obsolete vocabulary. Classical poets were
required to learn such words, perhaps by memorising them and to reproduce them in their compositions.8
These socalled ‘high style’ vocabulary items form the bulk of Thai classical poetic vocabulary which is
highly valued by Thai literary scholars. The first two khlong stanzas discussed earlier appeared to be
relatively easy because they were extemporized composition. masterpiece, khlong kamsūan
, a nirat is extremely difficult.9 Merely to have read this poem is regarded as in itself an indication of being
highly educated and well-read. The late Khun Phra a renowned scholar of Thai literature, stated that those
who regarded themselves as poets or experts in poetry often asked him if he had read khlong kamsūan
. 1960: p.C.) The same can be said about other classical poems of a similar period such
as Yuan Phai, Phra and Thawāthotsamāt. The unusual syntax which appeared in these poems is, perhaps,
also the result of the Pali-Sanskrit influence. The royal children started by learning Khmer script and
learned to read Pali when they were only seven or eight. In the fifth reign of the Bangkok period, Prince
Wachirayan, the Prince Patriarch, said in his autobiography that his knowledge of Pali and Khmer
vocabulary helped him to broaden his comprehension of Siamese. (Reynolds 1979:8). The degree of
difficulty in both vocabulary and syntax for translators was clearly pointed out by Griswold and Prasert Na
Nagara when they translated Yuan Phai. They modestly aimed at clarity since their main interest was
historical rather than literary. Even so they said:
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 57
We found that the vocabulary includes many words that are lacking in all dictionaries known to us.
The syntax was eccentric, sometimes to the point that we are uncertain which is the subject of a verb
and which the object, and some places we had to guess at the meaning or give up altogether.
(Griswold and Prasert 1976:142).
Some Thai scholars admit that many words in khlong kamsūan remain obscure and that they have
to make guesses when reading the poem 1960:ii). Prince Phitthayā (1952 310) once challenged
anyone who claimed to comprehend yuan Phai completely to come forward to receive a financial reward
from him. Even to a well-educated Thai, fully equipped with literary handbooks and other such aids, Thai
classical poetry still presents formidable obstacles. It is a field not readily accessible to the casual passer-by
and those who really come to understand and love it are few in number. Like greenhouse plants they are
confined within a limited space and one has to get into the greenhouse to admire and smell the scent of their
flowers. Since one knows that the owner of that greenhouse is proud of his plants and is kind enough to
invite you to see his green-house, you would have to say, if he ever asked, that his plants look lovely and
the flowers smell nice.
This explains why few translators have dared to touch Sīprāt’s poem. And when they did try, only
selected stanzas of their choice were possible. Professor Simmonds, for one, has undertaken this daunting task.
Two examples from his work will be examined in order to illustrate the complexity of such a project.10 1A
below is the first example of translation and under it, 1B is the original khlong stanza with the approximate
English equivalent given below each Thai word or phrase.
1A
Far from your flesh I sleep so cold, Cold to the bone in the bitter wind That pierces me through and
through. At Bang Thornao, exhausted by the cold, Could I but hold your hand twined And entwined!
1B
(1) càak maa náaw
come away beloved soft flesh sleep cold
(2) nǎaw lom chaay sâap chúu
cold exhaust because wind blow pierce beloved
(3) càak baaŋ thoranaaw naaw nom
come to Bangthoranaw lemon/bend down breast beloved
(4) nǎaw kûu mûn
cold exhaust hand beloved relieve soft hand
First, we can see that four different expressions are used when the poet addresses or refers to his beloved:
nák nîn or perhaps nák nîn on the first line; chúu the last word of the second line; , the last word of
the third line; and , in the middle of the last line. Let us now consider the underlined words.
nák nîn: nák is a word familiar to students of modern Thai. As an adverb it means ‘so, ver’, as in nǎaw
nák ‘so cold’ As the head of a noun compound, it often means ‘the one who is good at…’, as in nák phûut
‘the one who is good at speaking, i.e. a speaker’. In line 1 we do not know whether nák is an adverb
modifying the verb preceding it or whether it is the head of the compound nák nîn. But what does nîn mean?
Some experts suggest it must be a variation of nîm ‘soft’ and thus nák nîn is the poet’s reference to his
beloved—something like ‘the soft one’ (Chanthit 1951:63). The next word is easier. means ‘meat,
flesh’. So can we have nák nîn all three syllables together to mean ‘the beloved’ i.e. the soft-fleshed
one?
The translation of the first line, so far, can be rendered as ‘the poet coming away from his soft-fleshed one
— sleep cold’. Who sleeps cold? Is it the poet or the beloved? Two experts ( 1960:17; Lanlanā
1970:17), suggest the poet, while the third (Chanthit 1951:63) insists it is the beloved. Could it be both the
poet and the beloved, we might ask?
Line 2 is fairly straightforward. As usual, it is the poet who is the speaker. So, here we have ‘I, the poet,
am cold and exhausted because the wind pierces through me—my body’. Here again, syntactically the wind
can pierce through the beloved, chúu, as well. But all three experts agreed here that it should be ‘O
beloved’. To the non-specialist this seems a rather arbitrary decision, especially in view of the arguments
for ‘poet and beloved’, and the statement that the wind piercing through the beloved is a syntactic
possibility.
In line 3 the underlined words are naaw and nom. This is where we run into difficulty. It is part of the
nirat convention that the poet uses the name of the locale for punning. Here Thoronaaw is the name of the
locale and the meaning of naaw depends on which tone we assign to it since the old writing system does not
show the difference. As it stands, it means ‘lime’, but if it is to be pronounced with a high tone náaw then it
means ‘to bend something down’ and it should mean ‘cold’ if pronounced with a rising tone nǎaw. We are,
therefore, faced with three possibilities. (1960:17) decided it should be náaw ‘to bend something
down’, while Chanthit (1951:63) preferred naaw ‘lemon’, but as the lemon tree is full of lemons its
branches will droop down or bend down because of the weight of the fruit. Lanlanā (1970:17) simply said it
is naaw ‘lemon’. However, one ought to consider naaw and nom together as a unit and she decided it means
‘to touch the breast’.
Line 4 is very difficult to understand, let alone to translate into English. The syntax is unanalysable, with
mûn at first glance appearing meaningless. One theory is that in the North and North Eastern dialects, the
vowel U is often pronounced ua, and therefore mûn should be mûan meaning ‘good, comfortable, soft’. mûn
then means ‘soft to the hand’, but to whose hand? According to one of the experts this line should read
‘No matter how cold and exhausted I am, when touched by your soft hands they (the cold and exhaustion)
disappear’. 1960:17), so Professor Simmonds’ translation sticks closely to the Thai, as close as
one can perhaps hope to while maintaining, or rather creating, a sense of poetry in the English,
For the next example of translation, a similar layout is given in 2A and 2B below:
2A
The boat glides fast to Thung Phranaya town
But I see no peopled town,
Only the bare fields empty of rice.
Thus is my heart empty, far from you.
All I can do is crane my neck to the empty sky
Calling to you, searching for you all in vain.
2B
(1) càak maa thóŋ phayaa
come away boat glide/rush Place name
(2) plàaw pliw cai hǎay nâa
town empty blow stunned with fear O beloved
(3) càak maa yia maa òk plàaw
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 59
come away boat come disheartened empty

(4) òk plàaw waay fáa râm hǎa ron hǎa
lonely look across sky moan look for you
This piece presents fewer problems than the previous one and the link between the literal translation and
Simmonds’ poem can be seen fairly readily. It is worth pointing out, however, how yia in line 3 comes to
mean ‘boat’. The word for boat, , occurs in line 1. According to most authorities:
1. It is possible for /r/ to become /y/, for example the Thai called Rangoon yâaŋkûŋ;
2. The vowel in Central Thai becomes ia in Northern and North Eastern dialects, so yia is ‘the
boat’.
The third line of Simmonds’ translation has no correspondence with the Thai original; here the translator,
following the example of Khun Phra has added the reference to the rice field for the sake of
clarification.
Although high-style vocabulary is not the only element that distinguishes an ordinary poem from a
masterpiece, it is clearly an important factor as far as Thai critics are concerned. Indeed, the sheer quantity
of such words inevitably makes vocabulary a key issue. No Thai literary scholars, in speaking of khlong
kamsūan , Yuan Phai, and Thawāthotsamāt, fail to find the vocabulary obscure, archaic, or foreign,
as it maybe, anything but a positive attribute; they regard it as something that can only be understood and
appreciated by careful study, but something that is essential if one is to learn the Thai language and preserve
Thainess. Chanthit, a prominent literary scholar, while praising Yuan Phai as a wannakam lōet ‘an excellent
work of literature’, condemed Manora Khrang Krung Kao which contained mostly non-poetical high-style
vocabulary as a wannakam lēo ‘an ordinary or base piece of writing’.(Chanthit 1967:46).
The key word for Thai poetry is a word of Cambodian origin meaning ‘sweet, melodious,
musical, harmonious, worth listening to’. The appreciation of poetic expression is part of a more general
esteem for the ability to phūt ‘to speak euphoneously’, which is a highly prized social skill (Mosel
1961:9). First and foremost, a good poem must sound because the ear-music and the poetry are one
and inseparable. A good poet must have a musical mind and ears that can hear the lines in terms of melody
when recited or sung. This is probably why puns, synonyms, and alliterations are abundant in Thai poetry,
especially in poems regarded as to Thai ears. According to Prince Phitthayā, whether a poem is
good or bad depends on its rot kham, ‘the flavour of the words’—i.e. the choice of words, and the rot
khwaam ‘the overall flavour’ of the chosen words when put together (Phitthayā 1952:310). So, in theory,
one may argue that it does not matter what type of words they are, classical or non-classical, Thai or
Sanskrit, humble or courtly, so long as their choice and use are artistic or poetic and thus produce the effect
of being .
Prince Thammāthibēt’s composition of boat songs and nirat poems is regarded as the most of all
Thai poems.11 The author of a university text book on Thai literature wrote:
‘These poems are so captivating and so breathtakingly sweet that there can be no comparison. The
poetry sounds as if every letter in every word was still wet with the coat of sweetest honey’ (Sitthā
1972:135)
a vivid description of what makes something to the Thai ears. Here is a kap stanza from one of
Čhao Fā Kung’s compositions to illustrate the Thai ideas of melody and euphony, or .
sùk sǒm phâat

two happy two make love
sùt sawàat sùu sǒm
two top of passion two make love
sanìt nítthra rom
two close deep in sleep
klom kliaw chúu sùu sǒm
arms around each other two make love
ā ē (Thamm thib t 1973:49)
Thai has a great wealth of synonyms or near-synonyms which poets had at their disposal. These cannot
be adequately matched in a translation and there is little a translator can do about it. In the stanza above we
see three different expressions which could only be rendered into English as ‘make love’. But none of the three
Thai expressions would ever offend even the most prudish of Thai old maids, nor excite the embarrassed
sniggers of a class full of spotty schoolboys. They are beautiful, poetical sounding words chosen for their
euphoneous effect. Together with the alliteration of the s’s and other assonance patterns, they give the verse
a harmonious structure as a whole, The Frenchman de la Loubère was very observant about this aspect of
the Siamese language in the 17th century. He said: ‘I have seen some expressions which to me appeared full
of smuttiness and gross immodesty although this had not the same effect in their language’ (de la Loubère
1969:60).
Another characteristic of Čhao Fā Kung is his use of puns. Punning is created by using a syllable of the
names of natural objects such as birds, plants, flowers, and so on, which are conventional love stimulants
and thus finding appropriate words with the right meaning to express love-longing through the punning
technique.12
sòok dûay naaŋ klay

Beakea frutescens sad because beloved far
taa chanǎy hàaŋ
Sandoricum indicum please eye how far from you
sabâa bâa cìt cay càk khàat
Entada phaseoloides mad (as if) my heart cease to breathe
tôn kàyhây hây khrûn hây naaŋ
Caparis flavicas cry already weep for you
(Thammāthib ēt 1973:88)
This stanza illustrates the type of puns used by Čhao Fā Kung. Each line of the khlong stanza contains the
name of a tree, the last syllable of which also has another meaning. Thus the poet makes use of the meaning
of the syllable in the name of the tree for punning and then to express his love-longing. Essentially this kind
of poetry is untranslatable.
So far, no one has attempted to translate Čhao Fā Kung’s works into English. However, a German
scholar, Klaus Wenk, has tried his hand at the ‘Boat songs’. He admitted from the start that a translation
could never be entirely satisfactory and had to be approached by paraphrase. Several lines or phrases could
only be interpreted in footnotes; in fact, footnotes occupy nearly half his translation. Such a euphoneous
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 61
poem with all its alliterations and synonyms must surely indicate that Čhao Fā Kung had sets of vocabulary
at his disposal. No less than 30 epithet pronouns occur in a mere three pages. The following list gives them
with an English equivalent and Wenk’s German translation. Some of these epithet pronouns are a
combination of others; e.g. no. 17, čhao eo bang, is a combination of no. 2 čhao and no. 10 eo bang. Most of
the longer ones are made up of combinations in this way. We can also see that alliterations are already
formed in many of these epithet pronouns, e.g. in numbers 12, 13, 18, 22, 24, 25, 27, 29 and 32. Anyone
attempting to translate a poem with pronouns such as these will have difficulty in finding suitable English
pronominal phrases to match the Thai.
Epithet prnonus wenk’s German English equivalent of german

1. nang Lady (f. counterpart of ‘master’) dir thee
2. Čhao Lady (identical with ‘lord’) dich, du thee, thou
3. younger sibling dir, du thee, thou
4. kaeo jewel sie her
5. anong girl (Skt *** ‘of kama, god of dich thee
Love)
6. suda girl (Skt. suta ‘daughter’) dich, du thee, thou
7. love (Skt. smara ‘Love, God of …meiner Liebster (of) my best beloved
Love)
8. tenter Liebste O best beloved
9. nong ram (5+beautiful) (Skt. rāma) …meine Dame, die Liebeinswete my lady, worthy of love
10. eo bang slim-waisted dich schlanke schöne thee, (O) slim beautiful one
11. wanida beloved (Skt. vanita ‘mate, wife) die mir Vertraute the (one so) intimate to me
12. suda duang 6+orb denie thine
13. suda duang chan 6+orb of the moon (nach) der Liebsten wie des the best beloved, like the orb of
(Skt. candra ‘moon’) Mondes Rund the moon
14. sai sawat strings of passion du Liebensweote thoou, (so) worthy of love
15. chom nang cpimtemamce+1 …dir,…deine thee, thine
16. sam wai of tender years (Skt. vayas de Zarte thou tender one
‘age’)
17. čhao eo bang 2+10 du Schlanke schöne thou, slim beautiful one
18. čhao ta tru 2+eye+beautiful meiner schonen herrin (of) my beautiful lady
19. khwan net soul (here=apple) of (my) eye Allerschönste most beautiful of all
(Skt. netra ‘eye’)
20. nuan phachong creamy+meticulous der so vollendet schönen (of) the one of such perfected
beauty
21. sawat summit of passion du Schöne thou beautiful one
22. nuan nang creamy+1 …meiner Allerschönste thou most beautiful of all
Epithet pronouns: Wenk’s German English equivalent of German

23. chom ngam countenance of beauty Schon bist du zart und jung, thou art beautiful, tender and
young
24. sam sangiam 16+chaste (same as 23 above)
25. sam sanguan 16+cherish du Zarte thou tender one
26. nong yao 5+young (Skt. yauvan ‘youth’ dir thee
27. čhao chom chai 2+countenance dir…an Eleganz thee…in elegance
+radiant
28. *** nopphamat 3+gold +gold dich…Glänzende thee…(0) shining one
of 9th grade purity
29. kaeo komon 4+tender du blühender Lotus thou, (0) blossoming lotus
30. *** khlao friend+fondle, caress der (feinen) Freundin sie zu longing to embrace my (soft)
umarmen partner
31. sai chai strings of the heart dich thee
32. sut sai chai ends of 31 Liebste best-beloved
33. kaeo phii my+4 du, meine Glänzende Thou, (0) my shining one
34. kaeo ta 4+(here=apple) eye dich…Glänzende thee…(0) shining one
Egerod made a literal translation of similar epithet pronouns occurring in a Northern Thai poem ‘Four
songs’. Some of his translations emerge in English as follows:
Northern Thai English

tây Lady of the Chinese silk from the South
câw wan yen Lady with colours of the day cooling towards dusk.
can Lady silk colour of the moon.
câw thalon Lady of the glorious mirror.
(Egerod 1971)
These literal renderings simply fail to convey the significance of the compliment and are therefore rather
meaningless without a detailed explanation in footnotes.
Attempts to reproduce the subtlety of the Thai pattern of assonance and alliteration have also been made
by some translators. Silcock, for one, tried to capture the Thai use of alliteration but could manage to
recreate the exact Thai pattern only on the first line of the quatrain. He maintains some alliteration in his
other three lines but without the same embellishment as the Thai;
The sharp sharp eyes, the long long hair, the fair fair maidens, Like fragrant gardens, and vibrant
voices, will soon be gone, Ailing old age will beat the body down, And when all’s done we’ll rot, not
handsomely.
(Silcock 1976:39)
One of Thailand’s greatest poets is Phu, and naturally his works are often translated. The two
translations given below are of the same piece, taken from one of Phu’s nirat poems. Translation
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 63
A is Keith Bosley (1979), and is the result of a collaboration between a Thai poet and an English poet;
translation B was similarly made but the collaboration is between a Thai not necessarily a poet, and his
Professor of English in America (Thong-In 1968). An interesting point that is worthy of mention is the
rendering of the Thai phon and of or witthayāthōn. The Bosley version rendered
phon as ‘passion petal’ and as the ‘hero’. The Thai-American effort was more ambitious and
fanciful, with phon as ‘the fruitful lady of graceful moonlight’ and as ‘the Noble
General of the March Intellect’. Both phon and appear frequently in works of Thai
literature; they are creatures of Himayana forest. phon are the ‘maiden fruit’ which, when ripe, become
full-sized beautiful maidens. Once picked, however, they can stay fresh for Just sixteen days and then they
rot like any other fruit. The are neither humans nor gods but can wash themselves in the
god’s Anodat pond. They each have a magical weapon resembling a knife which enables them to fly in the
air. When the maiden fruits are well formed, the come to pick them and keep them as
their maids for sixteen days. The are reported to do practically nothing but sit around
relaxing after swimming in the pool with the gods They indulge in sex and there is a Thai folk belief that
they like to come to make love to young virgins while they are fast asleep (Samnuan 1964:49–54). A
translator would indeed need a footnote when translating such complex characters.
Be thou a tree then let me on thee settle;

Let me brood on a branch, bide in the thick.
Be thou a lunar beauty, Passion Petal,
I beg I, as the hero, fly to pick.Be thou a lotus, let me be the bee,
To court and suck and make much of thy pollen.
Be thou the water, let me dragon be
That I praise and enjoy, once in thee fallen. Be thou the cooling cave, then, swan of thine,
I’ll swirl and dwell’ and enter in a flood.
Be thou, oh coolest flesh, in fact divine,
Then let me, charmed by thee, be as a god.
(Bosley 1979:114)
If she were the wood, I would rather be the bird

brooding the branches
of the tree in the greenwood; If the fruitful lady of graceful moonlight
may I be the Noble General
of the March of Intellect;If the lotus lily, myself is the carpenter bee to enjoy courting the pollen;
Being the Riverflow—I hope to be a dragon
to sojourn—yearn the sea at
all times;If the heartcave, [‘d rather be the swan
descending to dwell in the
rocky lodge;If her cool flesh is the godly fairy
I beg to dwell her enchanting
charm to be the divine nature.
(Thong-In 1968:11)
The Bosley translation gives one the impression that the poem has aged more than the original actually has
because of the archaic pronominal forms, ‘be thou’ and ‘of thine’, etc. Phu simply used phîi and
(literally: older brother—younger sister), the conventional forms of address between lovers and
married couples even today. Whether a translator should attempt to render a foreign work into an archaic
form of his own language is essentially a matter of choice. Clearly, the issue becomes more and more
complex where, for example, one of the indications of ‘archaicness’ in the English is the use of pronouns, while
the Thai pronouns of that period have not aged one bit. And what the foreign student of Thai will tend to
identify as ‘archaic’ vocabulary will crop up with wilful regularity in the works of modern Thai poets.13
Like translation itself, problems of translation go on. Thus, Thomas Silcock, after the painstaking work of
translating a Thai poem, wrote to his envoi, imitating a Thai style of krathu:14
So still in vain we must pursue,

Ends that we can’t combine
This strict rich rhyme to render through
English our floating line,
Verse where words waver and wriggle on a hook
Translation never ends, we close the book.
(Silcock 1976:93).
NOTES
1. As will be discussed later, the translators’ competence in English was marred by their insistence on using Thai
metrical forms in English.
2. Utcheni’s real name is M.R.Prakhin Chumsai. A poet and social critic who was active in the 1950s, her poems
and critical writings in prose have been published in two volumes; fā khlip . Bangkok:
Duangkamon, 1973 and Dao naphā din. Bangkok: Phikkhanet, 1974. A short account of her work and
personality is well depicted by Thomas Silcock in his book, Proud and Serene. Canberra: Australian National
University Press, 1968.
3. These are khlong, chan, kap, and rai. For details see, for instance, Robert B.Jones and Ruchira
Mendiones, Introduction to Thai literature (Cornell Univ. South-east Asia Prog.) Ithaca, New York: Cornell
Univ. Press, 1970.
4. Works on translation by Prince Chand have recently been published by the newly established National Identity
Board in order to propagate and preserve Thai heritage. See Chand (1983).
5. It is also interesting to note that Seni’s translation was published by SEATO.
6. An informative discussion of can be seen in Mosel (1961).
7. The Thai poetical sounding word oei is used to mark the ending of a poem. This kind of device cannot be
translated.
8. The text for poetry composition, , provides an extensive list of poetical vocabulary which it
requires poets to learn and use in their composition. See Phra , . Bangkok: s.n.,
1969.
9. For the discussion of nirat poetry and especially khlong kamsūan see Manas (1972).
10. Professor E.H.S.Simmonds has translated many stanzas from Thai classical poems and it is hoped that he will
publish them in the near future.
11. Prince Thammāthibēt is better known as Čhao Fā Kung, a renowned poet of the late Ayutthayā period.
12. See Manas (1972: p.157ff.) for discussion on the technique of punning.
13. See, for instance, Angkarn Kalyanapongs, Lamnam Phūkradu’ng. Bangkok: Su’ksit Sayām, 1969.
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 65
14. This is like an anagram where the first syllables of the lines form a sentence, here ‘So ends this English Verse
translation.’
REFERENCES
Angkarn Kalyanapongs, Naowarat Pongpaibool, Witayakorn Chiengkul 1978. Three Thai poets. Bangkok: The Siam
Soc.
Bosley, Keith (ed.) 1979. The ELEK book of oriental verse. London: Paul Elek.
Chand Chirayu Rajani, M.C. 1977. On translating Thai poetry. J. Siam Soc. 65(1), 293–364.
1983. Facets of Thai poetry. Bangkok: Amarin Press.
Chanthit Krasāesin 1951. Prachum wannakhadï Phāk nu’ng: kamsūan . Bangkok: Thai watthanā phānit.
..... 1967. Wannakam lōet wannakam Lēo samai Ayutthaya. Sangkhomsāt parithat 4 (4), 39–47.
Cooke, J.R. 1980. Thai Khlōng poems: descriptions and examples. J. Amer. Orient. Soc. 100(4), 421–37.
de la Loubère, S 1969. The kingdom of Siam (Oxford in Asia Historical Reprints). London: O.U.P.
Echols, J.M. 1978. The literatures of Southeast Asia in translation: some observations. In The past in Southeast Asia’s
present (Selections from the proceed. Annual Meet. Canad. Council Southeast Asian Stud. McMaster Univ. Now.
4–5, 1977). (ed.) G.P. Means. Ottawa: Secretariat, Canad. Soc. Asian Stud., 182–90.
Egerod, 1971. (trans.) The poems in four songs: a northern Thai tetralogy (Scandinavian Inst. Asian Studies
Monograph Ser.7) Lund: Student-litteratur, Curzon Press.
Graham, W.A. 1924. Siam Volume 1. London: Alexander Moring Limited.
Griswold, A.B., 1976. A fifth-century Siamese Prasert Na Nagara historical poem. In Southeast Asian history and
historiography essays presented to D.G.E.Hall. (eds.) Cowan, C.D. and Walters, O.W. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press,
123–63.
Lanlanā Siričharōēn 1970. Khūmū’ kamsūan sīprāt. Bangkok: Rōngphim khurusaphā.
Manas Chitakasem 1972. The emergence and development of the nirat genre in Thai poetry. J. Siam Soc. 60(2),
135–68.
Mosel, James 1961. Trends and structures in contemporary Thai poetry (Data Paper 43 Southeast Asian Program).
Cornell Univ. Ithaca, New York.
1952. Sāmkruang. Bangkok: Samnakphim Prince chaiyarit.
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Reynolds, Craig, J., 1979. (trans.) Prince Vajirañanavarorosa, Autobiography: the life of Prince Vajirañana of Siam,
1860–1921. Athens: Ohio Univ. Press.
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Thailand.
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THE LATER SHORT STORIES OF SĪBŪRAPHĀ
David A.Smyth
Introduction
Kulāp Sāipradit, or ,1 as he is better known, is one of the most important figures in the
development of modern Thai literature. His novel, Lūk Phū Chāi (A Real Man), first published in 1928, is
often cited as the first Thai representative of the genre. Further novels and short stories quickly followed,
and soon established him as a popular and prolific writer. His later works, dating from about 1949, showed
an increasing concern with social injustice—a concern which was to lead to censorship of his writings,
imprisonment and, finally, self-imposed exile in China. A gradual relaxation in the censorship laws in the
late 1960s, followed by the radical change in the political climate between 1973 and 1976, brought
later more ‘political’ works back into circulation and it is on the basis of these more than a
dozen short stories,2 two novels and numerous articles and translations—that much of his present reputation
rests. His short stories, in particular, have been eagerly read by young people who have found, in his
outspoken attacks on the rich and powerful, a voice for their own newly awakened idealism. These stories
have been reprinted frequently, often in university student magazines, and have served as a model for a new
generation of socially committed authors.
Despite his importance, little has been written in English about . The most detailed treatment
(Batson 1981) provides biographical information and short summaries of his five best-known novels; a few
of his short stories are discussed briefly in relation to the development of the short story genre as a means of
social criticism (Manas 1982), and reference to his role in the early development of the Thai novel is made
in works by Simmonds (1964), Khwandee (1975) and Wibha (1975). While the last few years have seen an
upsurge of interest in among Thai critics, with several useful studies published (e.g., Čharat
1974; Rungwit 1979; 1980), it is somewhat surprising, in view of their popularity and influence,
that very little critical attention has been given to the short stories written after 1949. This paper attempts to
redress the balance to some degree by discussing some of the political and literary aspects of these later
short stories.
Brief biographical details3

was born in 1905 in Bangkok and was later educated at the prestigious Thepsirin School.
Although little is known of his early life, it is generally assumed that his family background was middle-
class. While he was at school, he became interested in writing and journalism, and it was in this profession
that he was to make a living, albeit at times a precarious one, for most of his life. A man of exceptional
energy and ability, he had, before the age of 30, edited several of the most important Bangkok newspapers
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 67
of the period, including the influential Prachāehāt, a daily paper set up immediately after the 1932 coup
with the specific aim of promoting democratic ideals among the people. In mid-1947, he left Thailand on an
eighteenth-month study tour of Australia, and it was during this period that he became increasingly
interested in socialism and Marxism. These influences are clearly discernible in much of what he wrote
after his return to Thailand in 1949.
Throughout his life, was deeply concerned with. social injustice and, on a number of
occasions, he ran into trouble with the government for his outspoken views on social and political issues. In
1932, the magazine Krung was closed down temporarily as a result of official displeasure with one of
his articles; in 1941, his serialised history of the 1932 coup in the daily newspaper Suphāp Burut, of which
he was the founder, was brought to an abrupt end under government orders; and then, a few months later,
his vociferous opposition to Thailand’s entry into the Second World War on the Japanese side led to a
prison term which only ended with a change in government in 1944. In 1952, he was back in prison again,
starting a thirteen years and four months’ prison sentence; a newly introduced anti-communist act provided
the Phibun government with the opportunity to clamp down on anyone with suspected leftward leanings,
and , who had been particularly active both in the Thai branch of the Stockholm-based Peace
Movement and in his condemnation of Thailand’s involvement in the Korean War, was obviously a prime
target. In fact, he was released under a general amnesty in 1957, having served little more than four years. A
few months after his release, he accepted official invitations to visit first Russia, in 1957, and then China in
1958; however, while he was in China, a coup staged by the military strong man of the period, Sarit, was
soon followed by another wave of widespread arrests of politicians, writers, and others with known or
suspected leftist tendencies. Aware of the fate that would surely await him, , decided not to
return to Thailand, and was granted political asylum in China. There he remained until his death in June
1974. Apart from the fact that he made broadcasts over the ‘Voice of the People of Thailand’, the radio
station of the Communist Party of Thailand which was located inside Chinese territory, very little is known
of this last period of his life.
The stories
Between 1949 and his arrest in November 1952, published at least thirteen short stories, six of
them appearing in the weekly magazine, Piyamit, and the remainder in magazines such as Mē Wan
Čhan, Sayām Samai, Rōengrom, Thai Rāi Dū’an. Since 1973, many of these stories have
appeared in collected editions, often published by various groups of students. For example, a volume
entitled Rūam Rū’ang San Rap Chai Sībūraphā ( collected short stories for
life) ( , 1974b) containing six short stories, first appeared in April 1974, sponsored by a group of
students at Chiangmai University. It went through a second printing just two months later, and a third
edition appeared the following year.4 In the immediate aftermath of the bloody riots at Thammasat
University in October 1976 when the Thanin régime was carrying out public burnings of subversive
literature, books once more disappeared from the bookstalls, and just as in the previous
decade, no printer would dare to publish them. This time, however, an easing of restrictions followed more
swiftly and, by 1979 a fourth and more comprehensive edition had appeared, with four more stories added,
and a long introduction, consisting of essays by three different critics ( 1979). Another
collection, in which seven of these same stories appeared, was also published in 1974, under the title of the
first story in the collection, Rāeng Thōe (Give us a hand), the sponsors of this edition being another
group of students calling themselves ‘The United Front of Students Against Imperialism’ (Nāeo Rūam
Naksu ‘ksā čhakrahqandiniyom). Apart from the various collected editions, later
68 THE LATER SHORT STORIES
short stories continue to be reprinted frequently in magazines and anthologies of modern short stories. Under
the present political regime they are no longer regarded as subversive, nor labelled ‘a danger to society’.
Social inequality and the sufferings of the poor provide the background for most of the stories under
discussion. frequently gives detailed descriptions of the low quality of life of the working
class, the cramped and smelly living conditions, the long hours of physical toil and the ever-present threat
of sickness with its consequent loss of wages. His workers—whether farmers or factory workers, samlor*
drivers or servants—are honest, hard-working folk, generous and reasonable by nature. Often, the plot
involves them in direct confrontation with an exploiting ruling class of frivolous-minded aristocrats, hard-
nosed businessmen and corrupt representatives of the government. Two of best-known and
most highly-regarded stories, Khon Phūak Nan (Those kind of people) ( 1979: 77–89) and
Rāeng Thōe ( 1979:197–213) represent a scathing attack on the attitudes of this privileged
élite. In Khon Phūak Nan, the people referred to in the title are the poor; the story itself consists of three
separate incidents and the resulting confrontations which occur between Lūang Chōmchailai, a titled
but progressive-thinking girl of twenty and her conservative parents. The story opens with Čhao Khun
trying to persuade his daughter, Chōmchailai, to continue her education in America; his attitude is
scarcely different from that of many of the tens of thousands of Thai parents who have sent their children
overseas in the three decades since the story was first published:
Čhao Khun was of the opinion that if you were a Thai, then you couldn’t really command
respect if you hadn’t been to study in America or England, so he advised his daughter to continue her
education in America. He even went on to say that there was no need for a girl to study anything too
demanding. This being the case, Chōmchailai ought to go to America for two or three years, study
make-up, and then come back with some kind of diploma and speaking English. That would be quite
sufficient. ( 1979:78)
Chōmchailai is not interested in buying the education that would further validate her status and she points
out that, despite the hundreds of Thais who have studied abroad and brought back specialised knowledge,
there has been little change or progress in the lives of the majority. Her father is reluctantly forced to admit
that his idea of progress—new buildings, wide roads, neon lights and fast cars—is unknown beyond the
suburbs of Bangkok.
The second confrontation, which is linked to the story by a flashback, occurs when the cook’s little daughter
becomes seriously ill. Chōmchailai wants to rush the child to hospital immediately in her parents’ plush car,
but her mother will have nothing of it; the child is a scruffy little urchin, she says and proceeds to argue
callously about the different needs of poor people:
Before, when they were sick, if they needed to go to the hospital, they didn’t go by car, did they? So
how did they manage to survive then, without any great trouble? Tiu [Chōmchailai’s nickname], don’t
go getting yourself involved so much with those kind of people; they’ll start forgetting themselves.
And as for sickness, they’ve long been used to that, and they’ve got their own ways of treatment. If
they hadn’t, they’d all be dead by now. Just look at the people upcountry; they’ve never seen a doctor
or a hospital. How do they manage to survive for generation after generation? And as for Granny
Khrām [the cook], well, she’s a hundred times luckier than those kind of people in being able to live
* A tricycle pedicab. (Ed.)

LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 69
in the city amongst people of our class. She even gets too much medicine and up-to-date advice—far
more than people of her class need. ( 1979:87)
Despite Chōmchailai’s own secret efforts in getting the child to hospital, the little girl dies; Chōmchailai is
convinced that she would have lived if she had been born into a wealthy family, such as her own, and had
been given proper treatment right from the beginning.
Chōmchailai’s friendship with Bao, the son of the family’s driver, provides the final incident in which
attacks the attitudes of the wealthy élite. Such is her parents disapproval of this relationship,
that they order the boy to leave the house. An industrious, intelligent and idealistic young man, Bao
explains his imminent departure to Chōmchailai: ‘My crime is that I’m not from the same class as his daughter
[i.e. you] and he thinks it is sinful for his daughter to come and talk with people like me’. ( 1979:
87)
While Chōmchailai’s parents are thoughtless, narrow-minded snobs, the rich man in Rāeng
Thōe is a much more striking personification of cold-hearted exploitation; Chōm-chailai’s mother’s attitude,
not that it excuses it, derives largely from ignorance and thoughtlessness; the rich man of the second story,
however, is of the entrepreneurial rather than aristocratic class, and his scornful disregard for the suffering of
the poor is based on the market value of labour. At the beginning of the story, Māen, a poor farmer, lies sick
at home, too poor to buy the medicine necessary to cure himself. His wife goes to the nearby house of the
rich man to ask to borrow 100 baht to buy medicine; Māen’s parents once worked at this house, and Māen
himself has often been hired for odd jobs by the owner, so it is reasonable to hope that some assistance
might be forthcoming. In fact, Māen’s wife is turned away the first time because it is night time and, when
the owner finally consents to see her the next day, he remains unmoved by her pleas, saying that it is not his
responsibility. Māen’s friends gather together and raise the money and in due course he recovers. The
situation is then dramatically reversed when the rich man’s car gets stuck in the mud late one night as he is
driving his wife to hospital. He is forced to beg for assistance, which Māen gives rather reluctantly, pointing
out that it is no thanks to him that he managed to recover from his own serious illness.
An important theme running through Rāeng Thōe, and a number of other short
stories, is the gradual awakening of political consciousness among the poor. Anger at the rich man’s attitude
creates a feeling of group solidarity among Māen’s friends, and between them they raise the money for the
medicine. Later, as they all sit around talking at Māen’s house, the conversation turns to labour, money and
power; Māen asks:
Who is it, who builds these houses and even the beautiful palaces? Isn’t it us poor people?… Who is
it, who grows rice to feed the whole country? And who saves us from starving to death? It’s us poor
farmers again… Who is it who builds canals and roads? Isn’t it us who build them?… How are all
these things built? Is it with money or labour? I never thought about this problem before until I heard
about the contemptuous things that man from the green house said. ( 1979:204–6)
And in the final incident, when Māen and his colleagues at first refuse to help, the author is clearly pointing
out the potential power of a politically aware working class.
Khao Tū’n (He’s waking up) ( 1979:215–28) is, as its title suggests, another story in which
the poor hero comes to question certain things that he has always taken for granted. Am, an impoverished
samlor driver, rents a single room in a slum area, which he shares with his wife, two young children and mother-
in-law. The daily struggle for survival is made harder when he has to find the money to repair the damage
done to the roof in a typhoon; to make matters worse, he injures himself while helping a friend and, like
Māen in the previous story, is forced to stop working for a while. Eventually he recovers, thanks to a
donation of medicine by a kindly old man, and the story can progress from description of the overcrowded
living conditions of the poor to the author’s main point. Am arrives home late one lunchtime, feeling full of
the joys of life; his children are eagerly waiting as he has promised to take them to Sanam Luang to see the
official handing over of weapons by the American government to the Thai government. He explains to his
wife that he’d met a group of fellow samlor-drivers from the North-East who were discussing the poverty
rife in their home provinces. One of them suggested that they made a small collection and sent it as their
contribution towards alleviating the problem but he was immediately challenged by several others; one of
these points out that they’ve scarcely enough money for themselves as it is, another argues that it will get
them into a ‘nice bloody mess’ ( 1979:223), while a third says he is talking like a communist.
Amidst these objections, a fourth driver speaks out with rousing words, demanding:
What the hell’s it got to do with politics? It’s about helping our starving brothers. But if that’s what
you’re going to call politics, then I’m all for it! A nice bloody mess, I call it, if we don’t help. All
we’re talking about is helping—why should that get us into a bloody mess? And if that’s what you
call a bloody mess, then a bloody mess is alright by me. And you, whoever it was, who just said wait
and let the rich people help our brothers—have you ever seen them ever once stretch out a hand to
help us?…
When we were still living with our parents and grand-parents, working in the ricefields, the rich
made money and rice available for us to borrow. Did they ever help us? When you fell upon hard
times, when you had no rice to eat or grow, and they gave you rice, did they do it because they loved
you? And when you had rice, how much of it did they take away? How many times their original loan
was it? Don’t you see? And you’ve still got the nerve to say wait for the rich to help us!
We sweat and toil away in the scorching sun, wading through mud in the middle of the paddy-
fields, exhausted almost to the point of dropping; the rice ripens and then do you know where it
disappears to, and where all the money goes, and why we have to live on the bread-line? I’m not
clever enough to tell you how it disappears, but one thing I do know for sure is that our rice or our
fruit can’t just disappear into thin air. And I’d say it flows into the hands of those people that you
dream are going to help us. My God! You leave your parents, you leave the rice fields, none of you
for very long, and then you just go and forget all about the past. ( 1979:223–4)
Such eloquence carries the day; a collection is made and they march off to the newspapers office to hand in
their donation. Am’s own small donation has awakened in him a new sense of meaning to life and an
awareness that he can be of genuine use to his fellow men. And when his wife reminds him of his promise
to take the children to see the weapons, he can no longer see the outing in quite the same light:
Do you want me to take you and the children to see them showing off weapons for killing innocent
people?… I don’t want to see my children getting enjoyment out of weapons that are used for killing
people. I saw the picture in the newspaper of those Koreans who were blown up by petrol bombs. I
was horrified. That picture really shocked me with the cruelty of war. It made me hate war. I don’t
want to see a show of force in support of war—I’d like to see a show of force in support of peace. (
1979:226)
Writing at a time when Thai troops were fighting on the U.N. side in Korea, scarcely endeared
himself to the authorities with such vigorous anti-war sentiments; still less so with his ending, in which Am
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 71
and his wife are about to join the Peace Movement—an organisation which the government was to claim
was a mere façade for communist subversives.5 Indeed, a month after the appearance of Khao Tū’n in
Piyamit in October 1952, was arrested and shortly afterwards sentenced to thirteen years and
four months in prison.
Prakāi Mai Nai Dūang Tā Khao (The new light in his eyes) ( 1979:231–46) which
was published in the same magazine (Piyamit, June 1951) some sixteen months earlier, covers essentially
the same ground as Khao Tū’n, that is, the political awakening of the individual, the selfishness of the rich,
the Peace Movement, and the author’s own opposition to Thai involvement in the Korean War. It lacks,
however, something of the vitality and directness of the later story; the alcoholic aristocrat who has fallen
on hard times never seems a very plausible character for a radical conversion and his credibility is further
undermined by the fact that he is used as the butt for some humorous remarks by the young factory workers
who rescue him as he lies in a drunken stupor slumped against a tree at Sanam Luang and exposed to the
torrential downpour. But is not one to let a weak plot dilute his didactic mission; indeed, as
always, he makes skilful use of the single realistic incident to illustrate his point about morality. In this
story, as the old drunkard lies out in the pouring rain a wealthy young couple pull up briefly and, assuming
him to be a labourer, make derogatory remarks about the working class before driving on to their society
function. The poor factory-worker pair are rather more concerned, but when they attempt to flag down a
passing car in the hope that the driver will assist, they are reprimanded at gunpoint for stopping a VIP’s car
and then, when they finally decide that there is no alternative but to spend their own hard-earned money on
hiring a samlor to get the man home, the samlor driver, aware of their act of kindness, refuses to accept any
payment.
Unlike many of short stories, this one provides an example of practical, grass-roots
political activity; the two factory workers are already committed peace activists, and they spend all their
free time asking people at bus-stops and in cinema queues to sign their anti-war petitions. At the same time
as it puts the anti-war argument across, the story aims to show that peace activists are not dangerous
subversives, but ordinary, hard-working, compassionate people, and it implies that, by voicing their
opinions, ordinary people might be able to influence government policy. If the old drunkard’s signature on
the peace petition—hence the ‘new light’ of the title—seems scant reward for the workers’ diligence, and a
rather flat conclusion to the reader, the author has at least achieved his main aim of getting his message
across when the girl factory worker
says:
I think that the people are beginning to wake up… Now, when you ask them to sign the petition
demanding the five great powers to make peace, you don’t have to spend so long explaining as you
did when there was the first petition. Most people seem well aware that, for their own good, and for
that of their family and country, they must do something or other in support of world peace. They’ve
begun to realize that whether they choose peace or war is up to the people themselves, not simply a
matter for two or three people to decide. Those people who refrained from signing the petition were
mainly government officials; they said they’d dearly like to do something to bring peace but, that by
signing, they would be endangering their jobs. Several told me that they were looking for a chance to
leave government service where they were forced to sell their freedom so cheaply. People are
gradually beginning to understand that if government is going to be government by the people, or
democratic, then its policies must be those of the people, and the rulers of the country must respect
those policies. ( 1979:240–1)
But commitment to high ideals and a desire to improve the lot of one’s fellow men are by no means the
exclusive preserve of the working class in stories; nor would it be fair to say that the author
is primarily concerned with class struggle and strengthening class divisions. What does concern him is that
people, whether rich or poor, should behave in a virtuous and compassionate way towards fellow human
beings. Chōmchailai, in Khon Phūak Nan, is a clear example of how a rich person should behave; and there
are other minor characters—the man who gives ointment to Am in Khao Tū’n, and the judge who helps pay
for the tram driver’s son’s education in Āi Nū Long Thāng (Nipper’s got lost) ( 1979:173–94)—
who readily fulfil the traditional obligations of the more fortunate towards the less. This idea of the
‘virtuous man’ finds fuller expression in two stories, Nak Bun Čhāk Chāntan (The saint from Shantung) (
1979:113–35) and Khao Lū'ak Lāmbārēnē Nai Sayām (He chose his Lambaréné in Siam) (
1979:153–70). In both stories, the author avoids the issue of class and class conflict, using the
heroes to set an example to readers by their selfless devotion to others.
The hero of Nak Bun Čhāk Chāntan is Alan Norton, an Australian volunteer worker in North China
during the late 1940s; the story is told in the first person by Nātayā (or ‘Netti’), a Thai girl studying
medicine in Australia. She meets Alan when he returns on a brief fund-raising mission in which he gives
public talks on the plight of the people in China. The lecture, and Alan’s subsequent conversations with
Netti, provide the author with the opportunity to exercise his journalistic talents in presenting readers with.
up-to-date information on the hardships endured by the Chinese people and the efforts of certain foreign
individuals to alleviate their plight. Yet, contrary to the author’s intentions, the story holds the reader’s
attention, not because of the inspiring example that Alan Norton sets, but rather through the successful
interweaving of a romantic plot. This is a quite deliberate device, employed in several of the stories,
although judging from the title of this particular one, it seems to have achieved undue prominence.
Netti, a typically apolitical and socially unaware Thai student, is deeply impressed by Alan’s idealism
and self-sacrifice, and from there, in world, falling in love is only a step away. Netti’s
deliberate flouting of Thai social conventions—romance with a ‘farang’, inviting him to go dancing, and
then as they walk home, agreeing to his request to put his arm round her waist ‘for warmth’—while to some
extent reflecting the author’s own progressive attitudes towards women, cannot fail to excite the average
reader’s interest for rather less high-minded reasons; and when Alan proceeds in ‘true confession’ style to
reveal how his affair with his fiancée, Emma, came to an end, the story has drifted away from sermon and
into romance. Psychologically orientated readers might delve further and conclude that Alan seemed to
suffer more from a damaged ego than from genuine heartbreak, for his intention of offering Emma the
chance to back out of a life of hardship in a remote corner of China has been neatly pre-empted by her
opting out of her own accord, thereby denying him (without any intended irony) the chance to play the
generous-hearted saint! Alan and Netti discuss the nature of love and it comes as no real surprise when, at
the end, she promises to take her medical skills out to China as soon as she has finished her studies, the
implication being that they will marry and 1ive happily ever after, caring for the poor in China.
While the story does, to some extent, ‘reflect the spirit of internationalism making sacrifices for the
disadvantaged’ ( 1979:35), it clearly branches off into a direction that the author had not
intended—the direction of the kind of romantic love stories he had been writing two decades earlier.
Aware, perhaps, that romance had led him to stray, made a more disciplined attempt at the
theme of virtue personified a few months later in Khao Lū'ak Lāmbārēnē Nai Sayām. As one might guess
from the title, the life of Dr Albert Schweitzer provides the inspiration for this story; after studying
medicine in England for ten years, the hero, Pan, returns home determined to set up a hospital and free
school in his native Phetchaburi province, despite the attractive offers of high positions in government
service. Three years pass, and the first person narrator of the story comes across Pan’s name in the news-
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 73
paper as the newly elected M.P. for Phetchaburi. At first he assumes that Pan has simply abandoned his
ideals in favour of a quick and easy way to wealth and power; later, when they meet, Pan assures him that
his ‘Lambaréné’ is making slow but sure progress, but that he has decided to enter politics in order to
further spread his vision. The story ends with Pan expressing the hope that he will be able to fuse the
qualities of two other doctors whom he (and ) greatly admired—Dr Albert Schweitzer and Dr
Sun Yat Sen6—in bringing justice and an improved standard of living to the rural people.
With no female characters in this story, there is no danger of romance distracting the reader from the
sight of virtue. However, it is never very exciting to read about pure unadulterated goodness, and with the
social criticism lacking a little of the author’s customary fire (the trains not running according to the timetable
is one of the more serious complaints), the distinctly vague nature of the Utopia that is supposed to be
developing somewhere in Phetchaburi and the five-page potted biography of Albert Schweitzer which is
squeezed in rather gratuitously, there is little really to attract the reader,
Māhāburut Čhantima (The Great Man in Chantima’s Life) ( 1979:137–51), which
appeared a month before Khao Lū'ak Lāmbārēnē Nai Sayām, is another rather unconvincing attempt to
write about a ‘good’ person, partly because of the problem of making virtue sufficiently interesting, and
partly because the virtuous ‘hero’, Nopphadon, is already dead before the story begins. Čhantima, his
widow, marries a rich and successful, funloving businessman, Kaiwan, who is the antithesis of her first
husband, a serious-minded writer. Čhantima adjusts well to her new spouse and finds him much better
company than the ‘great man’ of the title: ‘When she thought of her first marriage, it made her think that she
had been living with a teacher, not a close friend like Kaiwan was’ ( 1979:140).
After a while, things begin to turn sour, and she tires of the endless social rounds, eating, drinking and
throwing up at a different friend’s house each month. When her husband begins to stray a little, she turns a
blind eye, but seeks solace in the letters she has kept from her deceased first husband. This infuriates the
jealous Kaiwan and a violent quarrel ensues. They are eventually reconciled, Kaiwan admitting the error of
his former ways and, in an ending which, if nothing else, indicates active encouragement of
reading and public libraries, the couple work together to publish ‘The selected letters of Nopphadon’. The
story ends with news that the book has received wide acclaim and that the profits will be put towards setting
up the ‘Nopphadon Public Library’.
In Khao Tū ’n and Prakāi Mai Nai Dūang Tā Khao, uses the story, or at least part of
it, to criticise directly the government’s policy in supporting the United Nations in the war in Korea. The
stories Kham Khān Rap (Answer my call) ( 1979:249–61) and Kae Phlat Fūng (The sheep
that strayed from the flock) (Sībūraphā 1979:91–111) also represent strong attacks, not on a single specific
policy, but on traditionally respectable and respected institutions of Thai society. The former consists
entirely of a discussion (a technique that the author was to use later in his short novel Čhon Kwā Rao Čha
Phop Kan Īk (Until we meet again) ( 1979)) between two university students. Thanong has
decided to cut class and persuades his girlfriend, Rati, to join him. As they walk together hand in hand, he
questions the purpose and élitism of the university; he sees it not merely as a sterile institution with
inflexible rules which deny real freedom of thought, but as an integral part of a system which perpetuates
social injustice:
As long as we think only of ourselves—that is by settling down to study so as to get a piece of paper
to sell to the highest bidder in the market place for cheats and tyrants, we’re praised for being nice,
quiet polite kids. But if we spend some of our time thinking about other people, thinking about the
suffering, the oppression and the injustice that exists here and there, about the swindling, the moral
bankruptcy and the decay in our society, and we complain or speak out in all sincerity about our
dissatisfaction, then we’re met by reproachful looks and accused of being disruptive kids and real
trouble-makers. (Sībūraphā 1979:225)
The story ends with Thanong announcing that he is going to drop out of university, just two months before
his final exam, and try to find a ‘new way’; marriage to Rati is to be postponed, yet she appears to be quite
prepared to wait until he sorts himself out, in spite of the conventional middle-class attitudes she has been
voicing throughout their conversation.
Kae Phlat Fūng deals with the problem of overseaseducated students who return home full of
knowledge and ideals, eager to play a role in the development of the country, only to bump up against an
inflexible bureaucracy. The story opens with a female first person narrator (who subsequently disappears
altogether from the story) sailing back to Thailand after studying in Australia; the Norwegian captain of the
boat tells her of two other young Thai students he had known, who had also studied in Australia. The first,
Hathai, arrived home to find his fiancée on her death-bed and as a result, threw himself body and soul into
improving workers conditions by establishing cooperatives. He ran into trouble with the authorities and was
arrested, and by the time his name had been cleared, he had spent six months in prison. During this time, all
his hard work had been under mined and, Hathai, the sheep who strayed from the flock by trying to fight
against the system and do something practical to help the poor, had become a disillusioned alcoholic. Anop,
like-wise, was an idealist when he returned, but he quickly discovered that his colleagues in the government
department where he worked were too busy occupied with their own petty jealousies, back-stabbings and
internal intrigues to take any interest in developing the country. A senior colleague, in advising Anop to be
a little more flexible and realistic, sums up the author’s criticism of the bureaucracy:
I admire all of these plans of yours. I’m sure they must be very good. And if they could be
implemented, they would doubtless benefit the country greatly. But the trouble is, who are you going
to tell them to? Haven’t you heard what people are talking about nowadays? They’re talking about
corruption, and they’re not saying corruption is a terrible thing. Rather, they’re wondering how they
can find a way of soliciting a bribe, because if they do, just once, they can hit the jackpot in a much
bigger way than if they worked their guts out for the government for five or ten years. It’s worth it.
People curse you for two or three weeks and then you quit. After that, the power of your wallet makes
you a big man in society. Don’t you realize, in Thai society people don’t despise dishonesty nearly as
much as they do poverty? ( 1979:106)
Anop gradually comes to see the futility of trying to change things by himself, and joins the flock; the
Captain bumps into him one evening in a nightclub and soon notices that Anop now talks not of improving
his country, but only of enjoying himself, and in a style, moreover, that could only be financed by the
accepting of bribes. The story ends on a profoundly pessimistic note, with Anop asking the Captain not to
judge him too severely, and the latter replying ominously: ‘It’s not your fault, Anop. I understand only too
well. But I hope you won’t go too far. I feel sorry for your country’. ( 1979:111–2)
One final story is Āi Nū Long Thāng, in which a poor tram-driver struggles to put his son through school,
only to see him fatally wounded in an opium-running misadventure, shortly before he was to take up a
coveted place at university. The first three-quarters of the story are devoted almost entirely to a description
of the sacrifices the father makes—the long hours of work during the day, the extra work at night, giving up
his drinking habit and going into frequent debt to a neighbour—all the time countering his wife’s more
limited ambitions for her son’s future, in the hope that the boy will have a better chance to make something
of himself. Having passed the university entrance exam, Āi Nū goes up-country on a hunting expedition
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 75
with his more well-to-do classmates. Ashamed of his poverty, he is readily lured into a scheme that
promises easy returns, especially when he is assured that it has the backing of an influential person and that
there will be no risk involved. The death-bed scene where he admits his mistake and begs forgiveness from
his father provides a suitably tear-jerking finale, and lest the reader should feel inclined to draw the
conclusion that one should not try to rise above one’s station, as the mother had been saying all along, the
author swiftly steps in to point the finger of blame at society:
His brief life, once innocent and beautiful, had fallen a victim of the greed and dishonesty, the
wrongdoing and shamelessness towards sin which had overwhelmed society during his lifetime. (
1979:194)
Some Final Observations

Sībūraphā’s main aim in the stories discussed here was clearly social criticism; indeed, so fundamental and
so explicit is the didactic element that many of these stories might more appropriately be termed ‘parables’.
At the same time, however, he wished to reach as wide an audience as possible, which meant to some extent
catering to popular taste. Thus, several of his stories are an odd mixture of political tract and popular
romance, the latter sometimes merely hinted at, at other times an integral part of the plot. In Khon Phūak
Nan, for example, there is a suggestion of romance between Chōmchailai and Bao—the classic rich-girl-
poor-boy theme—with the story ending as the thought flashes through Chōmchailai’s mind: ‘that it was
indeed possible that in the future she might choose a hero from among “those kind of people” to be her
partner’. (Sībūraphā 1979:89)
Prakāi Mai Nai, Dūang Tā Khao and Kham Khān Rap both involve young couples, partly at least
because the author knew that they would hold the reader’s attention more readily, since there is a certain
curiosity involved when observing mixed couples even if their words and actions are rather ordinary.
Indeed, in the latter story, absolutely nothing happens; the story is pure dialogue, broken up occasionally by
such observations as: ‘the girl couldn’t bear the silence. Silence was a thing frightening for girls of her age’
( 1979:253). But with the young couple walking along flouting convention by cutting class and
holding hands, and with rebellious ideas swirling around in Thanong’s head, even the reader left cold by the
short-comings of tertiary education will feel some incentive to read on to the next page. In Nak Bun Čhāk
Chāntan the romantic element clearly got out of control and dominated the whole story; in Kae Phlat
Fūng it is confined to a tear-jerking episode near the beginning, in which Hathai’s fiancée dies just hours
before his boat docks; criticism of government failings is forgotten for several pages as some standard
romantic devices are paraded: first there is the rather whimsical touch of asking the girl to wear the same
dress she had worn on the day of departure five years ago; then there are the premonitions of impending
doomthe ghostly sighting on board the ship, the family waiting at the quayside dressed in mourning, and the
mistaking of the younger sister for the dead fiancée; and finally the death-bed scene, complete with ice! Of
course, there is a practical side to this which goes beyond merely catering to popular taste, for if we shed a
tear in sympathy with Hathai at his loss, perhaps we will sympathise too with his ideals, workers
cooperatives and all, and not jump to hasty conclusions that he’s a communist trouble-maker.
The western reader, approaching these stories out of context of the times when they were written, is
inevitably going to be left with certain reservations; for one thing, didactic literature of this kind is too far
removed from the mainstream of the Anglo-American tradition to be considered quite respectable, while the
frequently made criticism that such works lack artistic merit is, in the case of several of these stories, not
without justification; and the melodramatic and overly-sentimentalized treatment of the love theme, a
perfectly acceptable approach in Thai fiction, sets up a further cultural barrier for a readership not
accustomed to such a convention in serious modern writing. As if these general problems were not enough,
many of the stories themselves are full of their own little shortcomings which can only be attributed to the
carelessness or clumsiness of the author himself: do we really want to know about Schweitzer’s organ
performances (Khao Lū'ak Lāmbārēnē Nai Sayām) ( 1979: 158)? Why, we ask, does boring old
Nopphadon (Māhāburut Čhantima) (Sībūraphā 1979_140) manage to achieve the status of a great man
(Sībūraphā 1979:150–51), especially since Kaiwan has already redeemed himself? And where does ‘I’ (Kae
Phlat Fūng) (Sībūraphā 1979:91–3) disappear to, after introducing the story Kae Phlat Fūng? The
list could go on and on.
But despite the many literary shortcomings of these stories, new readers still find in them a tremendous
freshness and vitality. Even a quarter of a century later, their relevance to contemporary Thai society is all
too apparent and, even in the least tightly constructed stories, the author’s attacks on social injustice are
delivered with undeniable eloquence and passion. Today, Sībūraphā is admired by many young Thai
authors and critics for his strong sense of social conscience and his courage to speak out fearlessly,
regardless of the personal consequences. Clear testimony to his influence can be seen in the growth of the
Wannakam Phū'a (Literature for Life)7 movement over the last few years and in the hundreds of
other short stories published annually which also take contemporary social and political issues as their basic
theme.
NOTES
1. Thai writers frequently adopt pseudonyms. Kulāp wrote under a number of different pen names as well as his
real name, with most of his fictional writings appearing under the name .
2. Rungwit’s bibliography of Sībūraphā’s works (Rungwit 1979: 100–14) lists thirteen short stories as definitely
belonging to this later period (1949–58) although he provides no date for one story Khon Khit (The Thinker)
which could also belong to the same period. This paper deals with ten of these stories which appeared together in
a collected edition for the first time in 1979 (Sībūraphā 1979).
3. For fuller biographical details in English, see Batson 1981.
4. Unlike many of the pocketbooks (paperbacks) produced over the last decade, the publication figures for these
volumes do not appear on the inside cover. Based on the estimates of Suwit and Prathīp (1972:66) and de Fels
(1975:232) and the figures that appear in books published at the same time dealing with similar themes, it would
be reasonable to assume that there were, on average, about 5,000 copies printed for each edition,
5. For further details, including the precise charges laid against Sībūraphā, see Čharat (1974: 52–9). One of the
chief activities of the Thai branch of the Peace Movement was to gather signatures for mass petitions; this aspect
of their work forms the basis of the short story Prakāi Mai Nai Dūang Tā Khao.
6. A few months earlier, , had in fact, translated a short biographical article about Sun Yat-Sen which
appeared in the weekly Dēlī Mē Wan Čhan.
7. The term Wannakam Phū'a Chīwit describes literary works written from a socialist viewpoint, in which the author
focuses on a particular aspect of society with a view to improving it. Following the 1973 coup, numerous
pocketbooks appeared on the market, bearing the legend ‘phū'a ’ on the cover in addition to the title,
thus indicating the political sympathies of the author(s).
REFERENCES
Batson, B. 1981. Kulap Saipradit and the ‘war of Life’ J. Siam Soc. 69, 58–73.
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 77
Čharat Rotčhanawan 1974. (ed.) Kān Sū Kulāp Sāipradit (Kulāp Sāipradit’s Life of Struggle).
Bankgkok: Prachak kānphim.
de Fels, Jacqueline 1975. Popular literature in Thailand. J. Siam Soc. 63, 219–33.
Kwandee Rakpongse 1975. A study of the novels of Lūang Bupphā Nimman-heminda (pseud. Mai Sot).
Thesis, Univ. London.
Lōk Nangsu’ 1978. Ralu’k Thu’ng Sībūraphā (in memory of ). Lōk Nangsu’ 2(2), 28–81.
Manas Chitakasem 1982. The development of political and social consciousness in Thai short stories. In The short story
in South-East Asia (eds.) J.H.C.S.Davidson and H.Cordell. London: Sch. Orient. Afr. Stud., 63–99.
Rungwit Suwanaphichon 1979. Sībūraphā: Hāeng Wannakam Thai (Sībūraphā: the Jewel of Thai Literature)
Bangkok: Samnakphim phāsikō.
Simmonds, E.H.S. 1964. Some aspects of narrative prose fiction in Thai. In Proc. 25th Internat. Congress of
Orientalists, 1960. Moskva: Izdat. vostoch. lit., 4, 337–43.
Sībūraphā 1954. Lūk Phū Chāi. (A real man). Bangkok: Phrāe phitthayā. (4th ed.).
..... 1968. Rūam Rū'ang Ēk (Selected short stories). Bangkok: Samnakphim phadungsu’ksā (3rd ed.).
..... 1974a. Rāeng Thōe (Give us a hand). Bangkok: Nāeo Rūam Naksu’ksā Tōtān Čhakrawandiniyom.
..... 1974b. Rūam rū'ang san rap chai chīwit Sībūraphā ( short stories for life) (ed.)
naksu’ksā khana witthayāsāt Mahāwitthayālai Chīangmai. Bangkok: Mitnarā kānphim. (2nd ed.).
Sībūraphā 1979. Rūam rū'ang san rap chai Sībūrapha ( short stories for life).
Bangkok: Samnakphim pancha. (4th ed.).
Suwit Sangyōkha and Prathīp Mu'annin1972. Wannakam Patčhuban Lae Kānsū’ sān Mūanchon (Modern literature and
mass communications). Bangkok: Sutthisān kānphim.
Trīsin 1980. Nawaniyāi kap Sangkhom Thai (2475–2500) (The novel and Thai society (1932–1957).
Bangkok: Samnakphim sāngsan.
Wibhā Sēnānān 1975. The genesis of the novel in Thailand. Bangkok: Thai watthana phanit.
THE SUDHANA—MANOHARĀ TALE IN THAI
Henry D.Ginsburg
The story of Prince Sudhana and the bird maiden Manoharā—in Thai Suthon and Manōrā—is an ancient
tale which was already prominent in the Sanskrit literature of northern Hīnayāna Buddhism in the early
centuries of the Christian era. Its early history has been carefully traced by Jaini (1966) with particular
reference to its presence in reliefs on the early ninth century temple of Borobudur in central Java. The Pāli
versions of the tale are part of a collection of jātakas (birth tales) traditionally thought to be the work of
monks in Chiangmai in northern Thailand from the fifteenth century onwards. The title of this Pāli
collection is Paññāsa-jātaka (fifty birth tales) and it is known in three recensions: from Burma, Laos/
Chiangmai, and Cambodia/central Thailand respectively.1 All these birth. tales are extra-canonical, that is,
additional to the 543 birth tales included in the Buddhist canon, and more than half of the stories in each of
the three recensions are unique to that particular collection. Only fifteen stories are common to all three
versions (Finot 1917:44–9).
One Pāli story from the Paññāsa-jatāka that has been critically examined and edited, the Samuddaghosa-
jātaka (the birth tale of Samuddaghosa), suggests in the form of its language that it was composed in South-
East Asia rather than borrowed intact from a Pāli original from India or elsewhere (Terral 1957), while the
Burmese collection is known as Pana-thá (the Chiangmai fifty) which supports the idea of its origin
in northern Thailand.
In Thailand, certain popular stories with a Buddhist setting, from the Paññāsa-jātaka and elsewhere, were
translated into Thai verse, presumably from a Pāli language source, and were written down on the
characteristic long Thai folding books of paper made from the bark of the bush (Streblus asper). Such
tales were read aloud to the laity on the sabbath day, and form a genre at once didactic and entertaining,
known in Thai as suat. It is composed in a variety of verse forms, the usual mixture known as kāp (Skt.
kāvya), comprising common Thai verse forms called chabang and surāngkhanāng.2 Perhaps the most
popular of all such stories in Thai was the story of Suthon and Manōrā, and two versions of it in the
suat idiom are compared here. The Thai adaptors of the story are all anonymous, but their work is often
charming and nearly always endowed with the Thai flair for the concrete, the realistic, and the human. In
the process of transmuting the tale into the language and cultural terms of the Thai, the tales were inevitably
recast and expanded to many times their original length.
The first of the two Thai versions of the Suthon jātaka tale in suat verse is known in numerous
copies preserved mainly in the National Library in Bangkok [abbreviated below as NL]. A copy in the Royal
Asiatic Society in London was described, and a section of it analysed, by Professor Simmonds (1967), and
another copy in private hands is the only one so far published in Thai (Du’an Bunnāk 1956).3 The second
version is called here the Songkhla text [abbreviated below as S] for the reason that the only known copy of
it is preserved in Songkhla, in southern Thailand, in the museum collection in Machimāwāt temple, also
known as Wat Klāng. It was edited and published in Songkhla by Suthiwong Phongphaibūn (1970). The
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 79
Songkhla text was composed by a southern Thai poet with a good command of Sanskrit and Pāli loanwords.
It is full of colloquial southern Thai expressions as well as rather high-flown Indic vocabulary. The text
preserved in Songkhla is dated to the equivalent of November 23, 1868, though it is likely to be a copy of an
earlier text. Its length is approximately 51,000 words written in three volumes of folding books. The author
provides an informative colophon in which he tells us that he has
in devotion composed [it] according to the Pāli as they wrote it in ancient times. There is [here] no story
of Nāng Kānom, daughter of the wicked brahmin, no birdling of the lord of the birds, [these] are not
to be found in the old text. I wrote the chan verses according to the Pāli, the story as of old, of
Manōrā. (Suthiwong 1970:297–8)
The reference to omitted incidents will be amplified later. In the course of the story’s transformation into a
southern Thai folk tale, numerous accretions were made to the original, but our author has not included
them. And although he calls his verse ‘chan’, this is not the classical Thai chan where syllable length is
specified in imitation of Sanskrit verse, but a mixture of verse forms in which the three common forms
called , chabang, and surāngkhanāng are supplemented by eight other forms possibly of the poet’s
own invention, or at least highly uncommon.4
In addition to these two versions of the tale, there are other Thai Manōrā manuscripts in southern idiom in
a rather ‘folklorized’ tradition quite distinct from the two literary versions. Their language is highly
colloquial with much rustic and rough dialogue, representing the Thai poet at his most direct and
unrestrained. Although they may be said to possess little that is elevated or noble, they often rise to heights
of effective natural sentiment unmatched in the more conventional Thai literary styles and they merit further
examination. From central Thailand on the other hand, a highly formalized verse rendition of the tale was
composed at the end of the nineteenth century by Phrayā Itsarānuphāp (1927) in classical Thai chan. This
verse form attempts to imitate Sanskrit prosody and the resulting effect is, of necessity, some-what stilted,
although its high-flown and learned qualities endow it with a certain prestige in Thai literary terms. The
effect of casting the Suthon story in this form is to break the story up into scenes upon which the author has
written lyrical impressions or evocations, while the narrative element, which is so marked a feature in all of
the more natural Thai settings of the tale, is almost wholly suppressed.
The plot of the Suthon story in all its versions, both Indian and South East Asian, consists in basic plan of
the union, the separation, and the reunion, of the hero and heroine. Suthon is heir to the kingdom of
Uttarapañcāla, while Manōrā resides in the inaccessible kingdom of the kinnaras, the half-bird, half-human
beings who inhabit the lower slopes of the cosmic mountain Krailāt (Skt. Krailāśa). The first sub-plot
brings the couple together by events that enable a forest hunter to capture Manōrā with the aid of magic
noose belonging to a nāga king. In the Pāli/Thai versions, the land which is next to Suthon’s kingdom is in
famine, and its king offers a reward to a brahmin capable of casting a spell on the nāga king residing in a
lake lying between the two kingdoms. This spell would reverse the ill fortune of the kingdom. The nāga is
aided by a hunter from Suthon’s land; the hunter halts the brahmin’s evil spell and, as a reward, is later able
to borrow the nāga’s magic noose to trap the kinnara princess Manōrā. He then leads her to Prince Suthon
and the couple marry.
The second sub-plot causes the separation of the couple. A jealous court brahmin in Suthon’s land tells the
king that Suthon must be sent to subdue a rebellious vassal. Then the brahmin falsely interprets a dream of
the king and calls for the sacrifice of Manōrā, but she cannily asks for her wings and tail on the pretext of
performing a last dance before the queen, and flies away to her father’s kingdom in Krailāśa. Suthon returns
victorious but, in grief at the loss of his beloved, he undertakes a perilous journey to her land beyond the
80 THE SUDHANA—MANOHARĀ TALE IN THAI
magic Himavanta forest in order to regain her. He has to perform miraculous feats to win her back, but the
couple are at last reunited, and eventually they return to Suthon’s land where he accedes to the throne.
The number of characters in the Pāli version of the tale is fifteen, compared with sixteen and seventeen in
the National Library and Songkhla texts respectively. All of the fifteen Pāli characters occur in the two Thai
versions and they can be conveniently grouped in the following manner:
Sudhana group: Sudhana and his parents, King Ādiccavamsa and Queen Candadevi;
Manoharā group: Manoharā and her parents and six sisters.
First sub-plot group: Jambucitta, the nāga king; the king of Mahāpañcāla; the evil sorcerer brahmin;
the hunter; and Kassapa the hermit.
Second sub-plot group: the purohita and the brahmin promised promotion by Sudhana.
The fifteenth character, the god Indra, appears ex machina at appropriate points in the plot.
The sixteenth character in both Thai versions is the vassal king in revolt in the second sub-plot, named
Phrayā Čhan in the Songkhla text, and also Čhanthaphānu (P.Candabhānu), while his name is Nantharāt
(P.Nandarāja) in NL. This latter name may arise from a misunderstanding that the king of Mahāpañcāla
(named Nandarāja in the Pāli) and the rebellious vassal were one and the same person, as the rebel is not
clearly identified in the Pāli. In fact, the king of Mahāpañcāla is not named in either Thai version. The
seventeenth character in the Songkhla text is the hunter’s wife, named Mēkhabidā, unique to this text,
though found in other southern versions. Her presence is an example of the many elements of naturalization
in the setting of the story in southern Thailand.
Among these characters a few variations in names and spelling can be noted. The neighbouring king of
Mahāpañcāla, King Duma in the Pāli (Manoharā’s father), becomes Prathum (Praduma in Pāli spelling) in
NL and (P.Dumvara) in the Songkhla version. Manoharā’s mother is unnamed except in NL
where she is Čhankinnarī. Čhan is a popular name, readily supplied in this tradition where a name is wanted.
For example, the extra character of the vassal king in revolt is named Phrayā Čhan in S, as already noted.
There are no differences of primary significance between the three versions. They can all be said to be
clearly in the same overall tradition, and the fact that the two Thai versions omit nothing significant from
the Pāli, and only occasionally alter or add to it, strongly indicates that they both derive directly from it.
Indeed, the poets themselves have each stated clearly that they took the story faithfully from the Pāli text,
and there is nothing to suggest that we should doubt this.
The following twelve points stand out as the most prominent differences in the three texts:
1. In the Pāli, the scheme to kill the nāga lord is formulated by King Nandarāja on advice from his
ministers. Neither of the Thai texts mentions this king’s name, though in NL this name, Nandarāja (Thai.
Nantharāt) is given to the enemy vassal whom Suthon must subdue. The number of advising ministers in NL
is specified as eight (unspecified in Pāli) and one brahmin is chosen to catch the nāga as in Pāli, but in S the
king chooses eight learned brahmins who all undertake the mission in company. In the Pāli, the reward for
the nāga, dead or alive, is half the kingdom. NL has the same reward, but the king asks for the nāga alive.
In S, the reward is cloth, jewels, silver and gold, and the nāga lord must be killed.
2. The initial events at Kassapa the hermit’s hut and pool differ in the various texts. In the Pāli, the hunter
arrives, greets and questions the hermit, finds the pool, returns and asks the hermit about it, then watches
Manōrā and her sisters bathing in the afternoon of the same day, which happens to be the day of the full
moon. Finally, he returns again to the hermit and asks about catching a kinnara maid.
In NL the hunter reaches the lake first, then the hermit’s, where the hermit explains that it is the kinnaras’
lake. The hunter stays overnight to spy on the maidens. Thus, the order of events is different and one
interview with the hermit is absent.
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 81
The same interview is lacking in the Songkhla version where the hunter first reaches the hermitage and
asks to spend the night. The following morning he sets out and by chance finds the lake where the kinnara
maids are already bathing and playing. He hides and watches them, then returns to question the hermit
about catching one.
In addition to these minor variations, the two Thai texts add scenes in Krailāsa not found in the Pāli,
where Manōrā’s mother warns her about the excursions to the lake. The Songkhla text additionally includes
the incident prominent in southern Thai folk versions of the tale where Manōrā and her sisters must steal
their wings from the sleeping queen before they can set off for the lake.
3. Manōrā and her sisters respond to the crisis of Manōrā’s capture by the hunter with surprise but soon with
calm acceptance in the Pāli version; with frantic desperation, violent laments, reproaches and appeals in
NL; and with a tempered alarm and fear together with appeals, to the hunter in S. The copy of the NL text in
London extends the lamentations with extra passages in which bribes are tried upon the hunter to induce him
to release Manōrā. The bribery attempts are also found in S. In keeping with the detached viewpoint of the
Pāli text towards this incident, Manōrā delivers a moralizing farewell before setting off into the forest with
the hunter, in which she points out the universality of misfortune, of union and of separation. This farewell
in NL is an impassioned grief passage where Manōrā recalls the pleasure of a home and family she may
never see again. S substitutes for these an additional interview with the hermit in which Manōrā pleads with
him to intercede with the hunter on her behalf.
The incident of Manōrā leaving behind some token of herself with a message occurs in each version, but
in the Pāli she entrusts pieces of her clothing to the mountain and leaves a noncommital message for her
family in case they should follow her there, indicating only the direction in which the hunter led her away.
In NL she ties her jewelry to a tree as a sign for her rescuers, having failed to bribe the hunter with them (in
Pāli the hunter asks Manōrā for her jewels at the lake; this does not occur in the Thai texts). Then she leaves
messages with forest spirits along the way, begging her family to save her. In S the messages are delivered
to the hermit but they are contrary to those in NL. She asks that they do not follow her.
4. King Praduma, the father of Manōrā, has an attitude of compliance to his queen’s plan to go in search
of Manōrā in the Pāli, but in NL he has to be talked into agreement. In the Songkhla text on the other hand,
it is the king’s own suggestion that the queen go looking for Manōrā, and he tells her to inveigle the hunter
into giving back their daughter.
5. Concerning the question of Manōrā’s purity, as she must travel alone in the forest with the hunter for
many days, the Pāli text includes a passage explaining that Manōrā's superior state of being made it
impossible for the hunter to approach or touch her. For the same reason, it is explained that the hunter’s
only thought was to offer Manōrā to Prince Suthon, whose merit was equal to hers. The matter is not
specifically broached in the NL text but the hunter’s attitude to Manōrā is clear from his respectful
addresses to her. In S it is treated separately in the section where the prince meets Manōrā for the first time.
He is concerned and suspicious of the hunter’s proper behaviour during the long forest journey, so he tells
the hunter to take four men to the place where Manōrā is waiting. The four men find themselves unable to
approach closer to the maiden than four * because of the heat radiating from her. Thus Suthon is assured
of her purity.
6. In the first encounter of Suthon and Manōrā each of the three versions describes Suthon’s departure
from the city for an excursion. In the Pāli, his mount is an elephant, Samudahatthi (Kamutahatthi in NL;
unnamed in S); in the Pāli, when the hunter and the maiden come across the royal path, Suthon is struck
* is a linear measure based on the distance from elbow to fingertips. (Ed.)

with love and questions the hunter, then rewards him, and plans are commenced for the marriage of the
couple. In NL, Suthon is initially angry. He questions both the hunter and Manōrā, and falls in love with her.
Then he withdraws with Manōrā to a pavilion and eventually seduces her in a long amorous passage,
wherein she protests at length at his advances and arguments. Suthon’s anger is a feature of Thai
naturalization of the story. Carried to an extreme degree, as it is in the folktale versions from the south,
Suthon punishes the hunter for returning without,. any game and has to force him to disclose the arrival of
Manōrā.5
This first encounter receives quite different treatment in S. The hunter and his prize are first seen from a
distance, and Suthon sends a scout to look; he returns with the hunter, who explains. Manōrā's purity is then
tested, as above. The hunter’s wife, Mēkhabidā, is sent to attend and guard Manōrā; Suthon’s parents are
informed and they come out of the city to see her; she is interviewed and her horoscope is read. Preparations
for a wedding begin and the couple are united only after the ceremonies, as in the Pāli.
7. The royal dream which provides occasion for the jealous purohita’s false interpretation is dreamed by
the king in the Pāli and NL, but by the queen in S where Manōrā is called to interpret it before the purohita
is consulted. Manōrā gives the correct, suspicious interpretation. The dream itself is briefly described in NL
where the king dreams that his intestines spread and flow around the earth where the Pāli specifies that they
issue forth from his breast and thrice encircle the continent of men , and then return to his
body.
The queen’s dream in the Songkhla version is more involved: the enemy king cuts off Suthon’s head with
a sword, and all his entrails are seized and tied around the city; his blood flows out all the four gates of the city.
Then a man takes Suthon’s clothing and puts it into a fire: it rises up into the air ‘from the queen’s hand’
(čhāk thēwī), and Manōrā interprets the decapitation as a mark of the gods’ respect for Suthon’s
powers. The sacrifice of his entrails around the city she explains as a sign that the populace are in an
auspicious state within the limits of his authority. Lastly, she explains that the burning of Suthon’s clothing
and their disappearing into the sky shows his imperviousness to the attacks of the enemy.
In S alone the purohita’s false interpretation ties the alleged ill omen to Suthon’s safe return from the
campaign. In the Pāli and NL, the ill omen is said to threaten calamity for the land of * rather
than for Suthon.

8. In the Pāli text, Manōrā’s flight occurs after officers come to seize her and take her to the sacrifice. She
flies away without hovering, turning to leave messages from the air, as in the two Thai texts. Her farewell is
given in the palace after she dances before the queen and she takes her leave as if she were about to die in
the sacrifice, rather than as in the Thai versions where she has already effected her escape. This casts a quite
different complexion on her messages to Suthon and her farewell. The Thai texts also lay stress on the
element of guile in Manōrā’s obtaining her wings from the queen whose loyalties and duties are in conflict,
as she has been assigned by her son to protect Manōrā, and clearly feels a motherly love for Manōrā, while
her husband requires that Manōrā be taken for the sacrifice. In NL, the queen desperately appeals to Manōrā,
in an attempt to dissuade her, when she realizes that Manōrā is actually going to flee, protesting that she
would never let Manōrā die, that Manōrā could trust her and come down from the air. Manōrā’s
philosophical reply is that fear compels her to flee, that living creatures by nature flee the threat of death. In
S, the conflict of loyalties is dealt with in a calmer fashion: Manōrā flies out the window, stops and takes
her leave, giving a long and eloquent message for Suthon. The queen’s suggestion in response is quite
* Probably P.Uttarapañca, but it is likely to be a corrupted form of Uttarapañcāla (?= Mahāpañcāla). (Ed.)
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 83
sensible, that Manōrā should first fly to Suthon and take his leave, but Manōrā explains that she would not
be able to find her way and she wings off to the hermit’s dwelling.
9. The instructions for Suthon entrusted to the hermit by Manōrā regarding the difficult journey through
the forests are enumerated in the Pāli version in great detail. There are eighteen separate items in Manōrā’s
description of the way. Twelve of these are enumerated in NL, with slight variations in order and content. S
includes only a very brief resumé of the journey ahead of Suthon, though the journey itself is described at
length in this version, incorporating approximately fifteen incidents which correspond in major details to the
Pāli journey.
10. Suthon’s return from battle and discovery of Manōrā’s flight find variant treatment in the three
versions. In the Pāli, he reports at once to the king on his campaign, then his mother embraces him and tells
the bad news of Manōrā’s flight. In his palace, Suthon is reduced to a fainting state by his grief and he bids
his mother farewell to follow Manōrā, against her strong protestations. He leaves the city and stops at the
hunter’s house. In NL, the events are the same but they are elaborated in somewhat greater detail, including
Suthon’s return through the forests and his anticipation of Manōrā, details of the booty and prisoners he has
brought back, long and repetitive grief passages and pleadings on the part of the queen, the repetition of
Manōrā’s instructions (not in the Pāli) and Suthon’s final departure. The variants in the Songkhla text are
the following: there is no interview with the king at all, and Suthon misses Manōrā at once, learning from
the servants of Manōrā’s flight. Then the queen comes to him and they both faint and require medicines. No
instructions are relayed, as in this version Manōrā has left them with the hermit rather than with the queen.
Only after Suthon departs does the king appear, and the queen informs him of the events. He sends messengers
after Suthon to dissuade him from his quest but the prince sends them back and continues on his way. The
hunter accompanies Suthon on a seven-day journey to the hermit’s dwelling, where Suthon sends the hunter
back after they talk to the hermit together. In the Pāli and NL, Suthon sends him back before interviewing
the hermit.
11. All three texts agree that when Suthon arrives at Manōrā's land he finds kinnara maidens drawing
water from a lake, but the number of maidens is seven in the Pāli, sixteen in S, and 500 in NL.
12. There are variations in S’s treatment of Manōrā’s discovery of the arrival of Suthon. These are similar
to the way this text treats Suthon’s return and discovery of Manōrā’s flight. First, a detail is added. The
purifying water administered to Manōrā to remove the taint of her years of contact with human beings is
given to her by an appointed brahmin, while the maidens give it in NL and in the Pāli. Then, finding the ring
that identifies the presence of Suthon, Manōrā faints and is carried to the queen whom she begs to inform
the king. The queen does so and the king then questions the maids who carried the water about the human
stranger. This contrasts with the events in the Pāli and NL where Manōrā first sends presents to Suthon, then
informs her mother and then her father. The Pāli includes an interrogation of Manōrā by the king which
seemingly ought to have occurred seven years previously when Manōrā first returned from the human
world. This interview is absent in NL.
Notable differences also arise in the trials employed to test Suthon: these slightly alter the depiction of the
prince’s character in the three versions. The pretext for the three trials is not mentioned in the Pāli: the king
merely asks Suthon whether he can perform the feats. Suthon replies with casual confidence that he can do
anything. In NL, the king explains that he only proposes the feats to satisfy the devas (gods) regarding
Suthon’s merits. In the Pāli, Suthon performs each feat with almost arrogant confidence, although he must
invoke Indra’s aid in the last test in which he must choose Manōrā from among her sisters. In NL, he makes
no specific assertion or boast of his abilities, and he must additionally invoke an oath on the second of the
tests when he tries unsuccessfully on the first attempt to lift a stone throne. Only S presents the trials as a
difficult challenge to Suthon. The king proposes them, he says, for the sake of knowing the extent of
Suthon’s skill. The bow test is accomplished easily, but he must shoot through eight layers in all of trees,
slabs, metal sheets, etc. with his arrorw, where there are seven layers in the other versions. Yet Suthon,
when the second test is proposed, feels sorely taxed, and wonders in despair at Manōrā’s calm appearance
as she watches. For the lifting test he takes an oath and Indra appears, whereupon Suthon is able to lift the
massive rock, here specified as eighteen in size. Indra assists in the choice of Manōrā from her seven
sisters of identical appearance, as in the other versions, but in S he attends the reunion of Manōrā and
Suthon as well, and presides at the ceremonies, thus playing a more prominent role in this version. An
additional detail in S is the preparation of a special room for the choice. NL describes only the adornment of
the seven sisters. Southern folk versions also mention a room for the choosing of Manōrā from her sisters.
The ensemble of the two Thai poems and their presumed Pāli source comprise a puzzle of literary cross-
currents, particularly when taken together with the Lao, Cambodian and Mon versions of the story.6 The
tendancy in the vernacular versions to expand and naturalize the story in consonance with the poet’s own
imagination and cultural context is clear. The extent of embellishment can be seen as increasing in order
from the National Library text to the Songkhla text, while embellishment is even more pronounced in the
Lao, Cambodian, and Mon versions. Although the National Library text is a faithful retelling of the Pāli tale,
elements of naturalization can be identified in the extra dream in which the queen anticipates Suthon’s
birth: in the scene where Manōrā is warned by her mother of danger at the lake where she is destined to be
captured by the hunter; in the scene of Manōrā's farewell before her flight from Suthon’s land; in the
entertainment and didactic wet-nurse passages (Ginsburg 1971:88–9); in the reunion scene between Manōrā
and Suthon and their extended courtship love passage (ibid., 74–7). And yet the variations in this text are so
limited in scope that we are not led to suspect influence from any active oral tradition. In comparison, the
Songkhla text shows more evidence of naturalizing detail and embellishment, and here a knowledge of folk
versions from southern Thailand, oral and written, enables us to identify their apparent influence upon the
Songkhla poem. Such additions are the hunter’s wife, Mēkhabidā: the rebel vassal named Phrayā Čhan, the
theft of wings and tails by the seven kinnara princesses to fly to the lake where Manōrā will be captured; a
date for setting Manōrā's horoscope; the lively description of the hunter’s appearance; and Suthon’s cursing
Manōrā’s servants in his grief at her loss. Here also, comparable to the NL text, are entertainment passages,
a didactic passage on choosing a wife, and a love passage (ibid., 84–110).
In the Lao poem, various major variants and additions can be noted for the first time, such as the absence
of the subplot involving a second kingdom in famine, and of the nāga lord. In general, the Lao poem
employs considerable freedom in treating the details of the narrative, although conforming in most major
features. There are three dreams additional to the one found in the Pāli story. The dream is apparently a
pleasing feature which all the South East Asian versions expand in some measure. Further-more, the god
Indra makes repeated interventions in the course of the Lao narrative, especially in the much extended
forest journey section of the poem where he thrice assists. the questing prince. This forest section is further
embellished by encounters, which are extraneous to the Pāli or Thai, between Suthon and ghosts who give
accounts of their sins and sufferings, a feature which would seem to relate to locally popular Buddhist
stories such as the Phra Mālai tale.7 one device of the plot is clearly omitted from the Lao poem by what can
only be an oversight, since it is referred to in the text without any context. Suthon obtains from the hermit
an account of what lies before him in the forest, as described by Manōrā when she visited the hermit on her
journey home. This is specified in the Pāli-Thai versions, and in the Lao poem the hermit also conveys to
the prince her account of the forest quest, but in the Lao she fails to deliver to the hermit any account of the
forest. She only leaves her ring and cloth, and mentions some of the forest dangers in a generalized way.
The ‘cloth’ must, in fact, be the magic cloth which, as we know from the Thai versions, is meant to assist
the prince when he encounters dangers in the forest, but the listener to the Lao poem must be previously
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 85
familiar with the story to follow this reference. A number of other important points of the narrative are
glossed over in this fashion so that the story seems to be of less interest to the poet. Perhaps he is merely giving
formal setting to a well-known story, giving it ‘literary’ attributes. The inherent drama of the narrative gets
overlooked and the potential excitement offered by Manōrā’s capture, her first meeting with Suthon, her
flight, the prince’s trials, and so on, which are so vividly appreciated in the two Thai poems, are virtually
ignored in this Lao version.
A similar tendency can be noted in the Cambodian poem, but here appear even more surprising omissions
and additions. Of these the most remarkable is the absence of the choice of Manōrā from among seven
maidens. Instead, following the performance of feats by the prince, the question of whether to reunite him with
Manōrā is proposed to Indra, and the entire court travels to Indra’s heaven to seek his judgment. Indra’s role
is much expanded in this version. Another major omission is, as in the Lao poem, the sub-plot concerning
the kingdom in famine and the special role of the nāga lord. An addition is Nāng Kānom, Suthon’s first
wife, and daughter of the purohita whose jealousy is in fact aroused by Manōrā’s ascendancy over his
daughter. This is the same Nāng Kānom mentioned in southern Thai versions of the tale, whom the
Songkhla poet tells us he has excluded from his poem because she is not to be found in the Pāli text. He also
mentions the exclusion of the birdling(s) of the lord(s) of the birds, and in fact the Cambodian poem contains
an incident where birdlings of a monstrous bird interview Suthon before he is carried to Krailāt. There is
clearly a link here between two geographical distant narrative traditions, the Cambodian and the southern
Thai. The Cambodian poem does not share the Lao poem’s tendency to trivialize or gloss over the dramatic
elements of the story.
These regional variations in a literary tradition merit much further study, revealing as they do a great deal
about local South East Asian literary traditions and culture.
NOTES
1. The Burmese version was published in Burmese translation in 1911; the Lao recension was described by Finot
(1917), and the Cambodian version was published in 1953 in Phnom Penh, with a Cambodian translation
appearing there in 196l.
2. These verse forms require a rhyme scheme including internal rhyme (from the end of one line to the middle of
another line) and external rhyme (from the end of one line to the end of another line) and specific numbers of feet
per line. For an introduction to Thai prosody see Schweisguth (1951: 18–25).
3. Only one of the copies of this version is complete, in six volumes of the Thai folding book in the National
Library, Bangkok, and it is this complete copy that is taken here to represent this manuscript tradition. The
incomplete copies present differences in spelling, word choice, and phrasing from one another and from the one
complete copy which is taken here as their fair representative. The National Library text is approximately 45,000
words in length. Its orthography and spelling suggest an early or mid nineteenth century date, and, in fact, the
scribe has dated the completion of his work in a colophon to three o’clock in the afternoon of Thursday on the
date corresponding to October 1, 1856.
4. For the details of these variant metres see Ginsburg (1971: 163–9).
5. Information from oral sources.
6. These versions are summarized in Ginsburg (1971:173–200).
7. Phra Mālai is a monk who obtains miraculous powers by dint of powerful meditation, travels to heaven and to
hell, and returns to preach about these places to his countrymen.
REFERENCES
Finot, L. 1917. Recherches sur la littérature laotienne. Bull. Ec. fr. Extr.-Orient 17(5), 1–218, [+ iii].
Du’an Bunnāk 1956. Manōrā čhāk samut lae phāp Nāi Du’an Bunnāk. Bangkok: s.n.
Ginsburg, H.D. The Sudhana-Manoharā tale in Thai. Thesis, Univ. London.
Itsarānuphāp, Phraya 1927. Phra Suthon kham chan. Bangkok: Queen Sukhumān mānsī.
Jaini, P.S. 1966. The story of Sudhana and Manoharā: an analysis of the texts and the Borobudur reliefs. Bull. Sch.
Orient. Afr. Stud. 29, 533–58.
Paññāsa jātaka 1953. Phnom Penh: Inst. Bouddhique.
Paññāsa jātak samrāy 1957. Phnom Penh: Inst. Bouddhique.
Schweisguth, P. 1951. Etude sur la littérature siamoise. Paris: Maisonneuve.
Simmonds, E.H.S. 1967. Mahōrasop in a Thai Manōrā manuscript. Bull. Sch. Orient. Afr. Stud. 30, 391–403.
..... 1971. Mahōrasop II. The Thai National Library manuscript. Bull. Sch. Orient Afr. Stud. 34, 119–31.
Suthiwong Phongphaibūn 1970. Manōrā nibāt. Songkhla: College of Education.
Terral, G. 1957. Samuddaghosajātaka. Conte pāli tiré du Paññāsajātaka. Bull. Ec. fr. Extr.Orient 48, 249–351.
Pana-thá 1911. Rangoon: Hanthawaddy Press.
THE ORIGINS OF NONTHUK AND THE IMPORTANCE
OF HIS MYTH
Maneepin Phromsuthirak
Nonthuk,1 in the the Thai version of the is a or demon who is to be reborn as

Thotsakan.2 According to the he is an attendant of Śiva and his duty is to wash the feet of all
sages and divine visitors to the god. Nonthuk performs his duty diligently but receives a reward unsuitable
for his efforts. He is always mocked by Śiva’s visitors; some of them find pleasure in patting his head and
face; others like to pull his hair on every occasion. This makes him bald and it causes him much shame and
anger. He comes to ask for justice from Śiva, saying that his services for the period of ten million years
should be rewarded; he asks the god to grant him a diamond finger which will kill anybody at whom it
points. Śiva, who is always compassionate and beneficent, consents. The demon who now possesses this
magical finger becomes very bold and aggressive, killing all the sages and gods who tease him as they did
previously. This agitates Indra very much; he hurriedly goes to seek Śiva’s help; Śiva has to ask to
vanquish Nonthuk in order to bring peace back to Heaven. To achieve this, then turns himself into
the form of a very beautiful goddess with whom the demon falls in love at first sight. The goddess demands
that Nonthuk imitate her dancing or else she will not accept his love. The demon, enchanted by the
goddess’s beauty, agrees to do so. The goddess then dances the thep-pha-nom prathom,3 at the end of which
she points at her own lap. Nonthuk, unconscious of what he is doing, follows suit. Crippled, he falls to the
ground and is trodden on by , now in the form of the god with four hands. The demon is so infuriated
to find that he has been tricked by that he mocks the god: ‘You have four hands so you can kill me
easily. Why do you have to change yourself into a woman’s form? Are you afraid of my finger?’ ,
infuriated, decides on another course of action. He answers the demon:
Not at all. I have to disguise myself as a woman in order to kill you because you are destined to be
destroyed by your own lust. However, if you are complaining of having only two hands in this birth, I
will grant a boon to you so that you will have ten heads and twenty hands in your next birth. And I
will be reborn as a human being with only two hands and still kill you.
He then kills Nonthuk with his trident. (Rāma I 1971:56–63). Thus incarnates himself as Phra Rām,
or Rāma, and Nonthuk is reborn as Thotsakan.
Neither Nonthuk nor the myth of his being reincarnated as is found in any Indian version of the
, yet a very faint link between Nonthuk and can still be traced in a Thai text called the Nārāi
Sip Pāng, (‘Ten Incarnations of (Lū’an Rit 1923; Praphan 1968), in which there is another
explanation of how Nonthuk comes to be reborn as with twenty hands. The text narrates:
‘After his death, Nonthuk, in the form of a ghost of an uncremated corpse, wanders along the foot of
Mount Sumeru.4 He performs a penance by making his skull into a fiddle, his backbone into a musical
88 THE ORIGINS OF NONTHUK AND THE IMPORTANCE
bow, the skin of his head as the covering piece of the fiddle, and the sinews of his body into the
strings. He plays the fiddle for Śiva who gives him the boon he wants. ‘You will be born of the race
of Phrom.5 You will have ten heads and twenty hands. You will be able to separate your heart from
your body. You will live for one thousand years.’ Nonthuk, therefore, is born into the race of Phrom
as a son of Lord Latsatīan and of Ratchadā. He is named Thotsakan. (Lu’an Rit 1923: 76–7; Praphan
1968:28, 65)).
The prototype of Nonthuk’s severe penance in this myth may be traced to a South Indian myth about
. A Tamil the Tiruvarañcaram, tells us that tries to uproot Kailāsa; Śiva presses him into
Pātāla6 with his toe nail; then tears off one of his heads to make the * with it, using the
tendons of his forearms for strings, and plays music for Śiva, who is very pleased and gives a
he asked for (Shulman 1976:437).
The Sanskrit has the story of being pressed into Pātāla by Śiva with his toe, but no
mention is made of severe penance, which is also absent from the , although it had
been adopted by the Thais to be the story of Nonthuk, ex-incarnation, narrated in the Nārāi Sip
Pāng. However, the Thai account of Nonthuk possessing the frightful diamond finger and being charmed
and tricked to death by is not found in the Tiruvarañcaram. There are two Indian myths of the
demon with a death-dealing finger, or rather a death-dealing hand: one, a Sanskrit version found in the
Bhāgavata 7, the other a South Indian version related in the Tamil
. The myth in the Bhāgavata goes as follows: The demon is the son of Sakuni. Advised by
the sage Nārada,8 he pays homage to Śiva by means of his own body; he burns his flesh on his body as an
offering for the god. On the seventh day, being disheartened at not having obtained sight of the god, he is on
the point of cutting off his head with a sharp sword when Śiva comes out of the sacrificial fire and stops him.
Śiva, pleased with the devotion of the demon, promises to give him any boon he desires and the sinful
demon asks for the following terrifying one: ‘May any body on whose head I shall lay my palm perish.’
Śiva grants what he has asked, whereupon the demon, in order to test the potency of the boon, tries to
place his palm on the head of Śiva himself. Śiva, seized with terror in consequence of his own foolish act,
runs to who is in his paradise, Vaikuntha,* for help. assumes the form of a brahmacārin**
and plays a trick with the demon; he asks him to test the power of Śiva’s boon with himself. The demon
, bewildered and amazed by the smooth and convincing words of , places his palm on his own head,
and falls down instantly with his head severed like a tree struck by a thunderbolt. (Bhāgavata 1973:
356–58).
It cannot be said for certain that the Thai story of Nonthuk has the Sanskrit version as its prototype since
as we have seen, in the latter the motif of the demon being tricked by in the form of a goddess is
lacking, as too is the dancing. On the other hand, the Tamil story of the demon with a dreadful hand might
be plausibly considered as the source of the Thai story of Nonthuk because two important motifs of the Thai
story can be found in the Tamil myth also: one, the demon’s use of a frightful finger as a powerful weapon;
the other, the use of dancing as a device to defeat the demon by assuming the form of a goddess.
The Tamil myth of the sinful demon, related in the is noted here in order
to attest this suggestion:
Bhasmāsura (the Ash-Demon) is born of the ashes on the body of Śiva. He is so devoted to the god that
the god grants him the boon of having the power to turn to ashes anybody on whose head he places his hand.
* The is the Indian lute. (Ed.)

LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 89
Bhasmāsura becomes arrogant because of the boon and hence a threat to the whole world. changes
himself to the form of Mohinī, ‘the fascinating woman’, and bewitches the demon into imitating the hand-
movements of her dance; she puts her hand on her head and the demon follows her, and turns himself to
ashes (Shulman 1976:314.
During the many centuries of the expansion of Hindu civilization to South East Asia, a number of
classical myths were adopted by the local peoples, but these myths, in the first step, seldom deviate far in
any essential point from the original. More significant divergences may be found in the same myths retold
by the isolated tribes of India, and in more far-away countries, which often utilize Hindu motifs but
transform them into different tales when absorbing them into their nonHindu ideological frame-works. The
Sanskrit story of the demon can be said to undergo this process. It is noteworthy that, although the
Tamils changed the name of the demon from to Bhasmāsura, they still keep the main point of the
myth, that of Śiva’s inferiority to . However, some divergences had also occurred. In the Tamil
story, assumes the form of a goddess, not a brahmacārin as in the Sanskrit version, and, closer to
the Tamil, both the Thai and the Cambodian accounts describe taking the form of a goddess to
deceive the demon and using dancing as a device to defeat him. But some differences from the Tamil
prototype do occur, one being that the frightful hand of the demon has been changed into a dreadful
diamond finger. Moreover, there are still some divergences between the Thai and the Cambodian versions.
In the Thai story, kills the demon with his trident, while in the Cambodian account the god uses ‘the
globe’9 for the same purpose. Even more important is that the main point of the Thai tale is the supremacy of
, the most powerful destroyer of the unrighteous, especially of the demons, while the Cambodians
emphasize Nonthuk’s destructive conceit as an essential subject.
One may argue that the Cambodian story of Nandaka is the prototype of the Thai version, but this seems
unlikely because of the dancing tradition. It is well known that South Indian peoples link dancing closely
with religion and the dancing part in the myth of and Bhasmāsura is more probably used by the Tamils
to worship the god. Evidence indicates that the Thais adopted this South Indian myth at the same time as
they learnt Indian dancing, using the adapted Tamil myth as a story piece for the preliminary dance (see n.
3) from the Ayutthaya period onwards, a tradition which has been referred to by King Rama IV (1920:13) in
his poetical script for the dance, the Bot bōek Rū’ang Nārāi Prāp Nonthuk. The tale of Nandaka has, on the
contrary, not been used at all by the Cambodian dancers or actors; hence it is more likely that the Thai story
of Nonthuk has its origin in the Tamil myth.
It is apparently the only Hindu myth relating to Thai classical dancing in Thai literature and its existence
in Thailand must have preceded that of the myth of Śiva’s performance of the dance in
front of the assembly hall of Cidambaram10 or—the centre of the universe—narrated in some
Tamil The story in the Tamil Koyil runs as f ollows:
In the forest of Tāraka dwelt multitudes of heretical the followers of the * Thither
proceeded Śiva to confute them. The god was accompanied by disguised as a beautiful
woman, and by the personified serpent couch of . The sages at first disputed
violently among themselves, but their anger was soon directed against Śiva whom they endeavoured
to destroy by means of incantations. A fierce tiger was created in sacrificial fires, and rushed upon the
god. Smiling gently, Śiva seized it and, with the nail of his little finger, stripped off its skin and
* Vaikuntha is heaven, variously situated in the northern ocean or on the eastern peak of Mt. Meru. (Ed.)
** A brahmacārin is a student of Brahmanism. (Ed.)
wrapped it about himself like a silken cloth. Undiscouraged, the sages renewed their offerings and
produced a monstrous serpent which, however, the god seized and wreathed about his neck like a
garland. Then, when Śiva began to dance, there at last rushed upon him a monster in the shape of a
malignant dwarf, Muyalaka; the god then pressed the tip of his foot upon the demon and broke the
creature's back, leaving it writhed upon the ground. So, his last foe prostrate, Śiva resumed the dance,
witnessed by gods and sages. Then should behold the dance again in sacred . (Rao
1916:235–6).
This dance forms the motif of the South Indian copper images of ‘Lord of the Dance’, described
in detail in Rao (1916:236–7). The images are of all sizes, rarely if ever exceeding four feet in total height.
(loc. cit.). Some copper images of Śiva are found in Thailand. Paintings of this motif are also of
relevance; most of the details of these fine artistic pieces are similar to the Indian images of Śiva
dancing the on Muyalaka's back. There is also evidence indicating that once upon a
time images of Śiva were popular among the Thais, but they were known as the images of Śiva's
vanquishing the demon not as of Śiva . A reference to the popularity of these
images is found in the Rū'ang Nāng Nopphamāt, compiled during the early Rattanakosin period (1800– 24
A.D.). The text says that during the time of the author there were many images of Parameśvara (i.e. Śiva)
treading upon the back of . These images were cast either of gold or of nine, or seven, kinds of
metal; large images were about five or six sok (about 10 feet) high, while small statues were about the size
of a monkey's kneecap (just a few inches), and various sizes between these two limits abounded (Nāng
Nopphamāt 1925:14).
The Thai myth of Śiva in the form of also differs from the Indian version. In Thai texts the
myth loses its main motif, that of the god’s supremacy exhibited through his cosmic dance; it is preserved in
Thai literature as no more than the myth of his destruction of the demon dwarf . The story goes
as follows:
Once there was a demon named , who was born at the same time as the Earth. He
obtained a boon from all three of the gods—Brahma, Śiva and . Both his eyes become blazing
flames. He was very proud of himself, deeming himself greater than all gods and human beings, and,
therefore, he persecuted and oppressed the three worlds. All the sages consulted each other about
what was to be done and then went to see Śiva, telling him what had happened. Śiva, therefore, went
down from Mount Kailāsa in order to wage war with the demon who opened his eyes of fire and
caused the fire to encircle the god. Śiva, by means of his divine power, trod on the back of the demon
; from both his ear-holes he opened the tubes of water and of fire which fell on the head of
the demon and deprived him of his power. His eyes of fire were lost forever. Śiva then cursed the demon
to become King 11, who was to roam about in the world eating offerings made to spirits
whenever human beings perform any of their ceremonies; a curse which was to last for a period of
one badra kalpa*. Śiva then went back to Kailāsa. (Praphan 1968:39).
It can be seen that the extant Thai myth of Śiva-Mūlākhanī does not contain any dancing episode whatsoever.
At the same time, because of the obvious similarities, it is difficult to dismiss the relationship between the
demon Muyalaka in Hindu mythology and the demon Mūlākhanī in Thai literature as coincidence. The
* A school of Hindu philosophy. (Ed.)

LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 91
differences between the names of the two demons might easily have been caused by the story being related
orally long before it was ever written down; the story has also been changed. The theme of Śiva’s taming of
the heretical sages of the Tāraka forest is changed to his vanquishing of the malicious demon .
It is plausible, too, that some parts of the Thai story Śiva-Mūlākhanī of are influenced by the image of
rather than by the original Sanskrit myth. The fire flowing from the ear-holes of the god
might have been inspired by the image of the fire in his left hand, and by the circle of fire around the Indian
image of , while in some images of him standing on the back of Muyalaka, the halo of his
braided hair is depicted as flowing out from both sides of his crown and this, too, might have been
misunderstood by the Thais to be the fire and water flowing from his ear-holes.
Certainly, in the year 1923, in a Thai book called Tamrā Ram (Treatise of Dancing) published by the
Royal Library, the images of Indian , with Śiva dancing on the back of Muyalaka, were
identified with those of his vanquishing the demon Mūlākhanī (Tamrā Ram 1923:(5)) and the complete
version of Śiva’s taming of the sages of the Tāraka forest, narrated in the Koyil purānam, is also given.
Nevertheless, although it is also very similar to that story, it cannot be treated as evidence for the early
existence of this Hindu myth in Thailand because the Tamrā Ram does not say definitely whether this
myth in particular was transcribed from Thai manuscripts or translated from foreign books. In its
introduction, Prince Damrongrāchānuphāp says that the book is compiled from some English books, from
Sanskrit manuscripts in the Thai Royal library and from the Thai treatise on dancing (ibid., (8)). The myth
might also conceivably have been from stories related in a book on the postures of Śiva’s dance as they are
carved on the gopuram* of a temple at Cidambaram given to the Thai Royal Library in 1914 (ibid., (9)).
In addition to this, the presentation of the story of in the form of the goddess vanquishing the demon
Nonthuk had been used as the bot bōek rōng—the preliminary dance at the opening of the theatre—since the
Ayutthaya period. King Rama IV (1920:13) has referred to this tradition explaining that this story began to
be performed as the preliminary dance because in this episode, the teachers of the nai,12 the dance
drama of the Inner Court, were able to show their pupils how to dance various movements supposedly as the
‘goddess’ did in the ancient times (ibid., 13). And further, the reason why this story was presented
as a preliminary dance in the first place can probably be found in the Indian tradition of dramatic art as
prescribed in the In the elaborate series of preliminaries before the actual
drama begins, one finds the dancers practising their steps (Keith 1924:339). The Indian teachers of dancing
must have brought this tradition with them to Thailand and must have taught it too, at which point the main
content of the Bhasmāsura myth (i.e. the demon imitating the dance of the god) would have been chosen as
the most appropriate piece for the practice. Moreover, it can be said that the main theme of this myth, that
is the almighty god, has been widely favoured by the Thais, This can be attested by the
characteristics of the Hindu myths in Thai literature from the Ayutthayā to the Rattanakosin13 period.
Therefore, this myth must have been accepted pleasantly by the Thais to be performed as the preliminary
dance in order to pay homage to .
There is, however, as has already been noted, no certain date for the introduction of Indian dancing to
Thailand. In the invocation to him in the Lilit* Ōngkān Chaeng Nam, a work attributed to the 14th century,
and which means the sacred exclamation for ritual oath taking, is described in a passing reference as
the god who assumes the form of a woman in order to destroy the demons ( awatān asura lān laeng
thak) (Lilit ōngkān 1974:7). However, what is certain is that this phīru awatān (Skt. bhīru avatāra), or
* badra kalpa ‘the beautiful’ or ‘good’ age, and the name of the present one! (Ed.)
*gopuram is a gateway of a Hindu temple. (Ed.)
incarnation as a woman, cannot be said to be a ref erence to the myth of the churning of the ocean
like that of the Sanskrit for in that myth , in the form of Mohinī, does not destroy any demon directly,
he only deceives them in order to gain or the ambrosia water for the benefit of the good! Myths
continue to entice.
NOTES
1. Nonthuk (Skt. nan-du-ka) or Nonthok (Skt. nan-da-ka) is probably dervied from the Sanskrit Nandi, the Bull of
Śiva, since Nonthuk is Śiva’s door keeper. This accords well with one of the main characteristics of Nandi, the
chamberlain of Śiva.
2. Thotsakan, ‘ten-necked’ (Skt. is an epithet for , lord of the demons, Rāma’s chief
opponent.
3. This dance always begins with the movement of thep-pha-nom (‘a god with folded hands’), which is usually
followed by the prathom (‘preliminary’) movement. This second movement may be misleading, making people
think that the preceding one is the preliminary whereas the thep-pha-nom prathom is actually a dance with
various movements.
4. Sumeru, mythically the mountain in the centre of the Hindu world, is submerged in the sea to a depth of eighty-
four thousand yōjanas, and rises above the sea’s surface to that same height, being surrounded by seven mountain
ranges. On its summit is , heaven of Indra, the most beneficent god of the Buddhists [sic.]. For the
Thais, Mount Sumeru is as sacred as Mount Kailāsa is for the Śaivaites. Kailāsa, a mountain in the Himalayas,
north of Manasa lake, is said to be the site of Śiva’s paradise.
5. Skt. brahma (masculine). For Thais influenced by the , the race of , is called Phrom because
in that story the Hindu god Brahmā is the founder of race.
6. Pātāla is the lowest of the seven infernal regions which nāgas (highly respected serpent creatures) and all kinds of
demons inhabit. For the Thais, it is the world of snakes and of nāgas and abounds with valuable treasures.
7. The Bhāgavata is a work of great celebrity in India and exercises a more direct and powerful influence
upon the opinions and feelings of the people than any other of the . It is so named because it is
dedicated to the glorification of Bhāgavata, or . The most popular part of this purāna, however, is the
tenth book, which narrates in detail the history of
8. A rishi (Skt. ‘sage’) to whom some hymns of the Rigveda are ascribed, he is one of the prajāpatis (‘great-
fathers’) and also one of the seven great rishis; he is the inventor of the , and the chief of the gandharvas,
(‘heavenly musicians’). Nārada is also the author of a text-book on law called Nāradeya dharma Śāstra. For the
Thais, (Skt. Nārada) is worshipped as a divine music teacher.
9. It is a profound tradition of the Cambodians that ‘the Earth’ (Skt. bhū) is one of the objects held in
hands, a tradition which can be traced back to the seventh century A.D. The symbol of this bhū takes on a variety
of forms in Cambodian art: a sphere, a disk, a segment of a sphere, or a discus that has been hollowed out. It is
likely that ‘the globe’ in Judith Jacob’s translation, which follows, is the same object as this bhū.
10. Cidambaram is today a town in Tamilnadu. It has been held very sacred by the Śaivaites who call it ‘the temple’,
but was already very famous in the middle of the seventh century A.D. and has always been the seat of activity of
Śaiva scholars.
11. This Krung originally derives from the name of the demon King Bali in Vamana incarnation
in Hindu mythology and must be influenced by the Cambodian Pãli. (cf. Porée-Maspero 196l). Like the
Hindu demon Bali, Pãli has to yield up his treasure, or the world he created, to a god who is actually the
Lord Buddha, not , as in the Hindu story. But the Cambodians interpolate something: before Pãli
* lilit is a Thai combined metrical form. (Ed.)

LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 93
agrees to disown his world, he asks Buddha to let him have offerings given at the beginning of any ceremony and
is granted what he requests.
12. For more information on nai, see Damrongrāchānuphāp, Kromphrayā. Tamnan inao.
Bangkok: s.n. 1964.
13. There are many literary evidences showing that, for the Thais, is the god of power and might. Two texts
of the Ayutthaya period, Lilit ōngkān Chaeng Nam and Lilit Yūan Plāi (‘the war-loss of the Northerner’), clearly
illustrate him as such. The , the most celebrated and sacred Thai epic, and the Nārāi Sip Pāng (‘Ten
Incarnations of ’) are the best examples on this same subject from the Rattanakosin period.
REFERENCES
Bhāgavata purāna 1973. (trans.) J.M.Samyal. Delhi: Oriental Publ.

Keith, A.B. 1924. The Sanskrit drama… Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Lilit ōngkān Chaeng Nam 1974. In Lilit Rae nirāt (comp.) watcharī Romyanan. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn Univ. Press,
3–31.
Lilit yūan Phāi 1912. (ed.) Nat. Lib. Bangkok: Nat. Lib.
Lūa’h Rit, Khun Ying 1923. (ed.) Nārāi Sip Pāng. Bangkok: Rong Pim Thai.
Nang Nopphamāt 1925. Rūa’ng Nāng Nopphamāt. Bangkok: Nat. Lib.
Praphan Sukhonthachāt 1968. (ed.) Nāvāi Sip Pāng lae Phong Nai Rū'ang . Bangkok: Phra Chan.
Porée-Maspero, E. 1961. Pãli et rites de la maison. Anthropos 56, 179–251, 548–628, 883–929.
Rama I, King 1971. . Bangkok: Phrāe phitthayā, 6th ed., 4 vols.
Rama IV, King 1920. Bot bōek Rōng Rūàng Nārāi Prap Nonthuk. In Bot Bōek Rōng Luang. Bangkok: Rong
Pim Thai, 5–13.
Rao, T.A. Gopinatha 1916. Elements of Hindu iconography. Madras: Law Print. House, 2(1).
Shulman, D.D. 1976. The mythology of the Tamil Saiva Talapurāṇam. Thesis, Univ. London.
Tamrā Ram 1923. (ed.) Nat. Lib. Bangkok: Nat. Lib.
APPENDIX: THE STORY OF THE NANDAKA,
GUARDIAN OF THE GATE OF IŚVARA1
Judith M.Jacob
29. There was once a called Nandaka, keeper of the portals of Śiva’s palace on Mount Kailāsa.
Nandaka was ugly. He had a bald head, with tufts of hair at the sides. 30. As a result,(30) all the celestial
30. As a result,(30) all the celestial
beings, the sons of the gods, the nāgas and the used to enjoy ridiculing him. Every time they came
to cali upon Śiva they would slap his head or rap him on the head with their knuckles, laughing at him and
mocking him in their various modes of speech before going to attend upon Śiva in his residence. That was
how it was every time!
Nandaka was a who had no particular power or prowess. When he was slapped and thumped he
felt furious and thought to himself, ‘The. reason why all the celestial beings hold me in contempt is that I am
a humble person with no powers like theirs. I must go and see my master,
31. iva,Śand ask a boon of him.
Let (31) him grant that my index finger should become a weapon. Then I shall point it at all that horde and
make them fall into the outer Cakravāla. That will serve them right for looking down on me and slapping
and rapping my head!’ With this in mind, Nandaka presented himself before Śiva and said, bowing low
before him, ‘My lord, I, who am here before you, am your servant, keeper of the gate of your palace for
many a long year. I have never received a single gift from you. But now all the celestial beings, the sons of
the gods, the nāgas and the despise me, my lord, and on every occasion they slap me and rap me on
the head. I am incensed with rage and I ask you, my master, to bestow a certain boon 32. on me.(32) Will
you grant that my right index finger should become a weapon-finger with the power to point at that vulgar
rabble and make them flee far away from me, pellmell? Then I shall be able to stay and carry out my duties
to you, my lord, in contentment.’ When the great lord Śiva heard this, he was sorry for Nandaka. He took
hold of the index finger of his right hand, raised it up and recited a formula, bestowing the boon, all in a
moment, through his own personal might. And the index finger became a weapon, exactly as Nandaka
wanted it to be.
33. When he had achieved his wish, Nandaka took leave of Śiva respectfully and went away to carry on
guarding the gate as before. He set about pointing his finger at all the celestial throngs who came to amuse
themselves by hitting his head and daily sent them drifting away confusedly towards the distant Cakravāla.
The whole celestial throng, the nāgas and the , were reduced to humility by Nandaka’s finger.
Nandaka kept on pointing his finger, no matter which divinity it was. He merely had to see any one of them
coming through the air from afar and he would point at him making him fall towards the Cakravāla. The divine
beings were all terrified
34. of Nandaka. They did not dare to come and call on Śiva!(34) Śiva’s meeting
hall was deserted from then onwards.
The matter was not kept secret; news of it reached Śiva. He was horrified and anxious. ‘I gave too great a
gift to Nandaka’, he thought. ‘At present he is pointing his finger only at the outer gods. But suppose he
thought of treachery towards me and pointed at me? I should be sent flying towards the distant Cakravāla—
no doubt of it! This royal domain of mine on Mount Kailāsa would go to Nandaka! He would certainly take
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 95
possession of it. Mmm. I can’t let this state of affairs continue. I must think about getting rid of him. Then I
shall have my peace of mind for
35. the future.’ With this thought (35) in mind, Śiva sent a message to his
young brother, . Would he please come to see him in the inner room? came and Śiva
told him all about the special weapon which Nandaka’s index finger had become. listened and
then said, ‘You gave the boon without considering its potential danger to yourself. How can you now take it
back and make it disappear? The matter has already gone too far. The only thing is to work out a way to kill
him, off.’ took it upon himself to help and bade Lord Śiva goodbye. Leaving
36. the royal residence he changed his form into that of a (36) beautiful young girl and walked with graceful movements
towards Nandaka’s home. When he reached it, he glanced provocatively in Nandaka’s direction, behaving
like a woman who enjoyed the society of men and leading Nandaka on by various means to fall in love with
her. When Nandaka turned and saw the attractive girl, he felt sure, not knowing it was
in changed form, that she was a girl from a troupe of dancers. And so he fell head over heels in love with
the transformed . He smiled broadly and spoke persuasively, breaking into verse as follows:
37. (37) ‘Come, O dearest treasure! Approach, beloved. I would talk with you. Where are you going and
where do you come from? I look at you and want us to be f riends’.
‘You have asked me a question; I must reply with warmth, with eagerness, with desire. I am here because
I am looking for a husband, one who pleases me; then I will take him on.’
‘Dear lady, blessed with beauty, you are here looking for a husband, to live in harmony together. What
kind of man will you choose, precious love? Does a man like me please you?’
‘O handsome young man, I am searching for a husband who can dance. If you can dance well enough, I
can like you, love you and take you as my husband.’
‘My treasure, your beauty excels that of all others! As for dancing the yoke-carrying dance, whatever the
measure, I can perform it. What’s the difficulty? Dance on, my lady.
38. ‘I shall then (38) follow you and so dance correctly. Being a man of intelligence, I shall learn all the
rules from you, my teacher. Please dance, beautiful lady.!’
When the transformed heard Nandaka undertake to imitate the dancing, he swayed his body,
performing the measure cāk’ lāt2 and he twisted his right index finger round so that it pointed down towards
his thigh. Nandaka performed the same dance movements and pointed his finger in the same way. The moment
his weapon-finger pointed at his thigh, he fell down instantly on the spot.
turned himself back into the splendid, powerful , four-handed, holding the disc.
Moving quickly, he grasped Nandaka’s head, pressed him down and raised the disc above him, ready to
attack him with it.
39. Nandaka (39) was full of gloom and dismay when he saw . ‘I am beaten
by trickery’, he thought. ‘In his disguise as a girl, he led me on—I lost my senses.’ Compressing
his lips in anger, Nandaka spoke. ‘so! I have slipped up and let my enemy get the better of me! What can I
do, my lord, in my situation, with only two arms? How can I do battle against you, with your four arms? If
we both had two, I would not accept defeat by you.’
heard this and said, ‘In this existence I have four arms and you only two and so you lose. Now,
off you go and be born in the world of humans with ten faces and twenty arms. I shall descend and be born
as a man with only two arms and we shall fight each other
40. again.‘(40) And with these words killed Nandaka, using his special disc.
When he learned that Nandaka had been born as the demon king, , Lord of the on the
island of changed his form, leaving his old shape on the shore of the great ocean and was
born as Rāma. There was much fierce fighting between them. The full story is in the book of the Rāmakerti.
Do read it.
96 APPENDIX: THE STORY OF THE NANDAKA,
I draw upon the early part of this story in order to show its gati:3 Nandaka, who died as a result of his
own index finger, has a gati like that of a clever individual who talks constantly and shows off. He points
towards 41. himself alone, praises only himself.(41) A boastful person attracts criticism and will be
destroyed like Nandaka. Wise people with understanding would do well to give this further thought.
O Nandaka, you had your master dip4 your finger so that it became a weapon-finger. With the power thus
achieved, you pointed your finger at the godly throngs and dispersed them.
You confidently used your finger, without forethought, until all the divine beings felt angry with Śiva,
your master, who told to dispose of you.
You lost your life because, through his powers, the flame of passion consumed your being. You could see
only the girl, and were an easy prey for your sweetheart! You met with your end through not taking
thought.
When you became overwhelmed by passion’s fires, 42. you proceeded to dance, following (42) the
movements of , who performed the dance figure Phkā Phkul. You pointed at your own thigh,
collapsed and so died.
The section on dying by means of one’s own finger ends here. It is gati No.68.
TEXT
NOTES
1. This story, translated from the Khmer, is one of a collection of tales composed by Suttantaprijā In, 1959. Gatilok
ou L’art de bien se conduire (Ed. de l’Inst. Bouddhique). Phnom Penh: Inst. Bouddhique, 10 vols., 10, 29–42.
2. The untranslatable names of Khmer country dances are left in transliteration.
3. This word, which forms part of the title (Gatilok) of the whole work, means ‘line of thought, trend, behavioural
tendency’. It may refer either to the moral of the story or to the behaviour of a character.
4. This second poem (which runs to the end of the story) contains some inconsistencies. In the narrative above there
is no mention of ‘dipping’ the finger and Śiva did not directly tell to kill Nandaka. The use of the
name Kosi with Sūlī in the Khmer text (translated ‘Śiva’) is odd since, although Sūlī is a regular name for Śiva in
Khmer poetry, Kosi is a regular name for Indra.
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 97
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 99
LAĪ SŪ’ THAI 101
THE SIAMESE ADMINISTRATIVE ÉLITE IN THE EARLY
TWENTIETH CENTURY AND THE HISTORICAL
ORIGINS OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT IN SIAM*
Ian Brown
Siamese economic policy and administration in the last three decades of the absolute monarchy has long
been the focus of critical scholarly analysis. The most longstanding criticism has been that the Siamese
authorities in this period were almost invariably conservative and unimaginative in the use of the resources
which they had at their disposal, with the result, it is alleged, that they failed to exploit the full economic
potential of the kingdom in the short term or to lay the foundations for more securely based economic
growth in the future. Recent years have seen the emergence of the more radical criticism that economic
policy and administration in early twentieth century Siam was not simply short-sighted and unreasonably
conservative, but more seriously that the very considerable economic interests and political influence of the
Siamese administrative élite itself stood as a critical obstacle to the emergence of a more prosperous and
economically stable Siam. The present paper has two principal objectives. First, to suggest that these
criticisms are not fully sustained by a careful reading of the Siamese administrative records of the early
twentieth century; second, to argue that by placing state economic policy and administration and, in some
cases, the economic interests and political influence of the administrative élite at the centre of the analysis,
these criticisms may even have hindered progress towards a fuller understanding of the historical origins of
Siamese underdevelopment.
I
The first major scholarly analysis of Siamese economic policy under the late absolute monarchy is that
contained in James C.Ingram’s Economic change in Thailand since 1850 which was published in its first
edition in 1955.1 A central argument in Ingram’s analysis was that in the allocation of its financial
resources, (both tax revenue receipts and the proceeds of foreign loans), the Siamese administration of the
early twentieth century failed to provide sufficient funds to projects and programmes of a developmental
character. Rather, he argued, the Siamese authorities consistently preferred to devote the resources at their
disposal to programmes that would, in the immediate term, secure the internal administration and external
security of the kingdom. Thus very considerable emphasis was placed on the construction of a railway
network designed to improve commun ication between the capital and the outlying provinces of Siam. More
seriously, in Ingram’s view, a very substantial proportion of the kingdom’s loan funds and tax revenues was
devoted to the creation of reserves to support the government’s paper currency issue, and to support the
external value of the baht after the currency was placed on the gold-exchange standard in 1902. It is held
that these reserves far exceeded the normal requirements of the paper currency issue or the exchange. The
major casualty of the administration’s allocation of resources was, according to Ingram, the series of
irrigation proposals which were placed before the government in the opening two decades of the twentieth
century. Although the important economic advantages which would arise from a large-scale irrigation
110 THE SIAMESE ADMINISTRATIVE ÉLITE
project in the central plain were clearly laid before the administration, (notably the assurance of an adequate
supply of water for rice cultivation in all years, and the promotion of agricultural diversification by the
provision of opportunities to cultivate dry season crops), all major irrigation proposals from the beginning
of the twentieth century were rejected by the government, until in 1915 the implementation of one relatively
modest scheme was sanctioned. The result, it is argued, was that an important opportunity to make a major
investment in the future prosperity and stability of the kingdom’s rice economy was lost. It should be added
that in the Siamese administration’s decision to commit funds to the construction of railways and the
maintenance of high reserves rather than to irrigation works, Ingram sees the powerful influence of a series
of British financial advisers who were appointed by the Siamese government from the last years of the
nineteenth century.
Writing some twenty years after Ingram, David Feeny proposed a more radical explanation for the failure
of the Siamese administration to implement a major irrigation programme in the early twentieth century.2
Of considerable importance in his analysis was the fact that in the final years of the nineteenth century the
Bangkok élite, including members of the royal family and of the major bureaucratic families, had acquired
substantial holdings of agricultural land in the Rangsit area to the immediate north-east of the capital. This
was an area which had been opened up and provided with relatively advanced water control facilities by the
Siam Canals, Land and Irrigation Company, established in 1888. During the 1890s large numbers of
agricultural families moved into Rangsit, sending up land prices and rents, and as a consequence the
investments by the Bangkok élite in this area became an important source of private income for that class. It
was Feeny’s contention that that financial interest would have been seriously threatened by the construction
of major irrigation works in other areas of the central plain. It was suggested that the construction of new
irrigation facilities away from Rangsit would almost certainly have drawn many agricultural families out of
that area, for by the early twentieth century the Rangsit canals and dykes were falling into disrepair. The
result would have been a fall in land prices and rents in the Rangsit area and hence a substantial loss of
income on the part of the Bangkok landowning élite. There was thus, argued Feeny, a conflict between the
Bangkok élite’s private interest and the welfare of the kingdom taken as a whole which would clearly have
benefited from the construction of major irrigation works in the central plain. In this conflict, it was
implied, the Siamese administrative élite allowed its private interests to dominate, with the result that
proposals for large-scale irrigation works in the central plain were consistently rejected in the early
twentieth century. To strengthen this argument Feeny noted that when, in 1915, the administration did
finally sanction a limited irrigation scheme it was for an area which was adjacent to Rangsit and was
designed essentially to improve the flow of irrigation water into the latter area. In other words, the Bangkok
élite was prepared to sanction an irrigation project which would secure an increase in land values in an area
where they were major landowners. It should also be noted that Feeny employed the same basic argument to
explain the tardiness of the Siamese administration in promoting more scientific agricultural practices in
this period. Thus it was not until 1916–17 that the authorities proceeded with the establishment of an
experimental farm for rice. It was located in Rangsit where, presumably, local cultivators and landowners were
to be the principal beneficiaries of the farm’s experiments and trials.
A further major focus of critical analysis has concerned the allegation that in the early twentieth century
the Siamese administration made little serious attempt to refashion. the basic structure of the kingdom’s
economy. To be specific, it is alleged that the authorities were not concerned to diversify the economy away
from its dangerous dependence on the export of a limited number of primary commodities by encouraging
the growth of non-agricultural production. A moderate form of this criticism can be found in Ingram, though
the argument is only implicitly expressed. Reviewing the century of economic change in Siam from 1850,
he argued that:
most changes in the economy as a whole were in volume rather than in kind. New methods were not
used, new products were not developed. No product of any importance (except rubber) was exported
in 1950 which was not exported in 1850. (Ingram 1971:209).
Essentially the same argument was also presented, although far more vigorously, by Benedict R. O’G.
Anderson in an article which appeared in 1978. In a passage critical of the widely held view that the later
absolute kings were farsighted, dynamic, modernizing rulers, Anderson quoted Ingram’s description of
economic fossilization noted above, and then added:
One naturally asks where all that modernizing dynamism went. Why was it that, after a century of
modernizing rulers, a ‘uniquely independent’ Southeast Asian state remained so backward? Why did
its export economy look like a retrogade version of the neighboring colonial economies…? (Anderson
1978:216)
The absence of major structural change in the Siamese economy over the period of the later nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, and more specifically the observation that capitalism had failed to take root in the
kingdom despite the penetration of the economy by capitalist influences from the 1850s, has in recent years
also attracted the attention of a considerable number of Thai scholars of the younger generation, among
whom the most prominent is Chatthip Nartsupha.3 The principal feature of the work of Chatthip, and of the
school of political economy which has emerged in Thailand largely as a result of his writings and scholarly
encouragement, is that it seeks to interpret the historical devel-opment of Siam’s economy and society from
a Marxist perspective. The foundation of the Chatthip analysis is his characterization of the precapitalist (or
saktina) economy of the kingdom. Two prominent features of that social formation have been identified.
First, it was argued that the village in the precapitalist economy was an essentially self-sufficient
community in which agriculture and handicraft production, (notably the weaving of cloth), were both
pursued. As there was no pronounced division of labour between villages, internal trade was very limited
and was usually conducted on a barter basis. Moreover, within each village there was no marked disparity in
wealth among the inhabitants. In brief, in this period ‘the villages did not contain any dynamic potential, but
persisted inexorably through time in their static form’ (Hong 1984:144). Second, Chatthip argued that in the
precapitalist social formation the king, and in practice the Bangkok élite as a whole, had control over the
major part of the land, labour and capital resources of the kingdom. Consequently a disproportionately large
share of the kingdom’s surplus product was channelled towards this élite urban class, who in turn devoted a
major portion of these resources to expenditure on Bangkok and the court, and on internal security and
external defense. For their part, the cultivators, who were the essential source of this surplus product, were
deprived of the resources through which they would be able to raise their productivity in agriculture or to
transform their economic role. In short, according to Chatthip, the exploitation of the peasantry by the urban
élite— the constant and considerable flow of resources from the rural economy to the capital—stifled
whatever economic initiative that the people might have had. Crucial to Chatthip’s analysis was the further
observation that the penetration of the Siamese economy by capitalism after the kingdom was opened to
virtually unrestricted international trade from the middle of the nineteenth century, did not lead to the
disintegration of these precapitalist structures. Rather the post-1855 economic system could be
characterized as ‘saktina combined with capitalism’. In practice members of the saktina class, (the royal and
noble administrative élite), were able to use their entrenched economic and political position to absorb the
growing Chinese merchant community, and in this way the latter was prevented from developing into an
independent and powerful bourgeoisie, capable of affecting fundamental change in the structure of the
Siamese economy.
The foregoing remarks, being as brief as they are, cannot do justice to the complexity and sophistication
of the analyses under review.4 However it is to be hoped that at least one essential point has been
established: that is, that each of these writers, from Ingram to the Thai political economists such as
Chatthip, has placed the Siamese administrative élite—whether as the formulators of government economic
policy or as the controllers of the major portion of the kingdom’s productive resources—at the centre of the
analysis. It is the élite, whether through lack of foresight and imagination, or through their entrenched
economic and political interests, who are held to have had a major responsibility for the alleged absence of
substantial economic change in Siam in the period from the middle of the nineteenth century.
II
In turning now to assess these analyses, it is proposed first to examine in detail Feeny’s argument, and
evidence, that a desire to protect the existing private interests of the Siamese élite was a critical obstacle to
the adoption by the government of a major irrigation programme in the early twentieth century.5 It would be
naive to expect a bold statement of such élite self-interest, secured at the expense of the welfare of the
kingdom as a whole, to appear in the Siamese administrative records now held in the National Archives in
Bangkok; and, indeed, Feeny does not appear to have located such a declaration. Rather, to support his
argument he places considerable weight on a paragraph which appeared in a report published by the Royal
Irrigation Department in 1927. It is a paragraph which purports to explain the administration’s decision in
1915 to proceed with an irrigation project in the Pāsak district, adjacent to Rangsit, rather than one on the
west bank of the Čhaophrayā, some distance from Rangsit, in Suphanburī.
The Government took the above course probably because it was considered inadvisable to disturb
existing arrangements of landlords and tenants in the Rangsit area and elsewhere, which the opening
up of big areas of land in Subhan, free for all, must have done. (Quoted in Feeny 1982:83–4)
The critical phrase here concerns possible disturbance to the ‘existing arrangements of landlords and tenants
in the Rangsit area and elsewhere. Feeny interprets this to mean the exodus of cultivators from Rangsit that
would almost certainly have occurred if a major new area of land were to have been opened up for rice
cultivation and provided with more advanced water control facilities. This inference is probably a safe one.
He proceeds to suggest that such an exodus of tenant-farmers would probably have led to financial losses on
the part of the Rangsit landowners, (again probably a safe inference). But he then argues that it was this
threat to the financial position of the Rangsit land-owners, many of whom were powerful members of the
Bangkok administration, which was the important consideration in the decision of the government to
proceed with Pāsak rather than Suphanburī.6 However, it need only be noted that there are other possible
reasons why the Siamese administration may have considered it inadvisable to permit or encourage an
exodus from Rangsit. For example, it may have wished to avoid the possibly severe strain on local
administration and on rural social and economic stability which a large-scale migration of farming families
from Rangsit, the premier rice-growing district in the kingdom, might have occasioned. There may have
been concern that a major migration might, at least in the short-term, disrupt rice cultivation in the central
plain on a sufficiently large scale to pose some threat to the government’s land tax revenues. In this context
it should be noted, as indeed Feeny himself noted, that in early 1916 the British financial adviser,
W.J.F.Williamson, who it may be assumed had no private interest in Rangsit, also recommended that Pāsak
be preferred to Suphanburī since this decision “would benefit areas already under cultivation and would avoid
the problem of migration out of the Rangsit area” (Feeny 1982:82). In brief, whilst the Royal Irrigation
Department report of 1927 does indeed strongly suggest that the important consideration in 1915 was that
the authorities wished to avoid a large-scale migration from Rangsit, it offers no clear guide as to the reason
or reasons why such a movement of population would have been unwelcome to the administration. On this
point there can be only conjecture.
Two further points may be made with respect to Feeny’s analysis. First, given the fact that in the last
years of the nineteenth century the Bangkok élite had been able to utilize its political and economic power
to secure large holdings of land in Rangsit, it is difficult to see why they would not similarly have moved to
become important landowners in any new area, such as Suphanburī, that was subsequently opened up by
major irrigation works. In this way the losses suffered in Rangsit might well have been recovered in the new
area of irrigation development. In this respect it should again be noted that by the early twentieth century
the Rangsit canals and dykes were falling into serious disrepair. In particular many of the canals were suffering
from a rapid accumulation of silt which in turn was leading to poor drainage from the area. The result was
an accumulation of soluble salts in the soils and excessive acidity which would over time contribute to
declining yields (Feeny 1982:51, 62). In these circumstances, land prices and rents in Rangsit would almost
inevitably have come under downward pressure: they would certainly have fallen below those which would
obtain in any newly developed area of the central plain which was being provided with really effective
irrigation and drainage facilities. Thus, were the Rangsit landowners to have acquired land on a substantial
scale in a new area of irrigation development they could have found themselves securing tenants in districts
where rents were relatively high, losing them in an area of relatively depressed rents. In brief, by the early
twentieth century the Bangkok land-owning élite might well have been in a position to benefit from the
opening up of new irrigated areas away from Rangsit. Thus with regard to a major state irrigation
investment in this period it is possible that, rather than there being an inevitable conflict between the private
interests of the Bangkok élite and the wider interests of the cultivating population, there may well have been
a convergence of private and public interest. To this view it might be argued that the élite, having invested
heavily in Rangsit, were simply unable to undertake a major investment in another area, even one which
now promised substantially higher returns. Unfortunately there can be no evidence to deny (or sustain) that
criticism, for the point could be settled satisfactorily only by detailed reference to the private financial
resources of the élite in this period.7 However, it may be noted that a major part of the cost of opening up a
new area such as Suphanburī would have fallen not on the landowners, as had been the case with Rangsit
which was developed as a private concession, but on the public purse. The final point to be made with
respect to Feeny’s analysis is as follows: there are clearly dangers in using evidence which relates to the
Siamese administration’s decision in 1915 to proceed with one particular, relatively small irrigation project
at the expense of another, to draw conclusions with regard to the government’s irrigation policy as a whole
over the period from the early 1900s. Thus, even if it is accepted that a desire to protect the private interests
of the Bangkok élite in Rangsit was the principal reason for the rejection of the Suphanburī scheme in 1915,
it does not necessarily follow that that same consideration was of any importance in the administration’s
rejection of van der Heide’s major irrigation programmes in the previous decade.8
A close reading of the Siamese administrative records concerned with irrigation in the opening two
decades of the twentieth century reveals that there were a number of substantial considerations, many of
them varying over time, which influenced the administration’s policy in this period.9 There is space here to
consider but three of them. First it may be noted that the attitudes and expectations of the Siamese
authorities in commissioning the two major irrigation reports in this period, that from J.Homan van der
Heide in 1902 and that from Sir Thomas Ward in 1913, differed substantially. The first report was
born essentially out of a dissatisfaction, initially on the part of the Minister of Agriculture, Čhaophrayā
Thēwēt, with the deteriorating facilities in the private concession at Rangsit, and a belief, not formulated in
detail, that henceforth the government itself must undertake the construction of irrigation works.10
However, in engaging van der Heide there was little or no discussion within the administration as to the
precise reasons why the kingdom should embark on such a major investment at that time, and there was
certainly no decision as to the amount of capital which the state would be prepared to commit to it.11 In
contrast, in 1913 the then Minister of Agriculture, Prince was quite clear as to the need for a major
irrigation investment: it would enable the Siamese rice cultivator to compete on equal terms with his
counterparts in Burma and Indo-China, and was thus essential for the continued prosperity of the
kingdom.12 in addition, in 1913 the administration decided firmly on the scale of the investment which it
wished to make. In short, in the early 1900s the Siamese authorities, in effect, stumbled into consideration
of an irrigation programme; a decade later the approach was considerably more sophisticated and
calculating. The second point is that van der Heide himself must be allotted some of the responsibility for
the eventual rejection of his irrigation report, published in 1903. The Dutch engineer appears to have been a
man of grand, perhaps even grandiose, ideas, with the result that, left unfettered by the absence of precise
instructions from the Siamese administration, he proceeded to produce proposals which far exceeded the
financial resources and possibly also the contemporary agricultural requirements of the kingdom.13
Moreover, in his relations with his Siamese subordinates in the Irrigation Department he appears to have
been frequently insensitive and overbearing. Neither as administrator or engineer did he command loyalty
or even respect within his department14 and this undoubtedly came to influence the administration’s attitude
towards his proposals.
But undoubtedly the major reason why the Siamese administration of the early twentieth century failed to
commit itself to a substantial investment in irrigation was that, given the other demands on the finances of
the state, it simply did not have the resources to undertake either the van der Heide or the complete Ward
programme. In practice, van der Heide’s proposals were sabotaged by the Shan uprising in Phrāe and
Lampang in mid-1902 which forced the Bangkok administration to allocate immediately a sharp increase in
resources for the more rapid construction of the railway to the north (Holm 1977:114–5). Full
implementation of the more modest proposals of Ward presented in 1915 was foiled by the inability of the
kingdom to raise a major foreign loan, as had originally been intended, following the outbreak of hostilities
in Europe in August 1914.15 Although the presence of a financial constraint has been clearly noted by
earlier writers (Ingram 1971:200; Feeny 1982:81), the rigid force with which it bore down on the Siamese
administration has not been sufficiently emphasized. It is commonly argued that given the political and
occasionally even military threat faced by Siam from the imperial powers during this period, the
administration understandably sought to invest in the construction of a railway network linking Bangkok
with the extremities of the kingdom rather than commit resources to irrigation works which could do little,
directly, to protect the sovereignty of Siam (Feeny 1982: (80–1). In this context, for example, Feeny
(op.cit., 77) noted ‘the revealed preference of the government for investments in railroads’ and, at another
point, referred to ‘the decision-making process by which the government decided not to invest in irrigation’
(op.cit., 83). The financial adviser, the landlords at Rangsit, and the Bangkok élite are said to have
‘favoured’ railways over irrigation (op.cit., 81–2, 84). But the use of the words ‘preference’ and ‘favoured’,
and the reference to the ‘decision-making process’, implies some degree of choice, whereas in fact the Siamese
administration, in the political and military circumstances it faced, simply did not possess the freedom to
choose. If the political sovereignty of the kingdom was seriously threatened, as it was in the early twentieth
century, then without question or calculation that threat had to be met; in part by the construction of
railways, by the strengthening of the armed forces (to maintain domestic peace rather than repel external
attack), and by the maintenance of foreign exchange reserves sufficient to secure the external stability of the
currency in all normal trading circumstances. Moreover, investment in these areas had to reach a minimum
level to be effective. In terms of the security of the kingdom, little would be achieved were construction of
the northern railway to be halted at, say, unrest in the outlying provinces could be quelled only if
the armed forces were maintained at a certain strength; exchange stability could be assured only if the
reserves were held at an adequate level.16 In summary, it is argued here that the broad pattern of
government expenditure, the commitments to railways, the military and currency reserves, and even the
general size of those commitments was determined primarily by Siam’s weak international position in the
early twentieth century, as the focus of imperial rivalry in main-land South East Asia.
Continuing this line of argument, the administration’s failure to undertake major irrigation works can be
said to reflect less the ‘preference’ of the authorities than the inescapable fact that once the commitments
above had been satisfied the resources simply did not exist for a major irrigation investment.17 Indeed, with
respect to the ‘preference’ of the Siamese authorities, as noted above, there is evidence that in the early
1910s, although perhaps not before, members of the Siamese administration had acquired a clear
appreciation of the importance of irrigation if Siam were to continue to compete effectively with her
neighbours in the international rice trade, and that the government had a firm determination to proceed with
such an investment. The fact that in 1913 the administration bore the expense of engaging a second, and
distinguished, irrigation engineer, Sir Thomas Ward, to draw up extensive irrigation proposals; the firm and
precise manner in which it stipulated the size of the investment which it wished to make; its willingness to
raise a loan in Europe to finance Ward’s proposals; and perhaps most importantly of all, the clearly stated
view of a major figure in the administration, the Minister of Finance, Prince that following
the collapse of the attempt to raise a loan in Europe, irrigation should be given priority over the continued
construction of the northern railway,18 all bear witness to the government’s new found perception and
resolve. That this resolve was not translated into the full and prompt implementation of Ward’s proposals
was, again as noted above, primarily a consequence of the inability of Siam to raise a loan in Europe during
the war years, whilst in the inter-war decades the increased costs of construction (Feeny 1982:63), the
budgetary problems of the 1920s and the depression of the 1930s made a major investment in irrigation
difficult and then simply undesirable.
In summary, it is argued here that the explanation for the failure of the Siamese administration to
undertake a major irrigation programme in the early twentieth century lies primarily not in the attitudes,
perceptions or self-interest of the Siamese élite, but in the severe constraints imposed on the formulation
and execution of Siamese economic policy by the European imperial presence. The argument that the
Bangkok élite allowed consideration of self-interest to influence strongly the administration’s irrigation
policy can be substantiated neither by documentary evidence nor by a priori reasoning. The view that the
Siamese administration was invariably short-sighted and unimaginative in its assessment of the potential
benefits of a major irrigation investment is belied by the appointment of Sir Thomas Ward in 1913. That there
was no major irrigation investment in this period was primarily because the European imperial presence in
mainland South East Asia severely diminished the authority of the Siamese administration in the disposition
of the scarce resources which it had at its command.
III
It is now possible to consider the observation that in the century from the opening of the kingdom to
international trade in the 1850s the Siamese economy underwent no substantial structural change, and the
related criticisms, either that the Siamese administration of the early twentieth century made little serious
attempt to encourage the growth of indigenous nonagricultural production or, more radically, that the
alleged exploitation of the rural districts by the urban élite stifled the economic initiative of the indigenous
population. Discussion of this observation and these criticisms is made treacherous by the difficulties
involved in characterizing precisely the nature of the economic change experienced by the kingdom over the
period from 1850. In the most general terms it is indeed clear that little fundamental distinction can be
drawn between the broad structure of the Siamese economy in the later nineteenth century and its broad
structure by the end of the absolute monarchy. It need only be noted that according to a population census
conducted in 1929, well over 80% of the working population of Siam were still engaged in agriculture,
forestry, or animal husbandry (Central Service of Statistics: 62). In the same year exports of rice and paddy
still accounted for over 60% of total export earnings (op.cit., 76, 150–1). But although the absence of
fundamental structural change is clear, this should not be interpreted as evidence of either economic
stagnation or of the absence of substantial economic vitality and initiative in the kingdom over this period.
Indeed, there is abundant evidence throughout these decades of the most substantial economic vigour and
responsiveness.
Just two broad examples must suffice. The first concerns the dramatic expansion of rice cultivation and
export which occurred over the decades from 1855 through to the 1930s, an expansion undertaken almost
entirely on the initiative of indigenous labour and capital (Johnston 1981). It is possible that the increasing
commitment of the rural population to the cultivation of rice for export during the second half of the
nineteenth century arose in part through economic pressures applied by the Bangkok administration. More
specifically, it can be argued that the gradual replacement of corvée obligations by cash tax payments,
coupled with the substantially increased ability of the administration to assess and collect tax revenues
following the bureaucratic and administrative reforms of the late nineteenth century, forced the peasantry to
direct their labour and capital increasingly towards the cultivation of those crops, notably rice, which would
provide a substantial cash income (Chatthip and Suthy 1981: 15–6). It might also be suggested that in
abolishing slavery over the last three decades of the nineteenth century, the adminis-tration, in effect,
pushed the rural population into the cultivation of rice for the world market, for the latter would now be
required to take responsibility for their own livelihood. Although it would be extremely difficult to assess
the strength of these two forms of pressure on the rural population, it is unlikely that they could have been
of sufficient magnitude to account for more than a relatively minor part of the increasing involvement of the
Siamese peasantry in the cultivation of rice for export in this period. It need only be noted that the average
annual volume of rice exports rose from just under 113,000 metric tons in the first half of the 1870s to a
little over 1,534,000 metric tons in the second half of the 1930s (Feeny 1982:127–9). This represented a
increase, achieved during a period when the population of the kingdom increased little more
than times (op.cit., 21). In view of the magnitude of the increase in rice exports, it may be suggested that
the more powerful influences on the movement of indigenous labour and capital into rice cultivation were
the rising price of rice in the second half of the nineteenth century19 and the prospect, for the cultivator, of
being able to purchase with his income from rice an ever increasing array of imported manufactured articles.20
In other words it is argued that the rural population of the lower Čhaophrayā delta were attracted rather than
forced into the cultivation of rice for the world market. If this analysis is accepted, then two important
points may be made. First, the analysis implies that there was a substantial increase in the real income of the
rice cultivator in the lower Čhaophrayā delta through the second half of the nineteenth century, even after
the tax demands of the government and the commission of middlemen, millers and moneylenders had been
met.21 This in turn undermines the view of an exploitative saktina class draining off the rural surplus on a
vast scale. Indeed, it suggests the retention of a substantial proportion of the newly-created wealth within
the rice districts of central Siam, for without this incentive the movement of indigenous labour and capital
into rice cultivation would almost certainly have occurred on a considerably smaller scale than in fact it did.
Second, the analysis above indicates the most vigorous response to economic opportunities on the part of
the rural population of the lower delta, which in turn again undermines the view of a stagnant indigenous
economy, drained of its dynamic potential.22
The second illustration of substantial economic initiative in Siam in this period concerns a number of
commercial and industrial enterprises which were established in the kingdom in the final three decades of
the absolute monarchy. The following may be briefly noted. The first, chronologically, was the Siam
Commercial Bank which began operations, under the name of the ‘Book Club’ in October 1904 and which
was incorporated by royal charter in January 1907.23 The founder of the bank was the then Minister of
Finance, Prince Mahit, though his involvement in the enterprise was a private initiative. The capital of the
Siam Commercial, at least in its early years, was provided mainly by Prince Mahit himself, a number of
prominent Chinese tax farmers, the Privy Purse, the Deutsche Asiatische Bank, and Den Danske
Landmandsbank of Copenhagen.24 The principal concern of the bank in this early period was the conduct of
exchange business, which it carried out in competition with the three established European banks in
Bangkok, the Hongkong and Shanghai, the Chartered, and the Banque de L’Indochine. Despite being at the
centre of a severe banking crisis in late 1913, after which it was reconstructed principally through a further
major injection of capital by the Privy Purse,25 the Siam Commercial grew into one of the foremost banks in
the kingdom, and indeed it still occupies a prominent position in the Thai commercial banking system. The
Privy Purse was also an important source of funds for the Siam Cement Company, providing one-third of its
initial share capital when the company was established in 1913 (Siam Cement Company 1963:125). Indeed,
the main initiative in the creation of the enterprise came from King Vajiravudh himself. Machinery,
technical expertise, and management were provided primarily by a Danish cement company, F.L.Smidth
(Tandrup 1980:172). The Siam Cement Company began production in May 1915, thus fortuitously
benefiting from the restriction of cement imports into the kingdom which arose from the war-time
disruption of international trade (The Record July 1923:13–5; Siam Cement Company 1963:127). However,
after the revival of foreign trade from 1918 the local company was able to retain a substantial share of the
home market against foreign competition. The sales of the Siam Cement Company rose from approximately
25,000 tons in 1920 to 135,000 tons in 1940 (Siam Cement Company 1957:12). There even developed a
modest export trade, principally to the Malay States.26 At present Siam Cement not only retains a prominent
position in the domestic cement market but has also diversified into such areas as the manufacture of
asbestos-cement sheets and industrial fibres.27 Indeed it is perhaps the most prominent indigenous industrial
concern in present-day Thailand.
Not all the commercial enterprises undertaken by the Siamese administrative élite in this period were as
successful as the Siam Commercial Bank and the Siam Cement Company. Perhaps the most serious failure
involved the Siamese Steamship Company which was inaugurated in January 1918 (Greene 1971:334–42;
Vella 1978:172). The company’s fleet at that time consisted of three German merchant vessels which had
been seized as enemy property by the Siamese authorities when Siam had declared war on the Central Powers
in July 1917. The initial capital of one million baht was provided equally by the government on the one
hand, and by a group of wealthy Siamese and Sino-Siamese entrepreneurs on the other.28 Whilst trade was
buoyant the new company enjoyed considerable success—indeed four new vessels were purchased in 1919
—but as the post-war trading boom broke it began to run into serious financial difficulties. Its problems
were compounded by the loss of two vessels at sea, in February 1918 and in December 1920. In January
1922 management of the shipping line was transferred to the British-owned Borneo Company, but this
reorganization could do little to solve the fundamental commercial weaknesses of the Siamese Steamship
Company, and it was finally wound up in March 1926.
The final two examples of commercial and industrial enterprise in these decades depended upon neither
the capital or the initiative of the Siamese administrative élite, at least in their early stages. Following the
renegotiation of the kingdom’s commercial treaties in the first half of the 1920s, the government was free in
March 1927 to introduce a new tariff, a tariff which included a 25% duty on tobacco in all its forms.29 In the
years that immediately followed, there emerged in the kingdom a number of relatively small-scale cigarette
manufacturers. They included the Eastern Tobacco Company (registered in 1927) and the Siamese Tobacco
Company (registered in 1932), both of which were promoted by Chinese or Sino-Siamese.30 Unfortunately
neither concern appears to have been able to produce cigarettes of an adequate and uniform quality,31 with
the result that they failed to compete effectively against either the standardized imported brands, despite a
very considerable increase in the duty on imported cigarettes in the early 1930s,32 or the output of the local
factory of the British-American Tobacco Company which began operations in April 1933.33 in 1939 the
business and plant of the Eastern Tobacco Company were acquired by the Government.34 At about the same
time negotiations began between the Siamese authorities and the British-American Tobacco Company for
the purchase of the latter’s assets in Siam.35 The transfer of ownership was completed in 1941, the British-
American plant forming the basis for the government’s Tobacco Monopoly (Ingram 1971:137, 140) which
continues to operate very profitably to the present. The second example of industrial enterprise in this
period outside the initiative of the Siamese administrative élite concerns the Boon Rawd Brewery which
was registered in August 1933.36 The brewery was founded by Phrayā Phirom a businessman
whose previous enterprises included, perhaps most notably, a passenger motor-boat company (Phirom
Phakdī 1975a:135–6). Unlike Malayan Breweries in Singapore (formed in 1931), which involved a
partnership between the local firm of Fraser and Neave, and the Dutch brewers Heineken, the Bangkok
company forged no formal alliance with a European brewery.37 During its early years Boon Rawd enjoyed a
considerable measure of tariff protection from imported beers,38 though the success of the company in the
1930s was also derived in large measure from the high quality of the beer which it produced.39 There is
perhaps little need to add that Boon Rawd continues to hold an important position in the Thai beer market,
despite the establishment of indigenous competitors, notably Amarit Beer, from the 1950s.
The emergence of these commercial and industrial enterprises in the early twentieth century provides a
major problem of interpretation. The arguments put forward by Ingram (1971:209), endorsed and developed
by Anderson (1978:215–6), that ‘most changes in the economy....were in volume rather than in kind’ and,
more importantly, that ‘new products were not developed’ in the century from 1850, appear to imply that
this development in non-agricultural production occurred on too small a scale to be analytically
significant.40 Then in Chatthip’s analysis, the emergence of these commercial and industrial concerns is
seen as simply one aspect of the absorption of the (predominantly Chinese) bourgeoisie into the saktina
class in the early twentieth century,41 a process which prevented the development of an independent
capitalist class capable of promoting fundamental structural change in the Siamese economy. As a result of
its almost unavoidable collusion with saktina political, administrative and economic power, Chinese
‘merchant capital failed to change the mode of production of Siam’ (Chatthip and Suthy 1981:31). The
argument in this paper is that in seeking to understand the nature of the economic change experienced by
the kingdom in this period, it may be more valuable to concentrate on the examples, admittedly limited, of
economic initiative and structural change which did occur, rather than on the general formulations of
economic stagnation and fossilization proposed by Ingram and Chatthip, and to consider why those areas of
undoubted economic vitality were not more extensive and influential than in fact they were.
Of the five commercial and industrial enterprises noted earlier, three were financially successful—the
Siam Commercial Bank, the Siam Cement Company, and the Boon Rawd Brewery. In the case of the first,
the Bank, a critical element in its success was the support which it received from the government. This was
seen most dramatically during the bank crisis of December 1913 when the Siam Commercial was saved
from collapse only through the prompt administrative and financial assistance of the authorities.42 However,
government support in a less dramatic form was of considerable importance to the Bank right from its
earliest days. Perhaps most notably, the government appears to have placed a substantial part of its
business, in terms of the deposit of government funds and the conduct of exchange transactions, with the
Siam Commercial rather than with the three European banks in Bangkok.43 Not only did the government’s
custom provide the local bank with secure business but it would also have signalled official confidence in
the concern to the wider public. The commercial success of the remaining two enterprises, the Siam Cement
Company and Boon Rawd Brewery, rested in part on the nature of the product they manufactured. As
cement is a large bulk/low value commodity, the advantage in a particular market will always lie, all else being
equal, with the domestic producer, who does not have to bear heavy transport costs, rather than with the
foreign cement company. Similarly, with beer the advantage in a particular market should lie with the local
brewery, for beer needs to be consumed within a few weeks of brewing if it is to be at its best. This is not to
argue that efficiency and high product standards were not important for the commercial success of the bank,
cement company, and brewery. Indeed, there are grounds for arguing that the two manufacturers, at the very
least, approached international competitiveness in this period. This was certainly the case with Siam
Cement which, as noted earlier, was able to establish a position in the domestic market during the 1920s
when there was virtually no tariff protection, and which was even able to develop a modest export trade
during that decade.44 For its part, Boon Rawd was apparently able to break the prejudice of the Siamese
drinker for foreign beers within just one or two years of entering the market.45 Given the very considerable
expertise and experience required to establish a successful brewing plant—brewing in that period was as
much an art as a science—this was a considerable achievement. Finally, the Siam Commercial Bank
appears to have been able to provide services of a comparable quality to those of its European competitors
in Bangkok in this period.46 Nevertheless, it can be argued that an important element in the commercial
success of these three enterprises was the degree of assistance they received, from the government in the
case of the Siam Commercial Bank, and from the nature of their product in the case of Siam Cement and
Boon Rawd.
The same broad line of reasoning may be applied to the experience of the Siamese Steamship Company
in this period. It would appear that the operations of the company were severely hampered by the fact that
its ships were aged and in bad physical condition, for they had been laid up in the port of Bangkok from
August 1914 until they had been taken into service in early 1918.47 Moreover, according to the Financial
Adviser W.J.F. Williamson, the company’s steamers were not specifically suited for the trade in and out of
Bangkok: for example, only two ships were equipped for the particularly lucrative coolie trade between
Siam and the South China ports.48 However, it can be argued that even with modern and appropriate ships
the Siamese Steamship Company would still have experienced considerable difficulty in competing on the
important runs from Bangkok to Singapore and Hong Kong. First, following the collapse of the post-war
trading boom, shipping rates throughout the world were forced down to levels at which even major
European shipping companies found it difficult to remain profitable (Sturmey 1962:56, 64–5). Second, and
more important, the structure of shipping routes in the East appears to have been prejudicial to the profitable
operation of small, indigenous lines such. as the Siamese Steamship Company. The local concern could
easily secure cargoes of rice in Bangkok for shipment to Singapore and Hong Kong, but, according to
Williamson, it experienced considerable difficulty in obtaining inward cargoes for Siam.49 The reason for this
was almost certainly the fact that the major western shipping companies which brought cargoes of
manufactured articles from Europe into, in particular, Singapore, would seek to employ their associate or
subsidiary lines when those cargoes were trans-shipped for the smaller ports in the region such as Bangkok
(Hyde 1973:92–3). Denied inward cargoes for Bangkok, the Siamese Steamship Company would have
found it almost impossible to remain profitable on its operations overall.
The experience of the indigenous cigarette companies of the late 1920s and the early 1930s clearly stands
in contrast to that of the cement and beer enterprises in that period. As suggested earlier, the failure of the
Sino-Siamese tobacco companies to become established in the domestic market, despite the erection of a
considerable tariff against imported cigarettes in the early 1930s, was due primarily to their inability to
manufacture cigarettes of a sustained quality that would repel imports. In other words protection on the
scale imposed was of little value to a technologically inferior indigenous industry. Nevertheless, it should
also be noted that the increases in the import duty on tobacco in the early 1930s did have the effect of
persuading the British-American Tobacco Company to begin production within the kingdom, and although
in the short term this contributed to the demise of the indigenous industry, it also introduced more advanced
cigarette production techniques into Siam, provided a growing demand for local tobacco leaf,50 and, of
course, provided the instrument for government ownership of the industry on the eve of the Japanese war.
The argument being developed here is that the pattern of economic change in early twentieth century
Siam, and in particular the nature and extent of diversification away from agriculture in that period, was
determined primarily by the powerful and diverse influences of the international economy. This was an
inevitable consequence of the opening of the kingdom to virtually unrestricted foreign trade from the middle
of the nineteenth century. The conditions, laid out in the Bowring Treaty of 1855, under which Siam’s
commercial intercourse with the outside world was transacted did permit some very limited economic
diversification as, for example, into the manufacture of cement from the 1910s. But if the Siamese
administrative élite had sought to promote major structural change in the economy in the early twentieth
century then the conditions under which Siam was integrated into the world economy would have had to
have been radically altered.
As the absolute minimum step this required the renegotiation of the kingdom’s commercial treaties to
restore Siam’s fiscal autonomy which had been surrendered in the mid-nineteenth century. However, and
this is the critical element in the argument, the restoration of fiscal autonomy, achieved in the 1920s, still
left very severe limitations on the ability of the Siamese administrative élite to effect significant structural
changes in the economy. One illustration of this point has already been given. The imposition of higher
duties on imported beers in the early 1930s gave assistance to the newly-established local brewery, but this
was an enterprise whose product in any event possessed ‘natural’ advantages against foreign competitors,
whilst Phrayā Phirom Phakdī himself took care to secure the most modern production methods—by
purchasing European plant and engaging European brewmasters. In contrast, high duties on imported
tobacco could do little to assist a nascent Sino-Siamese cigarette industry which consisted of small-scale
factories and which remained backward in its production methods. With an economy open to world trade,
(and despite the tariff increases of the late 1920s and 1930s the Siamese economy clearly remained an open
one in this period), such considerations as the difficulties in securing technological and industrial
knowledge, shortages of trained and experienced personnel, as well as possible adverse factor endowments
or the limited size of the domestic market, could each provide a formidable barrier to economic
diversification within Siam. A high degree of import protection would be of relatively little assistance in
overcoming those barriers. Moreover, even in those cases where economic, commercial and technological
circumstances did favour the establishment of a new industry within the kingdom, there remained serious
limitations on the extent to which the administration could protect an enterprise in its infancy. First, one
broadly undesirable result of imposing high import duties would be that almost inevitably the domestic
price of the articles being protected would rise. Had the Siamese administration of the late 1920s or 1930s,
seeking to promote a substantial measure of industrialization, imposed protective duties on a relatively wide
range of manufactures, the almost certain consequence would have been a substantial rise in domestic prices
for non-agricultural articles and thus a possibly sharp fall in real incomes, notably in the rural areas. At
some point the imposition of protective duties across a wide range of manufactures would become socially
disruptive, even if it succeeded in creating industrial employment. Second, as the prosperity of the kingdom
in this period still rested primarily on the export of rice, the erection of protective tariffs, even on a modest
scale, laid Siam open to commercial retaliation by its trading partners. Thus, if the Siamese administration,
in an attempt to develop an important local textile industry, had imposed a heavily protective duty on
finished cotton goods,51 it is quite probable that the major exporters of piece goods, including Britain, would
have been encouraged to take retaliatory action against the Siamese rice trade. This would have had
potentially disastrous consequences for the kingdom.
In addition to these external considerations it should be noted that Siamese economic policy and
administration in this period was also forced to act under a number of serious internal constraints, although
even here there were important external origins. Three brief examples may be given. The first involved an
acute shortage of appropriately trained and experienced government officials. In part this was a reflection of
the fact that a reformed national system of education was, in this period, still in its infancy,52 and thus the
supply of suitable locally-educated recruits for the higher levels of government service was limited.
Moreover, it was almost invariably the case that the relatively small number of highly competent officials who
did emerge were drafted into the major ministries, principally the Ministry of the Interior,53 rather than into
commercial or agricultural departments. Thus an attempt made by the administration in the early 1900s to
develop government research into improved agricultural techniques with the aim of promoting more
advanced cultivation practices in the kingdom broke down largely because the official selected to direct this
work was found to be incompetent, inadequately trained, and lacking in commitment (Johnston 1975:340–
2). In the early twentieth century there was certainly no prospect of the government securing a sufficient
number of committed and adequately trained officials to ensure the implementation of a programme of
scientific agriculture throughout the rural districts of central Siam. The second constraint was that of
capital. Under the terms of the Bowring and subsequent commercial treaties, the rates of taxation on land
and on foreign trade, which were usually the two most important sources of government revenue in colonial-
ruled primary producing territories of that period, were frozen at very low levels. Consequently, until Siam
regained fiscal autonomy in the 1920s, the administration could secure major increases in tax revenue only
by exploiting the existing tax structure more thoroughly—through. substantial reform in the methods of tax
assessment and collection. As an alternative it was of course possible for the government to raise capital on
the European money markets to finance major projects, and in fact between 1905 and 1924 Siam borrowed
overseas £13.63m., in large part to finance railway construction (Ingram 1971:181). But in practice the
administration was severely constrained in this area by a strong fear of the political implications which
could easily arise were Siam to have borrowed on a substantial scale from the imperialist powers of Europe.54
The Siamese élite were without doubt fully aware that in the last years of the nineteenth century, the
granting of loans to the government of China by the western powers had been an important element in bringing
the Middle Kingdom close to dismemberment. The final constraint to be noted was that imposed, indirectly,
on the broad pattern of government expenditure by the presence of the imperial powers in mainland South
East Asia. As was argued above during consideration of the government’s irrigation policy, the Siamese
administration was forced to respond to the European threat by investing heavily in a strengthening of the
armed forces and, more importantly, in the construction of a railway network radiating from Bangkok and
designed to ensure the effective administration of the whole kingdom from the capital. If the Siamese
administrative élite sought to protect the political sovereignty of the kingdom then such investments simply
had to be made, no matter how limited the resources at their command and no matter the strength of the
competing demands upon those resources. As a final point in this context, it need only be emphasized that
the restrictions on the ability of the government to raise capital (both internally and externally) and the
constraints on its freedom of deployment of the resources which it could command, both derived primarily
either from the terms of Siam’s nineteenth century commercial treaties with the major powers, or from the
kingdom’s delicate international political position in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
In summary: the essential argument of this section is a familiar one—that in the later nineteenth and early
twentieth century, the increasing demands of the industrialized economies for the primary commodities of
the non-European world, the technological advances being made in the industrial west, and the dominating
influence of the industrial states over the structure of world trade and investment, condemned virtually all
nonEuropean states to an overbearing dependence on the production of industrial raw materials and
foodstuffs, and closed off any prospect of substantial economic diversification.55 it is in view of
considerations such as these that analyses which attempt to explain the failure of the Siamese economy to
experience substantial structural change in the early twentieth century principally in terms of an alleged lack
of economic foresight or imagination on the part of the Siamese administrative élite, or in terms of the
élite’s alleged suppression of the rural economy’s dynamic potential, or their absorption of the Chinese
merchant class, lose much of their persuasiveness. It must be emphasized that any administration in
Bangkok in this period, whatever its persuasion, ideology, and economic foundation would have faced the
same severe, externally imposed constraints on its ability to promote substantial economic diversification
within the kingdom.56 Seen in these terms, the economic power of the Siamese administrative élite in the
early twentieth century was seriously circumscribed.
IV
There remains one important point to be considered. Although. the Siamese administration of the early
twentieth century was severely constrained in the promotion of substantial economic change, to what extent
did the Siamese élite nevertheless appreciate the need for economic reform, for increased agricultural
productivity and for diversification both within and away from agriculture? In fact, on a number of
occasions in this period senior members of the administration offered cogent analyses of the emerging
pattern of economic change in Siam, as well as far-sighted proposals for reform. For example, as was noted
earlier, in 1913 the Minister of Agriculture, Prince , argued that the construction of large-scale
irrigation facilities in the lower Čhaophrayā plain was essential if the Siamese rice cultivator was to
compete on equal terms with his counterparts in Burma and Indo-China.57 In the absence of these facilities,
he suggested, Siamese rice would rapidly find it difficult to compete in international markets, with the result
that the kingdom would become increasingly impoverished. In the previous decade Prince
Phenphatanaphong, the Assistant Minister of Agriculture, had argued strongly the importance of
government investment in agricultural development, in part by the establishment of experimental farms, a
station to breed work animals, and an agricultural college.58 Moreover, it is important to note that in this period
a number of members of the Siamese élite undertook on their own initiative experiments in more advanced
agricultural practices. Prominent in this respect were Sāi Sanitwongse, the son of an important half-brother
of King Mongkut and the personal physician of King Chulalongkorn, who conducted trials with various
forms of agricultural machinery on his Rangsit estate (Johnston 1975:54; Feeny 1982:52); Sāi’s son,
Suaphan Sanitwongse, whose agricultural activities included the organization of a rice-seed competition in
the Rangsit area in 1907;59 and čhao Sithiporn Kridakara, a son of Prince Naret who was himself the
eldest half-brother of King Chulalongkorn, who spent a major part of his life from 1920 on his farm at
Bangbert, some 400 kilometers south of Bangkok, engaged in agricultural experimentation aimed at the
development of a more diversified pattern of cultivation for Siam (Sithiporn 1970:1–3; Batson 1973:302–9;
Feeny 1982:56). Reference should also be made to proposals presented in 1910 by the then Minister of
Agriculture (Čhaophrayā Wongsānupraphat), that the government should encourage the local production of
a wide range of foodstuffs and household articles which, at that time, the kingdom was securing primarily
through imports.60
But without doubt the most critical analysis of the kingdom’s economy in the final decades of the
absolute monarchy was that put forward by Phrayā Suriyā who was the Siamese Minister in Paris in the
early years of the century and then, on his return to Bangkok, Minister of Finance from 1906 to 1908
(Brown 1975: 164–92). In 1911 he wrote two economic textbooks under the title Sapsāt (The science of
property) in which he sought to explain in the broadest terms the relative economic poverty of Siam
(Chatthip: 1978; Wedel 1982:50–8). In particular he drew attention to the contrast between an essentially
indigent cultivating population, suffering from acute and persistent shortages of capital, and a wealthy élite
who indulged in the conspicuous consumption of luxury articles and neglected the kingdom’s needs for
productive investment. The solution to Siam’s economic problems would lie in the creation of mechanisms
by which the economic surplus would be more equitably distributed between cultivator and capitalist, and to
this end Phrayā Suriyā advocated that the kingdom’s labouring classes be allowed to retain rights in the
ownership, and to become involved in the management, of the factors of production. This would be
achieved essentially through the creation of co-operative institutions and structures. Phrayā Suriyā also
advocated the establishment of a national bank to advance credit on advantageous terms to the cultivator.
Thus, a central theme in Phrayā Suriyā’s analysis was that in early twentieth century Siam there existed a
conflict between the economic behaviour of the élite and the interests of the cultivating population. It is,
therefore, not surprising that his writings were strongly attacked by the authorities, including King
Vajiravudh himself.61 And yet it is possible to see in the other analyses and proposals referred to above,
those of Prince , Prince Phenphatanaphong and Čhaophrayā Wongsānu-praphat, the prospect not
of conflict but of a convergence of élite and non-élite interests. Thus, it was suggested earlier that a major
state investment in irrigation would probably have been advantageous not only to the kingdom’s cultivators,
primarily through ensuring an adequate supply of water for rice cultivation in the central plain in all years,
but also to the personal interests of the Bangkok administrative élite, through the expansion of opportunities
to acquire prime agricultural land which a large-scale irrigation programme would almost certainly have
provided. Similarly both the cultivator and the landowner would presumably have welcomed any advance in
agricultural technique that would have improved the productivity of the land. There is little reason to doubt
that the keen interest taken by prominent Rangsit landowners, including most notably members of the
Sanitwongse family, in agricultural experimentation in the opening decades of the twentieth century, was
due at least in part to a desire to increase the value of their extensive land-holdings. The same general line
of argument may be applied to the commercial and industrial initiatives of this period. Although a principal
objective of the promoters of the Siam Commercial Bank was, of course, to increase their own wealth, the
establishment of an indigenous exchange bank, breaking the European monopoly of exchange business in
Bangkok, also brought substantial economic advantages to the cultivating population. Most importantly it
ensured that the export of the rice crop would be financed in all seasons. Similarly,62 in establishing a local
cement plant in the 1910s it is clear that not only did the promoters secure a substantial return on their
capital,63 but also that the Siamese population as a whole benefited from an increased availability of high
quality cement, which was particularly important during the war-time disruption of trade, as well as
increased employment opportunities.64 Therefore if there was a conflict of economic interests involved in the
foregoing initiatives, the conflict was less between groups within the kingdom than between the kingdom
and foreign interests. Thus in the examples given above the disadvantage lay respectively with the Burmese
and Indo-Chinese rice cultivator, the European exchange banks, and the foreign manufacturer of cement.
There is a further point to be made with respect to the commercial and industrial initiatives of the Siamese
administrative élite in the early twentieth century, whether they involved collusion with Chinese
businessmen as in the case of the Siam Commercial Bank or whether they involved some form of
bureaucratic capitalism, as with the Siam Cement Company.65 Where these initiatives were successful they
clearly gave the Siamese administrative élite access to important new forms of wealth, and it must,
therefore, be assumed that in these circumstances the élite would have strongly welcomed any further
expansion of industrial or commercial enterprise in the kingdom. In summary, it is argued that the Siamese
administrative élite, as landowners and as industrial and commercial partners, appear to have had every
interest in seeing an increase in agricultural productivity and the emergence of a substantial industrial and
commercial sector within Siam in the opening decades of the twentieth century.
But despite the critical analyses and the proposals for economic reform, despite even the prospect of
increased economic power for the Siamese administrative élite itself if economic initiatives were pursued,
there was clearly no firm commitment to major economic change on the part of the Siamese administration
in this period. In part this may have been a consequence of an awareness on the part of the élite that any
initiative to promote major economic change in the kingdom would almost certainly be obstructed by the
constraints outlined earlier. But there may have been two further important and related considerations. First,
the generation of Siamese who had witnessed the opening of the kingdom to international trade in the
middle of the nineteenth century could not at that time have foreseen in full the unprecedented economic
changes, notably the dramatic expansion in foreign trade and the physical transformation of the central plain
into one of the world’s major rice producing regions, which were to occur in Siam over the following
decades. It follows that the generation of the early twentieth. century, when looking back, would naturally
have been more inclined to marvel at the major economic changes which had been accomplished, or at least
their more visible manifestations, rather than have directed a critical, doubting eye at the detailed pattern of
economic change which. was occurring in the kingdom. Second, it is important to note that from the middle
of the nineteenth century right through to the 1930s Siam did not experience severe economic depression. It
is true that there were a number of relatively serious contractions, for example towards the end of the 1900s
and again at the end of the following decade, but there was nothing of sufficient magnitude to provoke or
force the Siamese administrative élite as a whole into a searching examination of the structure of the
kingdom’s economy. In other words the problems of a long-term decline in agricultural productivity, the
heavy dependence of exports on just one or two primary commodities, the limited extent of industrial
development, each clearly existed or had its origins in the early twentieth century. But their critical
importance in the determination of the living standard of the kingdom was not brought into sharp focus
until the collapse of international trade in the 1930s and, more importantly, until the period of rising economic
expectations which accompanied the European territorial retreat from Asia in the late 1940s and 1950s
In addition it must be acknowledged that the pattern of economic change experienced by Siam in the later
nineteenth and early twentieth century simply reflected the orthodoxy of the times. Thus, in essence, the
character of economic change in the two rice-growing colonial neighbours of Siam was virtually identical to
that of Siam herself in this period. Moreover, it should be noted that the colonial administrations in Burma
and Indo-China were themselves not particularly concerned with the problems of agricultural productivity
and agricultural diversification in these decades,66 and they were certainly not concerned with the problem
of excessive dependence on primary export earnings to the extent that they contemplated major structural
change in the local economy. It was held simply that the nonEuropean territories would achieve firmly-
based prosperity through specialization in the production of those commodities in which they had a
comparative advantage. It was this orthodoxy that the Siamese élite, taken as a whole, accepted, not least
because the kingdom had indeed experienced a quite unprecedented expansion in economic activity under
that orthodoxy from the time Siam had been opened to international trade in the 1850s. It might well be
argued that this economic orthodoxy represented yet a further external constraint, not in this case on the
freedom of action of the administrative élite, but on its perceptions. If this was so, then the constraint was a
powerful one, made powerful by the apparent advantage of the orthodoxy for the kingdom, at least until the
economic turmoil of the 1930s.
NOTES
* This paper, which was completed in early 1983, draws on material collected during research visits to Bangkok in
1978 and 1982. The first visit was made possible by the generous financial assistance of the Social Scienee
Research Council, the second by that of the School of Oriental and African Studies. I would like to acknowledge
also the assistance of Dr Chatthip Nartsupha (Chulalongkorn University), Ms Pornpen Hantrakool (Silapakorn
University), Dr Hong Lysa (National University of Singapore), and Malcolm Falkus (London School of
Economics) in giving their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I remain responsible for all errors of fact
and interpretation.
1. A second edition of this work appeared in 1971; in this paper the references are to this second edition. See, in
particular, Ingram 1971:79–87, 170–4, 194–202 for the analysis which is surveyed in this paragraph.
2. David Feeny, ‘Technical and institutional change in Thai agriculture 1880–1940’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 1976, which has been published in an extensively revised form. In this paper the references
to Feeny’s work are to this published version. See, in particular, Feeny 1982:52–8, 60–2, 80–4, 103–5 for the
analysis which is surveyed in this paragraph.
3. From an extensive literature see in particular: Chatthip and Suthy 1977; Chatthip and Suthy 1977a; Chatthip and
Suthy 1981; Chatthip, Suthy and Montri 1981. In addition, recent years have seen the production of a large
number of M.A. theses in this field from Thai universities, many being written under the supervision of Chatthip,
as well as a vigorous discussion of these issues in Thai scholarly journals. There are admirable English language
surveys of this literature in Hong 1984, and Reynolds and Hong 1983.
4. Neither has it been possible to consider all the relevant published work in this field. For example see: Bell 1970;
Elliot 1978; Elliot 1978a; Feeny 1979; Hewison 1985.
5. It should be emphasised that although the landowning interests of the Bangkok élite in Rangsit occupy a central
position in Feeny’s analysis of the failure of the Siamese administration to undertake a major irrigation
investment in this period, he does propose a number of other considerations which are said to have influenced the
administration’s policy in this area. For example, he observes that ‘since Thailand did not have fiscal autonomy
until 1926, the government was not in a position to capture some of the gains [from a major irrigation
investment] by raising tax rates’ (Feeny 1982:104). For his full analysis, see Feeny 1982: 80–4, 103–5.
6. It might be added that this was also the view of Pelzer, who argued that the government’s decision to ignore the
advice of its irrigation expert, Sir Thomas ward, that irrigation work should begin in Suphanburī, and to proceed
instead with the Pāsak project ‘was due to political pressure exerted by landlords who had interests in the Khlong
Rangsit area’ (Pelzer 1945:60. See also Credner 1935:220).
7. Although it may be noted that Feeny (1982:84) suggests that ‘by 1903 élite who had speculated heavily in land at
Rangsit were probably not in a financial position to attempt to extend their control over a much larger area.’
8. cf. Feeny 1983:703. ‘If the van der Heide project had been undertaken and most of the Central Plain had been
provided with irrigation, tenants would have left the Rangsit area, where many government officials and
members of the royal family owned land, and would have migrated to newly irrigated lands. This contributed to
the rejection of the van der Heide proposal…’ See also Feeny 1982:104.
9. Many of the considerations to be noted below were also included in Feeny’s discussion, (see, in particular, Feeny
1982:80–4). However the focus of his analysis clearly remained on the ways in which the interests of the Siamese
élite would be affected by a major irrigation programme. Thus, for example, ‘The van der Heide proposal and a
number of other irrigation proposals were turned down because the élite were unable to capture the benefits’.
(Feeny 1982:104)
10. Čhaophrayā Thēwēt to King, 23 November 1899, NA r5 KS 9–2/18. Čhaophrayā Thēwēt to King, 15 June 1900,
1 January 1901, NA r5 KS 9.2/28.
11. Documents in NA KS (Ag.) 11/1.
12. Prince to King, 13 January 1913, NA r6 KS 4/2. Ward 1915: iii.
13. See, for example: Prince Devawongse to Čhaophrayā Thēwēt, 10 May 1903, NA KS (Ag.) 11/71.
Wongsānupraphat 1941:156; Ministry of Agriculture 1957:69–70; Ward 1915:3–5-
14. See, f or example: Anuruthathēwā, ‘Rāi ngān klaāwthu’ tangtāe
čhonthu’ng tang Anuruthathēwa penčhaokrom’ (Report on the Canal Department from its establishment
until the appointment of Anuruthathēwā as Director), NA KS (Ag.) 11/803.
15. Prince Čhanthaburī to King, 20 February 1915, NA r6 Kh 1/29. Prince Čhanthaburī to King, 16 September 1915,
NA r6 KS 4/2.
16. In this context it may be noted that the statutory size of the exchange reserve fund, legally established in
November 1908, was determined by the practical experience of supporting the exchange during a period of strong
pressure against the baht from late 1906. Brown 1979:398–9.
17. Chatthip would maintain that even though a major investment in, for example, the construction of a railway
network may have been politically crucial in this period, there were other areas of government expenditure—on
defence, internal security, and the court—where very substantial reductions could quite easily have been made
presumably without compromising the independence of the kingdom (Chatthip and Suthy 1981:30). In this way
funds could have been released for a major irrigation programme. In making this argument Chatthip may have
been influenced in part by the evidence of major expenditures on quasi-military forces and on the royal
household during the reign of King Vajiravudh (Greene 1971: 102–16, 204–13, 288–306; Vella 1978:27–52,
267). Two observations may be made on this argument. First, it is important to note that the ‘extravagances’ of
King Vajiravudh’s reign led to severe budgetary crisis in the 1920s; in that sense the heavy military and court-
related expenditures of the sixth reign were drawn in part from resources which, in the long term, did not exist.
Second, the experience of the Ministry of Finance during the financially more circumspect fifth reign makes
clear the very considerable pressures that the administration faced each year to keep government expenditures
within its limited resources (Brown 1975: chaps.4–5). It might be added that substantial expenditures on defence,
internal security, and the court (the administrative élite), may be said to be identifying features of state
organisations as such, rather than of any particular political or social order. In summary, the capacity of the
Siamese administration of the early twentieth century to reallocate its expenditure towards irrigation was
almost certainly substantially less than is argued by Chatthip.
18. Prince Čhanthaburī to King, 20 February 1915, NA r6 Kh 1/29.
19. Despite occasionally pronounced year-by-year fluctuations, the export price of rice for Siam may be said to have
doubled over the last three decades of the nineteenth century (Feeny 1982:127–8).
20. This is the view of, for example, Ingram (1971:43).
21. Adas’ study of the historical development of the rice economy in Burma argued that in the second half of the
nineteenth century, those ‘cultivator-owners who overcame the difficulties involved in clearing and cultivating
new lands in the Delta were well rewarded for their years of assiduous toil…a large share of the profits of paddy
production went to the cultivators themselves’ (Adas 1974:74). Moreover ‘in most areas of the Delta during the
first phase of development [1852–1907] tenants enjoyed a standard of living which was roughly comparable to
that of cultivator-owners’ (op. cit.,:76). Adas also argued that ‘the increased availability of [imported] consumer
items had played an important role in stimulating surplus paddy production’ (loc. cit.,).
22. This is an appropriate point to note an important conclusion by Hong from her work on the economy of the early
Bangkok period. She argued that even in the decades prior to the opening of the kingdom to international trade in
the 1850s, the economy ‘did contain and encourage economic exchange, surplus production and internal trade’
(Hong 1984:149). This point was also made by Reynolds and Hong: ‘The pre-1855 economy was more dynamic,
flexible, and responsive to the changes flowing from the provisions of the Bowring Treaty than the political
economists are willing to recognize. The Thai economy in the early Bangkok period does not warrant the ‘static’
or ‘stagnant’ label that an Asiatic Mode of Production-like characterization would give it’ (Reynolds and Hong
1983:91).
23. Siam Commercial Bank 1971:28. King to Čhaophrayā Thēwēt, 30 January 1907, NA r5 KS 12.2/12. Brown 1975:
160–3.
24. Prince Mahit to King, 19 January 1906: King to Prince Sommot, 24 February 1906: NA r5 KS 12.2/12. Chatthip
and Suthy 1981: 32, 397; Siam Commercial Bank 1971:29.
25. Privy Purse Department to King, 13 August 1914, NA r6 Kh 15/2 Immediately following reconstruction, the
Privy Purse held approximately half of the stock in the Siam Commercial.
26. Annual Statement of the Foreign Trade and Navigation of the Kingdom of Siam, Department of H.M.’s Customs,
Bangkok, annually 1927–28/1939–40. The export of cement from Siam appears to have reached a peak in the
mid-1920s, when its annual value was just over 200,000 baht. The trade contracted sharply from the end of that
decade, presumably in part because of depression in overseas markets.
27. In fact it was in 1938 that a subsidiary, the Siam Fibre-Cement Company, was established to manufacture
asbestos cement sheets (Siam Cement Company 1963:129).
28. However, by November 1922 the principal shareholders were the Navy League, the Ministry of Finance, and the
Privy Purse, who between them owned almost three-quarters of the capital in the company. qv.
W.J.F.Williamson, ‘Note by the Financial Adviser on the present position of the Siamese Shipping Company;
and an opinion as to the policy to be adopted towards it by the Government’, 3 November 1922, NA r6 RL 20/
22.
29. Note: ‘Rates of Customs Duty on Tobacco’ [1934] NA K.Kh 0301. 1.37/91.
30. Ministry of Commerce (Bangkok), Department of Company Registration, Files 55, 219.
31. W.D.Reeve (Adviser to the Department of Customs) to the Director-General of Customs, 12 March 1934, NA
K.Kh 0301.1. 37/91.
32. In January 1931 the import duty on tobacco in all its forms was raised from 25% to 50%: in February 1932 it was
raised to 60%. Note: ‘Rates of Customs Duty on Tobacco’ [1934]NA K.Kh 0301.1.37/91.
33. F.A.P.Skivington (British-American Tobacco Company, Thailand) to Prince Viwatanajai Jaiyant (Ministry of
Finance), 22 April 1941, NA K.Kh 0301.1.4/6. The British-American Tobacco Company, with its head office in
London, had been importing cigarettes into Siam from at least the beginning of the century. Its decision to
establish a factory in the kingdom, using a substantial quantity of locally-grown tobacco leaf, was almost
certainly prompted by the heavy increases in the duty on imported cigarettes which had been introduced in the
early 1930s.
34. ‘Aide-memoire’, 14 May 1941, NA K.Kh 0301.1.4/6. Thompson 1941:399. There is no indication as to the fate of
the Siamese Tobacco Company.
35. Documents in: NA K.Kh 0301.1.4/6. ‘Re: Purchase by Government of British-American Tobacco Company
(Thailand) Ltd.’ (1939–1941).
36. Ministry of Commerce (Bangkok), Department of Company Registration, File 247. It should be added that
although the administrative élite was not directly involved in the establishment of Boon Rawd, in 1933 the Privy
Purse did lend the company 150,000 baht (Sangsit 1980:57; Phirom 1975b:226–7).
37. Although it should be added that the Boon Rawd brewing plant was purchased from Germany and a German
expert was engaged to erect it (Thompson 1941:448). Moreover, from the beginning of production, German
brewmasters were employed in the plant (Personal interview with Khun and Khun. Sa-ngā, retired
employees of the brewery, 13 July 1982, Bangkok).
38. In March 1934, W.D.Reeve, the Adviser to the Department of Customs, calculated that the excise duty on beer,
after allowing for the customs duty on imported raw materials, gave locally-made beer a preference of
approximately 20%. W.D. Reeve, 4 March 1934, NA K.Kh 0301.1.7/28.
39. Khun and Khun Sa-ngā suggested that in its first years of operation Boon Rawd found it difficult to
compete against imported beers. In part this was due to the almost inevitable problems which would arise in
commencing brewing operations, in part to the prejudice of the Siamese consumer for imported beers, simply
because of their foreign origin. But within a short period, they suggested, the high quality of Boon Rawd beers
had broken that prejudice and had established the brewery firmly in the domestic market (Personal interview, 13
July 1982, Bangkok). Thompson (1941:448) suggested that Boon Rawd was an immediate success, paying
substantial dividends after two years of operation.
40. Although it might be added that Ingram (1971:132–48) did provide a reasonably detailed account of domestic
manufacturing industries in the period to 1950.
41. In making this point Chatthip and Suthy refer specifically to the ‘collusion between Chinese businessmen and the
royalty’ in the establishment of the Siam Commercial Bank (Chatthip and Suthy 1981:31–2).
42. Documents in: NA r6 Kh 15/2, 15/3.
43. It is interesting to note that in 1906 the British Minister in Bangkok alleged that Prince Mahit had used his
position as Minister of Finance to transfer government funds hitherto held at the British banks to the Siam
Commercial Bank. Paget (British Minister) to Westengard (General Adviser to the Siamese Government), 15
May 1906, NA r5 KS 12.2/12.) Prince Mahit denied the allegation, arguing that the distribution of government
funds between the various banks in Bangkok “depends upon the accident of which bank the money happens to be
paid into by the persons who owe money to the Government”; and moreover that as the Hongkong and Shanghai
“does not pay interest on deposits above a certain sum…the Government does not keep a large balance at that
bank”. (Westengard to Prince Devawongse, 22 May 1906, NA r5 KS 12.2/12.) But in fact it would be rather
surprising if the government had not, in the interests of state, favoured the Siam Commercial over the British
banks in the capital. There was certainly no legal, political, or financial reason why such favour should not have
been exercised.
44. Even when the new tariff was introduced in March 1927, imported cement attracted a duty of only 5%, the
general rate under the new schedule. This rate was increased through the tariff revisions of the early 1930s. In April
1932 a specific duty was imposed on imported cement, the duty being increased further in September 1933.
These latter impositions were introduced in response to the continuous dumping of large stocks of Japanese
cement onto the Siamese market from the beginning of the 1930s. (James Baxter (Financial Adviser), ‘Siam Cement
Company’, 15 September 1933, NA K.Kh 0301.1.7/31.)
45. Personal interview with Khun and Khun Sa-ngā, 13 July 1982, Bangkok. It might be added that in this
period beer was a relatively expensive drink in Siam and was, therefore, consumed mainly by more wealthy
Siamese. For this class, therefore, demand for a particular brand of beer would almost certainly be determined
more by quality than by price. Consequently, the tariff protection granted to the local brewery in the early 1930s
would have been of relatively limited value to Boon Rawd unless it had been producing beers of a quality
comparable to those which could be imported into the kingdom. The discriminating Siamese drinker would
always be prepared to pay more for a good beer. In this general context a distinct contraction in the volume of
beer imports into Siam in the later 1930s should be noted: from 1,691,853 litres in 1936–37 to 974,084 litres in
1939–40. Annual Statement of the Foreign Trade and Navigation of the Kingdom of Siam, Department of H.M.’s
Customs, Bangkok, various years.
46. This is perhaps an appropriate point to note that until 1941 the Siam Commercial Bank employed European
managers. (SithiAmnuai 1964:35.)
47. W.J.F.Williamson, ‘Note by the Financial Adviser on the present position of the Siamese Shipping Company;
and an opinion as to the policy to be adopted towards it by the Government’, 3 November 1922, NA r6 RL 20/
22.
48. ibid.
49. ibid.
50. The British-American Tobacco Company was strongly encouraged to use local leaf by the fact that it was left
free of excise, whilst foreign leaf attracted a high import duty. For its part British-American committed
considerable capital and expertise to improving the quality of Virginia tobacco produced in Chiangmai and
Chiangrai. ‘Aide-memoire’, 14 May 1941. NA K Kh 0301.1.4/6.
51. It should be added that under the terms of the commercial treaty with Britain which came into effect in 1926, the
duty on cotton goods, (as well as that on iron and steel manufactures, and on machinery), was limited to 5% for a
period of ten years (Ingram 1971:180–1). As Siam’s commercial treaties each contained a ‘most-favoured-
nation’ clause, the effect of this stipulation in the British treaty was to prevent the Siamese administration from
imposing protective tariffs against any foreign cotton manufactures, at least until 1936.
52. See Wyatt 1969
53. It is interesting to note that until 1910 the Royal Pages School, founded in 1899, trained officials solely for the
Ministry of the Interior. Even after it was renamed the Civil Service School in 1910 that Ministry probably
claimed most of its best graduates (Tej 1977:231–5).
54. The first serious proposal that the kingdom should raise a loan in Europe was made by Prince Mahit, the Minister
of Finance, in late 1902, following the government’s decision to proceed rapidly with the construction of the
northern railway. But fears over the possible political implications of such a loan, perhaps most firmly expressed
by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Devawongse, prevented the administration from reaching a decision
until, in late 1904, a budgetary crisis arising in part from the demands of the railway construction programme,
forced the issue. It might be added that the first loan was for the relatively modest sum of £1m. and, on the
insistence of the Siamese government, was secured simply on the general credit of the kingdom (Brown 1975:
119–49).
55. This rather bold proposition may well provoke the observation that from the middle of the nineteenth century
Japan too was exposed to the demands of the industrialized economies for primary commodities, the superiority
of western technology, and the dominating influence of the industrial states over the structure of world trade and
investment, and yet, in sharp contrast to Siam, was able to undertake the most fundamental restructuring of her
domestic economy. In reply it may be argued that Japan’s political and economic relationships with the western
world in the later nineteenth century differed very markedly from those of Siam. Two points may be briefly
made. It should first be emphasized that Siam remained vulnerable to European military intervention and
annexation at least through into the first decade of the twentieth century. This military-political consideration
clearly had a profound influence on the perceptions and objectives of the Siamese élite in this period. In general
terms it required the kingdom to accept an essentially deferential, submissive, relationship with western power. In
contrast, insular Japan did not face the serious prospect of European occupation, and this permitted, perhaps even
encouraged her to contemplate political and economic equality with the western nations. This manifested itself
not simply in the development of a military capability but also in the need to restructure the economy on the
western pattern. The second point is that there are grounds for arguing that western manufactured imports found
it considerably more difficult to penetrate the Japanese than the Siamese market in the second half of the
nineteenth century. Two particular considerations appear to have limited the entry of western imports into Japan.
First, the treaty port system, which remained in force until 1899, confined the activities of western merchants to
the designated ports. A notable consequence of this restriction was to prevent western traders from establishing
direct contact with Japanese wholesale dealers in the larger cities and towns of the interior. Second, the Japanese
merchant community exhibited a number of features which discouraged the marketing of imported goods For
example, import transactions were usually conducted in cash, partly because the export trade too was conducted
on a cash basis, partly because Japanese merchants sought to avoid forward transactions. Consequently, the
import trade was largely confined to Japanese merchants with substantial capital resources. It might also be noted
that in the later period the internal distribution of imports was controlled by various associations of Japanese
merchants. These forms of protection, and the consequently slow increase in cotton goods imports, were
important for the early growth of the indigenous cotton industry in Japan. (I am indebted to Dr Shinya Sugiyama
of the Department of Economics at Keio University for these latter observations). Attention might also be drawn
to the analysis by Moulder (1977:128–45) which suggests that in the second half of the nineteenth century Japan
was not incorporated into the world economy to the same degree as was China. Analyses which alternatively seek
to explain the radically different courses of economic change in Japan and Siam in this period primarily in terms
of internal considerations, for example by contrasting Japanese and Thai social values, or by drawing distinctions
between the political institutions and economic structures of the two countries immediately prior to and following
the establishment of contact with the west in the 1850s, include: Ayal (1969); Likhit (1981); Surichai (1981).
Reference should also be made to Anderson (1978:198–209).
56. It must be emphasized that the Thai political economists offer some recognition of the influence of external
considerations on the pattern of economic change in Siam in this period. For example, Chatthip and Suthy note
(1981:34) that ‘because of the free inflow of foreign manufactured goods, Chinese factories like sugar refineries
and Siamese local industries in the central region had to close down’. And again, ‘the local industries of various
countries throughout the world suffered a rapid decline when they were opened to international trade, or exposed
to the force of imperialism, in the nineteenth century. Of course, Siam was no exception’ (1977:146). In fact, at
one point Chatthip and Suthy (1981:34) propose that ‘the sakdina system and imperialism…prevented the
emergence of an independent bourgeois class in Siam’. However, it remains that the main focus of the political
economy analysis has concerned Siam’s internal social, economic and political structures. The primary purpose
of this paper has been to suggest that the crucial considerations for explaining the historical origins of Siamese
underdevelopment were the external constraints (‘imperialism’) outlined at length above. These influences were
considerably more varied and powerful than the political economy analysis appears to allow.
57. Prince to King, 13 January 1913, NA r6 KS 4/2.
58. Prince Phenphatanaphong to Čhaophrayā Thēwēt, 26 October 1904, NA r5 KS 10/1.
59. Johnston 1975:363. See also Suvabhan (1927) which includes a brief biography of Suaphan Sanitwongse by
Prince Damrong.
60. Čhaophrayā Wongsānupraphat, ‘Memorandum on our domestic economy’, 7 December 1910: in Chatthip,
Suthy, and Montri 1981:219–22.
61. Following the King’s published criticism, Sapsāt was banned. In the seventh reign the teaching of economics was
made a criminal offence (Chatthip 1978:402, 408).
62. This was an important consideration. In late 1902, prior to the establishment of the Siam Commercial, the
European banks in Bangkok had become involved in a serious dispute with the government over the
determination of the exchange value of the baht following Siam’s abandonment of the silver standard and the
realignment of the currency with gold. During the course of this dispute the two British banks threatened not to
purchase baht at the new rate fixed by the government, an action which might well have brought the rice trade to
a halt. In the circumstances the Siamese government had little choice but to follow the demands of the foreign
“banks and fix the external value of its currency at a lower level (Brown 1979:384–5).
63. Between 1921 and 1937 the dividend paid by the Siam Cement Company was never less than 7% (in the years
1933–1936) whilst throughout the 1920s the company paid either 10% or 11%. (‘The Siam Cement Company:
balance sheet presented to the annual ordinary general meeting of shareholders’.) These records are held at the
head office of the Siam Cement Company, Bangsue, Bangkok.
64. In 1923, just eight years after production had begun, the Siam Cement Company had a labour force of 230
Siamese and about 70 Chinese (The Record July 1923:13–5).
65. Chatthip, Suthy, and Montri 1981:22. Reference should also be made to Sangsit 1980:chap. 2.
66. Government investment in the development of improved rice seed selection appears to have been even more
tardy in IndoChina than it was in Siam. In the French colony a central rice station was created in 1927, and the
Office du riz was opened in 1930 (Wickizer and Bennett 1941:238).
SOURCES
All the primary sources which have been used for this paper are held in the National Archives (NA) in
Bangkok. The sources consulted and quoted in the notes above are drawn from three of the Archives’
collections.
(1) The administrative records and official correspondence of the Royal Secretariat, which cover the
period from the mid-1880s (from the reform of government administration) until the end of the absolute
monarchy in 1932. These records are divided first by reign, r5 (mid-1880s to 1910), r6 (1910–1925); and
then by Ministry or Department, KS [ ] (kasētrāthikān/Ministry of Agriculture), Kh [ ] (khlang/Ministry of
Finance), and RL [ ] (rātchalēkhānukān/Royal Secretariat). Thus, for example, the reference NA r6 KS 4/2
identifies a file from the records of the Royal Secretariat concerned with the Ministry of Agriculture in the
reign of King Vajiravudh; the final number specifies the file in which the document referred to is held.
(2) The internal records of the Ministry of Agriculture. In Thai these records are identified by [ ],
followed by the file number. In this paper this reference has been transcribed as KS (Ag.)
(3) The records from the Office of the Financial Adviser (samnakngān sētthakitkānkhlang). The financial
advisers were British officials, appointed by the Siamese government from the late 1890s. These records are
identified by the reference K.Kh [ ] 0301, followed by the file number.
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SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES

LAĪ SŪ’ THAI

Essays in honour of E.H.S.Simmonds

LAĪ SŪ’ THAI

SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES

ISBN 0-203-99058-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN - (Adobe eReader Format)

E.H.S.SIMMONDS: A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE— 1

Sū’ Thai is a collection of articles written to be presented to Professor E.H.S.Simmonds in appreciation

Certain technical details found in this book may need clarification.

‘Remember that a tear

1957 The independent state of Laos. World today 13, 432–41.

Levels of influence in tonal analysis1

Diagram I: Continuant and stop finals in Thai

Theorizing about tones

All continuant finals All stop finals

/râap/ /kràap/ /pràap/

/hàak/ and /hàaŋ/

/râap/ and /rîap/

Tone Tone 1 Tone 2

Distributions and comparisons

Input and in-built conditioning

Diagram 2: Articulatory histograms in Thai

The limits of ‘Invention’

The model: normal functioning

Diagram 3: Speech valving

Rule 1. On passing c, if state P, no instructions (=normal);

Diagram 4 : Speech valving

(i) will be called a Pe syllable;

(v) & (vi) will be called a pβ syllable; Diagram 5: Syllable samples

Diagram 6: Graphing of syllable samples7

Diagram 7 Comparison of speed and pressure curves

Modulation in the model

Diagram 8: Glottal modulation

* Isopiestic means ‘denoting equal pressure’. (Ed.)

Diagram 9: Comparison of pitch and pressure curves

Development of pet names

/sáp-praphaa/ ‘Radiant Wealth’

Classification of pet names

Flowers: /bua/ ‘lotus’

Animals: /mŭu/ ‘pig’

Cries of a baby: ‘cry of a baby’

Sounds: ‘sound of a solid body falling into water’

Phonological patterns of pet names

‘wantan’ (Ch. jiǎo )

or in special modifiers* like:

(/prîaw/ + /prîaw príit/ ‘sour’ ‘extremely sour’)

High tone: CVVS3 ‘creaking sound of a door’

/cóo/ CVV3 CVV4

* That is, intensifiers, (Ed.).

Loan and newly-coined pet names

Set A: -pi: -phi: -bi:

Some of these spectrograms are shown in Figs.1–5.

Fig. 1 (Male Speaker: ST)

Fig. 2 (Male Speaker: NP)

Fig. 3 (Female Speaker: DC)

Fig. 4 (Female Speaker: PT)

Fig. 5 (Female Speaker: KU)

The , Chinese-Foreign language (bilingual) vocabularies, are a valuable

Oho! Bunny loves High moon.

(1) Au clair de la lune Moon’th hare

The hare at the moon doth aim

And knows that mating season will come soon

nók khûn raw kàw