IN THE MIDST OF ONE OF THE BUSIEST SECTIONS of present-day Bangkok, there is a modern garage by the side of an ancient but busy canal. By that garage, all but hidden from view, is a strange Perhaps it is neglected because it is forgotten. It should forgotten, because its existence testifies to a revolution in Siamese thought. More likely, it is neglected because considered slightly embarrassing. It is a linga garden, that is, a place where there are hundreds of wooden and stone objects that are phallic in shape.
Why are they there? In a law promulgated on 21 August 1782, the new king, Rama I (born in 1736 to a Thai father and a mother who was "daughter of a Chinese richest family") ordered that all the phallic representations of the god Shiva should be gathered together and burned (ignoring the fact that many were of stone). He so decreed in order that the people of Siam should follow what he considered the "true" Way of Buddhism. This was necessary in order that a revived Siam might avoid the calamities that had beset the kingdom of Ayutthaya a generation earlier, when Siam had been attacked and utterly sacked by armies from Burma in April 1767. He is not o hoped to avoid the ridicule of foreign visitors. It difficult to imagine how he might have arrived at the former conclusion, as most of those present in the new Siam had lived through the calamities of the 1760s and 1770s, when hundreds of thousands died of starvation and violence." But what foreign visitors might have ridiculed Siamese religious practices? And why might the new king have feared their ridicule?
King Rama l and many of his contemporaries in effect were voicing their own discomfort, perhaps embarrassment. They had gone through great pain and distress when the Burma forces had attacked and sacked Ayutthaya, and those who remained to assume power were young. Many Thai who remained were divided into plundering bands who beset the countryside. Those who came to power were unusually young by the customary standards of Siam. One of the half-Chinese boys who grew up in privileged families in Ayutthaya in the 1730s was named Sin, remembered as King Taksin (b. 1734; r. 1767-1782). In the short run, he was an exceptionally able organizer and leader, sweeping his armies across much of central Indochina, but toward 1780 he became megaloma- niacal, and pretended to such divinity that he alienated many of his contemporaries. The formal explanation of what then happened is that a spontaneous rebellion erupted early in 1782 which swept the young king from the throne and then executed him. Another version of events has it that an able young Chiang Mai woman married to the younger brother of the future King Rama I helped organize the rebellion. Whatever the actual list of participants, the real point of the story is that basic religious issues motivated the change of reign. Both Taksin and the future Rama. I and his brother were active proponents of reformist Buddhism that blamed the kingdom's 1767 fall upon religious issues and sought to establish new Buddhist values that would correct the mistaken of the past and ensure that the kingdom would not fall again. Taksin solution was to make of himself a "stream-winner" on his way to personal buddhahood. Rama I, his brother (and siblings) and many others of their contemporaries wanted instead a return" to a more rigorous Buddhism. It was from such senti- ments that the "linga garden" was born. It is the rationality and "scientific" attitude that seems so characteristic of the generation that came to power by the 1780s. In the past I have noted how the author of the laws of the period demonstrated their reasons. We might also however, draw our attention to the audience that presumably read" or had read to them the laws that came to them in a flurry in the First Reign of the new dynasty. After all, if you think of it, laws issued in the name of an absolute monarch did have reasons: they might just be issued with not have to absolute authority. If new actions had to be justified, then something was going on in the minds of at least some ficant portion of the public. Surely it says something significant that all the laws of Siam were revised and reissued in 1805 This leads us again back to the mind-set of the generation of King Rama I-and note again that we need to think about a substantial element of the population, and not just the ruler or his close associates. Let us begin by visualizing them. They appear in crowds on the murals painted on the walls of the new temples that adorned Bangkok. The first thing we note about them is their variety. Their complexions ar dark and light and everything in between. Their hair styles make it clear that some are of Chinese descent and others Indians or Thai, as does their dress. They lived in all kinds of dwellings, tiny or palatial, those of the rich and of the poor. Contrast these depictions with the people seen on the walls of other parts of the neighboring world, where everyone looks the same . If we begin with such visual impressions, let us move on to consider the entertainments they might have experienced. Here the world is as varied as the urban world developing by the 1740s. Now move on to the literature they listened to an chanted and wrote. Their poetry was becoming, according to Nidhi Eoseewong, linguistically much more like their spoken And language than the literature of a few generations earlier the literary works now found in Bangkok (founded in 1782) were much more international than they used to be: there were now translations from Chinese, Mon, Burmese, Persian Malay, and Javanese, among others. We have to assume that those who sponsored and paid for these works did so because they wanted what had been particularistic tastes to become universalistic tastes Most of the literature associated with the late Ayutthaya period of Siam had destroyed and lost in devastation of the 1760s, and it had to be re-created from scratch from the 1780s. That which had been memorized might simply be copied again but to meet new needs and match new thoughts there was a massive outpouring of words massive in spite of the fact that printing was not yet employed. A good example of such literary renewal was a new "Exegesis of the Three Worlds" produced on royal order by Phraya Thammapricha (Kaeo) in 1802. Though based on a work five hundred years old, this amounted to a drastic recasting of traditional Buddhist cosmological thought. Whereas the older tradition had begun with the celestial world and worked its way down to the world of humans and the underworld, the new work reversed the old order to begin with humans and work upwards from there The more pious among contemporaries may have believed that it was owing to renewed orthodoxy, but many more surely believed that Siam's success was due to leadership, organization and military might. For most of the first twenty years of Bangkok's history, Bangkok was at war with the lands west of the mountains. These were concluded only when forces from the northern principality of Nan succeeded, where Chiang Mai had failed, in expelling Burma forces from the Kok River basin in the far north (around Chiang Saen). (Nan thereby gained a degree of prestige, power, and independence that Chiang Mai never enjoyed.) During the same period, Bangkok forces came to dominate the country we now think of as Laos, as well as what are now the northeastern provinces (Isan), and even Cambodia One of the keys to Bangkok's success is strikingly represented in the literary chef doeuvre of the reign of Rama I's son, Rama II (b. 1782, r. 1809-1824). This was the Thai-language version of the Ramayana epic poem of India. modified from his royal father's version most of the subcontinent editions of which have the hero Rama praying to the gods for assistance and, with their aid, triumphing over worldly foes. The version of the Second Reign however, has Rama tricking the gods into aiding him. Just as in the Three Worlds cosmology, human beings were at the center of the world and in control of their own fate.
IN THE MIDST OF ONE OF THE BUSIEST SECTIONS of present-day Bangkok, there is a modern garage by the side of an ancient but busy canal. By that garage, all but hidden from view, is a strange Perhaps it is neglected because it is forgotten. It should forgotten, because its existence testifies to a revolution in Siamese thought. More likely, it is neglected because considered slightly embarrassing. It is a linga garden, that is, a place where there are hundreds of wooden and stone objects that are phallic in shape. Why are they there? In a law promulgated on 21 August 1782, the new king, Rama I (born in 1736 to a Thai father and a mother who was "daughter of a Chinese richest family") ordered that all the phallic representations of the god Shiva should be gathered together and burned (ignoring the fact that many were of stone). He so decreed in order that the people of Siam should follow what he considered the "true" Way of Buddhism. This was necessary in order that a revived Siam might avoid the calamities that had beset the kingdom of Ayutthaya a generation earlier, when Siam had been attacked and utterly sacked by armies from Burma in April 1767. He is not o hoped to avoid the ridicule of foreign visitors. It difficult to imagine how he might have arrived at the former conclusion, as most of those present in the new Siam had lived through the calamities of the 1760s and 1770s, when hundreds of thousands died of starvation and violence." But what foreign visitors might have ridiculed Siamese religious practices? And why might the new king have feared their ridicule? King Rama l and many of his contemporaries in effect were voicing their own discomfort, perhaps embarrassment. They had gone through great pain and distress when the Burma forces had attacked and sacked Ayutthaya, and those who remained to assume power were young. Many Thai who remained were divided into plundering bands who beset the countryside. Those who came to power were unusually young by the customary standards of Siam. One of the half-Chinese boys who grew up in privileged families in Ayutthaya in the 1730s was named Sin, remembered as King Taksin (b. 1734; r. 1767-1782). In the short run, he was an exceptionally able organizer and leader, sweeping his armies across much of central Indochina, but toward 1780 he became megaloma- niacal, and pretended to such divinity that he alienated many of his contemporaries. The formal explanation of what then happened is that a spontaneous rebellion erupted early in 1782 which swept the young king from the throne and then executed him. Another version of events has it that an able young Chiang Mai woman married to the younger brother of the future King Rama I helped organize the rebellion. Whatever the actual list of participants, the real point of the story is that basic religious issues motivated the change of reign. Both Taksin and the future Rama. I and his brother were active proponents of reformist Buddhism that blamed the kingdom's 1767 fall upon religious issues and sought to establish new Buddhist values that would correct the mistaken of the past and ensure that the kingdom would not fall again. Taksin solution was to make of himself a "stream-winner" on his way to personal buddhahood. Rama I, his brother (and siblings) and many others of their contemporaries wanted instead a return" to a more rigorous Buddhism. It was from such senti- ments that the "linga garden" was born. It is the rationality and "scientific" attitude that seems so characteristic of the generation that came to power by the 1780s. In the past I have noted how the author of the laws of the period demonstrated their reasons. We might also however, draw our attention to the audience that presumably read" or had read to them the laws that came to them in a flurry in the First Reign of the new dynasty. After all, if you think of it, laws issued in the name of an absolute monarch did have reasons: they might just be issued with not have to absolute authority. If new actions had to be justified, then something was going on in the minds of at least some ficant portion of the public. Surely it says something significant that all the laws of Siam were revised and reissued in 1805 This leads us again back to the mind-set of the generation of King Rama I-and note again that we need to think about a substantial element of the population, and not just the ruler or his close associates. Let us begin by visualizing them. They appear in crowds on the murals painted on the walls of the new temples that adorned Bangkok. The first thing we note about them is their variety. Their complexions ar dark and light and everything in between. Their hair styles make it clear that some are of Chinese descent and others Indians or Thai, as does their dress. They lived in all kinds of dwellings, tiny or palatial, those of the rich and of the poor. Contrast these depictions with the people seen on the walls of other parts of the neighboring world, where everyone looks the same . If we begin with such visual impressions, let us move on to consider the entertainments they might have experienced. Here the world is as varied as the urban world developing by the 1740s. Now move on to the literature they listened to an chanted and wrote. Their poetry was becoming, according to Nidhi Eoseewong, linguistically much more like their spoken And language than the literature of a few generations earlier the literary works now found in Bangkok (founded in 1782) were much more international than they used to be: there were now translations from Chinese, Mon, Burmese, Persian Malay, and Javanese, among others. We have to assume that those who sponsored and paid for these works did so because they wanted what had been particularistic tastes to become universalistic tastes Most of the literature associated with the late Ayutthaya period of Siam had destroyed and lost in devastation of the 1760s, and it had to be re-created from scratch from the 1780s. That which had been memorized might simply be copied again but to meet new needs and match new thoughts there was a massive outpouring of words massive in spite of the fact that printing was not yet employed. A good example of such literary renewal was a new "Exegesis of the Three Worlds" produced on royal order by Phraya Thammapricha (Kaeo) in 1802. Though based on a work five hundred years old, this amounted to a drastic recasting of traditional Buddhist cosmological thought. Whereas the older tradition had begun with the celestial world and worked its way down to the world of humans and the underworld, the new work reversed the old order to begin with humans and work upwards from there The more pious among contemporaries may have believed that it was owing to renewed orthodoxy, but many more surely believed that Siam's success was due to leadership, organization and military might. For most of the first twenty years of Bangkok's history, Bangkok was at war with the lands west of the mountains. These were concluded only when forces from the northern principality of Nan succeeded, where Chiang Mai had failed, in expelling Burma forces from the Kok River basin in the far north (around Chiang Saen). (Nan thereby gained a degree of prestige, power, and independence that Chiang Mai never enjoyed.) During the same period, Bangkok forces came to dominate the country we now think of as Laos, as well as what are now the northeastern provinces (Isan), and even Cambodia One of the keys to Bangkok's success is strikingly represented in the literary chef doeuvre of the reign of Rama I's son, Rama II (b. 1782, r. 1809-1824). This was the Thai-language version of the Ramayana epic poem of India. modified from his royal father's version most of the subcontinent editions of which have the hero Rama praying to the gods for assistance and, with their aid, triumphing over worldly foes. The version of the Second Reign however, has Rama tricking the gods into aiding him. Just as in the Three Worlds cosmology, human beings were at the center of the world and in control of their own fate.
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