ON 4 MARCH 1351, A SMALL GROUP OF MEN gathered in a newly built hall on an island in the Chaophraya River. Before them was an urn filled with water gathered from throughout Siam, stirred with a magical sword, and which they drank swearing their loyalty to the relative who was becoming their king (soon remembered as Ramathibodi D. The capital of a new kingdom there was taking shape. What happened that day (and we still lack any reliable accounts) has much to tell us about the processes that were then at work. First, many of the people then present were related to the new king, and soon would govern many of the surrounding towns and their territory. Many of them were native speakers of the Cambodian language (Khmer); and all the high-ranking among them possessed gold or copper plates on which were inscribed their formal titles. Much of the oath which they l. Thai schoolbooks and scholars cling tenaciously to the idea that Ayudhya was founded in 1350, having long ago been told that Lesser Era (chulasakkarat) years are converted to AD years by adding 638. The reason for the discrepancy is simple: the year 712 began on the 7th day of the waning moon of the 5th month, and continued until 713 began on the 1st day of the 6th month in the next year (365 days later), the interval being from 28 March 1350 to 28 March 1351. Thus the 6th day of the waxing moon of the 5th month did not occur until 4 March 1351 0ulian calendar) swore was like the oaths taken by colleagues even to the present day; but there was another part that is almost unintelligible nowadays. It was that part of the oath that warned men that the spirits of particular named streams and caves would punish them if they failed to keep their promise of loyalty. It is fascinating to note that those spirits were localized in extreme northern Thailand and adjacent portions of Laos. Either the spirits were being imported (which is unlikely), or the animistic religion employed here was rooted in the north, from whence some of these people came. But who were these people, and why were they here? The best guess is that those functioning as scribes, lawyers, accountants, chronologists, astrologers, and similar specialists probably persons associated with "East Siam e., Lopburi, Nakhon Nayok, and similar old localities once part of the Angkorean Empire. On the other hand, the administrative and military functionaries probably were people from "West Siam and Phetchaburi, for especially Suphanburi, Ratchabu example. Lurking in the shadows there may have been an important third group of people-Chinese and Indian merchants. About them we know very little, except that they were intimately involved in the trade of Siam by the early fourteenth century. One of their many interests was the ceramics trade, which earlier had brought them to the valley of the Tha Chin River, especially to Ratchaburi and Suphanburi. The one person who tied together all these groups was the new king, Ramathibodi l (also referred to as U Thong). Our best guess is that his wife was the daughter of the late of his the of ruler Lopburi and his father was a Chinese merchant of Phetchaburi It is important to note that he brought all three of these groups together, and from each of these he gained important resources. With his Lopburi relatives he gained many generations of expertise in ruler ship, including skills in such thin as law and medicine. His Suphanburi relatives brought with them manpower and military skills, while his Phetchaburi relatives gave him skills with such things as commerce and cash The combination would have been hard to equal. It has been conventional to treat the early history of Ayutthaya (Siam) in terms of its foreign policy, and thus to focus particularly upon Ayutthaya's continuing rivalry with neighboring Angkor, which after all was only 250 miles/400 kilometers to its east. We might note particularly Ayutthaya's capture of Angkor in 1369 and again in 1431. Here we might imagine that Ramathibodi was acting on behalf of his Lopburi relatives, who might be expected to see Angkor as their chief rival for prestige and power. But rather than defining their interests as being relatively more universalistic or "global. perhaps we might instead see their interest as being more local ham the interests of Suphanbur Suphanburi, after all, in addition to aspiring to leadership of all the areas to the west of Lopburi, including both the north and the south, might be expected to have not only a strong interest in the ceramics trade-which would reach its peak by the late fifteenth century but also to have had a strong interest rying the trade which extended not only to the center and south of what is now Laos and adjacent Vietnam, but also over the trade routes which extended to the west and south across the Malay Peninsula and into the Bay of Bengal. n this context that we might interpret a stone inscription which otherwise is quite puzzling. This is a stone dated to 17 February 1351 and to the Reliquary of Ban Rae in what is now Sakon Nakhon province This is what amounts to a Sukhothai inscription. Why is it here? The only way to account for it is to link it with Vietnamese literary references dated to 1318 to a Sukhothai intrusion into Champa in central Vietnam. But what is Sukhothai doing all the way east in central Vietnam The only way of accounting for this is to explore economic considerations; and if the Ban Rae inscription leads us from Sukhothai to the cast, then it would seem natural to look southwards from Sukhothai as well. is In conceptualizing this early period of Siam's history, it customary to think of it first in terms of religion. Early stone inscriptions detailing the history of Buddhism for example often refer to Buddhist monks as chao thai, that is, Thai lords, It is worth remembering, however, the emphasis that the am hang inscription of 1292 places upon economic on the freedom of buying and selling, d on the an lightness of taxation This leads us back to reconsidering the important role of economic activity in the foundation of Ayutthaya and in the location of the Sakon Nakhon inscription, both in early 1351 simply note Here we might begin with a simple point. Let us of that the earliest contemporary reference to the foundation in Ayutthaya occurs two years before it was formally founded 1351, when Chinese merchants reported in 1349 that Ayutthaya had been created, and that it was now named with a Persian or Arabic name that we translate as "New City" might it. (Shahr i Naw), implying that an Old City" had preceded By the later years of the century, a mission from Suphanburi was seeking in China the right to trade as a tributary mission. A bit later, in 1416, the Ayutthaya court was persuaded to double the customs duties charged. Finally, shortly after the catastrophic events in 1424 which ended the lives of two candidates (Ai hraya and Yi Phraya) for the throne of the kingdom of Ayutthaya, a major religious monument was constructed in their memory in the city (Wat Ratchaburana and inscriptions were left inside it written in Thai, Khmer Chinese, and Arabic 6 These were not discovered until the 1950s, so we can be confident of their authenticity. Their significance is ritualistic: that is, in a monument of the greatest importance, at least these four languages were considered to be relevant to memorializing the early kings of Ayutthaya. Even in the style of the early fifteenth century, Ayutthaya was expressing its true globalization.