Conclusion
Recovered from oblivion since the 1830s by King Mongkut’s
antiquarian pursuits, the kingdom of Sukhothai was by the 1920s
firmly established as modern Thailand’s golden age: a place and
a time when emancipation from Khmer rule was matched by the
invention of the Thai alphabet and the creation of unparalleled
works of art inspired by Theravada Buddhism—the ‘national’ faith.
This myth of foundation had, moreover, a twin in the myth of the
Thai adroitness at appropriating and inventively adapting foreign
knowledge, as remarked by Prince Damrong: ‘The Tai knew how to
pick and choose. When they saw some good feature in the culture o