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Laws and Social Order in Early Thailand: An Introduction to the Mangraisat

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

David K. Wyatt
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Extract

Over the past several decades a considerable body of scholarly literature has accumulated concerning the evolution of Thai social and political patterns, behaviour, and values, and our study of Thai society now is much more solidly-based than it was only a generation ago. One might legitimately begin to wonder, however, whether we might not “have it all wrong”. The question is not entirely flippant. Much of what has been written on such subjects has little solid historical depth. Historians' study of Thailand prior to the nineteenth century remains relatively superficial, based on very scanty sources; and to the extent that social scientists and others have depended on the historians, none would argue that they have been completely well-served. Even more seriously, however, one can argue that there has been a good deal of reading contemporary and recent situations back into the past; and even historians' analyses of pre-Chakri social and political history have been all too readily the prisoner of a narrow, linear view of Thai history as the political succession of kingdoms from Sukhothai to Ayudhya to Bangkok.

Type
Symposium on Societal Organization in Mainland Southeast Asia Prior to the Eighteenth Century
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , September 1984 , pp. 245 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1984

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References

1 Ithaca: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1969; Data Paper 74.

2 Mangraisat, ed. Nagara, Dr. Prasert na (Bangkok: Cremation of luang Hotrakittayanuphat ('Asa Hotrakit, 1971)Google Scholar, Griswold, A.B. and Nagara, Prasert na, “Epigraphic and Historical Studies No. 17: The ‘Judgements of King Mang Ray’”, Journal of the Siam Society 65, part 1 (01 1977): 137–60Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, the two excerpts from the Digha Nikaya and one from the Mahabharataia Sources of Indian Tradition, ed. Bary, Wm. Theodore de (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 1:129-33,133-39, and 237–39Google Scholar.

4 Mangraisat, transcribed by Sommai Premchit in collaboration with Tuikheo, Puangkam (Chiang Mai: Transliteration Series 1, 1975)Google Scholar.

5 See Appendix.

6 Kotmai Lan Na: Lanna Custom Law, and Kotmai Lan Na: Lanna Custom Law, transliterated by Premchit, Sommai (Chiang Mai: Transliteration Series 2 and 3, 1975)Google Scholar.

7 Awahan 25, Kotmai Lan Na: 25 Characteristics of Stealing, Lanna Custom Law, Thammasat chaofa Hariphunchai: Chao Pha Haribhunjaya's Dharmashastra, and Kotmai khosarat: Kosarat Customary Law, transliterated by Sommai Premchit (Chiang Mai: Transliteration Series 6, 14,16, 1975–1977)Google Scholar.