"The Constitution of Ayutthaya", in New Light on Thai Legal History, Edited by Andrew Huxley,

Bangkok: White Orchid Press, 1996, pp. 133-210.

NOTE: material added after publication is enclosed as [*...*]

This paper is a continuation of two earlier short studies and, like them, is intended as a
contribution to the determination of the correct dates of the Laws of the Three Seals, and to an
understanding of the Ayutthayan constitution, that is the structure of government as set forth in the
laws. It involves examination of the sources of both the structure and the language in which it was
described, and one purpose is to correct the errors in H.G. Quaritch Wales's Ancient Siamese
Government and Administration, which has been followed by several subsequent historians of
Ayutthaya and early Bangkok.1 In my first study, "Prolegomena", I established classifications for the
dates and royal titles of the preambles of the laws, which are mostly quite different from the reign
dates and royal titles found in the chronicles of Ayutthaya and generally accepted. I concluded that
nearly all of the dates are spurious and result from changes introduced when the laws were
recodified; and on the basis of those two elements, preamble dates and titles, I proposed that signs
of five codifications could be identified before that of Rama I in 1805. They were "A pre-1569
recension with true śaka dates", "laws of Nareśuor's [Naresuan] reign with true cula dates", "a
recodification by King Indaraja/Song Tham using Buddhist era dates", "a new code prepared for
King Dhammarajadhiraj/Prasat Thong", and new laws of Kings Naray and Phetracha, although not
full new recensions".2 My second paper was a very short version of what is presented here.
Because of space limitations arguments made in "Prolegomena" cannot be repeated here, and when
relevant I must refer readers to it.
This paper in no way completes the task of unravelling the complexities of the Ayutthayan
laws. In particular for the lower levels of society, the brai and lek and their relations to the ruling
classes and state, another study, perhaps longer than this, will be required.

NOTES

*Note on transliteration and transcription. For all Thai terminology, except proper names which
have a commonly used ad hoc phonetic transcription, I have used the Sanskritic graphic system
which permits exact equivalencies of written forms, and these are given in italics. Of course, when
quoting others, I reproduce their spellings, for example śaktina [Sanskritic], sakdina [ad hoc
phonetic]. Indic terms are spelled as in the Thai texts, i.e., kot. ('urn'), not kos. a.. All names of law
texts are in bold type.

1 Published by Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., London, 1934. See Michael Vickery, "Prolegomena to
Methods for Using the Ayutthayan Laws as Historical Source Material", Journal of the Siam
Society (JSS), Vol. 72, parts 1-2 (January and July 1984), pp. 37-59; and "The Constitution of
Ayutthaya, an Investigation into the Three Seals Code", paper presented at the 5th International
Conference on Thai Studies--SOAS, London, 1993. See also Vickery, Review of Yoneo Ishii, et.
al., An Index of Officials in Traditional Thai Governments, in JSS, 63: (July 1975), pp. 419-30.
2 . Vickery, "Prolegomena", p. 54. There are two series of miscellaneous laws, Kamhnat kau ('Old
.
Decisions') and Kat. 36 khò ('Law of 36 Articles'), issued by 18th-century kings.
 All of the work on Ayutthayan administration and state structure has to rely on the Three
Seals Code together with a few European reports from the 17th century. As has long been
recognized, the law texts themselves are full of unresolved problems, particularly in the dates to
which they are attributed, and the possible confusion of provisions originating in different time peri-
ods. Nevertheless, there has not been an attempt to resolve the problems, and historians have
continued to use the laws, or at least Quaritch Wales's interpretations of them, as though they were
unequivocally true records.3
These laws, in their extant form, date from 1805 and are due to a decision of King Rama I
to collate the existing Ayutthayan law texts and rewrite the whole code. The revision was accom-
plished in great haste, which may account for some of the anomalies to be described below.4 The
new edition alone was considered authoritative and older manuscripts were presumably destroyed.
This collection of laws is of particular interest to historians because several of the texts included
outline the administrative structure of the kingdom and are thus a sort of written constitution of pre-
19th century Ayutthaya.
The study of the pre-19th century administrative system of Siam would seem to have begun
with the efforts of Thai royal personalities in the latter part of the 19th century to explain the existing
administrative structure and account for the ways in which it differed from that set out in the old
Ayutthayan laws. The impetus for such activity undoubtedly came from the intention of King
Chulalongkorn and his brothers to reform the existing system, which forced them to examine closely
a structure until then taken for granted.
Simply describing the existing administration should have occasioned no difficulty for these
able men at the centre of the kingdom's government, but it is clear from King Chulalongkorn's two
major writings on the subject, dated 1878 and 1887, that he also wished to take into account the

3. Akin Rabibhadana, "The Organization of Thai Society in the Early Bangkok Period, 1782-
1873", Cornell Thailand Project, Interim Report Series, Number Twelve, Data Paper: Number 74,
Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, July 1969. For such awareness see also
Lorraine Marie Gesick, "Kingship and Political Integration in Traditional Siam 1767-1824", Ph.D.
Thesis, Cornell University, 1976, p. 9, "one cannot judge to what extent the laws were changed in
the process of 'restoration'...it is clear...that certain provisions of the Law of Provincial Hierarchy
and the Law of Seals [presumably Dharrmanun] reflect the early Bangkok situation". Gesick
nevertheless accepted that "one may assume that such provisions were only added to 'touch up'
these laws while their basic provisions were retained unchanged". The important question, however,
is did the basic provisions represent continuing reality or not?
4 The code is entitled Kat hmay tra sam dvan
. · ("Laws of the Three Seals"). The best edition was
prepared by Robert Lingat and published in three volumes in Bangkok in 1938-9 under the title
Pra:mvan ka.t hmay rajakal di  1, cula era 1166 ('Collected Laws of the Reign of Rama I,
Cula Era 1166'). It has been reprinted by Guru Sabhā in a five-volume set from which my citations
are taken. References will be to 'Laws' followed by volume numbers in roman numerals and page
numbers. Information on the revision of 1805 is in Lingat, "Note sur la revision des lois siamoises en
1805", JSS 23 (1929-30), pp. 19-28; and J. Burnay, "Matériaux pour une édition critique du code
de 1805", JSS 31:2 (1937), pp. 155-68. Lingat, "Note", determined the length of the revision
period as possibly from September to December 1805.

2 Vickery
country's traditional laws, even when no direct reference to the laws was made. 5 We may
hypothesize that one reason for his interest in the laws was a desire to find out if some of the
structures he most desired to modify did not owe their powerful situation to usurpation of functions
beyond those outlined for them in the traditional law texts.
Among European scholars study of the laws has fallen into two separate channels, the first
represented by the work of Lingat and Burnay, who were interested in establishing the exact texts of
the 1805 compilation, finding clues to the texts antedating the reform, and investigating Siamese legal
theory.6 Scholars of the Lingat-Burnay school would probably say that before further use of the
laws in historical study is feasible, we must know more about the way in which the present code was
compiled and the precise meaning of all sections of the laws. It is true, of course, that parts of the
law texts are in difficult, archaic language and will require careful linguistic and textual analysis before
their full value as historical source material is revealed. Extensive sections of the laws, however, may
be read without much difficulty and historical scholarship has suffered from the neglect of direct
investigation into these documents.7
The other current, illustrated by the work of Quaritch Wales, who based his writing to a
great extent on earlier interpretative studies by Prince Damrong, is directly concerned with the
evolution of Ayutthayan society and administration and uses evidence from the law texts together
with details of 19th-century practice to illustrate the process. Nevertheless, he neglected direct
investigation of some of the more interesting, and contradictory, sections of the laws, but perhaps
because his reliance on the authoritative statements of Prince Damrong gave his work a quasi-official

5 "A Royal Essay, Traditions of Royal Lineage in Siam", 1878, text and translation in Robert B.
Jones, "Thai Titles and Ranks Including a Translation of Traditions of Royal Lineage in Siam by
King Chulalongkorn", Data Paper Number 81, Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, June
1971; and "Commentary by His majesty King Chulalongkorn on the Administration of the
Kingdom" (Brah. rāj tāmras
. nai brah. pād samtec brah. culacòmklau cau ayu hua dran· thalen·
brah. param rājādhipāy kee khai kār pakgron· pheentin) [1887], Bangkok 2470 [1927]. See
also Michael Vickery, Review article on Robert B. Jones, "Thai Titles and Ranks" , JSS LXII, 1
(January 1974), pp. 159-174.
6 In addition to the work cited in note 3, see Robert Lingat, "L'Esclavage privée dans le vieux droit

siamois", Études de sociologie et d'ethnologie juridique, Institut de droit comparé, Paris, Domat-
Montchrestien, 1931; Lingat, "Evolution of the Conception of Law in Burma and Siam", JSS, 38:1
(1950), pp. 9-31; and J. Burnay, "Inventaire des manuscrits juridiques siamois", JSS 23:3 (1929),
pp. 135-203, JSS 24:1 (1930), pp. 29-79, and JSS 24:2 (1930), pp. 93-152.
7 As illustrations of their value for the study of Thai society, even in terms of the new domain of

'Cultural Studies', and not merely as antiquarian exotica, one need only note (1) the reason given for
the initial interest of Rama I in the law texts (Laws I, pp. 1-3) which shows his sociological
preconception, that the previous laws which gave women an absolute right of divorce must have
been corrupt, or as Gesick, p. 9 considered, "clearly unjust" (2) his edict regarding linga worship,
noted by Akin, p. 44, with its evidence for religious syncretism of the time, the extent of
Hinduization, and the accuracy of current formulations of the greater/lesser tradition dichotomy. The
first case, incidentally, offers a perfect opportunity to put gender into Thai history, as called for by
Craig Reynolds at the London Thai Studies Conference (Craig Reynolds, "Predicaments of Modern
Thai History", Third Conference Lecture, The Fifth International Conference on Thai Studies,
SOAS, London, 9 July 1993).

3 Vickery
status, subsequent historians have generally followed his outline of the evolution of early Siamese
administration.8

Quaritch Wales' use of the laws

Quaritch Wales drew on the law texts in order to present a coherent evolutionary picture of
the structure and development of early Ayutthayan administration--a picture which has not been
carefully studied by other historians. His story begins with the final conquest of Angkor at the date
found in the Hlvan· prasröt. h chronicle, 1431, with the entry "samtec brah. paramaraj a cau [the
King of Ayutthaya]went [and] took möan· nagara hlvan· [Angkor] ...". As a result, there was an
"influx into the Siamese capital of large numbers of Khmer statesmen and Brahmans. Their influence
led ... King Paramatrailokanatha (1448-1488), to undertake the complete reorganisation of the
administration by the adaptation of many Khmer principles and methods ...". He divided "the
population into two divisions, one military and one civil"; and this "was the administrative
system...that was followed in broad principle until the reign of Rama V".9 These details, it should be
noted, are not found in the laconic entry of Hlvan· prasrö.t h, nor specifically stated in any other
source, but, with respect to the Khmer influence, result from scholarly speculation oriented toward
explaining the large number of Khmer terms in Thai royal and administrative vocabulary taken in
conjunction with the statement of the long versions of the Thai Annals, but not Hlvan· prasröh,
about reforms carried out by King Trailok.10 Before the reforms attributed to King Trailok,
according to Quaritch Wales, Ayutthayan administration had been 'feudal', of the personal type,
allegedly like Sukhothai.
The picture presented by Quaritch Wales is based on a number of assumptions supported
by little or no evidence and made necessary by a preconceived idea of what the evolution of the
Thai system should have been. Crucial to his conception of this evolution was a belief that certain
features had originally been adopted directly from India and that others had been introduced from
Angkor in the 15th century and formalized by King Trailok, and that the differences from this ideal
structure which were observed from the 17th century on were due to deterioration of the original

8 H.G. Quaritch Wales, Ancient Siamese government and Administration, London 1934 and
Paragon Book reprint 1965, from which my citations are taken. In order to limit the number of
footnotes, the numerous page references to this work will be included in parentheses in the body of
the text. The most important writings of Prince Damrong on the subject are Tamna
. n kat. hmay daiy,
'Story of the Laws of Thailand', included in his commentary to the Royal Autograph Edition of the
Annals of Ayutthaya, pp. 403-410, and his 'History of Military Organization", published in
Collected Chronicle (Prajum ban·śav atar), Vol. 14. The former, in Thai Brah. raj ban·śav atar
chapap brah. raj hatthalekha, has gone through several printings. My citations are from the 6th
printing, Bangkok 2511, and will be cited as 'RA'. Prajum ban·śav atar has also gone through
several printings. My citations are from the Guru Sabha edition and citations will be abbreviated
'PB'.
9 Hlvan· prasröt. h, at date 793. Q.W., Administration, pp. 3-4, 47- 48.
10 .
For discussion and analysis of the different versions of the Ayutthayan chronicles, see Michael
Vickery, "Cambodia After Angkor, The Chronicular Evidence for the 14th-16th Centuries", Ph.D.
thesis, Yale University, 1977, pp. 0000

4 Vickery
system. Some of his evolutionary conceptions, which are not always mutually consistent, are as
follows:

-The Khmer modelled their civil administration on an existing military organisation.

-The 12th-century Khmer cabinet consisted of four chief ministers.
-King Trailok followed the Khmer model.
-In King Trailok's system there were originally four general officers, each in command of
one of the four divisions (caturan·ga) of the army, under the chief of the military division;
and in the civil division the four ministers were under the control of the head of the civil
division.11

Each of these statements is entirely speculative. Too little has been determined about the
structure of Angkor administration, either civil or military, to yet make useful comparisons, although
it seems to me that Angkor was quite different from Ayutthaya. For the second, Quaritch Wales
referred to the galérie historique of Angkor Vat, but this relief scene depicts 19 high officials, most
of whom seem to be military, and there is no way to determine whether four of them were chief
ministers. Moreover, in another context Quaritch Wales presented still a different evolutionary
picture:

-The army in ancient India was divided into four great departments (caturan·ga), infantry,
cavalry, elephants, and chariots.
-Originally in Siam there were four great departments in the military division under the kala
hom, modelled on the Indian tradition.
-King Trailok organized the four departments of the civil division on the model of the military
division.
-Later the "original arrangement became much confused". The main generals, who seem to
be called baña rama caturan·ga, are all of the infantry. There are six rather than four. The
elephants and cavalry, composing one of the four "original" military divisions, are in the civil
division, and the "original" artisan group, corresponding to the Indian chariots, has been split
up into "many small groups, each under a commander of comparatively low rank". 12

Here the only statements based on any kind of evidence are the first, on the classical Indian
system, and the last, on the Thai system as observed between the 17th and 19th centuries. There
are no grounds for the postulated steps in between. As for elements of Indianization, such as the
term and concept of caturan·ga, the process of selective borrowing and adaptation which occurred
all over Southeast Asia could easily have altered the original Indian meaning long before the
Ayutthaya period in which the term seems to have meant simply "military". 13
No conclusions may be drawn about direct Angkorean influence on Thai administration and
in general probably very little was borrowed, at least in the Ayutthaya period. The reforms of King
Trailok, if any, and the evolution of Ayutthayan administration must be deduced from other sources
-- laws, chronicles, inscriptions -- not assumed as the result of any kind of contact with Angkor.

11 Deduced from Quaritch-Wales's remarks, Administration, p. 79, 79, n.2.

12 Deduced from remarks in Administration, pp. 141-2.
13 See Vickery, “Review of Jones”, on the question of Angkor influence, and on caturan·ga below.

5 Vickery
 Quaritch Wales arbitrarily assigned places in a developmental sequence to sections of the
laws which are in mutual contradiction. Of course, the fault does not lie with Quaritch Wales alone,
for often he was simply repeating what Prince Damrong had written; and although Prince Damrong's
speculations were always interesting, and often valuable as hypotheses, we must recognize that they
were only hypotheses, not solutions based on the results of careful historical investigation.
Quaritch Wales considered that the Palatine Law dated from 1458 (his pp. 19, 22, 171,
173), and the Hierarchy Laws from 1454, and "the correctness of the dates...[is] corroborated by
definite statements in the Annals of Ayudhya" (173). Interestingly, he thought all the preamble dates
purporting to be earlier than Trailok, and particularly those claiming to date from the 14th century,
were false, and should be, in spite of the dates they contain, attributed variously to the 15th, 16th or
17th centuries.14 The last assumption was probably correct, but for the wrong reason. He believed
that the preambles of certain laws with 14th-century dates "reveal the existence, at the time of
promulgation, of a higher degree of administrative specialization, and of a well-developed official
class, with indications that the separation of the people into civil and military divisions was already
established, all of which we have abundant evidence to believe represents a stage in the organisation
of society that was not reached before the reign of King Paramatrailokanatha". 15
This would be a good reason if we were absolutely sure of the date of "the separation of the
people into civil and military divisions". In my opinion a sounder reason for rejecting the 14th-
century dates of these preambles, as I do, is the use of the Buddhist era, which all epigraphic
evidence indicates was not used for dating official documents in Siam at that time. 16 The matter of
separation of the people into civil and military divisions is extremely complex, and cannot be
thoroughly treated here, but it may be said with confidence that the conventional view that this was
accomplished by King Trailok is an oversimplification.
Griswold and Prasert challenged Quaritch Wales on this point with a law found in a
Sukhothai inscription, which they dated to the late 14th century, and considered as an Ayutthayan
intervention in Sukhothai because some of its provisions resemble the Ayutthayan Law on
Kidnapping/Abduction (Lák bha) with a Buddhist Era date equivalent to 1355-56. In an earlier
study I gave reasons why the Sukhothai text should be considered a Sukhothai law, which perhaps
influenced the Ayutthayan law code after 1569, and I shall take this up again below in the section on
the origins of the Ayutthayan state structure.17
Quaritch Wales would seem to have been under the misapprehension that the Palatine and
Hierarchy laws, the most important for the study of administrative structure, actually contained
dates equivalent to 1458 (tiger year) and 1454 (dog year) respectively. In reality the former shows
the date 720, which would normally be construed as cula era equivalent to 1358, and the two latter
laws have 1298, apparently śaka, and equal to 1376. It is certain, however, that the dates found in
these laws are in some way inaccurate since there is discord between the numerical year and the

14 . Q.W., Administration, pp. 172-3. He cited in this connection Law of the Reception of
Plaints, 1899 (1355), Law of Husband and Wife, 1904 (1360), Law of Witnesses, 1894
(1350), and Law of Offences Against the Government, 1895 (1351).
15 Q.W., Administration, p. 173.
16 See Vickery, "Prolegomena", and below, especially the quotation from Roger Billard, in note 72.
17 . A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, EHS 4, "A Law Promulgated by the King of Ayudhya in
.
1397 A.D.", JSS 57/1 (January 1969), pp. 109-148; Lák bha in Laws III, pp. 1-20; Vickery, "A
Guide Through Some Recent Sukhothai Historiography", JSS 66/2 (July 1978), pp. 182-2436, see
230-233; and below, pp. 000

6 Vickery
animal cycle, and more than one attempt has been made to emend them. Prince Damrong, in his
"Story of the Laws", gives the same dates as Quaritch Wales, but it is not certain whether he was
responsible for the emendation or was copying from another source. 18
In both cases the emendation seemed necessary because the titles contain 'Trailok', and in
the case of the Hierarchy Laws seem to reflect an administrative organisation believed due to the
initiative of King Trailok, but the emendations were made on different principles. The choice of a
date equivalent to 1454 involves a completely arbitrary change of numbers in order to fit the proper
animal year, dog, somewhere near the beginning of Trailok's reign; while 1458 was achieved by
assuming a copyist's error of 720 for an original 820, not too arbitrary an emendation, but one
which still leaves a two-year discrepancy with the animal year.
Later efforts to emend these dates involved the resurrection of the cul.amani .  era which
permits both placing the three preambles in question in the reign of King Trailok and reconciling the
numerical year with the animal cycle. By this computation the Palatine Law is dated to 1468 and
the Hierarchy Laws to 1466.19
Later, Akin Rabibhadana accepted Quaritch Wales for the Hierarchy Law dates, but
ignored his strictures concerning the 14th-century dates of certain preambles, and for the Palatine
Law followed Wyatt. He also accepted the cul.amani .  era, but did not make consistent adjustments
for it in his discussion. Thus after accepting that the implied cul.amani .  date for Dharrmanun, AD
1743, might be the best, he accepted that there was support for the date AD 1633 in the occasional
use of the title Ekadaśarat. h by King Prasat Thong. If, however, the cul.amani .  dates are accurate,
then none of the extant laws may be attributed to Prasat Thong. 20
Still another idea was put forward by A.B. Griswold and Prasert n. a Nagara, who suggested
that the discovery of a law text in a Sukhothai inscription shows the existence of a law code as early
as the 14th century and is evidence against Quaritch Wales' contention that all such preambles are
false. A critic of Griswold and Prasert pointed out, however, that the date of the inscription has been
obliterated and that the language is later than the period they wished to assign to it, and other Thai
historians date that Sukhothai inscription in 1433. My own view is that, whatever its date, it
predates the Ayutthayan law which it resembles, and which was adopted in Ayutthaya under
Sukhothai influence, no earlier than the reign of Trailok, and perhaps only after 1569. 21
As for the Annals corroborating any of these dates, the long versions, the dates of which
during the 15th-16th centuries are known to be wildly inaccurate, imply that at the beginning of his
reign, in 1434, King Trailok changed the titles and functions of certain officials. The true date, if we
accept the Hlvan· prasrö.t h chronology, for which there is a wide consensus among historians,

18 . See Vickery, "Prolegomena".

. ma ni
.  pp. 00-00 below.
19 . See further in Vickery, "Prolegomena", pp. 41-46; and on cu la
20 Akin, pp. 4, 20-21, 192, and Vickery, "Prolegomena", p. 43.
21 . A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, "Epigraphical and Historical Studies", EHS 4, JSS 57:1
.
(January 1969) pp. 109-148; and M.C. Chan Chirayu Rajani, Review of A.B. Griswold and
Prasert a Nagara, "Epigraphical and Historical Studies", 1-8, JSS 61:1 (January 1973), pp. 287-8;
Dhida Saraya, Class Structure of Thai Society in the Sukhothai and Early Ayutthaya Period,
B.E. 1800-2112 (Gron· sran· khòn· jan ján nai sán·gam daiy samay sukhodáy lee: tan ayudhaya
), Bangkok, 2518-2519/1975-76, Chulalongkorn University, pp. 121-127; Vickery, "A Guide
Through Some Recent Sukhothai Historiography", JSS 66:2 (July 1978), pp. 230-232.

7 Vickery
should be 1448, and since Prince Damrong has shown how the law texts may have influenced the
composition of the long chronicle versions, any information they contain relating to the laws may
have been taken from the law texts and is thus not independent evidence confirming the laws
themselves.22
We should also note that with regard to the Hierarchy Laws Quaritch Wales was not even
consistent in his assumptions. Initially assuming them to date from 1454 rather than 1376, he then
followed Prince Damrong in assigning the reforms they reflect to King Naresuan (1590-1605), and
finally added that their structure better represents the 18th century. 23 There is no doubt that the
laws, and in particular the Hierarchy Laws, contain several layers of material from different
periods, but before using the laws in historical reconstruction an attempt must be made to distinguish
these layers and attribute them to their true dates. It is hardly legitimate, however, to assign a law to
one date to fit one argument and to a different date to answer another, and if the details of the law
concerning provincial hierarchies really fit the reign of Naresuan and the date of the preamble is
really in error, there is no need to attribute it to King Trailok at all.
Quaritch Wales' use of the second element which has been important in dating the laws, the
royal titles contained therein, also merits some comment. Quaritch Wales followed Lingat in
asserting that the "names" of kings in the laws were "merely long titles applied to many monarchs and
of no use as an aid to identification". This opinion was even more strongly stated by Griswold and
Prasert: "such titles are purely conventional...The same elements, or some of them, are repeated
again and again ... in the same or different order; and any king might use a different combination at
different times...".24
Akin, on the contrary, finds "that the kings' names are not unreliable as a guide" except for
"a few kings who used the same names in their laws (e.g. Prasatthong often used the name
Ekathotsarot)".25 The underlying assumption in both cases is that the Ayutthayan kings are
accurately named in the chronicles and that where the laws differ from the chronicles it is generally
the former which are inaccurate.To the contrary, it is certain that royal titles followed definite
patterns, and random combinations of elements in secondary documents prove the inaccuracy of
those documents.26 Further discussion of Quaritch Wales analysis is included under specific topics
below.

Description of the laws

It is now necessary to re-examine carefully the laws themselves in order to assess the
accuracy of the formulations of Prince Damrong, Quaritch Wales, and later historians, to see if they
may not be inaccurate owing to a priori assumptions and to the practice of following Prince
Damrong in speculating about the evolution of the laws in cases where no direct evidence was
available, and to present to students what the laws actually say rather than what Quaritch Wales
believed they meant.

22 Damrong, RA, pp. 398-400.

23 Quaritch Wales, Administration, p. 109.
24 . Q.W., Administration, p. 172; A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, "Devices and Expedients
.
Vt Pa Mok, 1727 A.D.", In Memoriam Phya Anuman Rajadhon, Bangkok, The Siam Society
(1970), p. 151.
25 Akin, p. 188.
26 Vickery, "Cambodia After Angkor", pp, 265-296; Vickery, "Prolegomena". pp. 46-51, p. 47 on

cákrabarrti.

8 Vickery
 First some preliminary matters.

Foreign influences
The vocabulary of the Three Seals, like Ayutthayan Thai in general, is characterized by a
very large quantity of Khmer and Sanskrit, especially in the formation of titles, and this together with
the use of a 'Dharmaāstr' as a framework for categorizing the laws, has led some writers to
concentrate on foreign origins, in India and Cambodia. As shown above, Quaritch Wales based
much of his description and analysis on the assumption that the Thai had first adopted and then
modified Indian structures. With respect to Khmer, conventional wisdom, established for modern
western scholarship by Prince Damrong and Quaritch Wales, holds that the Khmer input was a
result of the conquest of Angkor in 1431 by King Paramarāja, father of Trailokanāth, and the
capture of Khmer scholars who, in the reign of Trailokanāth aided in the drafting of laws for the
reforms allegedly carried out by that king.27
Even radical Thai scholars, together with their praise for critical work in other areas of Thai
history, have not questioned the traditionalist and royalist interpretation that the "[aktina] system
was brought back from Cambodia by victorious Thai armies...in the late Sukhothai period and
became firmly established under King Baromtrailokanard [hereafter Trailokanath/Trailok] (1448-
1488)". This is perhaps because the most famous Thai radical scholar, Jit Pumisak, who found
something to challenge almost everywhere, accepted this royalist tradition, and Prince Damrong's
date of 1453/4 for the law in question, a matter of historical interest in itself, but which cannot be
pursued here.28
Moreover, as Quaritch Wales wrote in one context, study of latter-day Cambodian
administration "throws little light on the institutions of the ancient Khmer empire. Since the direct
attack on this subject by means of the early Khmer inscriptions has unfortunately proved almost

27 The most accurate record of that period of Ayutthayan involvement in Cambodia is in two
chronicle fragments now catalogued at the Thai National Library as "Chronicle of Ayutthaya", nos.
222 and 223. No. 223 was published in Vickery, "The 2/k.125 Fragment: A Lost Chronicle of
Ayutthaya", JSS 65/1 (January 1977), pp. 1- 80. No. 222 was later published in a thesis for
Silpakorn University, Kar jamra:
. brah. raj ban·śav atar nai rájasamay brah. pad samtec brah.
buddha yòtfa cu.lalok, by Miss Ubolsri Akkhaphand, whose supervisor Dr. Thamsook Numnond
kindly provided me with a copy of the chronicle text. These two chronicle fragments prove
conclusively that the stories of the Thai conquest of Angkor in mid-fifteenth century found in either
the official Ayutthayan or the Cambodian chronicles, and accepted in modern works on Thai and
Cambodian history, are almost totally wrong. There has been an astounding reluctance by historians
to accept the new evidence. David Wyatt, in Thailand: A Short History, writing after the
publication of "The 2/k.125 Fragment", simply retold the old tale, citing "The 2/k.125 Fragment" in
"Suggestions for Further Reading", p. 324 in a manner giving the impression that it supported the
traditional history. David Chandler, A History of Cambodia, pp. 78-9, likewise concealed the
importance of this text, refusing to acknowledge that the old history might have to be rewritten.
28 . Quotation from Yuangrat (Pattanapongse) Wedel, "Modern Thai Radical thought: The

Siamization of Marxism and its Theoretical Problems", Ph.D. thesis, University of Michigan (1981),
p. 28. Jit Pumisak [also Poumisak, Phumisak (¨Ô´Ã ÀÙÁÔÈÑ¡µÔì)], San·gam daiy lum mènam cau
bra:ya kòn samáy śri ayudhya ('Thai Society in the Menam Chao Phraya Valley Before the
Ayutthaya Period'), cited hereafter as "Thai Society"), pp. 34, 185.

9 Vickery
barren of result, it is probable that the indirect approach via the earlier Siamese institutions--and
particularly via the Siamese administration as reorganized in the fifteenth century, owing much as it
did to direct contemporary Khmer inspiration--may prove the most fruitful line of study;...".29 This
gets dangerously close to a bad case of circular reasoning, that is, Khmer administration is believed
to be the source of 15th-century Thai administration, but we really know nothing about the former.
Therefore we must infer it from the Thai example and in this way reconstruct the assumed model.
I do not think the evidence warrants this assumption. First, hardly any of the Khmer titles in
the Three Seals is found in the Angkor inscriptions. A possible exception which has been
recognized is kalāhom (possibly Khmer kralahoma), and an exception which has not usually been
recognized is kum. r. tèn·/pra:tèn· (Khmer kamraten·/mraten·).30 Even one of the most common
Khmer words used in the Ayutthayan, and modern Bangkok, bureaucratic hierarchy, kram 'group',
'department' (Khmer krum), does not occur in the Khmer inscriptions of Cambodia, which suggests
that not only did Angkor not contribute to the vocabulary of the Three Seals, but that the
Angkorean government structure was quite different. The few Khmer terms which are common both
to Angkor and Ayutthaya, such as brah. ('sacred', a rank) and bala ('forces, personnel'), point to
assimilation much earlier than the 15th century. Both are also common to 14th-century Sukhothai,
which suggests 11th- 13th centuries for the influence from Angkor, if such occurred. And in fact the
rich corpus of official titles recorded in the Angkor inscriptions is quite different from Three
Seals.31
A better time to search for Angkorean influence on Thai official vocabulary would be the
period from Suryavarman I (1002- 1050) to Jayavarman VII (1181-1220?) when large areas of
central and northeastern Thailand were under Angkor administration, and when the assimilation of
Khmer elements into Sukhothai Thai may be presumed to have occurred. The differences in the
Khmer vocabularies, however, put this also in doubt with respect to Ayutthaya.

29 "Administration", p. 13.
30 .I would like to dissociate kalāhom, which I take as the canonical form in Ayutthaya, from Old
Khmer kralāhom(a), and analyze it as Mon kala 'chief' + hom (?). The form kalāhom is found in
the oldest parts of Three Seals, and kralāhom, most common in 18th-century decrees and in laws
of Rama I seems to have been introduced (a hypercorrection?) in late Ayutthaya or Bangkok times.
This would mean that the explanation proposed by Quaritch Wales, Ancient South-East Asian
Warfare, London, Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., 1952, p. 151, was not correct, and that kalahom was
not connected with "Brahmanical rites before war". The derivation of kum. r. tèn· from kamraten·
seems indisputable, but pra:tèn· from mraten· is admittedly hypothetical, although I cannot think of
any other possibility. It would represent either an independent Khmer development in Ayutthaya, or
pre-Ayutthaya, or a misconception by scribes after the term was no longer in use.
31 . [*On kram, and misconceptions about it, see my review in Journal of the Siam Society,

Volume 62, part 1, January 1974, of Robert B Jones, “Thai Titles and Ranks Including a
Translation of Traditions of Royal Lineage in Siam by King Chulalongkorn” (Data Paper: Number
81, Southeast, Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York,
June 1971). *]Another certain Angkorean expression is khlon dvar (in Khmer khloñ dvar ) 'door
officer', listed among the inner palace functionaries, Laws I, p. 221, and there are a few more
occurrences of khlon. Such rare terms are just sufficient to show the strong Khmer background in
early Ayutthaya.

10 Vickery
 In my earlier remarks on this subject I proposed that early Ayutthaya was Khmer, not Thai,
and if so, they would have developed their own Khmer usage, which accords well with the evidence
available. The extant written evidence shows that Ayutthaya was still mainly Khmer in the time of
Trailokanāth, but that Thai influence was intruding. By mid-16th century the official language was
probably Thai, but the script still Khmer, and a fully Thai polity was not in place until Sukhothai
royalty took the Ayutthayan throne after throwing their support behind the Burmese invasion of
1569.32 Traditional scholarship established a false continuity of Thai culture between earliest
Ayutthaya and Thai states in Sukhothai and Lanna. It seems now preferable to hypothesize a Khmer
Sien-Ayutthaya in the 13th-14th centuries, with gradual Thai influence from the Northeast and what
is now Laos, since linguists have established that the Thai language which emerged in Ayutthaya was
a branch of Phuan, Phu Tai, etc., not the Thai of Sukhothai, then Sukhothai influence as Ayutthaya
expanded in that direction from the end of the 14th century, and finally domination of Ayutthaya by
Sukhothai, and full Thai-ization, after 1569.33 This subject need not be pursued further here, but it
must be realized that the Angkor inscriptions are of no help in understanding the Three Seals.
Whenever, and from wherever, Ayutthaya got its Khmer, that language was used in original ways
when assimilated to Thai, and Three Seals is not evidence for either linguistic or administrative
influence from Cambodia.
A new problem which is raised by a view of early Ayutthaya as an indigenous Khmer polity,
is that its administrative structure at that time may have been quite different from the Thai
administrative structure and practices prevalent in Sukhothai and other Thai states in northern
Thailand, Laos and northern Vietnam. When the two societies were unified during the 15th-16th
centuries it is likely that the result was a mixture of elements from both, with the northern, Thai,
culture and polity, victorious after 1569, imposing more of its practices on formerly Khmer
Ayutthaya. Thus, as sources for the structure of government and administration found in the laws,
we must consider a possibly pre-Thai Ayutthayan administration, which may have been influenced
by Cambodia, but also the administrative structures of the Thai polities to the North and
Northeast.34 Sukhothai, however, may not have been the most important influence, and the first Thai
who became influential in the Ayutthayan area may have come from a northeastern polity with a
government somewhat different from Sukhothai.
It has also been established, contrary to preconceptions at the time Quaritch Wales wrote,
that Nanchao was not Thai, and that the route of Thai migration, or transmission of Thai languages
and culture, was out of what is now northern Vietnam and its borderlands with China. It is thus a
priori relevant to search in that area for antecedents to Ayutthayan administrative structures. 35

32 The proposal of a Khmer early Ayutthaya, which many may have thought irresponsible, has now
been made respectable by the doyen of conservative western scholars of Thailand, David Wyatt, as
quoted in Suda Kanjanawanawan, "Historical expedience or reality", The Nation, "Focus" (8
February 1990), pp. 25, 27. In addition to work cited, see Vickery, "The Khmer Inscriptions of
Tenasserim: a Reinterpretation", JSS Vol. 61/1 (January 1973), pp. 51-70.
33 James R. Chamberlain, "A New Look at the History and Classification of the Tai Languages", in

Studies in Tai Linguistics in Honor of William J. Gedney, edited by Jimmy G. Harris and James
R. Chamberlain, Bangkok, 1975, pp. 49-66.
34 I am not denying that some ultimate sources may have been farther afield, in India or China, but

the nearest sources must be examined first.

35 . The basic facts on Nanchao and the ancient Thai language areas are in Wyatt, Thailand: A

Short History, pp. 10-15. See James R. Chamberlain, "A New Look at the History and

11 Vickery
 Too much weight should not be given to the evocation of Dharmaśastra
/dharrmasatr/dhammasattham in the Three Seals as evidence of foreign influence on Ayutthayan
law. The concept of dharmaśastra had been floating around Southeast Asia since Funan times, but
it is usually impossible to establish the content of the dharmaśastra to which reference is made.
Even if the introduction to Three Seals says the Ayutthayan dharmasatr was adapted from Mon,
that does not guarantee that such was the case. More important, the laws of the Three Seals,
especially those concerning administration, are not a dharmaśastra. They are texts concerning
practical matters arising in the particular cultures of the Menam basin. Within Three Seals the
dharrmasatr, much abbreviated compared to Indian or Mon versions, had become simply an
apparatus for classification which bears no evidence for external influences on the matters
classified.36

The nature of the early Ayutthayan polity

Most writings on early Ayutthaya have paid insufficient attention to certain details of
Ayutthayan origins which indicate that Ayutthaya followed Hsien/Sien as a port state which took off
in the late 13th century as part of the new wave of international maritime trade which started under
the Sung and continued into Ming times, and that the region of Ayutthaya could only have developed
in that way because most of its territory, to the south, was unsuitable for agriculture until the
construction of modern drainage and irrigation facilities. Understanding was also hindered by the
now obsolete belief that Sien was Sukhothai. Not only is there at least one Yuan dynasty record in
1299, which recorded envoys from both Hsien and Su-ku-tai at the same time, but there is an even
more explicit Yuan period record which states that hsien [xian in the article in question] controlled,
or was the link to, "upper water" or "go upriver" Su-gu-di, meaning that not only were Sukhothai
and Hsien different places, but that Sukhothai was upriver from Hsien, implicitly placing the latter
downstream.37

Classification of the Tai languages", in Studies in Tai Linguistics in Honor of William J. Gedney,
ed. Jimmy G. Harris and James R. Chamberlain, Bangkok (1975), pp. 49-66; F. W. Mote,
"Problems of Thai Prehistory", Sangkhomsat Parithat 2/2 (October 1964), pp. 100-109.
36 See Yoneo Ishii, "The Thai Thammasat", in Laws of South-East Asia, Volume I, The Pre-

Modern Texts, edited by M.B. Hooker, Singapore, Butterworth & Co (Asia) pte ltd, 1986, pp.
148, 157-9, 194-8.
37 . Tatsuro Yamamoto, "Thailand as it is referred to in the Da-de Nan-hai zhi at the beginning of the

fourteenth century", Journal of East-West Maritime Relations, Vol. 1 (1989), pp. 47-58; Geoff
Wade, "The Ming Shi-Lu as a Source for Thai History 14th to 17th Century", paper presented at
the 5th International Conference on Thai Studies-SOAS, London, 1993, p. 25. I wish to thank Dr.
Wade for reminding me of this information. Charnvit Kasetsiri agrees that in the 14th century the
Chinese intended Hsien, their rendering of 'siam'/syā (as it was written in Old Khmer and Cham),
as a name for the lower Menam basin, including Ayutthaya, not Sukhothai. See his "Ayudhya:
Capital-Port of Siam and its Chinese Connection in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries", JSS,
Vol 80, Part I (1992), pp. 75-81. On the contrary, David K. Wyatt, ignoring new work, asserted
boldly in his Thailand: A Short History, p. 58, that Sien (Hsien) was Sukhothai. This is his only
reference to that term, and in citing Chou Ta-kuan's contemporary report on Angkor, where Hsien
is prominent, Wyatt used 'Siam'. Nevertheless, when describing Rāmādhipa's settlement of
Ayutthaya , p. 66, he called it "a port City of some antiquity", which fits precisely the Hsien
described by Chinese writers since the 1280s, and which name the Chinese would continue to use

12 Vickery
 Only when Ayutthaya lost out to Malacca for appointment as China's representative in the
area did Ayutthayan rulers set out on the conquest of the agrarian hinterland. The earliest stage of
Ayutthayan development, as a maritime polity intent on dominating the entire peninsula, is hardly at
all reflected in the Three Seals, which constitute a body of law concerned with life in an agrarian
polity. This early stage is not apparent in the Ayutthayan annals either, and modern historians have
generally ignored it. The traditional legend of the chronicles, that Prince Rāmādhipati arrived on the
empty site of Ayutthaya with his followers and decided on it because of its agricultural fertility is not
at all credible. Not only was Ayutthaya at the very southern edge of the cultivable flood plain,
beyond which was an uninhabitable delta before modern canals were built, but the Khmer-style
temples in nearly all the cities of the delta and its immediate hinterland, Suphanburi, Ratburi,
Phetburi, Lophburi, show thick previous settlement.38
This has led to a skewed vision of early Ayutthayan economy and of the structure of the
relevant laws. Quaritch Wales believed that in early Ayutthaya the duties of the Treasury Ministry
(gl) must have been light, because "revenue was small and most of the government work was
done by forced labour". Only after trade began with China, which he seems to place in early 17th
century, did the duties of the gl increase and the minister came to be called cau da, "lord of the
landing stage".39
Sarasin Viraphol has taken off from that to say that "[i]n the reign of King Trailokanāth (r.
1488-1528) [sic, true dates 1448-88], which may be said to have been the first period in which the
Siamese court entered consciously into foreign trade, an Office of Ports (Krom ta [kram da]) was
organized". It had three sections, Right (kram da khva), "in charge of ports on the western side of
the Malay peninsula and trade conducted primarily by Mohammedan (Persian) traders"; Left (kram
da zay), "in charge of ports on the Gulf of Siam and trade in the Eastern Seas conducted primarily
by Chinese merchants"; and Central, (kram da klan·), "in charge of other foreign trade in general".
Like Quaritch Wales, Sarasin considers that originally the gl, to which the kram da was
subordinate, had little to do, "since the income of the state was primarily in the form of corvée
labour".40

for Ayutthaya until modern times. [*for the latest and most conclusive work on his see Chris Baker,
“Ayutthaya Rising: From the Land or From the Sea”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34/1
(2003), pp. 41-62;Yoneo Ishii, “A reinterpretation of Thai history with special reference to the pre-
modern period”, Paper presented at 8th international conference on Thai studies at Nakhon
Phanom, Thailand, January 2002.*]
38 O.W. Wolters, in The Fall of Srivijaya, indicated some of the important clues, but did not make

use of them with respect to Ayutthaya. On the natural conditions of the Ayutthaya region see
Yoshikazu Takaya, "An Ecological Interpretation of Thai History", JSEAS vol. 6, number 2 (1975),
pp. 190-195; and for the historical interpretation, see Charnvit Kasetsiri, The Rise of Ayudhya; and
Vickery, "A New Tāmnān
. About Ayudhya", JSS Vol. 67/2 (July 1979), pp. 123- 86.
39 Q.W., Administration, p. 90.
40 . Sarasin Viraphol, Tribute and Profit: Sino-Siamese Trade, 1652-1853, Harvard University

Press, 1977, pp. 19-20, where the dates given, 1488-1528, are not the reign of Trailokanāth, but
of his successor. Perhaps the most fanciful reinterpretation of the structure of the Ayutthayan central
government in that of Fred W. Riggs, Thailand the Modernization of a Bureaucratic Polity, pp.
74, ff. The main error, which skews his entire picture, was to misinterpret gln· (¤Åѧ) 'storehouse,
treasury', a Khmer loanword in Thai, as Thai kl (¡ÅÒ§), 'center', and on the basis of this to posit a

13 Vickery
 Sarasin supplies no evidence for an increase in trading in the 15th century, and it would
seem to be no more than belief in the dates traditionally attributed to certain laws, such as the Civil
Hierarchy Law, traditionally dated to the reign of Trailokanāth, and in which the gl ministry, but
not the 'kram da' as such, is included. It is more likely, however, that the time of Trailokanāth saw a
decline in trading compared to the late 13th and the 14th centuries, as Ayutthaya moved inland after
its attempt to control the peninsula failed.
Neither does the structure of the kram da as described by Sarasin conform to what is found
in the Hierarchy Law, and the basis for his description is uncertain, perhaps only an organization
pertaining to the Bangkok period.41 In the Civil Hierarchy Law, which outlines the central
administration, the department corresponding to the kram da, which is not mentioned by that name,
may be recognized from the title of its chief, hlvan· jotük śresthi. There is no division which may be
identified as kram da of the left, right, or center, nor is there a division of duties corresponding to
west or east side of the peninsula. There were subordinate positions under the gl designated as in
charge of relations with groups of foreigners. One was assigned to the "khèk from Java, the Malays,
and the English". Another dealt with the "khèk from England, the Ñuon [Vietnamese], and the
French". Other officials were interpreters for English, French, and Dutch.42
What this indicates is a section of the laws which in its present form may not be attributed to
any date earlier than 1600. As for 'Right' and 'Left' kram da, they are found only in laws of Rama I.
Indeed nearly all references to kram da in the Three Seals are in his Kamhnat . hmai (New
Decisions).43
An exception to the lack of attention to the earliest phase of Ayutthayan history in the laws
is the claim in the Palatine Law to suzerainty over, uyòn· ta:hna: (hujung tanah, 'land's end' in
Malay, probably the area of Johore and Singapore), Malacca, Malayu, and varavar (?). This may
be one of the oldest sections of the entire Three Seals, although I maintain my analysis that the
royal titles and date of the Palatine Law are quite artificial concoctions.44

concentric arrangement of four courts centered on the gln·, as highest among the four. Not only is
this linguistically wrong, but although there are indications of old structures with the v n· and möan·
as first of the four, there is no evidence that the gln· held that position until perhaps the 17th century
when all four were hierarchically subordinate below the Mahat daiy.
41 Sarasin cites two studies by Thai historians which I have not been able to consult, but in any case

what is crucial is the original sources.

42 Laws I, p. 234.
43 I shall demonstrate below that the part of the Dharrmanūn in which kram dā is also mentioned

is a law of Rāma I. There are two references to kram dā in pre-Rāma I laws of the 18th century,
in kamhnat
. kau 43 of 1736 (Laws IV, p. 119), and kamhnat . kau 48 of 1733 (Laws IV, p.
136).
44 Laws I, p. 70. "Prolegomena", p. 45-46, 51. The Palatine Law also contains details on royalty

and organization of the population which are different from all other laws, and which may reflect an
ancient system. Simon de la Loubère, The Kingdom of Siam, Oxford University Press, 1969, p.
82, confirms that Ayutthaya even as late as the reign of Naray (1656-1688) still entertained
theoretical claims to suzerainty over Johore. See below, in the section on territorial organization, a
detail from an older palatine law which may have been rewritten by Rāma I.

14 Vickery
 One section of the Miscellaneous Laws is in fact maritime law, but it is a very small part of
the whole, and contains no details permitting its placement as early as the 14th century. Ayutthaya
remained active in maritime trade, and those regulations could just as well have belonged to later
centuries.45 This consideration means that all of the laws dated in the 14th century, in addition to
problems with their preambles, seem anachronistic in their content when related to the main
concerns of the Ayutthayan government of that time. If there was an Ayutthayan code in the 14th
century, it must have emphasized maritime activities, such as the laws of Malacca. 46
Nevertheless, and contrary to the rationalizations of Quaritch Wales and Sarasin, the gl
'treasury' ministry, corresponding in function and etymology to the bendahara of the Malay maritime
powers, would have been the most important ministry of early maritime Sien-Ayutthaya; and the
kram da, as described above, is a perfect counterpart to the shahbandar of the archipelagic states.
Thus in spite of the anachronisms found in the extant Three Seals texts, the skeleton of those
sections could date from the very beginnings of Ayutthaya.
The extant law corpus, then, reflects a state preoccupied with inland territorial administration
and agriculture as the main economic activity, and the conventional attribution of major legal and
administrative changes to Trailokanāth may therefore be true, even if the reasons traditionally
proposed may no longer be accepted. There may be a connection with the short-lived move by
Trailokanāth of the administrative center to Phitsanulok, in the old Thai agrarian heartland, and the
failure of that change was no doubt because of the continuing importance of foreign trade at
Ayutthaya.

The law texts

The Lingat edition of the laws, considered to be the most accurate text, consists of 29 laws
of which 24 have titles dealing with specific matters while the other five are themselves collections of
royal orders and decisions on various subjects.47 In format most of them begin with a preamble
which includes the date, the earliest of which go back to the reign of Rāmādhipat, founder of
Ayutthaya, the titles of the king, the official to whom the law was principally addressed and the
subject to be treated.
These preambles are among the most interesting, and also the most baffling, parts of the
laws, and contain a number of contradictions, both among themselves and with generally received
views on much of Ayutthayan history. The reason for the difficulties of the preambles undoubtedly
lies in the nature of the revisions and codifications ordered by King Rama I and by several of his
predecessors.
Lingat and Burnay have emphasized that King Rama I desired first of all to recover and
restore the legislation of Ayutthaya, not to create something new. Even when some provision of the
old laws offended his sense of justice, he adopted the working principle that the passage in question
was due to the action of corrupt people who had tampered with the text and that his revision was in

45 Laws III, pp. 132-6.

46 .See R.O. Winstedt & Josselin de Jong, "The Maritime laws of Malacca", Journal of the
Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, XXIX/3 (1956), pp. 28-49.
47 Those five are Pet srec (Miscellaneous), Laws III, pp. 94- 183; Kat 36 khò (Law of 36
.
articles), Laws IV, pp. 229-257; Brah. rājapaññati (Royal Orders), Laws IV, pp. 258-292;
Brah. rāj kāmnat
. kau (Old Royal Decisions), Laws IV, pp. 293-354, V, pp. 1- 193; and Brah.
raj kāmnat
. hmai (New Royal Decisions), all of Rāma I before 1805, Laws V, pp. 193-372.

15 Vickery
fact a restoration of the true intention of the original law. Although full evidence for this aspect of the
revision of 1805 exists for only one particular case, it would be a good working hypothesis to
suppose that other changes may have been made in the law texts by Rama I, but that they have been
disguised through inclusion under a preamble dated in the reign of one of his predecessors. 48
There are also good reasons to suppose that similar revisions had been carried out at
various times by earlier rulers, each operating according to the same principle, and thus through a
desire to give an air of ancient authority to recent innovations much of the content of the extant laws
may have been deliberately misdated. Furthermore, Rama I did not intend the laws as historical
source material. they were the laws of his own reign even though preserving Ayutthayan tradition.
Thus the Palatine Law, although dated in the early Ayutthaya period, was also his own Palatine
Law, and the texts describing territorial administration, although not complete in all details, and in
some places mutually contradictory, must have been felt by Rama I to describe adequately the ideal
contemporary situation.

Dates in the laws

Nearly all of the laws are dated in their preamble, and several also contain sections dated
separately. Altogether the laws contain dates expressed in three, or four, eras. Until relatively
recently three eras, śaka, cula, and Buddhist were assumed, and were easily distinguishable, since
in no case, within the time period involved, AD 1350-1805, could there have been a possibility of
confusion in the year dates.49 It was recognised, however, that some of the dates were in error since
there was conflict between the expressed year date and the 12-year animal cycle.
Contemporary inscriptions show that in the area now called Thailand those three eras
followed one another in official usage in the order śaka, cula, Buddhist, with śaka being used
exclusively in Ayutthaya up to some time in the 16th century, cula then replacing it as the official era
up to the end of the 19th century, and the Buddhist era becoming popular and being used in some
official documents from the 17th and particularly in the 18th century.50 In Sukhothai the sequence is
the same, but the cula era was introduced earlier, in the 14th century, and appears concurrently with
śaka for some time thereafter. Traditional Thai belief, on the contrary, holds that the Buddhist era
was earliest and was followed by the śaka and cula eras beginning respectively at dates
corresponding to A.D. 79 and 639.51 The point of going into this is that genuine law texts should be
dated in the era appropriate for their period.

48 The only certain case is that given as the impetus for the revision in the prologue, Pra:kāś brah.
rāj prārabh, Laws I, 1-3. See also Lingat, "Note", pp. 19-20, and note 7 above.
49 That is any of the law dates lower than '1200' within this period must be cula, śaka dates are

those between '1272' and '1727', and any date over '1890' must be Buddhist.
50 As far as I know no complete table of dates has been prepared. The curious reader will have to

check through, as I did, the first four volumes of the collected Thai inscriptions, Prajum śila carük,
plus, for examples of 17th-18th-century use of Buddhist Era, Prajum cathmay hetu samay
ayudhya I. The change from śaka to cula era toward the end of the 16th century is standard
doctrine. See "Prolegomena", note 4; and for hitherto neglected evidence of śaka in early Ayutthaya
see my "The Khmer Inscriptions of Tenasserim: a Reinterpretation".
51 See comments in my "The Lion Prince and Related Remarks on Northern History", JSS 64/1

(January 1976), pp. 326-77, and "A Note on the Date of the Traibhumikatha", JSS 62/2 (July
1974), pp. 275-84.

16 Vickery
 Assuming the existence of only these three eras, we note that the two earliest laws, of 1341
and 1345, are dated śaka, which is as it should be, but then there follow five laws dated in the Bud-
dhist era with dates equivalent to 1350-1356, which is inappropriate. Later B.E. dates are found in
seven laws between 1358 and 1364, two laws in 1382 and 1432, and finally three laws of 1611-
1614. Only the last group fall in a period in which one might reasonably expect the Buddhist era to
have been in use. What this seems to indicate is that all of the laws containing B.E. dates were
codified or revised, if not composed out of whole cloth, in the 17th century, and the earlier B.E.
dates show a deliberate effort to provide a false aura of antiquity for certain pieces of legislation.
The same considerations apply to two cula era dates, 720 (1358) for the Palatine Law
and 796 (1434) for article 15 of the Law on Treason, both of which must have been inserted at the
earliest toward the end of the 16th century when we also find cula dates corresponding to A.D.
1593 and 1599, but are even more probably results of the recodification of Rama I.52
A different and more difficult problem is posed by the laws between 1622 and 1669,
apparently dated in śaka era in a period when it is believed to have fallen completely out of use in
Ayutthaya. In the opposite case of laws being dated in an era not yet in use, it is easy to postulate
false claims to antiquity at a time when the true sequence of eras was no longer known, but it is
more difficult to find a reason for apparent misuse of the śaka era after it had become obsolete. One
possible explanation is that these law dates are genuine and reflect a reaction by kings, one of whom
at least is shown by other evidence to have been a conscious archaizer, against the Burmese-
inspired cula era. King Prasat Thong (prasada don·, 1630-55), had two temples constructed
according to plans copied from Angkor Vat, was responsible for the first pran·gk built in Ayutthaya
since the 15th century, and attempted to resurrect the classical name for the city of Angkor, śrī
yaśodharapura, for one of his palaces. The chronicles also report that he came into conflict with the
Burmese court over a question of calendrical reform, although the exact details of what was involved
are not entirely clear.53
The rehabilitation of a fourth era, cul.aman. ī, complicates the picture of the law dates even
more. This era was known to, or had been postulated by, traditional Thai scholars and is mentioned
by Prince Damrong in his "Story of the Laws", where it is also called the "law era", equivalent to ś
aka plus 300 years, but was ignored by Quaritch Wales. A few years ago an article in a Thai
journal again gave it prominence and David Wyatt saw in it the possibility of explaining one of the
anomalous details of the Palatine Law.54
The term cul.aman. ī era is most properly applied to a group of twelve law dates which,
while apparently śaka era, show a discrepancy of two years between the expressed year date and
the twelve-year animal cycle. Two of these dates, as śaka, would be in mid-14th century, five more
in the 15th century, and the remaining five in the 17th. Obviously such consistency in the 'errors' is
not due to random miscopying, and some systematic explanation for the whole group is required.
The cul.aman. ī hypothesis accounts for these dates by claiming that this era, beginning 110 years

52 .For the Law on Treason see Laws IV, p. 132.

53 RA, p. 429, date 994 cula, 1632 AD; p. 435, date 1001-1002 cula, 1639-40 AD.
54 Prince Damrong, in RA, p., 406, a hypothesis which could account for only a few of the earliest

dates; Phipat Sukhathit, "Śakarāj cu.lāman. ī", Silpak on, 6/5 (January 1963); David Wyatt, "The
Thai 'Kat.a Man. diarapāla'
. and Malacca", JSS LV, 2 (July 1967), pp. 279-86. Note that 'cula'
('small') and 'cul. '- in cul.āman. ī (Sanskrit cūdāma
. ni)
. are of quite different etymological origins.

17 Vickery
later than śaka, had been in use, for laws only, in the early Ayutthaya period, and was then
forgotten, resulting in its dates being misunderstood as śaka. The 110-year difference is just enough
to make the year dates and animal cycle synchronisms of these laws coincide, and to keep all of
them reasonably within the Ayutthaya period.55
Jit Pumisak believed that all the cul.amani
.  dates were really śaka, and proposed that there
had been two systems of calculating the śaka era in Thailand, a 'fast' system with the expected
normal animal synchronisms, and a 'slow' śaka with a two year difference in animal synchronism.
One fault in this explanation is that he used the Buddhist era as the base and repository of the true
animal year, which is obviously not true. Animal synchronisms belonged in origin with the śaka and
cula eras, and the corresponding Buddhist year depended on calculations which differed from place
to place and at different times.56
Phipat Sukhathit who resurrected this era, assumed that six more law dates in which there
are varying discrepancies between the year and animal cycle, must also have been in the cul.aman .
era, and arbitrarily emended one or another figure of the 4-digit dates to make them fit the required
pattern.57 But some of these odd dates are very likely the result of careless scribal work, or
deliberate arbitrary alteration at later dates, and it would be equally legitimate to emend them to fit
the śaka pattern. The only dates suitable for consideration in the cu.laman . hypothesis are those
showing the regular two-year discrepancy with the animal cycle.
One more law which shows this typical discrepancy, but which was not considered by
Phipat, apparently because its expressed date is of the cula rather than śaka pattern, is that of the
Palatine Law, 720. It was this date however, and only this one, which Wyatt considered in his use
of the cul.aman. era for historical interpretation. He accounted for its unique features by supposing
that it had been converted to cula era from an original 'true' cul.aman . date, 1280, by a scribe who
misunderstood 1280 as śaka and subtracted 560 rather than 450, the correct figure for converting
cul.aman. to cula.58
In "Prolegomena" I argued that all the cu.laman. dates must have been devised in a single
codification, that they must all be studied together, not in isolation to 'solve' ad hoc problems, and
that acceptance of cu.laman . would have to involve the demonstration that all the laws in question
could be better understood by adding 110 years to their dates. 59 It is extremely unlikely that cul.a
man. was used briefly in the 14th or 15th century, then abandoned for one hundred years, used
again for a few law texts, neglected for 150 years more, and finally adopted for a third time in the
17th or 18th century. The time at which all of these dates were composed must have been at, or
shortly after, the last date in the pattern, 1643, if we do not accept the cul.aman. hypothesis, or
1753 if we do. Admitting the latter date makes it difficult to accept Wyatt's idea of misconversion of
the sole Palatine Law date, which would then most probably have occurred during the last, 1805,

55 If the cu.lamani
.  hypothesis is correct, the problem of late śaka dates noted above would
disappear.
56 . Jit, Thai Society, p. 37, and p. 44, where he credits Dhanit Yupo with the discovery of the

double śaka systems, 'fast' and 'slow'. See comment by Roger Billard in note 72 below.
57 . See note 54 above and "Prolegomena", pp. 41-42.
58 . Wyatt, "Kata Mandiarapāla".
. ..
59 Vickery, "Prolegomena", pp. 45-46.

18 Vickery
revision, for there would still have been scholars at court who could remember the use of a cu.laman.
 era 50 years earlier and who would have been able to cope with it correctly and consistently. My
solution was that the 'cu.laman. era' consists of śaka era years given a mystically auspicious
character by the attribution of false Buddhist era synchronisms, which involves artificial and
inaccurate animal-year designations, and that the author of that innovation was probably King Prasat
Thong. The Palatine Law date, even more anomalous, was probably imitation cul.amani . , devised
in the 1805 recodification of Rama I.60

Royal titles in the laws

Another problem of the law preambles is that the royal titles they contain combine terms in
ways unknown to the Ayutthayan Annals, which have served as the major source for historical
synthesis, but comparison with inscriptions shows that in some cases the laws preserve original titles
more accurately than the Annals. For example, the law rp fòn· (Institution of Litigations) dated
BE 1899 (AD 1355), two sections of the Slavery Law (dāa) dated 1359 and 1387 in the cul.a
man . pattern, and a section of the Miscellaneous Law (pet srec) of apparent cula era 1146 (AD
1784), especially the first-named, show a set of titles unknown to the Annals, but preserved in
several 15th century inscriptions, the Ayutthayan origin of which has been demonstrated; and 12
other law preambles dated between the 15th and 17th (or 18th) centuries, depending on whether or
not the cul.aman. hypothesis is accepted, show a title generally believed to represent that attributed
in the Annals to a king reigning between 1605 and 1610, but also apparently found in inscriptions of
mid-18th century.61
Together with the preservation of some genuine titles lost from the chronicles, the laws also
complicate the picture by combining certain titles in ways which are not found elsewhere. The best
example is the combination of ramadhipati, given in the annals for rulers in 1350-1369 and 1491-
1529, with trailokanat ha, ostensibly 1448-1488, found in the Palatine Law and Law of Provin-
cial Hierarchies which contain apparent cula and śaka dates belonging to the reign of
Rāmādhipat I, but have so far been attributed, either arbitrarily, or via the cu.laman
. era to King
Trailok, in part to account for details in the text such as mention of Malacca, which are clearly
anachronistic for the earlier period.62 We should note, however, that all scholars recognize the
possibility of later interpolation in the texts, and thus the presence of these anachronistic details does
not in itself show that the law was not originally drawn up in the reign of Rāmādhipat I. Another
point to consider is that the absence of the title trailokanat ha from all known inscriptions of the
15th century suggests that this title was not contemporary, but is a later attribution, and thus all such
preambles may have been attempts at archaizing undertaken at a later time.

60 Vickery, "Prolegomena", pp. 43, 46.

61 Laws II, pp. 27. 287, 317; Laws II, p. 173; Vickery, "The Khmer Inscriptions of Tenasserim";
Vickery, "Prolegomena". Jit Pumisak, "Thai Society", pp. 45-46, asserted that the 1146 date, which
he misread as 1156, was śaka, thus AD 1234, and over 100 years before the accepted date for the
founding of Ayutthaya. This is certainly a fantasy to be rejected. The law of 1146 belongs to Rama I
of Bangkok. Note, however, that I am not rejecting Jit's argument that a pre-Ayutthayan polity
existed in the lower Menam Chao Phraya basin.
62 Wyatt, "Kata Mandiarapala".
. ..

19 Vickery
 Analysis of all the titles together shows that they fall into two large groups, containing either
ram adhipat or ekadadha(daśa)ra.t h as major title, and a third, smaller group including three laws
with ckrabarti titles, although not in the reign of the king generally known by this title, and two
more laws with ramadhipati, but preceded by ckrabarti. Many of these titles, especially those of
the eka- type, are in preambles set at dates where the title in question is otherwise unknown,
another reason, in addition to confused dates, why the content of such laws may not without detailed
study be attributed to the reign apparently designated.63

More on old recensions and original dates

There is still further evidence, beyond that discussed in my "Prolegomena", which proves
that certain sections of the laws represent recodifications, and in some cases are out of place, that is
they were originally composed for a date, perhaps even a context, different from that with which
they are associated in the Three Seals. In most such cases the original date was almost certainly
later, and they have been replaced in an earlier context, no doubt, as I suggested in "Prolegomena",
in order to give them a patent of antiquity. If this is certain, it may still be impossible to determine the
correct original date and context. There are also contexts in which earlier existing laws have been
incorporated, with changes, in later revisions.
Perhaps the clearest case of the latter is the introductory statement to the Law of 36
Articles. It says that (an) unidentified defunct king(s) (samtec brah. buddha cau hlvan· nai brah.
param kot. [i.e. 'Boromakot', but not the one conventionally known by that epithet]) promulgated
42 laws (40 rp sn· and 2 khanòn); but now the recent king samtec brah. buddha cau hlvan· nai
brah. param kot. has removed ('cleansed') 6 articles (5 kat. and 1 rp s), leaving 36 (22 kat. and
14 rp s).64 These 36 articles date from 1650 to 1756, two years before the death of the king
known conventionally as Boromakot (param ko.t ).65
Three sections, in two different laws at different dates, and identified not by date, but by
near textual identity, were already noted by Lingat and Burnay, who suggested that the purpose had
perhaps been to make an innovation appear as ancient practice. Burnay, in fact believed that the
heterogeneous laws and decrees at the end of the Three Seals, the Kamhnat . kau ('old decrees')
and Kamhnat
. hmai ('new decrees'), the latter all of Rama I between 1782 and 1804) were
destined to eventually be incorporated into an appropriate section of one of the main laws. 66 This is
an acceptable hypothesis, but the three cases cited by Burnay seem rather to indicate something
else, the use by the author of a recension, in the last case Rama I, of a slightly modified older text as
part of his own new laws.

63 .
Vickery, "Prolegomena", p. 47 and end table, where the cákrabarti laws are respectively nos.
17, 20, 25, 9, and 26. It may not be assumed that all the titles in the laws are more genuine than
those in the chronicles, although some of the latter are inaccurate.
64 Yes, the breakdown into categories is inconsistent. See Laws IV, p. 229.
65 The epithet param kot (<kosa) 'great urn', is a posthumous title by definition (see Wyatt,
. .
Thailand, p. 127). Since this law emanates from the officials of the two main state councils, the luk
. sar (śala) hlvan· (on which see below), it may be that they issued it
khun śala and the luk khun na
soon after the death of the Boromakot who died in 1758, and referred to all previous kings in the
same posthumous style.
66 Burnay, "Inventaire" I, p. 157, with reference to Lingat.

20 Vickery
 The three examples are: (1) article 22 of Kamhnat
. kau dated 1085/AD 1723 and article
14 of Pan phnèk dated 1093/1731, (2) article 14 of Kamhnat . kau dated 898/1527 and the first
section of Pan phnèk dated 1052/1690, (3) article 5 of Kamhnat . hmai dated 1146/1784 and
article 5 of Pan phnèk dated 1086/1724.67
In all cases but Kamhnat
. kau 14 the dates appear to be absolutely coherent, and in the
first two cases the date of the article in the heterogeneous decrees is earlier than the corresponding
text in the main law, Pan phnèk. The first two cases, assuming accurate dates, agree with Burnay's
hypothesis about the incorporation of heterogeneous laws into main laws when a new recension was
prepared, but not for the purpose of providing false patents of antiquity. In the new recension the
old decision was updated when it was incorporated. Burnay did not take note of slight differences in
the texts, which mean that the new text was considered to be a new law, and as such acquired a
new date. In the first case, which is a question of the assignment of children from mixed marriages of
phrai som and phrai hlvan·, the kamhnat. kau refers to coupling of a male phrai hlvan· with a
female phrai som belonging to officials of the left and right bala röan, whereas Pan phnèk refers
to female som of officials in dahar and bala röan. There is an implication of a change in
organization of the population, or a change in the attribution of phrai som to officials; and indeed we
know that at the latest stage division of population into dahar and bala röan, not into left and right
bala röan was what mattered, although there had been a period in which left and right divisions of
both bala röan and bala dahar had existed.68 The other cases also contain slight differences in
wording.
There is nevertheless certain evidence among the laws of back-dating. In "Prolegomena" I
did not consider the indication of year of the decade in my analysis of the dates of the preambles,
and only seven of those dates contain this element. They are, in chronological order:69

law title
Ajña hlvan· 1895 BE [1351] hare fifth (peñśák)
Ajña ras. 1902 BE [1358] dog third (triniśák)
Ajña hlvan· 1976 BE [1432] pig sixth (chòśák)
Kra:pat śük 796 c [1434] tiger sixth (chòśák)
Kamhnat
. kau 961 c [1599] pig first (ekaśák)
Pan phnèk 1052 c [1690] horse second (dośák)
Phua mia 1166 c [1804] rat sixth (chòśák)

The first anomaly in this respect is that so few of the preamble dates contain indication of the
decade, since that was an essential element in traditional Ayutthayan and post-Angkor Cambodian

67 These six contexts are found respectively in Laws V.36, II.12, V.1-3, II.1-3, V. 206, II. 24.
Burnay called pan phnèk ,'mulakhati vivad''. The subject is "division of brai/phrai (Also Akin's
description, p. 187).
68 . See the discussion of provincial organization below.
69 BE is Buddhist Era, c is cula era, and the dates in brackets are AD equivalents. The ordinal

numbers are the number in the decade. These laws are found respectively in Laws IV, pp. 1-106;
106-115; 115-164; 293-354; Laws II, pp. 1-26; 205-284.

21 Vickery
dates.70 It was used in cula and śaka era dates, and always corresponded to the units figure. It thus
provides a quick preliminary check on the accuracy of a recorded year, and an additional check is
that six of the animal synchronisms were always odd and six even. Its absence from most of the law
preambles already suggests transposition which would have rendered the original decade number
inaccurate, and rather than rewrite it, it was suppressed.71
A second anomaly is that in the first three of the above dates the decade number appears to
be based on the BE date, something which was never done in true dates, at least of the Sukhothai
and Ayutthaya periods.72 Moreover, dog years were always even and pig years always odd. This
proves that those three dates, as I suggested on other grounds in "Prolegomena", were deliberate
falsifications. Not only that, but 'third' for 1902 proves another stage of recopying, from an earlier
1903, one of the easy copyist's errors due to similarity of numbers. 73 Since a Buddhist Era year
never ends in the same figure as the corresponding cula or śaka year these anomalies indicate (1)
that the decade numbers were devised after recalculation from original cula or aka to Buddhist era
dates, and (2) that the original cula or aka dates probably corresponded to the animal years given,
which in the first two cases are still accurate when the dates are transposed back to cula or śaka,
and in the third only one year off. Although the errors may be identified, and the probable cause,
recopying the law into an earlier context, is rather certain, there is no way, with only these elements,
to even hypothesize the correct original date. Animal x, nth of the decade, recurred every 60 years.
In the four cula dates of this series the indication of the decade agrees with both the year
date and with the animal synchronism, and there is no objective way to fault these dates, although,
as I indicated in "Prolegomena", there are other reasons to reject the preamble of the Law on
Treason (Kra:pat śük) dated 796.74 That entire law deserves study as a mixture of texts from
different times, including one clear example of back-dating which probably occurred in the recension
of 1805. Article 68 is dated 955 [AD 1593], apparently cula, and the responsible king is entitled
Ekadadharat. h, who is recorded as making provisions for soldiers who fought for his elder brother
"cau fa nareś jes. t. hadhipati". In fact, Naresuan reigned until 1605, but at the time of Rama I there

70 In Angkor dates it occurs only rarely. For its importance in post-Angkor Cambodian
historiography see Vickery, "Cambodia After Angkor, The Chronicular Evidence for the Fourteenth
to Sixteenth Centuries", Ph.D. Thesis, Yale University, 1977.
71 This may have been a result of the haste in revision, noted above, for scholars were quite capable

of calculating true dates when laws were back-dated.

72 As Roger Billard wrote (cited in Griswold, Arts asiatiques, 1960, p. 202, n. 2), "...c'est bien

l'astrologue qui s'est trompé de deux ans dans le millésime bouddhique qui pour lui, soyez-en assuré,
n'est que le résultat d'une addition faisant passer de l'ère C.S., la seule usuelle et la seule échelle des
temps indispensable à la chronographie et à l'astrologie, à l'ère mahasaka, puis à B.S. Cette erreur
sur le millésime B.S. ne me surprend pas du tout (cf. l'écart d'un an entre les actuels millésimes B.S.
de Ceylon d'une part, et de Birmanie, Siam, Cambodge, et Laos d'autre part), car je suis bien
persuadé que B.S. n'a pas été une ère civile, un comput réel et suivi (le détail de sa technique est
tout à fait artificiel et au demeurant non uniforme), mais une ère solennelle, un décompte effectué
chaque fois que besoin dans les occasions solennelles".
73 On this problem see Burnay, "Matériaux critiques", pp. 157- 60; and Vickery, "Cambodia After

Angkor", pp. 15, 327-8, Annex I, p. 6.

74 . Laws IV, p. 132. Vickery, "Prolegomena", pp. 39, 49-50.

22 Vickery
was a belief that the reign change from Naresuan to 'Ekadaśarat.h', whose true title was rameśvara,
occurred in 1593.75
The 'dog, third of the decade' fits still another pattern which strengthens the case for
transposition. The Three Seals Code includes three dates in three different laws with this false
conjunction. In addition to the introduction to Ajña ras. /Civil Offences it is found in undated
passages in Ajña hlvan·, article 106 and in Pet srec, article 46, and these passages show other
similarities.76 In the second and third the day dates are Thursday, fifth month, tenth of the waning
moon in the first case and fifth of the waning moon in the second.
The principal royal titles in the three laws are: (1) brah. cau ramadhipati ...param
ckrabarrti raj adhiraj , (2) brah. maha ckrabarrtiśra...maharaj adhiraj , (3) brah. param maha
ckrabarrti raj adhiraj .
Emphasis is on the term 'ckrabarrti', which is rare among the royal titles in the laws, and is
never found in the laws at a date within the reign of the king who has traditionally been given that title
(1548-1569).77
In the second and third the responsible official to whom the king addressed his
communication was one or another of the law court officials, who in the Hierarchy Law follow the
'brahmans', and whose titles there include the formula brah..subha
. v a:di śri mandātulraj /maldha
tulraj found in the laws under discussion.78 In the contexts under discussion they were
accompanied by subordinate officials, nay dav raj pandity,. and the clerk, nay sam khla. As
principal official in the introduction to a law the manda/maldhat ulraj is found in only one other
context, article 86 of Pet srec, associated with a date 1565 and a royal title in Ekadadhara.t h. Nay
sam khla is equally rare, found in only one other context, the introduction to Lák bha/Kidnapping,
where he is called the clerk of brah. subhav a:tii without the title manda~, etc. They are associated,
however with a king entitled samtec brah. cau ramadhipati śri param ckrabartiraj . Although
there are several rather low officials in the Hierarchy Law with the title raj pandity,
. none is
associated with the law court judges, and this nay dav raj pandity
. is not identifiable. It is probably,
however, the same title, incorrectly written in the nay dau raj pandity
. of the Slavery Law. The
form dav , may be presumed correct because it is an ancient pan-Thai title, which was not important
in late Ayutthaya or Bangkok.79

75 . Vickery, "Prolegomena", p. 51 and note 33; Vickery "Cambodia After Angkor", chapter IX,
"The Chronology of the Ayutthayan Chronicles".
76 Laws, IV, p. 79 and III, p. 111.
77 Vickery, "Prolegomena", p. 47.

78 'Laws', I, p. 266. They were brah k semaraj suphav ati..., and khun hlvan
. . · brah. kraiśri raj
subhav ati....
79 . Laws II, p. 331. This is an appropriate place to cite the two indexes of the Three Seals

produced in Japan, the first is the KWIC Index of the Three Seals Law (1981) of 75 large volumes
listing every occurrence of every word alphabetically. The second is The Computer Concordance
to the Law of the Three Seals in five volumes, by Yoneo Ishii, Mamoru Shibayama, and Aroonrut
Wichienkhiew, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto. Without them careful research on the
laws would be impossible, and I wish to thank the Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, for giving me a set
of the first. Both, naturally, contain a few defects, and the more serious are in the Concordance,

23 Vickery
 There can hardly be doubt that the two passages from Ajña hlvan· and Pet srec belong to
a single recension which was probably undertaken later than the main dates of those laws; and with
somewhat less certainty the introduction to Ajña ras. and article 86 of Pet srec may also be
attributed to that recension.
There are two more preamble dates which add evidence to the argument that laws were
recopied to an earlier date and certain elements which would be discordant either revised or
suppressed. The Law on Debts (K hn), now dated śaka 1278/AD 1356, and the Palatine Law
of cula 720/AD 1358, both contain the animal synchronism phrase, jvat (rat) nkstv (asterism) ś
ak, which, with respect to the animal, is incorrect in both cases, 1278 being monkey, and 720
dog.80 The redundant śak at the end cannot be other than a relic of an original number of the
decade, which always ended in śak. Obviously here, when the laws were recodified, the decade
number was suppressed rather than calculate a fake. The identical, and incorrect, phrase in these
two laws whose expressed dates are only two years apart, suggests that they both were first
promulgated in the same year.
Day dates, which include day of the week, the month, and day of the waxing or waning
phase of the moon may also be checked for coherency. That is, did the nth of a certain month,
waxing or waning moon, really fall on day x in a given year?81 This might seem like an attempt to
introduce a degree of precision into the method which cannot be sustained by the nature of the
material. The law texts are not like a stone inscription, or an original manuscript, in which we may be
rather certain that a date written is what the original writer intended. All of the Three Seals texts
have been copied at least once from their originals, and except for the Kamhnat. hmai of Rama I,
they have been copied, and probably tampered with, more than once. Thus the very meaning of
accuracy, or certain types of inaccuracy, in the dates is itself problematical. When we know that a
certain text has undergone recopying, it may be legitimate to accept that certain day dates which
when calculated are only one day off are in fact accurate, if the error involves two numbers, such 4
and 5, which are easily confused. Other apparent errors of only one day may nevertheless be
correct because of arbitrary adjustments made in the old calendars to maintain the succession of
days from one year to the next. When faced with a series of mostly coherent dates within a definitely
established historical period, such as the Kamhnat
. hmai of Rama I, the few cases of one-day error
may be ignored.
One problem, that of the cul.amani .  dates, seems to be resolved by examination of the day
dates. In "Prolegomena", as noted above, I proposed that the cul.amani .  years were really śaka
dates with falsified animal synchronisms. Now, having checked the day dates, I find that this is
probably true. In all cases the true year dates associated with the given animal years, two years later
than the expressed year, are incoherent with the expressed day dates, but three of the year dates as
given are totally coherent and two more are if we accept an error of one day. This is good evidence
that the true dates were the years expressed, understood as śaka. Five more are incoherent either

which is arranged in such a way that it is impossible to make an immediate comparison of contexts in
which the same person has different yaśa, for each official is listed with yaśa as an integral part of
the entry.
80 N kstv is a deformation of nak satra, itself used incorrectly in Ayutthaya and Cambodia as a
.
designation for animal synchronism.
81 I did not check this in "Prolegomena", and Prof. Huxley suggested that it might be useful.

24 Vickery
way, and two lack one of the elements required for the check. 82 Furthermore, the dates 110 years
later, which cul.amani.  is supposed to represent, are all incoherent with the expressed day dates.
This is also true for the date of the Palatine Law, which I described in "Prolegomena" as imitation
cul.amani
. .
Within the texts of some laws there is also easily identifiable evidence of later additions to
what were probably older basic texts. It is rather certain that the nearly identical provisions
concerning domestic animals which follow one another in the Pet srec Law, with Khmer used to
designate cattle and water buffalo (go, kra:pü) in one and Thai (vua, gvay) in the next, the section
with Khmer was earlier than that with Thai.83 It is impossible on this basis, however, to attempt any
suggestion of absolute date, other than that such use of Khmer probably predates the reign of King
Maha Dharmaraja (1569-1590), the quisling prince of Sukhothai who became king after supporting
the Burmese in their conquest of Ayutthaya.
Two cases in which the back-dated insertions may be attributed to Rama I are a section in
the Treason Law discussed above, and in lists of provinces in the Dharrmanun law as described
below.
Still another clue to relative, and perhaps in some instances almost absolute, dating is the
inconsistent attribution of yaśa ranks within the Three Seals. That is the same official, identifiable
by his raj adinnam and/or tamhnèn
. · may be given a yaśa inconsistent with the date of the text in
question, and even mutually inconsistent within the same law. It is known from other sources that
khun would have been an appropriately prestigious title for ministers in the early 15th century, that
King Trailok may have raised them from khun to brah, . that titles with the prefix òk were in use in
the 17th century, and early 18th, but were discontinued sometime before the reign of Rama I, and
that in his day, when the Three Seals was composed, ministers should have been ranked cau baña
.84
There are two conventional modern descriptions of the yaśa grades, which may be
compared with a list recorded for the late 17th century by La Loubère. Below are Quaritch Wales's
list, and two lists from R.B. Jones, the second of which is that of La Loubère.85

. 
samtec cau brahya samtec caubrahya. 
. 
cau brahya .  baña
caubrahya
.  (òkña)
brahya . 
brahya òkña
cau hmün brah. òkbrah.
brah. (òkbrah) . hlvan· òkhlvan·

82 The coherent dates are 1369, 1387, and 1555 (Dharmanun), the dates off by one day are 1359
and 1373 (in which one number is a 5 which could have been miscopied from 4), the incoherent
dates are 1263, 1267 (the two earliest dates in the laws), 1374, 1555 (udhar), and 1565, and the
two dates which lack the day of the moon phase are 1544 and 1557. See pp. 56-6 of
"Prolegomena", where these dates are numbered respectively 24, 27, 35, 23, 25, 1, 2, 26, 36, 38,
34, 37.
83 Examples are Laws III, pp. 98, 102, 108-9.
84 . These points are explained in the discussion below.
85 Quaritch Wales, "Administration", p. 35; Jones, pp. 127-128; La Loubère, p. 79; Vickery,

"Review of Jones".

25 Vickery
 camün khun òkkhun
hlvan· (òkhlvan·) hmün òkhmün
ca òkbn
hmün
bn

Both Quaritch Wales and Jones missed òkbaña, perhaps through neglecting to consult the
law texts directly, and La Loubère's work is evidence that this title was perhaps not in use in his day.
In Jones's case there is also a misunderstanding of the correspondence between brahya .  and baña.
. hlvan·, khun, hmün, bán.86
The laws themselves list the titles without òk as baña, brah,
Now the evidence from the laws, contemporary foreign sources, and Bangkok practice in
the 19th century indicates that the titles with and without òk were used concurrently for an at present
indeterminable time which included most of the 17th century, with the òk titles gradually dropping
out of use in the 18th century.87 The combined evidence of the preamble and body of the Civil
Hierarchy Law, which call the vn· minister respectively cau baña and òkbaña, also indicates that
these titles were equivalent, and we know that cau baña was used for the gln·, who is called
òkbaña in the law, at least as early as 1622.88 In Dharrmanun all the òk titles are gone, supporting
the other evidence that in spite of its 17th-century date, this law is mainly a composition of the time
of Rama I (see further below).
Thus we should conclude that cau baña equals òkbaña, but may indicate a later usage and
that the five ministers with one or another of these titles were equivalent both as to śaktina and yaś
a.89 The hierarchy of yaśa ranks should then read:

samtec cau baña

Laws I, p. 314; Q.W., Administration, p. 36, was of the opinion that hlvan· was "probably of
86 .

Khmer origin" and bra and bray "Indian titles". It is now known, however, that hlvan· is Thai,
brah. Mon-Khmer, and probably adopted into Thai from Khmer, while brahyā . may be a conflation
of brah. . with Mon bañā (see Vickery, "Review of Jones"). Quaritch Wales was correct in taking
khun as old Thai, but his theory of hlvan· added later, and brah. and bray "added in com-
paratively recent times" has no basis in the evidence.
87 Evidence for the early 17th century in the works of Jeremias van Vliet, (1) "Description of the

Kingdom of Siam", translated by L.F. Ravenswaay, JSS VII (1910), pp. 1-108, (2) "Historical
Account of Siam in the XVIIth Century", Selected Articles from the Siam Scoeity Journal VII
(1959), pp. 31-90, and (3) The Short History of the Kings of Siam, Translated by Leonard
Andaya, edited by David K. Wyatt, Bangkok, The Siam society, 1975. La Loubère, pp. 80, 96,
records uncertainty among his Thai informants about the use of òk. The title òkbaña is recorded in
1739, and okña, and okbrah. in 1748. See Law of 36 Articles, article 34, Laws IV, p. 253, Kam .
hnat kau 44, Laws V, p. 120, and Kamhnat . kau 48, Laws V, p. 138.
88 The double titles for the v  are in Laws I, pp. 219, 237; Records of the Relations Between

Siam and Foreign Countries, Vol. I, p. 131.

89 Although we should note that La Loubère, p. 79, considered that baña outranked okña.

26 Vickery
 cau baña òkbaña
baña òkña
brah. òkbrah. etc.

All of the òk titles but one are simply òk prefixed to a known title which has been used by
itself. The exception is òkña, for the element -ña has never been recorded as a title, and has no
relevant meaning in any of the languages which might have been involved. Strictly as a hypothesis at
this point, I suggest that the term òkña resulted from the affixation of an ancient Thai/Tai term of
respect, òk (/k/), to another term of respect, ña, representing, as in modern Lao, Sanskrit aj ña.90
Then òk was separated out in a new sense and prefixed to a series of other titles. Besides the
standard hierarchy, the Provincial Hierarchy Law lists 'òkmöan·' for some governors of fourth
class provinces.91
The epigraphical history of òk titles starts with Sukhothai Inscription 93 of 1399, in which
the titles of persons, presumably dead, to whom merit was offered were, samtec bò ['father'?] òk
and samtec pū brañā ['ancestor/grandfather braña'] bò òk. Then in 1403, Inscription 46, there
was a samtec mee òk who has been construed as a queen; and in 1412, Inscription 49, a certain
òkñā Dharrmarāja seems to have been a king.92 This last is the highest recorded status of the title
òkña, which declined in value in Ayutthaya.

Political Structure
The royal family
Two different types of royal family organisation are outlined in the laws, one in the Palatine
Law and the other in the Law of the Civil Hierarchy. The two are mutually irreconcilable.
Quaritch Wales assumed these to be sequential, that of the Palatine Law being followed by the that
of the Hierarchy Law. This, however, involves a contradiction with his analysis of the dates which
placed the former in 1458 and the latter in 1454. In both cases he mixes in details of 19th-century
actuality which are not mentioned in the laws, such as the use of the title cau fa and the kram titles
of royal princes. In this he followed an earlier description apparently based on the opinions of Thai
royalty, but this mixture of material from diverse sources merely confuses, since it is not known
when the 19th-century institutions first came into use.93

90 . In Black Thai there is a kinship term, ok, in the expression ok ao, pu of the first generation
senior to ego. See Câm Trong, "Some Questions of Ancient History and Culture of the Thai Ethnic
Nationality in Vietnam", Proceedings of the International Conference on Thai Studies, The
Australian National University, Canberra, 3-6 July 1987, pp. 200-205. This term is not listed in
Dorothy Crawford Fippinger, "Kinship Terms of the Black Tai People", JSS 59/1 (January 1971),
pp. 66-82.
91 . Laws I, pp. 323-324.
92 . See Griswold and Prasert EHS 1, 2, and 4.
93 . Quaritch-Wales, Administration, pp. 22-27 cited E. Gibert who probably drew on an essay by

King Chulalongkorn or on earlier information from King Mongkut. An English translation of

Gibert[Bibl] is in Appendix I to Carl Bock, Temples and Elephants, Bangkok, White Orchid
Press, 1985 [London 1884], pp. 405-20. See also Jones, and Review by Vickery. The title cau fa
is found only twice in the entire Three Seals Code, once in a law of Rama I in 1794 (Laws IV, p.
221), and once in a section of the Treason Law, which although dated 1593, must be an insertion
made in the time of Rama I (see above).

27 Vickery
 The Palatine Law first, in its preamble, lists the royalty who were in the king's presence at
the moment of proclamation of the law as:

-samtec brah. cau hnò buddhan·kur surivan·s.

-samtec brah. barrnameśvara
.
-baña ekasatraj brah. maha uparaj ,

of whom the last might be interpreted as two individuals, although the conjunction lee, which
separates all the other names in the list, is missing.94 The title ekasatraj is a garbled rendering of
something else, perhaps ekadaśara.t h.
A similar list occurs in article 158 of the law detailing the individuals who accompany the
king on certain occasions, thus: samtec hnò brah. buddha cau, samtec brah. barrnameśvara . cau,
brah. raj akumar.95
The title which requires particular notice here is barrnameśvara,
. which, as far as I have
been able to determine, is not used elsewhere for Thai royalty and has not been discussed by
Quaritch Wales or by his predecessors, King Chulalongkorn and Prince Damrong. Restored to its
superficially apparent Sanskrit form, the term consists of varna. m-eśvara,
. which is impossible. The
first element is a masculine noun meaning "colour, caste" (correctly written varna)
. and the second is
the form of iśvara, "lord", in combination with a word ending in the vowel a. Correctly
compounded, these two terms would result in varneśvara.
.
This type of confusion indicates the probability of a folk etymology based on a term no
longer understood, and I would suggest restoring it as parameśvara, a royal title well attested
among Malay and Javanese royalty as well as at Angkor. Whether its occurrence in the Palatine
Law indicates that the Thai once used this title, which has been preserved in no other source, or that
parts of the Palatine Law have been taken over from a foreign source is a problem which remains
to be solved.96 Mon influence is seen in the use of baña for a member of the royal family, and the
term surivan·ś, found in Sukhothai royal epigraphy, may indicate incorporation into Ayutthayan titles
after the reign of King Maha Thammaracha. In fact, all the anomalies suggest the last quarter of the
16th century.
A somewhat different hierarchy of princes appears in the third article of the law which deals
specifically with "royal sons and grandsons", brah. raj akumar brah. raj anta, ranking them in
accordance with the status of their mothers.97 The list, which seems in fact to include only brah. ra
jakumar (sons), is: samtec hnò brah. buddha cau, born of brah. gamahes. ī (Chief Queen); brah.
maha uparaj , born of mè hyua möan·; no title, born of a king's daughter, who "eats" (kin) möan·

94 Laws I, p. 69.
95 Laws I, p. 138.
96 . According to the Ayutthayan chronicles the third and youngest son of King Thay Sa (1709-

1733) was named Parameś, and it would be interesting to know if this title was given to a certain
prince in each generation. Unfortunately the chronicles do not offer that type of detail.
97 Laws I, p. 70.

28 Vickery
ek; no title, born of a king's granddaughter, who "eats" möan· do; brah. yauvaraj , born of brah.
snam (king's commoner wives).
Earlier studies have treated this list as a prescriptive statement for ranking royal children in
general, although admitting that no specific instance of the ranks hnò brah. buddha cau or brah.
yauvaraj had been recorded elsewhere and that instances of a brah. ágamahes. ī being appointed
were extremely rare. In another context I suggested that it merely recorded the position of certain
royal children at a particular time, and I would now like to elaborate on this a bit. 98
The two highest titles, hnò brah. buddha cau and brah. maha uparaj , would seem to have
been one of a kind, that is, there would not have been at a given time more than one of each. Thus
these two titles cannot be taken as general designations for sons of a brah. ágamahes. ī or a me
hyua möan·, for each of these ladies could have had several sons. What the law seems to be saying
is simply that at a certain time the princes holding the positions of hnò brah. buddha cau and brah.
maha uparaj were sons of the brah. ágamahes. ī and the me hyua möan· respectively.
The same would seem to hold true for the fifth rank of the list, although within the context of
known Thai documents it cannot be said what this rank was. At the time of the promulgation of this
law it was held by a prince born of a commoner mother, of whom there must have been many, with
many sons, who could not all have been brah. yauvaraj .
Only the third and fourth positions can be easily interpreted as general, prescriptive
designations, that is, that princes "born of kings' daughters" 'eat' möan· ek and those "born of kings'
granddaughters" 'eat' möan· do, of which there were undoubtedly several in all periods.
The statements on luk hlvan· and möan· ek, do, etc. have been the source for very
speculative descriptions of provincial administration from Prince Damrong through Quaritch Wales
to Charnvit Kasetsiri. Prince Damrong, followed by Quaritch Wales, considered that there were
möan· lūk hlvan· at the four cardinal points ruled by sons of the king "as almost independent
kingdoms", and Charnvit, not citing Prince Damrong, amplified this with a theory of step-by-step
shift northward from Lophburi to Chainat to Phitsanulok of the northern cardinal möan· lūk hlvan·.99
As I demonstrated in my review of Charnvit, there is no basis for such speculative amplifications in
the sources, and the law terminology suggests a much less contrived explanation, that rather than
being functional governors, it may have been that kin möan· meant only that lūk hlvan· and hlan
hlvan· princes were assigned möan· as appanages for their support, as was often done in Burma. 100
An entirely different royal family structure appears in the Law of the Civil Hierarchy.101
First, in the preamble, the Minister of the Palace (ván·) enquires concerning the rank (śakti) of:
-brah. anujadhiraj -the king's principal younger brother
-brah. raj akumar-royal sons
-brah. raj aputr-royal sons

98 Q.W., pp. 22-24; Vickery, “Review of Jones”.

99 . Quaritch Wales, Administration, p. 103; Charnvit Kasetsiri, The Rise of Ayudhya, pp. 21, 26-
27, 52, 97-98, 125, 127-28, 137.
100 . Vickery, "A New Tāmnān", pp. 158-60; Victor B. Lieberman, Burmese Administrative
.
Cycles, Princeton, Princeton University Press (1984), pp. 36, 80.
101 Laws I. pp. 219-220.

29 Vickery
 -brah. raj anata- royal grandsons.

Then in article 2 of the law, the ranks of princes, and their śaktina , are listed as follows (with ś
aktina in parentheses attributed if the prince in question headed a kram):

-samtec brah. anujadhiraj 20,000 (50,000)

-samtec brah. cau luk dhoe-royal sons 15,000 (40,000)
-either of the above, if maha uparaj 100,000
-brah. anuja-royal younger brothers 7,000 (l5,000)
-brah. cau luk dhoe 6,000 (15,000)
-samtec brah. cau hlan dhoe-royal grandsons 6,000 (15,000)
-brah. cau hlan dhoe 4,000 (11,000)
-hmòm cau-king's great grandson 1,500

Although entirely different from that of the Palatine Law, this list has been credited to the
same reign. We should note here that the princes are listed simply by birth title, not by rank. The
only rank mentioned is maha uparaj , which could be held either by the king's most important
younger brother or by a son. Another thing to note is that the rank of princes is not linked to that of
their mother. If the two laws really belong to the same time period, these features lend weight to my
contention that the Palatine Law is speaking of the ranks of particular individuals rather than setting
forth a general system.
The Law of the Civil Hierarchy also lists potential royal mothers, but of no higher rank
than snam. Its article 4 shows four snam ek (first class) entitled dav insurendr, dav śri sutacán,
dav indradevi, and dav śri culalák s. . Of these at least two are attested elsewhere, śri sutacán as
the title of the ambitious widow of King Jayaraja (1534-1547) of the chronicles and Queen śri cula
lák s. as a Sukhothai queen in an early Bangkok literary work. 102 The great differences between
these two laws make it difficult to attribute their statements on the royal family to the same reign, and
we should also note the absence of terminology, such as cau fa, which became common at some
time in the late Ayutthaya period and has been in use ever since. In contrast to the Palatine Law,
though, the Civil Hierarchy Law is easy to understand as a general prescriptive statement
applicable to any royal family, since any number of brothers or sons could receive the designated
amount of śaktina .
It is significant that in the Palatine Law the brah. maha uparaj , who in the Bangkok era,
and perhaps since the end of the 17th century, was heir apparent, prince of the Front Palace, is only
second in rank of princes, and that in the Hierarchy Law this office could be filled either by the
king's principal younger brother, brah. anujadhiraj or by a son.
These statements reflect an old practice which was in process of change in the 17th century,
and which had entirely disappeared by the time of Rama I. Under ancient Ayutthayan practice the
heir apparent was not the king's son, but his younger brother, if there were one. Both Joost
Schouten and van Vliet are insistent on this point. The former wrote that in principle, "when the King

102 Laws I, p. 221. Queen Cu.lalk s. n. was the alleged author of the story of Nan· nabhamaś,
written in the early Bangkok period, but presented as a Sukhothai work.

30 Vickery
dies, it is not his Son, but his Brother who is heir to the crown; but in case he have no brother, then
indeed his Son steps in by course, whose Brothers do succeed successively; lastly all the Sons of
the eldest Brother, who hath reigned, follow by turns". According to van Vliet, "there is a
fundamental law...which calls the brother of the deceased King to the throne, and excludes the son".
King Song Tham defied it and appointed his son to the exclusion of his brother, which set the scene
for the series of coups which brought Prasat Thong to the throne. 103
The importance of this rule, in principle, is also seen in the identification of King Trailokanāth
in van Vliet's The Short History of the Kings of Siam as brother of his predecessor, which is
found in no other source. When Prasat Thong became king he named his brother heir, fay hna. The
brother, as heir, according to the 17th-century observers, was not maha uparaj . That title was
reserved for a person, who might or might not be a prince, who was a sort of Prime Minister or
Chancellor, and who was not the king's heir. The process of change is seen in La Loubère's remark,
some 50 years after Schouten and Van Vliet, that the preferred heir to the throne was son of the
queen, but that succession was uncertain.104

The Central Administration

According to Quaritch Wales

The structure of the central administration, below the king, as described by Quaritch Wales,
was first two chief ministers, agramahasenapati, "heads of the civil and military divisions, or
divisions of left and right". On the civil side there were also four ministers, senapati, known
collectively as the catustambh, or four columns. Quaritch Wales believed they had at one time been
directly under the agramahasenapati of the civil division, by analogy with the military division in
which "there were four general officers, each originally in command of one of the four divisions
(caturan·ga) of the army".105 In addition, the civil division included departments for six mantri, or
councillors, directly responsible to the king, and a number of other departments.
On the military side of the central administration, Quaritch Wales believed that the military
division formed a kind of professional army, although "in time of war the civil division was called
upon to fight", that there had been professional armies both in the capital and major provinces, the
former under the kalahom, and that this situation was maintained "until the abolition of the distinction
between dahar and bala röan", which had been established by King Trailok, in the 15th century.
He also believed that Siam retained the ancient Indian division of military forces into four
departments (caturan·ga), infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots, except that "the last mentioned
were replaced by artisans, or as we should say, engineers". However, according to Quaritch Wales,

103 Francis Caron and Joost Schouten, A Description of the Government, Might, Religion,
Customes, Traffic and the Remarkable Affairs in the Kingdom of SIAM, 1636, English
translation 1671. reprint Chalernmit Historical Archives Series, February 1969, p. 131; van Vliet,
"Historical Account", p. 32.
104 . Van Vliet, Short History, pp. 63, on Prasat Thong's brother, p. 87; Vickery, “Review Article

on van Vliet, The Short History of the Kings of Siam", JSS 46/2 (July 1976); La Loubère, p. 102.
105 Quaritch Wales, Administration, p. 79, where the language, with respect to which side was

'left' or 'right' is not clear, but in his Ancient South-East Asian Warfare, p. 151, he said that
military officials were on the right (south) side of the king in audience. In fact, although left-right
distinctions are found in several sections of Three Seals, they never coincide clearly with a civil-
military division, nor with geographical relationships.

31 Vickery
"the original arrangement became much confused", a statement made necessary by the fact that in
the Ayutthayan system the great generals were all infantry commanders and the organization de-
picted in the Law of the Military Hierarchy is not at all like that postulated by Quaritch Wales.106
The structure of two chief ministers, four other ministers, and six councillors has generally been
accepted by subsequent scholars, and in diagram form would appear as illustrated below.

King
| | |
Right-military | left-civil
| | | |
kalahom | | nayak
| caturan·ga | catustambh |
| caturan·ga | ván· |
| caturan·ga | möan· |
| caturan·ga | glán· |
| | na | |
provinces provinces
six mantri
òkña brah. stec
brah. udaiydharrm, royal apparel
òkbrah. raj asubhav ahti, registrar
brah. bejbijaiy, palace guards
brah. raj abhakti, a treasury
òkbrah. śri bhuriyprij a, scribes

The Central Administrative structure according to the laws

In this section I propose to outline what the laws say, and engage in some comparison with
other relevant sources.
The first text to examine is not a law, but the passage from the long versions of the
Ayutthayan annals, all of which apparently date from a revision made in cula 1157 (1795),
recording changes in the central government administration. Quaritch Wales believed that it
contained "definite statements ... with regard to the reforms carried out by King Paramatrailokanath"
corroborating "the correctness of the dates of issue of those laws--the hierarchy laws of A.D. 1454
...", and which, according to Akin, "state that King Trailok gave honorific names to the nobles
according to their sakdina [sic], and appointed the two chief ministers".107 In the texts where it
occurs, this passage comes immediately after the entry recording King Trailok's assumption of the
throne at a date corresponding to 1434; but it is now known that the dates in this portion of the

106 Administration, pp. 80, 140-1.

107 Quaritch-Wales, p. 173; Akin, p. 192.

32 Vickery
annals are incorrect.108 In the Hlvan· prasröt. h chronicle, which at present is accepted as
chronologically accurate, the statement on administrative reforms is not included, but if interpolated
from the long versions would fall in 1448.
It is not, however, certain that the inclusion of this passage in the annals, even with a
correction of the date, represents independent corroborative evidence. Prince Damrong showed
that some of the law texts were used as sources in the revision of the chronicles, were
misunderstood, and led to errors in some of the dates of the latter. 109 Thus the statement in the
annals about King Trailok's reforms could have been drawn from the very laws which the annals are
supposed to corroborate. A detail which may, however, indicate early independent composition is
the use of the title khun for ministers. In the earliest extant Ayutthayan chronicle fragment, devoted
to the period of Trailok's father, the highest ranking officials are khun.110
Since the passage in question plays such an important role in all discussion of early Thai
administration and since the translations of it to date appear to me inadequate, I reproduce it here in
full with my own translation as well as the versions of Quaritch Wales, David Wyatt, [*and Richard
Cushman*]. Wyatt's version is in his translation of an abridged chronicle of Ayutthaya which
includes only a portion of the passage found in the complete annals, but enough to illustrate the main
points I wish to make.111

A text: brah. raj dan jǖa khunnan· tam .

tamhnèn · na
B MV: [the king] granted names [to] the nobles according to grade of na [rice
land?]
C QW: established the names, offices, and śaktina grades of the dignitaries
D Wyatt: then he gave titles to the nobles and assigned them ranks of paddy
land
[*E Cushman: Then he bestowed titles on the nobility of position and rank*]

A hai ao dahar pen samuha brah. kalahom

B let take dahar as multitude/cohort [of] brah. kalahom
C making the head of the soldiers samuha brah. kalahom
D organizing the military as (under the) samuha brah. kalahom
[*E he had the [head of the] soldiers made Chief Minister Phra Kalahom*]

A ao bala röan pen samuha nayak

B take bala röan as multitude/cohort [of] nayak
C making the head of the civilians samuha nayak

108 On the recension of 1157 and the incorrect dates, see Vickery, "Cambodia After Angkor",
Chapter IX.
109 Damrong, RA, pp. 398-400.
110 . See Vickery, "The 2/k.125 Fragment", p. 54.
111 . RA, p. 73; Quaritch-Wales, "Administration", p. 78; David K. Wyatt, "The Abridged Royal

Chronicle of Ayudhya of Prince Paramanuchitchinorot", JSS 61/1 (January 1973), p. 36; [*Richard
D. Cushman, The Royal Chronicles of Ayuttthaya, p. 15, from which I have considered only his
translations of the Royal Autograph text*].

33 Vickery
 D and the (civil side of government) under the samuha nayak
[*E the [head of the] civilians made Chief Minister Nayok*]

A ao khun möan· pen brah. nagarapāl möan·

B take khun [of the] möan· as brah. nagarapal möan·
C making khun möan· brah. nagarapal möan·
D.....................................
[*E the Khun Müang made Phra Nakhòn Banmüang*]

A ao khun vn· pen brah. dharmadhikaran.

B take khun [of the] palace as brah. dharmadhikaran.
C making khun vn· brah. dharmadhikaran.
D.....................................
E the Khun Wang made Phra Thammathikòn

A ao khun na pen brah. k s. etr

B take khun [of the] fields as brah. k s. etr
C making khun na brah. k s. etr
D............................
E the Khun Na made Phra Kaset

A ao khun glán· pen brah. kos. adhipati hai thüa śaktina

B take khun [of the] treasury as kos. adhipati let [them] hold śaktina
C making khun glán· brah. kos. adhipati all with śaktina
D...................... each bearing the śaktina
[*E and the Khun Khlang made Phra Kosathibòdi each bear the rank of *]

A hmün
B 10,000
C grade 10,000
D of 10,000 as a basis throughout [?]
[*E ten thousand sakdina.*]

My translation differs from the conventional treatment of this passage, and some of the
differences will be justified later. With respect to the four lower ministries, this passage does not
indicate that Trailok created anything new. He raised their yaśa from khun to brah, . and gave them
new raj adinnam or tamhnèn
. · titles, formed from Sanskrit terms, and certainly not taken from
Angkor. It is possible that the sense of the passage is that the offices of the nayak and kalahom
were created at this time, although it might also mean only the assignment of certain groups of
people (dahar, bala röan) to kalahom and nayak offices which already existed.
The structure of all six phrases concerning the officials is the same and this structure is in no
way obscure, but is very simple Thai--ao x pen y, 'take x as y', being equivalent, as Quaritch Wales

34 Vickery
saw, to colloquial English 'make x y'. Where my translation differs from the standard versions is in
adhering rigidly to this structure for the phrases dealing with the first two officials. In the other four
cases the translation 'make x y' had always been accepted.
From a Bangkok, or 17th-century perspective, the precedence given the möan· minister
over the vn· and gln· seems peculiar, for in the earlier period the vn· and gln· were both more
important, and in the later period the gln· at least was. The Hierarchy Law, however, also lists the
möan· minister first after the cákri samuha nayak, even though this appears anomalous both with
respect to the time of Rama I who was responsible for the laws as we now have them, and to what
may be presumed to have been the structure on which the next earliest codification was based.
The list is also peculiar in the inconsistency in the new titles for the four lower ranking
ministers. The ministers of möan·, na, and glán· are named by reference to their new tamhnèn . ·,
which are incomplete, whereas the vn· minister is listed with his raj adinnam. His tamhnèn
. · was
man. diarapa
. l. parallel to nagarpal of the möan· minister. This suggests an insertion into the
chronicle at a later time, not a current entry at the date in question.
The terms dahar and bala röan, modern Thai "soldier" and "civilian", have been left
untranslated to emphasize that they may not have had this meaning in the early Ayutthaya period.
As a result it is necessary to separate samuha from the words immediately following,
contrary to 19th century usage in which samuha brah. kalahom and samuha nayak were
inseparable titles for the chiefs of the military and civil ministries. In this passage the separation is
necessary, however, for it would be nonsense to translate, "take the dahar as chief of the military,
take the bala röan as chief of the civilians". The separation is grammatically permissible since
samuha, before becoming an inseparable part of various Thai titles, was a Sanskrit term meaning
"group", "band", "multitude", as Quaritch Wales translated it in another context , and is so attested
for Thai by the Royal Institute Dictionary.112 What the standard treatments of this passage show
are not a translations, but rather descriptions in terms of the 19th-century situation which had to be
achieved by emending and adding parenthetically what was not included in the original text.
There are still other passages which legitimize my treatment of samuha in the translation in
question. The first is in the section of the Civil Hierarchy Law concerned with the elephant forces,
the title samuha brah. gajapal, which by analogy with the versions of Qaritch Wales and Wyatt
cited above, should mean 'chief of the elephant guards'. Interestingly, however, in the table of ranks
of the elephant guards there are four officers whose titles contain the same expression samuha brah.
gajapal, as tamhnèn
. · .The first two, one of the left and one of the right, have 5000 śaktina , and
they are followed by two more with 3000 śaktina , also respectively left and right.113 On either
side, of course, there could be only one chief, and this suggests that interpretation of such titles
should be "so-and-so, of the cohorts (samuha) of the elephant guards---of the left side/right side".
A second example is in the kalahom department where the titles of two officials, one the
chief with 10,000 śaktina , and another of 3000 śaktina , both end with samuha brah. kalahom,
whereas there cannot have been more than one person with the title samuha brah. kalahom in the
sense of 'chief of the military division'. In both cases we should translate, 'cau baña mahasenapati
/brah. dharrmatrailok of the cohort of the brah. kalahom".

112 Quaritch Wales, 1934, p. 85

113 Laws I, p. 250.

35 Vickery
 The only apparently complete table of organisation of the central administration is that found
in the Hierarchy Laws, Civil, Military, and Provincial, which are replete with problems of date,
titles, and organization, some of which I have treated in "Prolegomena" and noted above. 114
They contain two separate preambles dated 1298 dog year and the royal titles in both are
close enough so that it is clear the same king was intended. That date, however, is clearly in error.
The year 1298, presumably śaka, was a dragon year, and the nearest dog years were 1292 and
1304, six years either way. Three different attempts at emendation have been made to place them
within the reign of King Trailok, but such a procedure is hardly to be recommended, especially
when the emendations cannot be justified on paleographic grounds.
Both preambles contain exactly the same copyist's error, which does not involve figures
easily confused, and is unlikely to have happened twice independently, and thus the preamble of one
of these laws was probably copied from that of the other, after the erroneous date had been
established. Thus an earlier stage consisted of only one of these laws, or of parts of both included
under a single preamble.115
The clearest evidence of such composition is that the preamble-type section of the joint
Military and Provincial Law, with the date and royal titles, does not come at the beginning, but in
the middle, between the military ranks and those of the provinces. At a glance it would seem that
this preamble should mark the beginning of a separate law on provinces, while the kalahom and the
rest of the military kram belonged in the preceding law with the other great ministries and
councillors. This, however, would violate the separation of civil (bala röan) and military (dahar)
departments believed to have been instituted by Trailok. If, on the other hand, it can be shown that
this division was not felt necessary until later, the suggested earlier arrangement of the two laws is
easier to accept.
The collation of the dates and royal titles of the two laws below shows that a priori the
derivation of one from the other may not be determined. Some elements of both are suspect. The
first contains not trailokanat h, the expected title, but trailokanayak, found in no other text, while
the second adds ramadhipati, inappropriate in every way with respect to current views on
Ayutthayan regnal periods.116

I śubhamáśtu 1298 sunákkha sán·vácchara: kalpák s. ya dáśami t r. s. thi adityavara

II śubhamáśtu 1298 śaka sunákkha sán·vajcha:ra: kalpákkhe dáśami tithi yán· adityavara
1298 dog year 10th Sunday

I brah. pad samtec brah. .... param trailokanayak tilak phu pen cau klau
II brah. pad samtec brah. ramadhipati śri param trailokanat h
His Majesty (.........................royal titles........................................................

I bhuv aman. dala

.  . cákr ágapurisotam param pabitr brah. buddhi cau ayu
sakal ana
II param pabitr brah. buddhi cau ayu

114 Laws I, pp. 219-327.

115 Burnay, "Inventaire" I, p. 156 recognized that the "deux morceaux sont, en réalité, les deux
divisions d'une même loi".
116 . See respectively Laws I, p. 219 and 316.

36 Vickery
 ..............................................................................................................................
I hua sathity . brah. dhinán penca: rátnamaha prasad toy purbabhimukh cün·
na
II hua sathity ayu na: . brah. dhinán· penca rátnamaha prasad toy purbhabhimukh
......) while in the (............name of palace......................) on the East
I cau baña dharrmadhipati śri ratna mandiyarpa
. l krap pán·gam dul brah. karruna
.  II
cau baña dharrmadhipati śri rátna maha mandiyarpal krap pán·gam dul brah. karruna . 
(............................the Palace Minister........................) addressed His Majesty ......

One revelation of late tampering is that the official to whom the law is addressed in both
preambles is the cau baña ... etc., Minister of the Palace (ván·) whose yaśa title in the body of the
laws is still òkbaña. As noted above, the period in which the òk titles were abolished is uncertain,
and this particular official was known as cau baña as early as the first part of the 17th century.117
The preamble might then be at least that early, with the body of the laws even earlier. Since,
however, his yaśa within the law is òk baña, it is preferable to impute the preamble to Rama I. Also
of interest is that these laws which concern the entire administrative structure are addressed to the
ván·, illustrating his capacity as agahmahasenadhipati, and perhaps indicating that the original law
dates from a time before the cákri and kalahom had attained their high positions.
In the HierarchyLaws the principal officers are listed according to the familiar four-fold
ranking system, in the order in which they occur of yaśa (hierarchical titles), raj adinnam (formal
.
titles indicating the position held), tamhnèn· (grade of office), and śaktina (numerical dignity marks),
although in some cases it is difficult to make a distinction between the second and third of these
types of rank.118
In the law texts, because the use of yaśa is inconsistent, śaktina is the best indicator of
levels of rank, and thus I list below the heads of the main departments accordingly. There were nine
officials in the Civil Hierarchy with the highest śaktina of 10,000 who, together with the kalahom
and two other officers listed in the Military Hierarchy, seem to have made up the highest level,
below the king, of the central government. They were:

10,000 [hmün]śaktina
cau baña maha uparaj
cau baña cákri śri an·grak s. samuha: nayak agramahasenadhipati...eku
baña yamaraj kram brah. nagarpal [möan·]
òk ña baldeb raj asenapati krahsetradhipati [na]
òk baña śri dharrmaraj kos. adhipati [glán·]
òk baña dharmadhipati maldiarpal [ván·] aga:mahasenadhipati
òk ña brah. satec śri subaharaj ...

117 . See note 88 above. He was not, however, given this title in La Loubère.
118 . They are listed here in the order followed in actual titles. Akin, pp. 21, lists them as "four related
methods of ranking...the sakdina [sic], the yot [yaśa], the honorific names [raj adinnam], and
 . · ]".
government position [tamnèn

37 Vickery
 brah. maharaj gru bramacariyadhipati śri buddhacary
brah. maharaj gru brah. raj pra:rohitacary...buddhacary
cau baña mahasenapati samuha brah. kalahom
òk baña śri raj tejojaiy
òk baña śri raj tejojaiy day nam
.

The titles have been segmented to facilitate comparison of yaśa, raj adinnam and tamhnèn . ·,
and ellipses indicate portions which have been omitted. In the case of the first named, there seems to
be no raj adinnam preceding the tamhnèn
. · , and in fact, since this title seems to mean cau baña of
the maha uparaj , there is not even a tamhnèn
. · in the sense this is found in the other titles. For the
two maharaj agru I find it difficult to distinguish these two elements. Words in brackets are the
conventional designations for the ministers of 'city', 'fields', 'treasury', and 'palace' respectively.
With respect to the structure outlined by Quaritch Wales there are several things to note
here. Judged by śaktina all of these positions would appear to be co-ordinate, equal ranking
branches of the administration, but if their yaśa is examined differences appear, not all of which are
easy to explain.
A second point is that there were indeed, as Quaritch Wales and other writers have
indicated, two "chief ministers", ag(r)amahasenadhipati, but the kalahom, chief of the "military
division", was not one of them. They were the cákri, chief of the 'Civil Division', and the ván·,
Minister of the Palace, although the cákri who was śri an·grak s. , 'royal bodyguard', was superior,
shown by his designation ek u.
The yaśa of the other five ministers of 10,000 śaktina seem to be baña (möan·), òkña (na
and brah. satec), the latter of whom, according to Quaritch Wales, was chief of church
administration, but who, for La Loubère, was governor of the city of Siam. 119 Although brah. would
seem to be the yaśa of the two Brahman officials, the maharaj agru, this is not certain, as will be
indicated. If the law is not corrupt it would seem to indicate two levels of rank set up at different
times, one providing for l0,000 śaktina and another with two or three different grades of yaśa.
The picture, however, is further complicated by evidence that some of the yaśa titles had
more than one type of meaning. Thus the official who was head of church administration or governor
of the city was òkña brah. satec, apparently combining two yaśa titles. But brah. besides being third
or fourth highest yaśa title had a very old function as a high title meaning 'sacred' or 'royal',
especially in a Khmer context, and satec also, in Khmer, couldmean 'king'.120 Another example of

119 Quaritch-Wales, p. 93; La Loubère, p. 88. There may have been a complete change in the
duties of this official, for Loubère's description is clear and convincing, but all references to the brah.
satec in the laws show him to have had religious functions.
120 . The title brah/vrah pada, 'royal feet', was the Old Khmer equivalent of 'His Majesty', and was
. .
preserved in Ayutthaya, as can be seen from the preamble of the law in question which refers to the
king as brah. pada samtec brah. parama...etc.

38 Vickery
this Khmer use of brahis . · of the cau baña maha senapati.The title indicating either
. in the tamhnèn
church official or city governor, then, was òkña by yaśa and brah. was part of his raj adinnam .
This distinction is important in assessing the rank of the two Brahman officials, brah. mahara
jagru, etc., who seem to have no yaśa, but whose titles, combining raj adinnam and tamhnèn
. · , use
brah. in the Old Khmer sense, and who are both outside the yaśa hierarchy and perhaps as high as
the highest yaśa level. That they indeed were outside that hierarchy, and belonged to a different part
of the administration is seen in the Dharrmanun Law where they are not listed as possessing any
seals, meaning that they did not have executive authority. 121
Neither can the baña rank for the möan· minister be automatically considered to represent
only the third level yaśa, for the title baña, like brah,
. has an older meaning, the 'senior nobles of the
realm' in the Mon kingdoms, and an independent ruler in the northern Thai principalities. 122
One final remark on the officials of 10,000 śaktina level concerns the first listed, the cau
baña maha uparaj . It would appear from a 19th-century point of view that he was the chief officer
of the Front Palace Establishment, thus cau baña of the maha uparaj , although Quaritch Wales
thought that it was a different office, to which La Loubère had referred, and which had long been
abolished. It was not to be confused with "the brah. Maha Uparaj a...a very exalted prince with the
śakti na grade of 100,000", who was heir apparent and prince of the Front Palace, vn· hna.123
Quaritch Wales, influenced by 19th-century practice, conflated two or three things which should be
kept separate. The section of the Hierarchy Law which lists the śaktina rank of 100,000, calls the
official in question just maha uparaj . This was also the rank cited by La Loubère who wrote
"Maha Obarat", also called cau baña maha uparaj , describing him as a Viceroy who represented
the king and performed regal functions when the king was absent. In neither case is he identified with
the Front Palace, and in La Loubère it is clear that he was not the heir apparent. 124
Van Vliet, fifty years earlier, had still more interesting things to say about him, and about the
ministers of the central government in general. In his "Description of the Kingdom of Siam" he
provided two different lists of the ministers. In the first he described the four ministers who were
involved in collecting revenue. They were òkña ván·, "president of the king's council", òkña baldeb,
"chief purveyor of the kingdom" [Minister of Fields (na)], òkña cákri, "chief of the army and the
navy and minister of interior", and òkña brah. glán·, "chief of the king's warehouses, keeper of the
great seal and intermediary for the foreigners". Van Vliet added that each of them had about one-
fourth of the administration of the country and received one-fourth of the revenues.125 If this is

121 See below, pp. 41-42, on the possible comparative significance.

122 H.L. Shorto, "The 32 Myos in the Medieval Mon Kingdom", BSOAS 26/3 (1963), pp. 578-9.
123 Quaritch Wales, Administration, p. 77, 23, 31.
124 La Loubère, pp. 95, 102. La Loubère legalistically refused to call him 'Chancellor', because he

did not have use of the king's seal. Here and below I transcribe the ad hoc renditions of Thai titles
by European writers in the graphic system of Thai transliteration, even within quotations from those
authors.
125 Jeremias van Vliet, "Description of the Kingdom of Siam". The two lists of ministers are on pp.

27-28 and 59. The identity of the 'great seal' attributed by van Vliet to the gl is uncertain.

39 Vickery
accurate, it suggests a provincial organization quite different from anything known later, a matter to
be discussed below.
Van Vliet's second list was more complete. Here he placed the òkña uparaj before the six
ministers as "first mandarin and stadholder", seemingly duties similar to those ascribed by La
Loubère. Van Vliet also said if a king died without a designated successor the òkña uparaj , ván·,
baldeb, cákri, and brah. glán· had to represent the king and rule until a new king was chosen.126
Thus clearly the uparaj was not then the heir apparent. The heir apparent was, however, termed
'front', fay hna, and in Van Vliet's day was supposed to be a brother of the king.127 Following the
òkña uparaj were again the òkña ván·, "president of His Majesty's secret council", òkña baldeb,
"chief purveyor", òkña cákri, "chief over the political, military, ecclesiastical and civil affairs", òkña
kalahom, "general over the elephants and over the armed forces afoot and on horseback", òkña
brah. glán·, "counsel and leader of all foreign affairs at the court and keeper of the great seal", and
òkña yamaraj , "chief judge for criminal and civil cases in [Ayutthaya]". Note that the möan· minister
is last. The significance of the 'great seal' of the glán· is still not explained.
Van Vliet's observations are valuable as evidence that the structure of the central
government as outlined in the Hierarchy Law is not aberrant, but represents reality at a certain
time. The vn· was really a sort of first minister, ranking even above the cákri; and the kalahom, not
only was not a prime minister, but was inferior to both, being merely a 'general', while overall control
of the military, as well as civilian affairs, lay with the cákri in the so-called 'civil division'. In this
respect the structure of the Hierarchy Law postdates van Vliet, and seems to fit approximately the
time of La Loubère. The yaśa, consistently òkña as recorded by van Vliet are in accord with this,
for in the Hierarchy Law all but the baldeb and the yamaraj among the six ministers have higher
ranks. La Loubère did not provide a full coherent list, but noted that both the brah. glán· and the
brah. satec were òkña, and the former sometimes baña, and the yamaraj òkña, but he did not
provide the yaśa of the cákri or kalahom.128
In the Dharrmanun Law, which shows several signs of editing at the time of the 1805
codification, the cákri, glán·, ván·, and kalahom ministers are ranked as cau baña, and the möan·,
na, and brah. satec as baña.
The real chief minister's post in the 17th century, however, was one which disappeared, and
by the late 18th century had been assimilated to heir apparent. This was the òkña uparaj or maha
uparaj , whose status resembled a stadholder for van Vliet, and a viceroy for La Loubère.
Turpin, in the time of King Taksin, wrote that "they formerly had an 'Oberat' (uparaj ),
whose functions and privileges were about the same as our ancient Palace Mayors (maires de
palais)". By his time that office had been abolished, and he implies that the uparaj had been non-
royal. Turpin otherwise described a four-minister government, under the baña cákri, "chief of the
State Council...and all the business of the provinces", a brah. glán·, who was "first minister", in
chanrge of foreign affairs, the baña yamaraj , in charge of justice, and a baña baldeb, in charge of

126 Van Vliet, "Description", p. 59.

127 Van Vliet, "Historical Account", p. 87, concerning King Prasat Thong.
128 La Loubère, pp. 80, 88.

40 Vickery
land, including management of the royal domain, inheritance, and corvée, which implies registration
of the population.129
Possibly the two references to maha uparaj in the Hierarchy Law, one with 100,000 ś
aktina and one with 10,000, represent in the first instance a 19th-century interpolation after the
term uparaj had become a very high royal title for the heir apparent, or else 100,000 was aktina
for a royal prince in that position, and 10,000 was śaktina for a non-royal person.
At the next lower level were officials who had śaktina of 5,000, namely:

*brah. udaiydharrm royal apparel

*òkbrah. raj asubhav a:ti...brah. suráśvati klan· central registrar
brah. bedraj adhipati...samuha: brah. gajapal elephant corps
brah. surindraj adhipati...samuha: brah. gajapal elephant corps
*brah. bejbijaiy can·van· kram lòm brah. raj aván· palace guards
brah. raj agru (2) brahmans
*brah. raj abhákti a treasurer
*òkbrah. śri bhuriyprij araj ...śri saralák s. na
. scribes

[rewritten as: *brah. udaiydharrm, royal apparel; *òkbrah. raj asubhav a:ti...brah. suráś
vati klan·, central registrar; brah. bedraj adhipati...samuha: brah. gajapal, elephant corps; brah.
surindraj adhipati...samuha: brah. gajapal, elephant corps; *brah. bejbijaiy can·van· kram lòm
brah. raj aván·, palace guards; brah. raj agru (2), brahmans; *brah. raj abhákti, a treasurer;
*òkbrah. śri bhuriyprij araj ...śri saralák s. na,
. scribes]

All of these, except the second-named officer of the elephant corps and the brahman
officials, were supposed to be chiefs of independent kram directly subordinate to the king, and five
of them, marked with an asterisk above, plus the òkña brah. satec with 10,000 aktina, were
considered in the l9th century to form the group known as the six mantri (councillors).130 The
treasurer is generally known as chief of the glán· maha sampati, a treasury separate from that of the
kos. adhipati (glán·), although this designation does not figure in his titles. Their yaśa, brah. and
òkbrah, . are all equivalent, although the two forms are unlikely to have been used at the same time,
and are evidence for hasty editing when the new code was produced..
The officials of this level do not form a coherent group, nor can any number of them be
classified as a special group of king's councillors, as they were in the Bangkok period. The brah.
udaiydharrm, in charge of royal apparel, was mentioned by La Loubère, who considered him, and

129 .
François Henri Turpin, Histoire Civile et Naturelle du Royaume de Siam, 2 vol., Paris, chez
Costard, Librairie, r. S. Jean de Beauvais, M.DCC.LXXI, Vol. I, pp. 94-98.
130 Quaritch-Wales, pp. 80-81; Akin, pp. 68-69, is unclear, saying only "some of the important

krom [kram] which were directly under the king" were The Registrar, and "another krom
which...should have been [sic!] an important krom, was Krom Lukkhun", the Brahmans. Laws I,
pp. 244, 248, 250, 250, 260, 265,267, 272 respectively.

41 Vickery
all palace officials, to be more influential than indicated by their ranks, because of their proximity to
the king. Interestingly, La Loubère gives him yaśa of òkña, higher than that recorded in the
Hierarchy Law, the reverse of the situation of the highest level officials who are accorded higher
yaśa in the law than they had in the 17th century. The same is true of a deputy of brah.
udaiydharrm, raj van·s. a, whom La Loubère called òkbrah,. but who in the law is classified as
khun.131 These discrepancies suggest the editing process, with lower ranking departments neglected
when ranks were updated in a new recension.

The 'military' division

The structure of the military does not appear as Quaritch Wales described it, or as it was in
the 19th century; and I would prefer to speak of dahar division, without prejudice about its
meaning, since a clear civil/military distinction is not deducible from the laws, nor from van Vliet, La
Loubère, or Turpin.
The form of the law text itself is anomalous, as has been described above; and before the
recension of Rama I it would appear that the kalahom and the rest of the military sections were
included in a single text with, and following, the 'civilian' departments. Indeed, some departments
with clear military duties, such as the elephant corps, the cavalry, and certain others, are still
included in the civilian part of the law, and their subordination to one or another of the great
ministers is not clear. Van Vliet implied that the elephant corps was under the kalahom in his day,
but it was separate when La Loubère wrote, as it is in the Hierarchy Law, and with equivalent
rank, òkbrah. according to La Loubère, brah. in the law.132
The first officer mentioned in the dahar division is of course the cau baña mahasenapati
...samuha brah. kalahom with śaktina of l0,000. Subordinate to him are two more fairly important
officers, brah. [yaśa] dharrmatrailok [raj adinnam] samuha brah. kalahom [tamhnèn
. · ] and hlvan·
· ], the first with 3,000
[yaśa] śri sav araj bhákti [raj adinnam] śri samuha brah. kalahom [tamhnèn
.
śaktina and the second with 2,400.
Then there are six officers who all seem to be included under a heading baña rama caturan·
ga can·van· asa 6 hlau, which I shall only attempt to translate to the extent of 'baña rama caturan·
ga chiefs of the 6 groups/types of asa (volunteers?)'. The first two, like the cau baña maha sena
pati have śaktina of 10,000. Their yaśa, òkbaña, may also be equivalent to that of the kalahom;
and their raj adinnam (they have no tamhnèn
. · ) ends, like his, with a:bhaiybiriyaparak ramabhahu.
Furthermore the second in command of their kram, the bahlat dul chlòn·, held śaktina of 1,000,
like the bahlat of the cau baña maha senapati, and the third ranking officer in their kram, again
like the corresponding officer under the cau baña maha senapati, held 800 śaktina. All the
evidence of the law text, then, is that these officers were of equal rank with the cau baña maha
senapati and headed their own distinct kram, not included under the kalahom.133
They are followed by four officers of 5,000 śaktina and with brah. as their yaśa. Each was
chief of a separate kram, with no indication of subordination to a superior kram. A relationship to

131 La Loubère, pp. 102, 96-97; Laws I, p. 244.

132 La Loubère, p 89, with a comment on van Vliet; Laws I, pp. 244, 250.
133 . Laws I, pp. 278-280.

42 Vickery
the baña rama caturan·ga, mentioned above, may be discerned in the description of the seals of
office of these four persons, in all of which a Ramayana motif is dominant, thus "Bali holding a
sword", "An·gata holding a flag", "An·gata seated on a dais", and "Hanuma. n holding a tree
branch".134
There is nothing in the law text to justify Quaritch Wales' supposition of an original four-
branch caturan·ga which then broke down into a six-fold arrangement. On the contrary the
occurrence of this term in the titles indicates that for the Thai of Ayutthaya it no longer had its
original Indian meaning and was simply a term used in connection with the military. It is found, not
necessarily exclusively, in the titles of the following officials of the kram under discussion:

-baña rama caturan·ga, discussed above

-khun caturan·ga vijaiybahlát, 800 śaktina (kram 2)
-khun còm caturan·ga pahlát khen (kram 5)
-khun caturan·ga bayuhbahlát khen, 800 śaktina (kram 6)
-hmün maha caturan·ga samupañjiy, 400 śaktina
-hmün hmu caturan·ga samupañjiy, 400 śaktina

The last two belonged to two kram listed immediately after the six major ones. In addition
to the above, the law on dahar shows a large number of lesser kram, that is, with lower śaktina.
Some of them provide evidence on the time at which the structure recorded in the law came into
being. The next highest rank in terms of śaktina were two officers with 3000, then several with
2000. Among the latter were the commanders of the "Great Right" and "Great Left" tamrvac, .
respectively entitled Hlvan· birenndeppati
.  and Brah. inndeppati
. . These titles are well known in
Ayutthayan history as belonging to the officers, then ranked khun, who in 1548 led the coup against
khun Voravongsa, enabling King Maha Cakraphat to take the throne; and as a reward the former
of the two officers, who was a member of the old royal family of Sukhothai, was granted the status
of ruler of Phitsanulok, with a traditional Sukhothai royal title samtec maha dharmaraj adhiraj .135
This was a step in the return to power of Sukhothai royalty which culminated with the Burmese
invasion in 1569. The background of Inndeb/Indradeb
. is not given in the chronicles, but they say
his reward was to be named cau bra:ya śri dharmasokaraj , title of the governor of Sukhothai in
the Hierarchy Law. The RA chronicle, however, in contrast to its predecessors, says he was given
that title as governor of Nakhon Sri Thammarat. RA is probably in error, particularly since the

134 Laws I, pp. 280-82. Bali and An·gata, like Han. uman, were monkey heroes in the Ramayana,
.
including Thai and Khmer versions.
135 . Laws I, pp. 286-289. The story is in RA, pp. 79-82, where the titles are in more correct

etymological spelling, birendradeb, i.e.,virendradeva, and indradeb. These two titles are very
Angkorean in form, though not found in Angkor records. Note that in Angkor all titles ending in -
deva denoted persons, usually living, not gods.

43 Vickery
governors of Phichay and Sawankhalok were involved in the coup, which appears to have been a
reaction of northern nobles.136
In the Hierarchy Law these two kram contain the unusual number of nine titles belonging
to officers mentioned in the "2/k.125 Fragment", which is a story of the 1430s-1440s, the time when
the old Sukhothai kingdom was being absorbed into Ayutthaya. There is also one title, śri yodha,
found in inscription no. 86 in Phitsanulok, and In s. araśákti (Nay Inda Saraśakti), who is prominent
in a Sukhothai inscription.137 This suggests that in origin these kram were originally from the north
and commanded by Sukhothai princes, and remained as such from the time of Trailok until the end
of the 16th century.

The state councils: luk khun śala and luk khun sar hlvan·
Quaritch Wales's description of the two state councils is also misleading. The first was the
"luk khun śala, a council of ministers and heads of chief departments of state, presided over in the
absence of the king by the head of the civil division". The second was the luk khun śala hlvan·, a
supreme court of Brahman judicial advisers", which "...consisted of twelve Brahman officials (who
strangely enough, alone among officials retained the old Thai appellation luk khun)". Their chiefs
were the brah. maha raj a guru purohita and the brah. maha raj a guru mahidhara.138
These two councils are not found in any laws before the 18th century, and the expression lu
k khun itself is absent from the Hierarchy Law, thus never associated with the brahmans except as
members of that council when that council is treated in other laws, and in its use it is clear that luk
khun was not a special designation for brahmans. In Sukhothai luk khun meant simply high-ranking
officials, and reference to them in 18th-century laws among the Three Seals indicates the same.139
Where the brahmans are listed in the Civil Hierarchy Law it is impossible to determine whether
there were 12, or over 20.140 Moreover, in three lists of the members of the luk khun sar/san
hlvan·, as it is called in the laws, dated 1743, 1758, and 1783, the number of members were
respectively 11, 7, and 7, not all the same, and not all brahmans.141

luk khun śala

1743 1758 1783

136 . RA, pp. 79-82. The Pncndanumaś Chronicle (Brah. raj ban·śav atar krun· śri ayutthaya
chapp pncndanumaś [cöm]), which was a source for RA, p. 32, just gives him that title without
refereence to Nakhon Sri Thammarat; Laws I, p. 320.
137 . A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, EHS 1, "A Declaration of Independence and its
.
Consequences", JSS 56/2 (July 1968), pp. 207-250, see p. 231.
138 Q.W., Administration, pp. 74, 80-81.
139 The Sukhothai evidence is the comparison of the near bilingual Khmer and Thai inscriptions

(nos. 4 and 5) of Lithai in which the officials who welcomed an important monk on his arrival in
Sukhothai were called amat ya mantri raj akula in no. 4 and luk cau luk khun in no. 5. See also,
Palatine Law, article 78, Laws I, p. 102; and article 80, p. 103.
140 Laws I, pp. 265-66.
141 The three lists are respectively in Kamhnat kau 11, dated 1743, Laws IV, p. 324; Kat 36
. .
khò, 1758, Laws IV, p. 229; and Brah. raja paññat 2, 1783, Laws IV, p. 261.

44 Vickery
 cau baña abháyraj a cau baña s. araśri cau baña rátanabibit
nara
. r . ddhitej cau baña jamna
 . ñ ([acting] samuha nayak)
baña kra:lahom parirák s. cau baña mahasena
baña brah. glán baña kra:lahom baña baldeb
baña baldeb baña dharrma cau baña bejbijaiy
baña raj subhav a:ti baña baldeb baña śri dharmadhiraj
baña sampátibal baña raj bhákti baña yamaraj
baña raj bhákti baña yamaraj baña brah. glán·
baña rátnadhipet . ·
brah. kambèn baña dharma
brah. maha amma
 . t cahmün samö cairaj baña dharrmatrailok
brah. asura:sena baña sudharrmamantri
brah. vijit na:ran
. · baña sura:sena
brah. birendeb baña bibádkos. a
baña raj nikun
baña maha amma
. t y

This does appear to have been a council of the officers in charge of the most important
government departments, although only in the 1783 list was the first-named, presumably the
presiding officer, the [acting] head of the 'Civil Division'. In 1743 and 1758 the council was headed
by officers who are not mentioned in other contexts of the laws, although cau baña abháyraj a is
mentioned in the chronicles. The head of the kalahom was always second or third, and was
followed by the other principal ministers, though in varying order. [NOTE: in printed text this Par is
before the lists, and begins "The first does..."]

luk khun sar hlvan·

1743 1758 1783
brah. śri mahosath brah. raj gru brah. gru brah. maha raj gru
bijet. mahidhar
hlvan· ñanapra:ka
. s . brah. cákra:pani brah. gru bijet
hlvan· deb raj dhat a brah. dharrmasat r brah. gru biram
hlvan· dharrmasat r brah. k s. em brah. deb raj dhat a
hlvan· áthya khun lvan· brah. kraisi hlvan· áthya
khun raj r. ddhanan khun raj biniccai hlvan· dharrmasat r
khun nanda:sen khun śri dharrmaraj hlvan· ñanapaka
. s .
khun raj biniccai
khun aj ña cák
khun purindhar
khun deb aj ña

In the list of 1743 the first title, presumably the president of the court, was the chief of the
medical kram, which in the Hierarchy Law precedes the brahmans' kram. If it be argued that the

45 Vickery
doctors were also brahmans, then that kram increases in membership to over 40 officials. The sixth
and seventh of the list, khun raj r. ddhanan and khun nanda:sen, are found in the outer section of
the palace department (ván· nòk) with yaśa of òkbrah; . and the last four, khun raj biniccai, khun a
jña cák, khun purindhar, khun deb aj ña, belonged to the department of the cákri, or mah
at dai.142
In the lists of 1758 and 1783 all the names belong to the 'brahman' group in the Hierarchy
Law, except the last in the 1758 list, khun śri dharrmaraj , who elsewhere appears only in kam .
hnat hmai, where he is described as the one who received cases to be judged in the court. Thus 143

this was not just a council of brahmans, but of judicial officials from various ministries, including
brahmans. There seems to be vague reference to one or another of these councils in the 17th-
century European writings. Schouten noted a college of 12 councillors with one president who
decided all appeals, and this is the number of the luk khun śala in 1743. Van Vliet, on the contrary,
wrote that "...in [Ayutthaya] is a court of nine councillors, ...five òkña, two òkbrah. (òkbrah. Olak
. chief secretary of the king, is one of them) and two òkhlvan·". Òkña yamaraj
[probably alak s. n],
[the möan· Minister]was president for life, and this council was the highest court of justice. The
king's 'chief secretary' was probably òkbrah. śri bhuriyprij araj senapati śri saralak s. n,
. one of the
144
officials with 5,000 rank described above. La Loubère surprisingly, given his interest in and
knowledge of law, had little to say about the law courts and councils in the capital, although going
into some detail about provincial courts. He concurs with van Vliet that the òkña yamaraj was the
"President of the Tribunal of the City of Siam".145 If these 17th-century references are to the council
known in the 18th century as luk khun śala, the position of the yamaraj had suffered a serious
decline.
Another group of central government officials whom La Loubère considered important were
four officers who commanded the forty-four mahat lek, and were entitled "Meuing [hmün]
Vai,...Sarapet,...Semeungtchai,...Sii". "All four are very considerable Nai...and though they have
only the title of [hmün], they cease not to be Officers in chief". They are identifiable in the
Hierarchy Law as respectively, the four hmün vaivaranat , sara:bejbhákti samöcairaj , and,
apparently, śri saurák, who are not mentioned by Quaritch Wales and who in the Hierarchy Law
come after the royal family, mahat lek, the harem, and minor palace personnel.146

Conclusions about the central government before Rama I

When the Hierarchy Law is read without prejudice it shows a table of organization
different from that hypothesized on the basis of 19th-century practice as the culmination of an
evolution from the government of King Trailokanath. The evidence of 17th-century European

142 . All these six are listed in the Civil Hierarchy Law, pp. 225, 238-9. The association of the
first-named with the sar hlvan· is mentioned in Kamhnat
. kau 16, Laws V, p. 11, dated 1643; and
.
Kamhnat kau 50, Laws V, p. 155, dated 1740, lists the last three as representatives of the cakri
on the sar hlvan·.
143 . .
Kamhnat hmai 6, 1784, p. 210.
144 . Schouten, p. 13; Van Vliet, "Description", p. 69.
145 . La Loubère, pp. 82-88.
146 . La Loubère, p. 10l; Laws I, p. 223.

46 Vickery
observers, moreover, demonstrates that the structure of the Hierarchy Law very closely
approximates the existing government structure between Naresuan and Naray, with some of the
differences due to revisions made in 1805. It is not possible to infer anything about the pre-
Naresuan government, let alone the system which prevailed at the time of Trailokanath, or of Rama
dhipati I in mid-14th century.
For comparison let us view this structure in a diagram, which is a composite of the evidence
of the Hierarchy Law, van Vliet and La Loubère, and which has been designed to facilitate
comparison with other systems.

47 Vickery
 Table One Government Structure in the 17th-18th centuries

The King
Heir apparent, king's brother
Maha  upara j
10,000/100,000 śaktina 
(not the heir apparent)

'Civilian' 'Military'
śaktina  10,000 śaktina  10,000 each
Two 'chief ministers' three chief generals
ván· cákri* kala h om tejo da y na m
.

Four other ministers Four maha tlek oficers 'Brahmans'

(catustambh/4 pillars)** 2 maha  ra j gru 
möan· /yamara j śaktina  10,000
baldeb 2 bra h. ra j gru 
glán· śaktina  5,000
bra h. satec*** 4 palát (deputies)
śaktina  3,000

śaktina  5,000**** śaktina  5,000

four officers
Royal apparel; Registrar; Elephant corps (2);
Chief, Palace Guards; Treasurer, maha  sampati; Chief of scribes

*Van Vliet indicates the ván· was more important, while in La Loubère the cákri/maha tdaiy seems preeminent,
and in the Hierarchy Law both are 'chief minister', with the latter more chiefly. There appears to have been a
change in their statuses between Prasat Thong and Naray which is reflected in the law.
**In the Bangkok period the 'four pillars' were the ván· , möan· , glán· , and na . Van Vliet, without using that
expression, said in one context that the four principal ministers were the ván· , na , cákri, and glán· , thus showing
the structural importance of '4' ministers in the information provided by his informants.
***The inclusion of the bra h. satec among the '4 pillars' is strictly hypothetical, for purposes of external
comparison. La Loubère, who shows no awareness of '4 pillars', gives considerable importance to the bra h. satec,
calling him "Governor of the City of Siam", a status which fits his śaktina  of 10,000 in the law, and which implies
.
the ta mhnèn · 'bra h nagarpa l', given in the Law to the yamara j, chief of the möan· . None of the references to 'catu
.
stambh/stam' in the Three Seals, most of which are in laws of, or imputable to, Rama I, includes the bra h. satec,
but they exclude the two chief ministers, in those contexts the maha tdaiy and the kala h om. If this exclusion
prevailed at a time when the ván· and cákri were chief ministers, and the kala h om only a general, then the bra h.
satec was the only other central official of status to be one of the 4 pillars.
****There is no indication in the Hierarchy Law, nor in Van Vliet or La Loubère, of the hierarchical link between
all of these officials and the King. The officer of the royal apparel, as La Loubère noted, was probably always of
the royal household, but the others might well have been subordinate to t he ván· ministry.

This table of organization of the central government, based on the Three Seals together
with evidence from the 17th-century Europeans Schouten, van Vliet, and La Loubère, may not be
imputed to a time before 1600, nor can the laws which reflect this system be imputed to an earlier
date. We might in that case hypothesize than the system, and the legislation reflecting it, were from a
Sukhothai structure imposed on Ayutthaya after 1569 by Kings Dharmarajadhiraja and Naresuan.

48 Vickery
 Besides this structure, there are still a few sections of the laws which name some of the
principal ministers with other titles and with the yaśa of 'khun', which by the 17th century was
relatively low, but which earlier had been at or near the top of the hierarchy in several old Thai
societies. These contexts are not in the Hierarchy Law, nor in any of the later Decisions, so it may
be inferred that they are not late innovations back-dated in a few of the laws, but parts of earlier
laws.
Most noticeable of these titles is cau khun hlvan· sab .l nagarpal, the last term of which is
.
the tamhnèn · of the möan· minister. Evidence that he was not simply a lower-ranking officer in that
ministry is his position as the principal official to whom a king Ramadhipati addressed his
communication of a law, one of those included in Miscellaneous, at a date B.E. 1900 [A.D.
1359].147 This relationship is reiterated on the next page, saying that the king spoke to cau khun
hlvan· sab .l̄ "and all the officials (mukkh mantri)".
A similar context is in Crimes Against the Government, at a date lacking indication of the
year, and obviously inserted within a previously existing text. There khun sab .l̄ raj senapat ī
reported to the king on offences committed by certain persons. Usually the 'raj senapat ī' indicates
a central government minister.148
A third occurrence of the same title is in Theft, at a date B.E. 1910 [A.D. 1364], when
khun sab l̄. jaiy made a report to a king Dharrmaraja Maha Cákrabarrti. Following this the king
took counsel with the khun maldiarapa
. l, the khun phèn, and the khun śri mahosath. The first of
. · of the palace ministry (ván·), the second is unknown in Three Seals,
these three holds the tamhnèn
and the third is listed in the Hierarchy Law as chief of the medical department.149
What appears here is a structure of four principal ministers ('four pillars'?), of which the
Minister of the City (möan·, nagarpal) was premier, and was followed by the Palace Minister (ván·,
mandiarapa
. l), and two others of which the fourth, now listed as medical chief, might originally have
been a Minister of Rites. The khun phèn, whose title suggests phèntin, the kingdom, literally 'the
surface of the land', sounds like an early version of the mahat daiy Minster, that is a minister in
charge of all general administration, with the duties of the na as well. In this connection we may
recall the remark made above, about the anomaly of the möan· minister having precedence in the
passage of the Annals attributing a reorganization of the ministries by King Trailokanath, and his
precedence, after the cákri in the Hierarchy Law, even though he did not have such precedence
either in the 17th century or in the time of Rama I. The rank of khun for ministers indicates early
date, as seen in the 15th-century events described in the "2/k.125 Fragment", and as in the ranks
before the reforms attributed to King Trailok, and they are ranked in the same order.
Perhaps in khun sab .l̄ jaiy nagarpal we have a relic of a time before the 17th century,
even from early Ayutthaya, when the four principal ministries were those suggested by these obscure
contexts. A possible hint of earlier importance of the mahosath officer is that in the listing of his
section in the Hierarchy Law he is called śr ī an·grák s. , 'royal bodyguard', a title borne by no other
minister in the Hierarchy Law except the cákr ī, and that right after the mahat daiy section in the
same law there is a peculiar inserted and partially dated (without year date) section in which the

147 . Laws III, p. 114.

148 . Laws IV, p. 89.
149 . Laws III, p. 290.

49 Vickery
brah. śr ī mahosath is the principal officer receiving royal instructions concerning messengers in the
mahat daiy.150 In a diagram it would be:

cau khun hlvan· sab l̄. jaiy nagarpal (möan·)

khun mandiarapa
. l (ván·)
khun phèn (= mahat daiy/na?)
khun śri mahosath

External comparison
Hardly anything of this structure or terminology may be related to what is known of
Angkorean organization; and at Angkor there was no system of numerical ranking, such as the
system of śaktina. One surprising possible connection with Angkor is the status of heir apparent,
whom both Schouten and van Vliet insisted should be a brother of the king, not a son, unless there
were no brothers.151
Relevant comparison, however, may be made with the Tai of northern Vietnam, Laos and
southern China.
I have not found a fully detailed description of the Black and White Tai, but the available
studies show comparable features. The traditional Black and White Tai political system described
by George Condominas consisted of hierarchies of identically structured entities, from the household
(hüön/rüön) upward through village (bān) to supravillage (möan·), which "designates
circumscriptions of different sizes" and different hierarchical importance, with the larger enclosing the
smaller, and ranging from a small principality to a large state like Thailand. Above the möan·,
however, was the cu, grouping 12 möan·, and ruled by a cau möan· or at ña (aj ña)152
Among those Tai peoples there are clear traditional distinctions between nobility,
commoners, and servile categories. All of the rule rs of these groups are entitled khun, 'chao'/cau,
("which serves to designate the chiefs and princes and...is perpetuated...for the members of ruling

150 . Laws I, pp. 262, 227.

151 . Schouten, p. 13; van Vliet, "Historical Account", pp. 32, 87. The importance of this, in
principle, is seen in the identification of Trailokanath as brother of his predecessor in van Vliet's The
Short History of the Kings of Siam, p. 63, a detail in contradiction with all other sources (on the
value of this source see Vickery, review article, JSS 64/2 (July 1976), pp. 207-36). Although the
evidence is not perfectly consistent, it is likely that when feasible, succession in pre-Angkor and
Angkor Cambodia was brother-to-brother. All Thai systems emphasize primogeniture.
152 . Georges Condominas, From Lawa to Mon, from Saa' to Thai , Department of Anthropology,

Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, 1990, pp. 35-36, 39.
See review of Condominas by Michael Vickery in Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletter, Australian
National University, Number Thirteen, June 1991, pp. 3-9. Further details about the möan· and cu
levels are from Pán Phomsombat, a Black Tai living in Vientiane, "Kan pokkhon· Tai Dam" ('Black
Tai Administration'), Typescript in Lao (26 pp.), kindly supplied by James Chamberlain.

50 Vickery
families and high-ranking administrative titles"), 'tao'/dāv ("nobles"), or 'phia tao'/bañā dāv,
"hereditary chiefs of the möan·.153
The Black Tai also had a system of 'śaktina' remuneration for high-ranking officials. A cau
möan· was entitled to rice land producing 1000 hap of paddy along with one village or more, about
100 households, of people to cultivate his fields, care for his animals, construct and repair his
buildings. As in Ayutthaya, these remunerations were attached to the function, not the person, and a
cau möan· who left his post lost them to his replacement. Lower levels of the hierarchy received
land of 400, 50, 30, etc. hap.154
Among the Lue in southern China there was a king, the cau phèntin, a title also known in
Ayutthaya and Sukhothai.155 There was also an uparaj who was viceroy and who was supposed to
be the king's first younger brother. As in 17th-century Ayutthaya, he was not heir apparent, the
latter, unlike 17th-century Ayutthaya, being the king's eldest son.
The next level of government was the 'four great pillars of state', all members of the royal
family, and consisting of a president with three other ministers, "'His First Lordship'...minister of the
administration of government, of finances and the revenue office--actually Prime Minister", the
"minister of Justice and the Recorder of Population", and the "minister of the government's rations",
which sounds very much like the 'purveyor' known to Van Vliet in Ayutthaya. 156
The business of government was conducted in two councils, Royal Outer Council (sanam 
nòk) and a Private Council (sanam nai), both under direct control of the king. The first included the
'four pillars' and other officials, including a representative of the sanam nai. The second, much
larger, was under the presidency of the cau hlvan· pasat [prasada], the Palace Minister. It included
a large number of other officials who were also all members of the royal family, which itself was
ranked in four grades of members.157
These councils are reminiscent of the two luk khun councils of Ayutthaya, although in
Ayutthaya they did not have the same importance as organs of the central administration. As noted
above, in Sukhothai the term luk khun just meant high-ranking officials.
The highest rank of royalty consisted of eight persons, called the 'eight pillars of state'. They
may be interestingly compared with some of the high-ranking Ayutthayan officials. As noted, the first
was the Palace Minister, a situation like that recorded by van Vliet for early 17th-century Ayutthaya.
The second was the cau hlvan· na phèn, "supervisor of the civil administration, officer of the royal
entourage", a description precisely parallel to that of the Ayutthayan cákri, Chief Minister of the

153 . Condominas, pp. 40-44. The peculiar view of Condominas and Haudricourt (n. 28) that khun
and cau are of Chinese origin would not be shared by most specialists in Thai linguistics. Note that
phia/fia is from Mon baña.
154 . Pán Phomsombat, pp. 9-10.
155 . Jacques Lemoine, "Tai Lue Historical Relation with China and the Shaping of the Sipsong

Panna Political System", in Proceedings of the International Conference on Thai Studies, The
Australian National University, Canberra, 3-6 July 1987, pp. 121-34. A difficulty with Lemoine's
study is that it is entirely based on Chinese research, not on direct study of Lue documents or
fieldwork; and apparently Lemoine is unfamiliar with Lue or other Thai languages. Thus many of the
Lue terms are unrecognizable in his rendition, and some of his definitions, done through Chinese,
seem inaccurate.
156 Lemoine, p. 122. Their Lue titles are among the most unclear in Lemoine's exposition.
157 Lemoine, pp. 122-3. The precise number of members is not clear from Lemoine's exposition.

51 Vickery
mahat daiy. His title 'phèn' is also like that of a khun who followed a khun maldiarpa
. l ('palace') in
a listing of officials which I have interpreted as ministers at a time preceding the raise in ranks
attributed to Trailokanāth, and this coincidence points to a relationship between old Ayutthayan
ranks and those of other Thai political systems. The term phèn probably refers to the surface of the
land, as in phèntin, a term appropriate for a minister in charge of civil administration.158
Following these two top ministers, the other six of the 'eight pillars' were a cau hlvan· of the
right and one of the center (the left cau hlvan· was among the second rank of royalty) with military
and hunting duties, a cau hlvan· na jan· in charge of elephants, a cau hlvan· na hòk in charge of
spears and rifles, a financial officer, and a cau hlvan· who was in charge of bookkeeping and head
of the palace bodyguards. All of these functions are found in the Ayutthayan Hierarchy Law, and
even almost in the same order. If the cau hlvan· of the right and center are assimilated to sections of
the Ayutthayan mahat daiy, such as the kram of the hlvan· maha amma  . t yadhipati and of the
hlvan· ca sènpati with 3000 and 2400 śaktina respectively, then the elephant corps follows later in
the law, preceding an important palace treasury, the gln· mahasampati, which precedes the
department of scribes.159
All Lue officials were ranked according to a numerical system of na ('field'), based on
numbers of measures (hap) of rice to which they were entitled. Lemoine believed that "the Lue na:
system...has probably been adapted from the sakdina system of the Central Thai after it had been
established in Ayudhya by King Trailokanath in 1454". 160 On the contrary, whenever this system
was adopted in Ayutthaya, it was probably part of a body of administrative traditions from a more
ancient background in Thai areas to the north, and, as I shall argue below, the Ayutthayan Thai, the
Black Tai, and the Lue would have adopted it from a system still farther to the north.
Also of comparative interest is that in the Lue system the cau hlvan· in charge of the han
'soldiers', called "Great General leading the troops to the front", equivalent to the Ayutthayan kala
hom, was an official of the second rank, below the 'eight pillars', as the kalahom appears in the
Hierarchy Law when its 'military section' is viewed, as the text indicates it should be, as a
continuing part of the main, 'civilian' part of the law. There were also Lue military ranks of khun ha
n, 'army officer', and phya han, ca han, seen han, terms which must be compared with the
Ayutthayan /thahaan/ (dahar).161
This term itself is mysterious. It does not seem to be Thai, is not found in Sukhothai
inscriptions or in the Black Tai chronicles, nor in the best-known White Tai dictionary, and the Indic

158 See above, p. 37 [167] for the earlier Ayutthayan structure. Lemoine, p. 124, says that phèn
(his 'phae:n') means 'peacock', and the minister in question "cared for the peacock feathers...and
during the great pageants...would carry the peacock feathers behind the cau phèntin". This
explanation of phèn' seems most unlikely. There is a word /pheen/ (written bèn), meaning the
spreading of a peacock's (nòk yun·) tail, and in Vientiane Lao it is also glossed as an ancient military
rank, but only equivalent to nay bán, 'chief of a thousand'.
159 . Laws I, pp. 224-226, 250, 267, 272.
160 . Lemoine, p. 132.

· ] Tsoeng Ha:n",
161 The full title of this military officer in Lemoine, p. 123, is "Tsao-long [cau hlvan

of which I am unable to interpret the third term. In Ayutthaya-Bangkok Thai it could be construed
as 'foot' and would be unproblematical, but it seems unlikely that this Khmer loan would have
penetrated into Lue.

52 Vickery
etymologies which have been proposed are unconvincing.162 It is worth noting that in Rhade,
Western Cham and Jarai, 'soldier' is kahan, dahan, and to'han, respectively, and in Malay tahan
means 'resist', 'defend'. Although the evidence is not exhaustive, I wish to propose that this is an
element of the early Chamic influence on the Thai/Tai which may also be discerned in the origins of
the their scripts.163
Surprisingly, the evidence in the inscriptions of Sukhothai, Ayutthaya's nearest Thai
neighbor, is not very helpful. There is little indication of the number, titles, or hierarchy of ministers,
nor whether a śaktina system was in use. Most of the same yaśa terms were in use, and had higher
status, in particular the lower ones, such as khun, used for chiefs of major möan·. The term nay
could also indicate someone of high rank, as in the title nay in s. araśákti in 15th-century
Sukhothai.164
One Sukhothai record with some links between more distant Thai structures and Ayutthaya
is inscription no. 38 with its text of a law promulgated some time between the end of the 14th and
middle of the 15th century.165
Following the royal introduction, there is mention of a state institutional form found in no
other Sukhothai or Ayutthayan text, four officials ranking just below the king and called braña ban·n·
, each followed by the name of a place, in order Sagapuri (braña ban·n· k s. etr [fields]), śri Sejana
laiypuri, dvaiynadi śri Yamana ['double river Yom'], and Nagòrdaiy, the last of whom was 'elder
brother', apparently of the king. If ban·n·, inexplicable in Thai, is the Mon bin·, buin·, /pà / 'surround',
they were subordinate provinces surrounding Sukhothai, where Mon influence at that time would be
expected.166 Whatever their precise role, they show a generic resemblance to the four 'Phya Luang'

162 . A Sanskrit etymology has been proposed (<Sanskrit dahana 'reducing to ashes'), but it is
unacceptable. See Robert K. Headley, Jr. "Some Sources of Chamic Vocabulary", In
Austroasiatic Studies, p. 465.
163 . See Michael Vickery, "Piltdown 3--Further discussion of the Rām Khamhaeng Inscription",

Part 3, "The development of Thai/Tai scripts" JSS, [*This is a corrected version. It was also
published in JSS, volume 83, Parts 1 & 2 (1995), pp. 103-198, but with so many typographical
errors that it is unusable.]. The greater difference between Ayutthayan and Sukhothai administrations
than between Ayutthayan and those of the Lue or Black Tai may give support to the linguists, such
as James Chamberlain, who propose that the Sukhothai and Ayutthayan Thai languages are from
different sources farther to the Northeast.
164 He was author of inscription no. 49, dated 1412. See Griswold and Prasert, EHS 1, "A

Declaration of Independence and its Consequences", JSS 56/2 (July 1968), pp. 207-250. In one
section of the Military Hierarchy, Laws I, p. 288, the same title in s. araśakti is given to a
pra:tèn· with śaktina of only 300.
165 . Griswold and Prasert, EHS 4. I do not have space for a more thorough discussion of the
problems in dating this law. Readers should note, however, that other Thai scholars do not suscribe
to the emendations made by Griswold and Prasert to fit it into their historical reconstruction. See
Dhida Saraya, Class Structure of Thai Society in the Sukhothai and Early Ayutthaya Period
(B.E. 1800-2112) [in Thai], pp. 121-127.
166 . H.L. Shorto, Dictionary of the Mon Inscriptions, p. 263. The third form is the modern Mon

pronunciation. Vickery, "Some New Evidence for the Cultural History of Central Thailand", The
Siam Society's Newsletter, Volume 2, Number 3 (September 1986), 4-6.

53 Vickery
(baña hlvan·) who administered the villages of the Lue kingdom, of whom one was a 'Field Luang'
and two were Luang of water courses.167
This inscription is also important for an organization of the population which shows links
between the Tai areas in Vietnam, the Lue, and Ayutthaya. The population, as among the Black and
White Tai and Lue, was organized in work groups under local chiefs, called in Sukhothai luk khun
mun tvan, and luk khun mun nay. Mun nay are familiar from the Ayutthayan laws, and tvan is
Mon for 'village'.168 Griswold and Prasert wished to attribute this structure to Ayutthayan influence,
on the grounds that Sukhothai society was not so strictly organized, but in this they neglected the
evidence of inscription 107, from Prae, and dated by them to the 1330s-1340s. It lists luk cau luk
khun, mun nay, brai dai, which could be interpreted 'officials' and 'group chiefs' and 'peasants', or
'officials' and 'group chiefs of peasants', or 'officials who are group chiefs of peasants', showing that
the institution of mun nay, chief of a mobilized population group, was well established in the early
Sukhothai period, and that Sukhothai continued the rigid social hierarchy of the northeastern Tai
which was also reproduced in Ayutthaya.169
Griswold and Prasert also saw evidence of śaktina in inscription 38, which, considering it
was an Ayutthayan document, they did not fear to exaggerate. One brief but vague relevant context
(Face 1, line 39) is a statement that offenders would be fined according to their śakti. This does
resemble Ayutthayan practice, and I am inclined on this point to accept the interpretation of
Griswold and Prasert, but as evidence that Sukhothai followed the practice of numerical ranks
which was widespread in the Thai/Tai areas, not devised in Ayutthaya by King Trailok.

The primary source of the Thai structures

The similarities in state structures among different Thai/Tai peoples are not surprising now
that it is realized that their ancestors inhabited a rather limited area of what is now northern Vietnam
and southeastern China until sometime between one and two thousand years ago.170 That area at
that time was under very strong Chinese influence, and the similarities are so striking that one
wonders why they have not been emphasized earlier. I cite details from the Ming, but "[d]uring the
1300 years from the early T'ang to 1906 the basic structure [such as the six ministries] remained the
same".171
All officials, from the emperor's sons down had a numerical rank like śaktina, based on
bushels of rice. Emperors' sons had 10,000, and civil officials, ranked in 9 grades, had salaries of

167 . Lemoine, p. 128, note 21.

168 . Barend Jan Terwiel, "Ahom and the Study of Early Thai Society", JSS 71/1-2 (1983), pp. 42-
62; see p. 47.
169 . Griswold and Prasert, EHS 21, "The Second Oldest Known Writing in Siamese", JSS 67/1

(January 1979), pp. 63-67.

170 . In order to avoid time-wasting controversy about a matter which is of no relevance for the

present subject, I shall maintain agnosticism here about more precise dating of the time of the Thai
dispersal.
171 Charles O. Hucker, "Governmental Organization of the Ming Dynasty", in John L. Bishop,

Editor, Studies in Governmental Institutions in Chinese History, Cambridge, Harvard University

Press, 1968, pp. 57-124, reprinted from Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 21 (1958), pp. 1-
66; quotation from Edwin O. Reischauer and John K. Fairbank, East Asia The Great Tradition,
London, George Allen & Unwin (1960), p. 274.

54 Vickery
1044 down to 60 bushels. Besides that, officials were given two types of titles, prestige titles, and
dignities, which included 'Pillars of State'.172
The Ming central administration, largely copied from the Mongols, was divided into General
Administration, Surveillance (Censors), and Military, although "the division was not a neat one, and
there was much overlapping".173 At first, when the Ming Dynasty was founded there were two
Chief Councillors, called 'Prime Minister', one of the left and one of the right (but the distinction was
not civil/military), and six lower ministries, but in 1380 the offices of the Chief Councillors were
abolished. In the original system there had been four ministries Finance, Ceremonies, Justice, and
Public Works. Then in 1368 the number was increased to six, Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War,
Justice, Works.174 All of these offices were present in the Ayutthayan system, although the identity
of the Ayutthayan office corresponding to the Chinese Ministry of Rites might be disputed.
Note that the Chinese Ministry of War belonged to the civilian side of the administration.
The military proper, paralleling the six ministries, had Five Chief Military Commissions. The
population was divided into two major categories, civilian families and military families. The former
paid land taxes and did corvée, while the latter had to provide sons for the army. 175
Paralleling the six civilian ministries and th e five military commissions was the Censorate,
consisting after 1380 of two Censors-in-Chief, two Vice Censors-in-Chief, and four Assistant
Censors-in-Chief. I do not think it is a coincidence that they parallel the structure of the Ayutthayan
'brahman' department with two top level officials of 10,000 na, two second level of 5,000 na, and 4
third level with 3,000 na. Besides surveillance, which cannot be imputed to the Ayutthayan officials,
the Chinese censors also performed judicial services very much like those of the śala luk khun and
sar hlvan·. Just as La Loubère noted for Ayutthaya, Hucker says, "the Ming governmental system
did not give a special autonomous status to the judiciary...[e]very local magistrate was chief justice
of his territory". There was a review procedure upward to the capital, where there was a Grand
Court of Revision, containing "two Courts of Review...one of the left and one of the right". This also
resembles the so-called 'Brahman' department and the two śala of luk khun, which included two
courts, kram bèn·, under the brah. kas. emaraj ..., and the khun hlvan· brah. kraiśri..., who are seen
in various laws to have been responsible for judicial review. 176
Finally, with respect to policy, the "most important court deliberations" included a "group of
men called the Nine Chief Ministers...the respective functional heads of the six Ministries, the
Censorate, the Office of Transmission, and the Grand Court of Revision...usually supplemented by
the various Military Commissioners-in-Chief"...etc.177 This looks very much like the group of
Ayutthayan officers with 10,000 śaktina, plus perhaps some of those with 5,000, listed above.
In summary, I feel confident in concluding that the origins of the structures of the central
authorities in early Tai/Thai states, including what may be deduced for Ayutthaya from the law texts,
should be sought in Chinese state structures, probably going back to the Han, when the Thai must
have first come into contact with Chinese officialdom, continuing through subsequent centuries of the

172 Hucker (pagination from Bishop), pp. 66, 69, 74; Wang Yü-ch'üan, "An Outline of the Central
Government of the Former Han Dynasty", in Bishop, op. cit., pp. 5, 10, 19, 27.
173 Hucker, p. 85. Note that the Mongols were carrying on from the Sung.
174 Hucker, p. 90.
175 Hucker, pp. 114-5.
176 .La Loubère, pp. 82-88; Hucker, p. 114; Laws I, p. 266.
177 . Hucker, p. 123.

55 Vickery
slow Thai movement west and southwestward, and reinforced again when close diplomatic contact
was established between Sien and the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty, followed by the Ming contact with
early Ayutthaya. Of course, different Thai polities preserved or modified different features of the
structures adapted from China to fit their different social structures or under the influence of other
neighbors such as the Khmer and the Mon.

Territorial organization
The Ayutthayan provincial organization is a different matter. I have been unable to establish
parallels with a Chinese system, nor with the territorial systems of other Thai/Tai polities. The Three
Seals Code, however, is interesting in showing different provincial structures at different times.
Quaritch Wales' view of the provincial administration, apparently based on Prince
Damrong's hypotheses, was that prior to King Trailok, Ayutthaya had been surrounded on the four
cardinal points by four provinces--Lophburi, Nakhon Nayok, Prah Pradeng and Suphanburi termed
möan· luk hlvan·, each ruled by one of the king's sons, a system supposedly set up by King Rama
dhipati I in 1351. If this were true it would also reflect the Lue and Tai structures, in which royalty
had great administrative responsibilities, and the Sukhothai institution of four baña ban·n· around the
capital (above p. 40).
Then King Trailok placed these four provinces directly under central government control,
that is, under the ministers in the capital, and the princes who had formerly ruled them were sent
farther afield to rule newly subjected provinces called brahya .  mahanagara. The central portion of
the kingdom, or ván· raj adhani . , was divided into a number of minor provinces called möan· nòy,
later fourth-class provinces, administered by officials appointed by the ministers.178
The kings' sons who governed the brahya .  mahanagara were first-class cau fa sons and
their provinces, known as möan· luk hlvan·, were also called möan· ek. There were also möan· hlan
hlvan·, or möan· do, governed by second class cau fa princes, although it is not clear where they
were. Beyond the provinces were vassal states called möan· prahdesaraj with their own
sovereigns.179
About 130 years after King Trailok, King Naresuan abolished the brahya .  mahanagara
and divided the outer provinces into three classes, ek, do, tri (one, two,
three), but here Quaritch Wales introduced the odd statement that the law which provides this
information, the Law of the Military Hierarchy, reflects "more particularly the condition of things
in the eighteenth century".180
The next stage supposedly came about in 1691 when the two chief ministers acquired
control of the northern and southern provinces respectively, a situation that prevailed in the 19th
century with the exception that at the latter date a few of the gulf coast provinces had been given to
the kram da of the glán· ministry. The reason for this change was surmised by Prince Damrong to
have been a rebellion in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, an opinion which Quaritch Wales followed in
Administration. In a later work, however, he modified his opinion as follows: "Siamese soldiers
[according to La Loubère] formerly wore red, the colour of ... Mars which presided over the south,
and that is why military officials were on the right (south) side of the king in audience. No doubt it

178 Q.W., Administration, pp. 105-06.

179 Q.W., Administration, p. 107.
180 Q.W., Administration, p. 109

56 Vickery
was because of this that, when about 1691 the administration of the country was divided between
the heads of the military and civil divisions, the former (kalahom) was given charge of the southern
provinces".181
Quaritch Wales ignored the logical contradiction between his two explanations. In the first
place he followed Prince Damrong in hypothesizing that the southern provinces had been given to
the kalahom because of a revolt in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, which was in the south, and this is the
only reason for postulating the date 1691 for this development. If in fact the division of the provinces
was due to astrological consideration there is no reason to choose the date 1691. Rather we should
expect it to have occurred at the very beginning of the creation of the ministries in question, that is, in
the reign of King Trailok, if we accept that he was responsible for the functional division of the
ministries. Quaritch Wales was also wrong in assuming, as I shall demonstrate later, that the division
of the administration into sections of the left and right corresponded either to a civil/military
dichotomy, or to a geographical division.182
When Rama I prepared a new code in 1805, responsibility in the central government for
provinces was indeed divided among mahat daiy, kalahom, and glán·, and this situation prevailed
until the reforms of King Chulalongkorn. This division appears in the laws in Dharrmanun, dated
1633 if śaka, although Prince Damrong and Quaritch Wales said the division should have occurred
in 1691. David Wyatt, apparently accepting the ostensible date of Dharrmanun, wrote that the
division was accomplished by King Prasat Thong (1629-56).183 It is certain that development
outlined by Quaritch Wales, with möan· luk hlvan· at the four cardinal points, and royal princes sent
farther and father afield, is to be rejected, or at least it cannot be sustained by any of the law texts.
Neither can the concept of the ván· raj adhani . , which is not mentioned at all in the laws.184 Three
important, ostensibly valid, lists of dependent territories are found in the laws. The first, in the
Palatine Law, is of 20 vassal 'kings' (kra:sátr) who presented gold and silver flowers to the central
government and eight chiefs (baña) of great cities (maha nagar). Then the Provincial Hierarchy
Law lists forty-eight first, second, third and fourth class provinces; and the third, in the Law of
Procedure (Dharrmanun), lists the provinces administered respectively by the cau baña cákri
(mahat daiy), the kram brah. kra:lahom, and the kos. adhipati (glán·). There is a fourth list in one
of the early laws of Rama I, dated 1783, indicating 16 great cities (maha nagar), which, according
to an old, perhaps then still existing, Palatine Law (Ka.t man. diarapa
. l), were considered foreign
polities (tan· möan·). This is proof of one modification introduced into the new Palatine Law revised
under the direction of Rama I twelve years later. The purpose of the order containing the old list is
of some social interest, but which is beyond the subject of the present study. It concerned

181 Q.W., Administration, pp. 103-110; Ancient South-East Asian Warfare, p. 151.
182 He did acknowledge, Administration, p. 81, that the laws are inconsistent in this respect.
183 Quaritch Wales, Administration, p. 86, 113; Wyatt, Thailand A Short History, p. 108. Wyatt

offers no source for his statement, and it is apparently based on the dates recorded in the law.
Wyatt, however, in his "Kat.a Man. diarapa
. la", proclaimed himself a believer in culamani
.  era, to
which the dates of Dharrmanun belong, and he should thus impute them to 1743, the reign of King
Boromakot. This illustrates the adhocery prevalent in most standard treatments of old Thai sources.
184 . For the argument about möan · luk hlvan· see Vickery, "A New Tamna . n About Ayudhya", JSS
67/2 (July 1979), pp. 158-160.

57 Vickery
differential fines for women who were unfaithful to husbands posted in foreign territories or in the
same polity.185
Even though the Palatine and Hierarchy Laws are believed to date from the same reign,
their lists are in certain respects contradictory, indicating composition at different times, while the
third list in Dharrmanun, outlining an entirely different structure, is found under a preamble dated
1555, year of the pig, which fits the cul.amani.  pattern and is equivalent to A.D. 1743 if that
hypothesis is correct, or 1633 if only śaka era is assumed. In spite of the recorded date, Prince
Damrong and Quaritch Wales preferred to place the three-fold provincial division in 1691, but it is
not attested in any other document until the reign of Rama I (1782- 1809).186
The territorial statements in the laws must also be compared with two lists found in the
annals, a list of sixteen vassal states (pra:deśa raj a) included in the post-1157 chronicles near the
beginning of the reign of Ramadhipati I, that is, at approximately the same time at which the
Palatine and Hierarchy Laws would at first glance appear to be dated, and a list of provinces
assigned to the kalahom and to the kram da department of the glán· ministry by Rama I in 1782
and included in the chronicle of his reign.187
An interesting feature of all these lists is that they are found in material compiled during the
reign of Rama I, but at different dates, and it is legitimate to wonder to what extent the lists owe their
present form to the preconceptions of that time rather than to the true situation at the dates assigned
to them.
The earliest list in terms of date of composition of the extant source material is the last one
cited above, that of 1782, which lists twenty möan· assigned to the kalahom and nine to the kram
da, a part of the glán· ministry, with the statement that "in the Ayutthaya period the southern möan·
were placed under the kram da because the kalahom had done something wrong".188 Rama I
stated further that he was taking 19 möan· from kram da and one from the mahat daiy to give to the
kalahom while eight möan· were left with the kram da and a ninth, taken from the mahat daiy
territory was to be added to the territory of the kram da. The king's explanation implies two
previous arrangements, the one immediately preceding 1782 when all southern provinces would
have been under the kram da, and an earlier one with all southern möan· under the kalahom. We
also know of a third, still earlier structure because La Loubère observed that the mahat daiy, in La
Loubère's words the Cakri, assuming them to have been the same, had general control over all the
provinces of the kingdom.189

185 . See Laws I, pp. 70, 317-26, 176-7 respectively, and Laws IV, p. 260 for the list of mahā
nagar in an old Palatine Law. Here is another case for the new gender historians.
186 . Quaritch-Wales, pp. 86, 113, 117, 153.
187 . On the 'post-1157 [1795] chronicles' see Vickery, "Cambodia After Angkor"; RA, p. 67, and

Brah. raj ban·śav atar krun· rtanakosindr chapp hòsamut hèn· jat i rajakal di 1 ('Royal
Ratanakosin Chronicle, National Library Edition, Reign 1'), Bangkok, Klang Vithaya, 2505 [1962],
cited hereafter as Reign I, pp. 26-7.
188 Reign I, p. 26.
189 La Loubère, p. 89. La Loubère's list of the "State Officers", starts with the Cakri ('Tchakry')

and Kalahom ('Calla-hom'). He only records the title mahat daiy, p. 84, as one of the provincial
officials, òkbrah. mahat daiy, explaining the term incorrectly as 'Great Tai', i.e., as though it were

58 Vickery
 The two intermediate stages, if the statements in the Reign I chronicle are historically
accurate, must then have been tried sometime between the reign of King Naray and 1767, and no
other sources, it seems, give evidence of these changes. The provinces left with the mahat daiy in
1782 are not listed, and the implication is that all other provinces were subordinate to that ministry.
The only specific statement in this connection is that cha:jön· drau (Cha Choeung Sao) "in ancient
times was subordinate to the brah. kalahom [and] later fell to the mahat daiy. Let it remain as in the
beginning/as before (tam töm)", which although ambiguous must have been intended to mean, "let it
remain with the mahat daiy", for it is absent from the other two lists, and if the intention had been to
leave it with the kalahom as "in ancient times" it, like bej(r)apuri (Phetchaburi/Phetburi), would
have been listed as taken from the mahat daiy for the kalahom.190 Again, one wonders what
documents existed showing the change in status of this province.
The names of möan· in these lists are clear, although they are not all of equal status today,
some being can·hvat ('province'), others amphoe (district within a province). Note should be taken
of ta:nav sri and mr. t (Tenasserim and Mergui), an area which was frequently a bone of contention
between Siam and Burma up to the 19th century. It is also interesting to observe that in the 1782 list
Nagara Sri Dharrmaraja, which in other lists comes first among the southern provinces, is here only
third, doubtless reflecting the fact that it was temporarily in disgrace in the early years of the reign of
Rama I.191
The next list in date of composition is that found in the 1157 [1795] chronicle at a date
corresponding to 1351 A.D. It bears a good deal of resemblance to the list in the Palatine Law
where the presence of malak a has been taken as sufficient evidence for emending the law date to
the reign of King Trailok.192 In 1350 Malacca had not yet been founded, but it was claimed as a
vassal by Ayutthaya in the 15th century and was attacked by King Trailok in 1455. The list in the
1157 chronicle has not been discussed in detail as far as I know, although the inclusion of malak a is
grounds for rejecting it also as a 14th-century record. It also includes java, which could in no
period have been a Thai vassal, although La Loubère bears witness that exaggerated territorial
claims, such as Ayutthayan pretensions to Johore, may always have been standard practice. This list
of 16 vassals is divided into two distinct groups, seven northern and nine southern provinces. With
respect to anachronistic names, the northern group may be subject to the same criticism as malak a,
for current doctrine holds that 14th-century epigraphy shows bis. nuloka designated as sòn· kve,
svarrgaloka as sajjanalaya, nagara svarrga as pan·ka or pra ban·, kamben  . · bej as jakan·rav ,
and some scholars believe that bicitr was known as sra:lvan·.193

maha, not mahat , daiy. The parallel term, mahat lek, for the corps of pages, proves the point.
Their etymology still requires explanation.
190 Reign I, p. 27.
191 . Reign I, pp. 81-82, at date 1795. Klaus Wenk, The Restoration of Thailand under Rama I,

1782-1809, Tucson, 1968, pp. 103-4, shows Songkhla detached from Nakhon Sri Thammarat and
made a third class province, perhaps even promoted to first class, and in general it was the leading
city of the South during the reign of Rama I between roughly 2328/1785-2334/1791 (exact dates
not possible).
192 . Wyatt, "Kat a mandiarbal".
. ..
193 These identifications are from the EHS of Griswold and Prasert; La Loubère, on Johore, p. 82.

59 Vickery
 Thus the insertion of this list at the place it is found in the chronicles seems clearly to be
erroneous and due to a late compiler, and it is legitimate to wonder if it was not done deliberately in
1795 on orders of Rama I who wished to supply ancient authority for theoretical inclusion of certain
territories under Thai suzerainty.
An interesting observation may also be made about some of the southern provinces on the
list. Third in order after malak a and java is ta:nav sri, which the first Europeans in Siam found to
be an important Ayutthayan port and the status of which as an Ayutthayan dependency in mid-15th
century is shown by contemporary epigraphy. Fourth is nagara śri dharrmaraj a, and then we find
da:vay (Tavoy), mo:ta:ma: (Martaban), and mo:lamlön· (Moulmein), areas which like Tenasserim
were fought over by Burmese and Thai but which seem most often to have been in Burmese hands.
The first mention of Tavoy in the Ayutthayan annals is found in the year of King Trailok's death,
1488, when it was taken by the Thai. Although there is no contemporary evidence, the Mon chroni-
cles make the Moulmein-Martaban area the scene of a growing Mon kingdom in the 14th century
and it is very improbable that it was an Ayutthayan dependency. Thus these names are further
evidence for the anachronistic character of this list.
The appearance of these trans-peninsular ports in the various lists is interesting from another
point of view, that of the date of their inclusion in the extant texts. The list of 1782 included only
Tenasserim and its close neighbour Mergui, and in fact at that date Tavoy was in Burmese hands.
However, before the composition of the second list in 1795 Tavoy had in 1792 been taken by
Rama I, although not held very long, and troops had been dispatched northward to Martaban. I
suggest then, that the inclusion of these möan· in a list composed in 1795, but dated to 1351, and
which in other respects is clearly anachronistic, indicates deliberate tampering by Rama I in order to
give his claims the weight of history.
The Palatine Law of 1805 presents still another type of list. Like the 1157 chronicle it
contains a group of vassal states, 16 in the north, which are not mentioned in the other lists, and four
in the south, about which the same judgement may be made as for malak a and java in the 1157
list. The northern portion also contains some clear anachronisms. First is nagara hlvan· (Angkor)
which, according to the best source, was not conquered until 1431. Then there is śri
satanaganahuta (Luang Prabang and/or Vientiane), which was not seriously threatened by the
Siamese until the reign of King Taksin, and several other northern states which, although
occasionally the object of Ayutthayan invasions in earlier reigns, remained outside of Ayutthayan
control until the reign of Rama I. Of course, we could say that some, such as jian· hmai on several
occasions, and tòn· u or sen hvi in the reign of Naresuan, might have been attacked by Ayutthaya
and have figured for that reason in theoretical claims, but this will not do for others such as jian· ray,
jian· run·, jian· sen and gotrapòn· (near Thakhek), which, like śri satanaganahuta, were not
objects of Siamese expansion until the reigns of Taksin or Rama I. The list is thus not a coherent
whole for any period earlier than the end of the 18th century, and it is significant that just before
compiling the laws, Rama I had successfully carried out campaigns which added several of these
territories to his kingdom as vassals. On the other hand, when the chronicle of 1157 was being
written (1795) he was entirely preoccupied with campaigns in the south and this is reflected in the
territorial claims of that list.
A second part of the same Palatine Law section lists eight baña of "great cities" (maha
nagara) who took the water oath and were thus more closely connected to the capital than the 16
vassal princes who merely offered "gold and silver flowers". A glance at the list shows that seven of

60 Vickery
them, four in the north and three in the south, correspond to vassal states of the 1157 chronicle.
Only nagara raj asima in the Northeast is not found in the earlier list.
Now I wish to emphasize again that both of these lists are in documents composed for
Rama I, and both are placed at dates very close together in the 14th century. Some of the same
anachronisms are found in both, but obviously the differences between them are such that both
cannot be true for the same date whether this is held to be the reign of Ramadhipati I or of
Trailokanath. The differences must then be explained as the result of one or more stages of
composition in later periods, and the only period for which it is possible to investigate this problem is
the reign of Rama I. I have indicated above reasons why da:vay, mo:ta:ma: and mo:lamlön·
would have been included in the list of 1795 but not that of 1782. Now we see that the last two
have been dropped from the list of 1805. By this time Thai pretensions to these towns were being
given up, although Tenasserim was still in Thai hands and Tavoy was still desired.
The absence of Songkhla from the latest list is due to its diminished status once Nakhon Sri
Thammarat had been restored to its earlier position, and the inclusion of Nakhon Ratchasima among
the great cities in 1805 reflects the increasing attention given by Rama I to the North and Northeast.
The name sajanalai instead of savarrgalok may be due to conscious archaizing, but both names
were still currently known. Only the omission of candapur cannot be explained by reference to the
events of the first Bangkok reign.
Another territorial list in the 1805 law collection is that of the Brah. Dharrmanun (Law of
Procedure), with a date probably intended as equivalent to 1633. This list, like that of 1782, shows
the three-fold division of provinces under the ministries, with the difference that those under the
mahat daiy in the 1782 list are only implied. The ministerial attributions are identical. Some not
included in both are small provinces subordinate at times to a larger neighbour, such as hlán· suon,
padiv and drai yog of the earlier list which are missing in 1805 and were probably included in
jumbòr and kañcanapuri as they are today. The 1805 list adds davay, which has been discussed,
and shows nagara śri dharrmaraj a restored to its prominent position. The name pan·taban is most
likely equivalent to pan·sa:ban in the modern province of Prachuapkhirikhan, and samgok is
possibly the amphoe of the same name in Pathumthani.
It is clear that the date of 1633 is too early for this list since La Loubère in 1688 observed
that provincial administration was entirely under the cákri. Prince Damrong proposed 1691, not on
any textual grounds, but because King Phetracha had to deal with a rebellion in Nakhon Sri
Thammarat in that year and might have found such an organisation more efficient for military
operations. However, the date intended by the compiler of the laws may not simply be ignored, and
we must take into account the statement of Rama I implying two earlier stages after the reign of King
Naray, one in which all southern provinces were under the kalahom, and one with all of them under
the glán·. He did not pretend that a division such as he made in 1782 had ever existed previously.
Just as 1633 is too early for this type of division so is the cul.amani .  date of 1743 occasionally
attributed to this law equally inappropriate, for at the latter date all the southern provinces, according
to the 1782 statement of Rama I, should have been under either the kalahom or the glán·. Had the
system he desired, and finally instituted, been in existence in 1743 his solution would most likely
have been simply to adopt it on the grounds that there had been an Ayutthayan precedent for it only
40 years earlier.

61 Vickery
 Akin has noted the name krun· kau (Ayutthaya in the Bangkok period) as evidence of an
insertion by Rama I.194 I would go further and suggest that the list is entirely the work of Rama I, as
is probably the division of the provinces among the three ministries. Another clue, besides krun· kau,
to tampering with the Dharrmanūn list is the inclusion of bej(r)apuri under the kalahom. In 1782
Rama I said he was taking that province from the mahat daiy to give to the kalahom, and if the date
of the Dharrmanun is even approximately accurate that province would have been under the maha
tdaiy. Moreover the Hierarchy Law, even though the threefold provincial division is not
mentioned, lists bej(r)apuriy under the pra:tèn· senat. khva, and all other provinces under that
pra:tèn· belonged to the cákri in the Dharrmanun law (see further below).
In fact, the statement by Rama I on the development of ministerial control of the provinces
seems to be convincing evidence that the structure he finally set up had never existed before. He
wished to share out provincial administration, and the perquisites thereof, among his ministers, who
were also his close allies and supporters, and in searching for historical justification he hit at different
times upon two different rationales.195 In 1782 he explained that Ayutthayan practice had been to
give southern provinces to the kalahom, although he himself would also let the glán· retain some, but
23 years later he simply inserted his system into the laws under an Ayutthaya period date to make it
appear that his system was the traditional one.196
It appears then, that all of the territorial lists so far discussed were drawn up in their entirety
at different times in the reign of Rama I and reflect the preoccupations of that time. They are thus of
no value as source material for any earlier period, which is not to say that there were no earlier lists
which in part formed the basis for those of Rama I. His use of malak a, java, malayu, varavari,
uyòn·ta:hna:, ton· ū, jian· krai, jian· kran, for example, the location of some of which may have
already been entirely unknown, seems to be certain evidence that earlier lists were still extant.
Indeed, proof of the existence of earlier, and different, lists is the Brah. raj paññáti 2, of
1783, in which Rama I included a list of 16 maha nagar said to have been in an old Palatine Law,
and considered as foreign territories (tan· möan·). They were, in modern orthography, Phitsanulok,
Satchanalay, Kampheng Phet, Tak, Nakon Ratchasima, Phichay, Phetchabun, Takuapa, Takuatung,
Patthalung, Songkhla, Thlang, Chanthabun, Nakon Sri Thammarat, Tenasserim, Tavoy. Among all
the lists of provinces it is the most peculiar geopolitically, and there is no evident reason why
precisely those 16 möan·, and not others, should have been considered outside the Ayutthayan
polity, unless this list is an authentic ancient relic from the time before Ayutthaya and Sukhothai were
fully unified, but when Ayutthaya already exerted some political hegemony over the Sukhothai area.
This would have been between 1419 and the 1440s. The number 16 for the listed möan· may
indicate a relationship with the lists in the Palatine Law of Rama I and the 1157 chronicles,
although the names are mostly different. Perhaps the number 16 was of traditional or ritual
significance.197

194 .Akin, p. 192.

195 .For discussion of Rama I as first among equals at the beginning of his reign, see David K.
Wyatt, "Family Politics in Nineteenth-Century Thailand", Journal of Southeast Asian History 9/2
(September 1968), pp. 208-228.
196 A date which he intended as 1633. This list is evidence against culam ani.
. .
197 In traditional Indian geography there were 16 great continents, mahājanapada.

62 Vickery
 The one remaining long territorial list, that of the Law of Provincial Hierarchies, shows an
entirely different character and seems to be a genuine period piece, although perhaps not of the 14th
to 15th centuries. Its 48 provinces cover, with the exception of the vassal states (the Chiang Mai,
Lao, and southern Malay areas), the entire kingdom of Siam as it was constituted in the early l9th
century. They are also divided into first, second, third and fourth class provinces, another 19th-
century feature. Most of the governors, however, have yaśa ranks which fell out of use sometime
towards the end of the Ayutthaya period. For example, all of the second class governors are òkña,
the third class governors are either òkña or òkbrah,
. and those of the listed fourth class provinces
are òkbrah, . òkmöan· or brah,. only the last of which was still in use by the reign of Rama I. The
governors of the two first class provinces, Phitsanulok and Nakon Sri Thammarat, are entitled cau
baña, appropriate for the time of Rama I. The òk- titles are generally used as described by La
Loubère, but that author believed the titles were distributed strictly according to the status of the
möan·, which is not the case in the law.
Furthermore the first, second and third class provinces are not distributed among the three
ministries, but, along with most of the fourth class provinces, are subordinate to four different
officials called pra:tèn·. Only the very last statement of the law says that, "the fourth-class möan·
subordinate to the mahat dai, kra:lahom, kram da hold śaktina as follows: cau möan· 3000...",198
which, for the reasons outlined above, must be an insertion of Rama I, and applies to the last 34
provinces listed without, however, specifying which provinces were under which ministry. The
statement can refer only to these 34, and not to the other fourth-class provinces dependent on first,
second, and third class provinces, because the latter are elsewhere given śaktina of 1600, 1000
and 800 respectively.
Two more law contexts are relevant for the study of territorial organisation. The first, in
section 8 of the Palatine Law, sets forth the order of precedence of kings' sons (luk dhoe)
administering ('eating') provinces, and then lists the möan· luk hlvan· (möan· of kings' sons) as bis.
nulok, savarrgalok, kamben  . · bej, labapuri, and sin·puri, and the möan· hlan hlvan· (möan· of
kings' grandsons/nephews) as inpuri and brahmpu . ri. These statements may not be construed as
indicating more than that certain princes received livings from certain provinces, like their
contemporaries in Burma, situations which do not affect the classifications of the provinces in the
other laws. It would seem that this type of exploitation of bis. nulok, savarrgalok, and kamben . · bej
could only have prevailed after 1569.199
The second statement, in the preamble of the Law on Abduction/Kidnapping, speaks of
slaves and members of the corveable population fleeing to jalian·, sukkhodai, dun· yan·, pan· yam,
sòn· kev, sahlvan
. · , jav tan·rav , and kamben
. · bej.200 It is interesting for preserving certain archaic
names found in other sources, such as the Sukhothai inscriptions, but missing from the laws. These
archaic names show that we are dealing with a text which may really have had its origin in the 14th
century, but the Buddhist era of its date, (1899/AD 1355-56) is probably due to a later
recodification. This is the Ayutthayan law text which bears some resemblance, especially in this list
of names, with the law inscribed in Sukhothai inscription no. 38, and which convinced Griswold and

198 Laws I, p. 326.

199 . Laws I, p. 72.
200 . Laws III, p. 1

63 Vickery
Prasert that the latter represented an Ayutthayan intervention in Sukhothai near the end of the 14th
century. I have argued the contrary, that it was a Sukhothai law later adapted in Ayutthaya, with that
list of names, inappropriate for the situation in Ayutthaya, maintained unchanged. There are two
periods when such Ayutthayan appropriation could easily have occurred, the time of Trailok, which
is reflected in that list of names, or in the new unification of Sukhothai with Ayutthaya after 1569. 201
Below are the provincial lists which have been described. The names are in the order of the
Hierarchy Law, with names not in that text inserted as closely as possible to their geographical
location, in general from North to South. Numbers under the other headings show the order of the
provinces in those lists. The list headed 'Pal' is the Palatine Law, and that entitled 'Old' is the old
Palatine Law to which Rama I referred in his Paññáti of 1783.

The provincial lists

Hierarchy
Law Rama I
name class pratèn· Dharrmanun 1782 Pal 1157 Old

Nagar hlvan· 1
Śri sátanagan. ahut 2
Jian· hmai 3
Tòn· u 4
Jian· krai 5
Jian· kran 6
Jian· saen 7
Jian· run· 8
Jian· ray 9
Saen hvi 10
Khemaraj 11
Brae 12
Nan 13
Tai dòn· 14
Gotrapòn· 15
Rev kaev 16
Biśn. ulok 1+ senat. khva cakri 1 I 10 I
Nagar śri dh 1 inpaña zay kala 1 kala 3 V 4 XIV
Savarrgalok 2 culadeb zay cakri 2 13
Sájanalaiy  II II
Śukkhodai 2 culadeb zay cakri 3 III 11
. · bej
Kamben 2 senat. khva cakri 4 IV 15 III
Tak IV
Bejapurrn. 2 senat. khva cakri 26 VII

201 . See footnotes 17 and 165 above.

64 Vickery
Nagarrajasima 2 culadeb zay cakri 31 VI V
Tahnavśri 2 inpaña zay kala 14 kala 11 VII 3 XV
M.rt kala 15 kala 12
Davay kala 16 VIII 5 XVI
Motama 6
Molamlön 7
Kra: kala 13
Samgok kala 17
Bijaiy 3 sena.t khva cakri 5 12 VI
Bicitr 3 senat. khva cakri 7 14
Nagar svarrg 3 culadeb zay cakri 6 16
Candapurrn. 3 inpaña zay glán· 1 kram da 7 9 XIII
Trat glán· 2 kram da 8
Jaiya 3 inpaña zay kala 4 kala 4
Hlán· suan kala 5
Bádalun· 3 inpaña zay kala 2 kala 2 X
San·khla kala 3 kala 1 8 XI
Jumbhòr 3 inpaña zay kala 5 kala 6
Padiv  kala 7
Bejpuriy 4 sena.t khva kala 6 kala 20 (<mahat )
Jaiynath 4 senat. khva cakri 9
Indpuriy 4 senat. khva cakri 11
Brahmpuriy 4 culadeb zay cakri 12
Singpuriy 4 culadeb zay cakri 13
Labpuriy 4 senat. khva cakri 15
Srapuriy 4 sena.t khva cakri 16
Udaiydhaniy 4 culadeb zay cakri 10
Manoromy 4 cakri 8
Ān· Dòn·  4 s. arabhas . khva
Viśeśjaijañ cakri 17
Krun· kau cakri 18
Savarrgapuriy 4 culadeb zay
Sarrgpuri  cakri 14
Karpuriy 4 inpaña zay cakri 25
Kañcanapuri kala 18
Draiyog  4 inpaña zay kala 19
Subándpuriy 4 culadeb zay cakri 22
Śrisavát 4 senat. khva
Nagar jaiśri 4 [culadeb zay] cakri 23
Rajpuriy 4 culadeb zay cakri 24
Viseś l̄. jaiy 4 [senat. khva]
Cha:jön· drau 4 sena.t khva cakri 21 mahat

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 Nagar nayak 4 sena.t khva cakri 19
Pracinpuriy 4 culadeb zay cakri 20
Nandapuriy 4 inpaña zay glán· 5 kram da 1
Da cin  ----*
Sagarpuri glán· 8 kram da 3
Mae klòn·  ----*
Samudrsan·gram glán· 7 kram da 9 (<mahat )
Pak nam
.  ----*
Samudrprakar  glán· 6 kram da 2
Jan  inpaña zay
Jalpuri  kram da 4
Pranpuriy inpaña zay kala 8 kala 10
Kuy inpaña zay kala 7 kala 9
Glòn· van kala 9 kala 8
Pan·taban kala 10
Thalan· kala 11 kala 17 XII
Rayòn· inpaña zay glán· 3 kram da 6
Pan· lamun· ----* glán· 4 kram da 5
Da Ròn· ----* cakri 27
Pua Jum ----* cakri 28
Kambra
. n ----* cakri 30
Jaipatan ----* cakri 29
Takuadun· kala 12 kala 15 IX
Takuapa kala 13 kala 14 VIII
Ban·n·a kala 16
Uyòn·tahna 17
Malaka 18 1
Java 2
Malayu 19
Varavari 20

*These are in the Hierarchy Law, but not under a pra:tèn·, thus probably new in the time of
Rama I. They are found in the Dharrmanun, which is further evidence linking this law to Rama I.
As noted, the Hierarchy Law contains two levels of organization, the latest being
classification of provinces as first, second, third, and fourth, and an earlier, partly concealed
structure in which each of the provinces is listed as subordinate to (khün) one of four pra:tèn·
entitled culadeb zay, inpaña zay, sena.t khva, and s. arabhas. khva, although the last included only
one fourth class province, Ang Thong. There is no mention of the three territorial ministries to which
the provinces were supposed to be subordinate until the very end of the law, where they are
mentioned only with respect to the fourth class provinces.
A search through the various ministries reveals that all had rather low-ranking officials called
pra:tèn·, the meaning of which term seems to have been lost already in the Ayutthaya period. None

66 Vickery
of the pra:tèn· in other contexts have titles corresponding to those of the provincial law. In the
Registrar's department, however, we find the relevant titles given to officials who are kum. r. tèn·,
probably Old Khmer kamraten·, and because of this I reconstruct pra:tèn· as Khmer mratèn·.202
The full titles of these four, plus two other kum. r. tèn·, who are of intrinsic interest in other respects,
are as follows:

kum. r. tèn· culadeb bhákti śri kántan bala dahar khün fay zay [left side]
kum. r. tèn· inpra:yadhikariy bala röan khün fay zay [left side]
kum. r. tèn· peñadhikariy khün fay zay nòk [left side outer]
kum. r. tèn· s. arabhas . jatikari śri kántan bala röan khün fay khva
[right side]
kum. r. tèn· senat. jat ikari śri kántan bala dahar khün fay khva
[right side]
kum. r. tèn· dharmadhikari khün fay khva nòk [right side outer]

These titles are obviously more complete versions of those given to the pra:tèn· in the
provincial law. The main term shows a difference only in the second, and here inpra:ya and inpaña
are easily understood as equivalents. Since kum. r. tèn·/kamraten· is a well-attested title of known
meaning, this Registrar's section of the Law of the Civil Hierarchy is certainly one which has
resisted tampering, and since the ranks of these officials are fairly low it is certain that the usage is
significantly later than the 14th century when kamraten· was still for the Thai a very high title. The
inclusion of these pra:tèn·/kum. r. tèn· in this manner in the Provincial Law shows that it is a later
composition than the Registrar's section in the Civil Hierarchy Law. The change in the titles from
kum. r. tèn· to pra:tèn· shows that the former was no longer understood, and that scribes replaced it
with the latter which, although not understood either, was found in several sections of the laws, and
which in fact had a generic relationship to kutèn· when both were Khmer titles.
A comparison of these six kamraten· titles reveals a number of significant details. We may
note in passing that some of the titles seem to be incomplete, which is of no particular relevance at
this time. Of more interest is the three-fold division, (1) "forces" (bala) of the dahar/ "forces" of the
röan; (2) left/right (zay/khva); and, (3) by inference, [inner]/outer (nòk). All four provincial kum. r.
tèn· are inner.
Schematically the divisions appear as below:

center

left right
| |

202 .
Laws I, p. 249. These functions and the correct etymology were noted by Jit Pumisak, Thai
society, p. 185.

67 Vickery
 | | | |
outer inner inner outer
| |

bala dahar bala röan bala röan bala dahar

The provincial law, in addition to showing the provinces under four pra:tèn·<kamraten·
subordinate to the registrar's department rather than the kalahom or cákri, also divides them
between the "forces" (bala) of dahar and "forces" of röan, and both of those groups were divided
between left and right. This is quite different from the division between dahar, under the kalahom,
and bala röan, under the cákri, which was a feature of the 19th-century Thai administration, with
its origins attributed to King Trailok. Moreover, there are very few cases of one-to-one
correspondence between the two structures. Most of the dahar provinces of the provincial law later
became mahat daiy (bala röan) provinces and vice versa.
Space limitations do not permit further discussion of the categories of the working and
serving population, but the laws are full of references to relationships and classifications of ordinary
people which do not conform to the system known from the nineteenth century. This still awaits
serious study.

Some conclusions on law recensions and development of the central government

This does not purport to be 'final conclusions', for the problems concerning organization of
the ordinary population have hardly been touched, but only further conclusions beyond what were
proposed in my earlier papers.
The more detailed investigation seems to confirm--at least it does not weaken--the
conclusions about dates, titles and recensions made in "Prolegomena". None of the law dates may
be imputed to any time before King Trailok (1448-1488), and most of them were devised, when
they are not true contemporary dates, after the reign of Naresuan (1590-1605). In particular, the
very early Buddhist era dates, ostensibly from the time of Ramadhipati I of Ayutthaya, were
recalculated in the 16th century.
To be sure, recalculation implies that there were earlier texts with some different type of
date, and what was their origin? Here I would like to give more emphasis to one of my conclusions
in "Prolegomena". That is, the true principal title of the king reigning 1448-1488 was ramadhipati,
not trailokanat h, but this was no longer recognized in the 16th century. Thus laws of mid-15th
century, with the royal title ramadhipati, along with changes in their texts, were redated to the first
reign of Ayutthaya as understood from the chronicles. King Trailok was probably the reformer he is
reputed to have been, and probably responsible for more legislation than is now recorded either in
his name or in his reign.
Perhaps the only portions of text which reflect the time of Ramadhipati I are those laying
claim to suzerainty over the southern part of the Malaysian peninsula, for Ayutthayan policy at that
time was to control that economically strategic area, and later to compete with Malacca in the China
trade. Those sections of the law, however, could also be imputed with equal plausibility to the time
of Trailok, who still tried to invade the peninsula as far as Malacca.
Probably a very early text is the first section of the Abduction Law with its list of
Sukhothai-area provinces, including some ancient names which could be attributed to the 14th

68 Vickery
century. This text seems to imitate the Sukhothai law in inscription no. 38 dated between 1371 and
1433. It would be reasonable to take this law as having been adopted by King Trailok during the
time he ruled in Phitsanulok over a joint kingdom of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya.
Among the hidden structures is an apparent four-minister central government with the möan·
minister in first place, and in which all have yaśa of khun. This reflects the time just before the reign
of Trailok, as seen in the "2/k.125 Fragment", and in the statement about central government
reforms imputed to Trailok in the Ayutthayan chronicles. To a certain extent that reform by Trailok
may be accepted, at least the raising of rank of the möan·, ván·, glán· and na ministries. The
prominence of the cákri and kalahom, however, especially their control over two divisions of the
population, must be imputed to later reforms and recensions, most probably the last, in the time of
Rama I of Bangkok.
Because of the Khmer titles, kamraten·, of the important officials over the provincial
administration, this structure hidden in the Provincial Hierarchy Law may be one of the oldest
layers of administration in the Three Seals. A precise date cannot be assigned, but it must predate
1569 when Ayutthaya came under the Sukhothai royalty, and it is probably at least as old as the
reign of King Trailok who was still using Khmer officially. This Khmer usage does not mean recent
influence from Angkor, for the Ayutthayan area was itself mixed Khmer and Mon, and a similar
provincial organization cannot be identified from Cambodian records.
Van Vliet, in the early 17th century, implied a provincial division not seen in the laws, and
possibly related to the kum. r. tèn·. He said that each of the four important ministers, respectively ván·,
baldeb, cákri, and glán·, had about one-fourth of the administration of the country and received
one-fourth of the revenues.203 Originally kamraten· was high enough to be a ministerial rank, and
van Vliet's remark suggests that in the oldest Ayutthayan four-department central government
structure, which was maintained until Rama I, the four ministers were kamraten· > kum. r. tèn·. Over
time ministerial titles changed, and relative importance among the four varied, with provincial kum. r.
tèn· themselves becoming relatively minor officials in the Registrar's Department.
At the time when this structure was active, and the provinces under the Registrar, the latter,
as the Civil Hierarchy Law still suggests, was under the Minister of the Palace (ván·), whose pre-
eminence was reported by van Vliet as late as the 17th century. There is obviously a contradiction
here, and perhaps van Vliet was writing in a time of transition. Contradiction concerning control over
provinces is also seen in the 18th-century description by Turpin, in which provinces and governonrs
were under the cákri, but land and corvée under the baldeb. Perhaps such contradictions were
inherent throughout the Ayutthaya period, not to be resolved until the 19th century.
Before the time of Trailok, and indeed until after 1569, it is difficult to accept that the
provinces of the old Sukhothai kingdom were subordinate to the degree implied in the laws, and
their inclusion may have come about only in the time of Naresuan, as Quaritch Wales noted. That
would have been when the Provincial Law in its present form was drawn up, with the old kum. r. tèn·
assimilated to the lower rank of pra:tèn·. An indication that this must have been after 1569 is in the
titles for the governor of Phitsanulok. Until 1569 that post maintained the traditional Sukhothai royal
title of Mahadharmaraj adhiraj and Sukhothai royalty were governors, until the last of that rank
became King of Ayutthaya following the war with Burma. With Sukhothai royalty ensconced in
Ayutthaya, their old territory would have become ordinary provinces, as seen in the Provincial Law

203 Jeremias van Vliet, "Description of the Kingdom of Siam".

69 Vickery
where Phitsanulok, although one of only two first class provinces, no longer has a governor with a
Sukhothai royal title. The eighteenth-century description of Siam by the French writer Turpin
suggests that the change in title for governors of Phitsanulok did not occur until the reign of Taksin,
for Turpin, writing, apparently in 1768, said that Phitsanulok was "formerly under the rule of
hereditary Seigneurs, and justice is still rendered today in the name of [emphasis added] its ancient
masters, and in their palace". In that year there was an expedition against Phitsanulok, but when he

wrote Turpin did not know its results. It was successful, and in 1770 Taksin "promoted the Cau

[sic! Phráya] Yomarat to Cau Phráya Surasi and ordered him to rule in Phitsanulok", and the title of
the governor of Phitsanulok in the Provincial Hierarchy Law is cau baña suraśri biśamadhira
j.204 This officer was the younger brother of the Cakri who later became Rama I. What is new in
the organization of the Provincial Law is the division into four classes of provinces, with no
relationship to the four kum. r. tèn·/pra:tèn·.
One aspect of the structure under kum. r. tèn·, the division of both type of 'forces', bala röan
and bala dahar among groups of the right and of the left, still appears in an early 18th-century law,
but was changed in a new version of the same law less than a decade later, as described above (pp.
14-15). Of course, the division of the population under the kum. r. tèn· represents a quite different
order from that between dahar 'soldiers' and bala röan 'civilians' known in the 19th century, and
perhaps from the 18th. Understanding the significance of the titles of the kum. r. tèn· would help, but
only one of them seems to have a clear meaning. That is the pra:dèn·/kum. r. tèn· senat. . In Burmese
sena.t is 'firearms'; and in the Burmese administration people were divided into villages by type of
service. Did the same type of service division prevail in Thailand? More discussion of this must await
study of the serving population.
The overall structure of the central government, which may be excavated from the many
textual layers of the Hierarchy Laws, with its clear similarities to Tai, Lue, and Chinese systems,
should probably be attributed to no date earlier than 1569 when Maha Dharmarajadhiraja of
Phitsanulok, of the old Sukhothai royal family, became king in Ayutthaya, to be followed by his two
sons, Naresuan and Ramesuon (traditionally known as 'Ekadaśara.th'). It was after this that
Ayutthaya really became Thai. Of course, King Trailok may have begun to assimilate northern
Tai/Thai practices during his reign in Phitsanulok, and absolute dating of these administrative
practices may not be possible.

204 . 
Turpin, Vol I, p. 26, translated from the original French, Vol II, p. 341; Ji r i Stránský, Die
Wiedervereinigung Thailands unter Tak sin 1767-1782, Hamburg and Tokyo, Gesellschaft für
Natur-und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, e.V., 1973, p. 91, translated from the original German.
Correction of the Yomarat's yaśa is based on Stránský's index.

70 Vickery
71 Vickery