Sukhothai Kingdom

The Sukhothai Kingdom was a post-classical Siamese kingdom (maṇḍala) in Mainland Southeast Asia surrounding the ancient capital city of Sukhothai in present-day north-central Thailand. It evolved from a trading hub to a city-state in 1127 and emerged into the kingdom by Si Inthrathit in 1238. Sukhothai existed as an independent polity until 1438 when it fell under the influence of the neighboring Ayutthaya after the death of Borommapan (Maha Thammaracha IV).

Sukhothai Kingdom อาณาจักรสุโขทัย (Thai) Anachak Sukhothai
1238–1438/1584
Sukhothai Kingdom at its greatest extent during the late 13th century under the reign of King Ram Khamhaeng according to the Ram Khamhaeng Inscription, the coastlines reflecting era-accurate coastline.
Sukhothai Kingdom (orange) in 1400 CE
Capital	Sukhothai (1238–1347) Song Khwae (1347–1438)
Common languages	Old Thai
Religion	Theravada Buddhism
Government	Mandala kingdom
Monarch
• 1238–1270 (first)	Si Inthrathit
• 1419–1438 (last)	Borommapan
Historical era	Post-classical era
• Founded as city-state	1127
• Kingdom established	1238
• Tributary of Ayutthaya	1378–1438
• Personal Union with Ayutthaya	1438–1569
• Installation of Maha Thammarachathirat	1569
• Annexed to Ayutthaya	1584
Currency	Cowrie shell Photduang
Preceded by Succeeded by Lopburi Chaliang Phraek Si Racha Indaprastha Ayutthaya Kingdom
Today part of	Thailand Laos Malaysia Myanmar

Sukhothai is traditionally understood to have been established as a commercial hub within the Dvaravati Lavo in the 7th century. Following the decline of Lavo, the polity appears to have fallen under the suzerainty of the Qiān, whose authority was ultimately extinguished following their defeat by Angkor in 946 CE. After that, Sukhothai was subsequently incorporated into the domain of Haripuñjaya approximately a decade later. By the mid-12th century, control of the city was reasserted by the Xiān monarchs, a dynasty descended from the Qiān, who are believed to have maintained a brief period of subordination to Angkor between the late 12th and early 13th centuries. Sukhothai is conventionally regarded as having emerged as an independent polity in 1238 CE.

The kingdom was centralized and expanded to its greatest extent during the reign of Ram Khamhaeng the Great (1279–1298), who some historians considered to have introduced Theravada Buddhism and the initial Thai script to the kingdom. Ram Khamhaeng also initiated relations with Yuan China, through which the kingdom developed the techniques to produce and export ceramics like sangkhalok ware.

After the reign of Ram Khamhaeng, the kingdom fell into decline. In 1349, during the reign of Li Thai (Maha Thammaracha I), Sukhothai was invaded by the Ayutthaya Kingdom, a neighboring Thai polity. It remained a tributary state of Ayutthaya until it was annexed by the kingdom in 1438 after the death of Borommapan. Despite this, the Sukhothai nobility continued to influence the Ayutthaya monarchy in centuries after through the Sukhothai dynasty.

Sukhothai was long regarded in Thai historiography as "the first Thai kingdom,” though current scholarship agrees that the origins of the Thai people extend much further back in time. The ruins of the kingdom's capital, now 12 km (7.5 mi) outside the modern town of Sukhothai Thani in Sukhothai Province, are preserved as the Sukhothai Historical Park and have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Etymology

The Thai name Sukhothai (Thai: สุโขทัย, Thai pronunciation: [sú khôo thaj]) is a compound of Indic origin. It joins sukha (Sanskrit: सुख, lit. 'pleasant, happiness') to udaya (Sanskrit: उदय, lit. 'ascent, rise of the sun'), and is treated as a corrupted form of Sanskrit and Hindi Sukhodaya (Sanskrit: सुखोदय), Sukhada (Sanskrit: सुखदा), or Sukhadaya (Hindi: सुखदाय). The name has been rendered "the dawn of happiness", "the dawn of prosperity" and "rising happiness", and glossed as "the Happy Thai".

G. E. Gerini gave the city an earlier name still. On his account it rose about 70 BC as Sukda, Sukhada or Sukhodaya, the form Sukhothai coming into use in central Siam later; the Mon-Khmer inhabitants of the territory are said to have pronounced it Sakkadéa, syncopated to Sakdéa or Sakda.

History

Early period

A modern reconstruction of the political map of Indochina around 960 CE, showing Roy de Sukhodaya. Maps of this kind project later polity names onto the 10th century and are not contemporary evidence.

Wat Si Sawai at the Sukhothai Historical Park

Reconstructed representations of women's traditional dress in the Sukhothai period (13th–15th centuries), based on archaeological evidence.

Origins to the 10th century

The traditions disagree about when Sukhothai was founded, and none of them is contemporary. One chronicle tradition places the founding of Sukhothai in 494 CE, followed by its twin city of Chaliang (เชลียง). The Legend of the Arhat (Tamnan Nithan Phra Arahant; ตำนานนิทานพระอรหันต์) instead gives 679 CE and names the founder as Indrajayadhirāja (อินทราไชยธิราช), from the city of Nakhon Luang (นครหลวง, "capital city", possibly Lavapura), who was deposed in 687 by Balidhiraja, elder son of Kalavarnadisharaja of Lavo. Who followed Balidhiraja is obscure in the surviving record.

A local textual tradition holds that Sukhothai and Lavo were subsequently brought under the authority of Padumasūriyavaṁśa (ปทุมสุริยวงศ์), presented in these narratives as the first Siamese sovereign, and identified with Pra Poat honne Sourittep pennaratui sonanne bopitra, whose reign is conventionally dated 757–800 CE.

Tatsuo Hoshino's reading of the Cefu Yuangui and the Book of Tang accords with that claim. Those texts record that the territory of Qiān, centred at Si Thep, bordered to the north on Duō Mó Cháng (多摩萇), which Hoshino locates in the Yom and Nan river basins of the mountainous region of present-day northern Thailand. On this reading the Sukhothai–Chaliang region was subordinate to Si Thep between the 8th and 10th centuries.

For the 9th and 10th centuries the city is generally presumed to have been abandoned after an incursion by the legendary Khom kingdom of Suvarṇakōmakam (สุวรรณโคมคำ), in the region of present-day Chiang Saen. However, two difficulties attach to that presumption. A separate tradition has Sukhothai playing an active part in the succession of the Dvaravati polity of Sambuka in the same period. Its ruler is said to have adopted Sambuka's prince Balaraj, backed his overthrow of his own father, and installed him as monarch of Sambuka, whose reign is put at 867 to 913 CE. Separately, Suvarṇakōmakam is widely identified as the predecessor of the Yonok Kingdom and is generally understood to have flourished before the 7th century, some two centuries before the incursion attributed to it.

Haripuñjaya rule, Tai settlement and the rise of a city-state

After the collapse of the Menam polities under Tambralinga and Angkorian pressure in the 10th century, Sukhothai is reported to have been taken in 957 by the Mon monarch Abhayakamini. He is said to have fled Haripuñjaya when its capital was captured by another Khom polity, Umoṅkaselā (อุโมงคเสลา), in what is now Fang. The chiefdom declared independence from Umoṅkaselā in 1017, during the reign of Arunaraja.

Its position on the routes linking the Mon city-states to the west, the Tai polities to the north and the Xiān polities of the lower Chao Phraya River basin to the south is thought to have made Sukhothai a regional entrepôt, developed to the level of a city-state by no later than 1127, a condition that appears to have held until the formal establishment of the Sukhothai Kingdom in 1238.

The Tai element in this population has a chronology of its own. Historians have long held that the migration of Tai peoples into Mainland Southeast Asia was gradual and took place between the 8th and 10th centuries. Before the rise of Sukhothai several Tai polities existed in the neighbouring northern highlands, among them Ngoenyang of the Northern Thai people (present-day Chiang Saen) and Chiang Hung of the Tai Lue people (present-day Jinghong, China). Semi-legendary Shan documents record that the Mau Shan prince Sam Lung-pha of Mogaung, before founding the Tai kingdom of the Ahom in Assam in 1229, raided the Menam valley and the Malay peninsula as far as Tawi (Dawei) and Yansaleng (possibly Junk Ceylon). This influx of armed Tai has been suggested as a factor in the establishment of the Tai kingdom of Sukhothai.

Local textual tradition, by contrast, places dynastic ties between the Mon monarchs of the Menam basin and the Tai nobles of the northern valleys considerably earlier, in the late 7th century. One of the sons of Balidhiraja of Sukhothai bears the Tai name Sai Thong Som and is traditionally held to have been born to a Tai queen consort from Yonok. That union is attributed to the northward expansion of the Lavo Kingdom into Yonok territory under Kalavarnadisharaja (r. 648–700), as recorded in the Northern Chronicle. The connection is said to have continued to the reign of Abhayakamini, whose consort came from Nan in Tai Ngoenyang.

Rulers before 1238

Dress and hairstyle of the Sukhothai era, from the Wat Si Chum stone.

The following are recognised as rulers of Sukhothai before the formal foundation of the Sukhothai Kingdom, conventionally assigned by earlier historians to 1238. Some dates derive from chronicle traditions and should be treated as approximate.

Ruler		Reign
Romanised name	Thai name
Under the Lavo Kingdom of Dvaravati
Indrajayadhirāja	อินทราไชยธิราช	679–687
Balidhiraja	พาลีธิราช	687 – mid-8th century
Under Indaprasthanagara / Qiān Zhī Fú
Unknown		757–?
Name unknown		c. 867
Abandoned?		Late 8th century – 957
Under the Haripuñjaya Kingdom
Abhayakamini	อภัยคามินี	957–959?
Sricandradhipati (Phra Ruang II)	ศรีจันทราธิบดี	959–?
As the free city-state of Si Satchanalai–Sukhodaya
Arunaraja (Phra Ruang I)	อรุณกุมาร	?–1052
Ruled from Mueang Chaliang		Late 11th – early 12th century
The polity split in two: Si Satchanalai and Kamphaeng Phet–Sukhodaya
Under Indaprasthanagara
Śayarāṅgarāja	ไสยรังคราช	1138–?
Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri	พนมทะเลศรี	1155?–1156/57
Suryaraja	สุริยราชา	1156–1184
De facto independent by c. 1204
Candraraja	จันทราชา	1184–1214
E Daeng Phloeng	อีแดงเพลิง	1214?–1219
The two seats were merged
Pha Mueang	ผาเมือง	Ceded the throne to Sri Naw Nam Thum
Sri Naw Nam Thum	พ่อขุนศรีนาวนำถุม	1219–?
Khom Sabat Khlon Lamphong	ขอมสบาดโขลญลำพง	?–1238
Pha Mueang	ผาเมือง	1238
1238: traditional formation of the Sukhothai Kingdom

Notes

Kingdom establishment

For the list of Sukhothai monarchs since the traditional establishment in 1238, see List of Thai monarchs § Phra Ruang dynasty (1238–1438).

Early political landscape and Monic domination

Following the fall of Lavo to Tambralinga in 927, and of Rāmaññadesa (lit. 'the land of the Mon'; potentially the eastern Menam valley) to Angkor in 946,  the upper Menam valley, particularly the regions of Sukhothai, Si Satchanalai, and Thung Yung (also known as Phichai Chiang Mai พิชัยเชียงใหม่), was brought under the control of a Monic dynasty from Haripuñjaya led by Abhayakamini from the 950s onward, as recorded in the Northern Chronicle. At the same time, the Phitsanulok area is recorded in the Ayutthaya Testimonies as having been governed by Sudhammaraja, a Xiān monarch who had relocated northward from the Phraek Si Racha region in the central Menam valley.

Later, during the reign of Suvacanaraja of Si Satchanalai, which commenced around the 1050s, these territories faced an incursion by a coalition of Tai Yuan mueangs under Śrīdharmatripiṭaka (ศรีธรรมไตรปิฎก) of Ngoenyang Chiang Saen. Although the conflict was ultimately resolved through negotiation, to establish a dynastic alliance, Suvacanarāja gave his only daughter in marriage to Śrīdharmatripiṭaka, while the Xiān ruler of Phitsanulok, led by Vijayaraja, is recorded as having relocated southward to Phetchaburi before the outbreak of hostilities. This interdynastic union produced two princes, the elder of whom, Kesariraja, later became ruler of the Lavo Kingdom.

Following the aforementioned events, no further record explicitly attests to the continuation of this Monic dynasty. In contrast, Śrīdharmatripiṭaka is noted to have remained influential in the region, particularly through the reconstruction of Phitsanulok under his authority. His son, Kesariraja, is further recorded as having married a daughter of an otherwise unidentified ruler of Si Satchanalai, and their son subsequently married a Xiān princess under Phra Chao Luang at Ayodhya. Śrīdharmatripiṭaka is described as settling at Phitsanulok and holding power there until his death. The move has been tentatively dated to about 1106.

Expansion of early Siamese polities

In the mid-12th century the upper Menam valley probably came under an emerging line of Siamese monarchs seated in the Phraek Si Racha region. Two princes of that line established themselves in the upper valley. The Ayutthaya Testimonies place Suryaraja, grandfather of Si Intharathit, at Vicitraprakāra (วิเชียรปราการ, modern Kamphaeng Phet) from about 1157. His cousin, Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri, formally titled Sommedethia Pprappanom Tteleiseri Maahesa Vorauaarintti Raacha Boppitra, appears in the Instructions Given to the Siamese Envoys Sent to Portugal in 1684 and in Du Royaume de Siam, which have him leave Yassouttora Nacoora Louang or Tasoo Nacora Louang, identified with Lavo, and take power at Sukhothai–Lacontai about 1156. The move may have been prompted by Sri Dharmasokaraja II (r. 1157–1183), who campaigned to recover Lavo and Phraek Si Racha and may have pushed his authority north as far as present-day Nakhon Sawan Province, on readings of the Dong Mè Nang Mưo’ng Inscription (K. 766) of 1167; he appears, however, to have lost the whole of the lower Menam valley to the ruler of Chen Li Fu and to the Angkorian Mahidharapura line by the 1180s or 1190s, after which he withdrew south to his own domain of Tambralinga.

The French sources add that in 1157/58 Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri, together with his younger brother Uthong I of Mueang Chaliang, moved south. The younger took the vacant throne of Suphannaphum in 1163, while the elder succeeded a kinsman at Mueang Sing about 1169 and went on to re-establish Phrip Phri in 1188; he also attempted an incursion into Tambralinga, then ruled by Sri Dharmasokaraja II, in 1180 or 1196. Michael Smithies has tentatively placed Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri in the line of Si Intharathit, who later reigned over Sukhothai between 1238 and 1270. His line in the lower valley became the Lavo dynasty of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, and Suryaraja's in the upper valley the Phra Ruang dynasty of Sukhothai.

In 1180 the chief Siamese polity at Phraek Si Racha is reported to have passed to a house possibly connected with the Mahidharapura Kingdoms of the Phimai region. Walailak Songsiri puts the connection no higher than the royal name, suggesting that Mahidharavarman may be the name of a prominent ruler from the polities north of the Dangrek range, taken up as a formal style for use with the Chinese court and perhaps accompanied by kinship ties. Reorganised under that line, it became known as Chen Li Fu. Some scholars hold that it remained under Angkorian suzerainty. By 1200, however, it was asserting some autonomy, most visibly by sending a tribute mission to the Chinese court. To the north, the domain of Candraraja, son of Suryaraja and the ruler who moved the seat from Kamphaeng Phet to Sukhothai after Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri left, is recorded as tributary to Indaprasthanagara through a dynastic tie, which early Thai scholars sought to identify with Angkor, although the Ayutthaya Testimonies place it to the east of Sankhaburi. Sukhothai–Kamphaeng Phet eventually renounced the tribute. War followed, and Sukhothai won it under Si Intharathit.

Rise of Sukhothai and state formation

After that victory Si Intharathit was given Mueang Bang Yang, in the present-day Nakhon Thai district, which had previously served as the power base of his kinsman, Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri. There he married Nang Sueang, a Tai Lueang (ไทเลือง) princess and daughter of Sri Naw Nam Thum, ruler of Mueang Rat (เมืองราด), situated either in modern Lom Sak district or Thung Yang. That Tai Lueang polity extended its reach into Mueang Chaliang early in the 13th century, as the reign of Rajadhiraj II weakened.

With Chaliang secured, Sri Naw Nam Thum and his son Pha Mueang pushed south to Sukhothai in 1219, overthrowing the Mon ruler E Daeng Phloeng. What remained of the older Mon aristocracy then revolted under Khom Sabat Khlon Lamphong and took the city back. Bang Klang Hao, a local chief later known as Si Intharathit, took the city from him in 1238 with military help from his brother-in-law Pha Mueang. The Wat Si Chum Inscription gives Mueang Rat as a substantial polity rather than a single town, describing Pha Mueang as lord there with a large elephant force and many dependent towns, and sets out the campaign in stages. Bang Klang Hao asked for the levies of Mueang Rat. The two moved by separate routes, Bang Klang Hao taking Si Satchanalai while Pha Mueang advanced through Bang Khlong, whose ruler submitted and handed over the town, after which he brought up the levies of Mueang Rat and Mueang Sa Kot. Chit Phumisak read the earlier move by Sri Naw Nam Thum as a first attempt that failed, the city holding out. He dated the point at which Mueang Rat ceased to answer to any outside power to about 1220, on the ground that it was able to commit its whole levy to the Sukhothai campaign.

Pha Mueang is recorded as returning to his own seat rather than taking Sukhothai for himself. That seat bears on the identification of Mueang Rat. A third proposal, advanced by Manit Vallibhotama and followed by Chit, places Mueang Rat at the old Khorat site in Sung Noen district, Nakhon Ratchasima province, on the grounds that Sri Sattha, Pha Mueang's grandson, is recorded as fighting Thao Ji Chan in his late teens and that Dong I Chan lies about 70 km from that site, so the two territories adjoined. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara argue from the terrain for the Nan valley about 50 km upstream from Uttaradit, a reading Wyatt follows while noting that the town has never been found. On the reading that places Mueang Rat at Thung Yang near modern Uttaradit rather than at Lom Sak, it occupies the same ground as Phichai Chiang Mai, the northern polity of Sukhandhakhiri, whose sons Jayadatta and Jayasena married into the ruling house of Ayodhya. Jayasena held Ayodhya from 1253 and returned north in 1289 to succeed his father at Phichai Chiang Mai. What relationship, if any, connected the line of Pha Mueang with that of Sukhandhakhiri does not appear to have been examined.

The events of 1238 made Sukhothai the principal seat of Siamese political authority, which it remained until the end of the 14th century.

Baker and Pasuk describe a steep social order beneath the warriors who fought these campaigns. Successful warriors were rewarded with promotion, land, money, regalia and women, while those who failed were liable to be killed. At Sukhothai an officer titled nai sayotha marshalled manpower, and people were bought and sold in the market alongside animals. Various records show Siamese control of the town before this, but earlier scholarship has taken 1238 as the formal beginning of the polity. David K. Wyatt dates the events later, to about 1243, arguing from the generations. Si Inthrathit was the father of Ram Khamhaeng, who was reigning in the 1290s, so an action of 1220 would fall too early for him. His argument assumes that Pha Mueang had sworn an oath to a ruler at Angkor, and on the later dating that ruler would be Indravarman II rather than Jayavarman VII.

Readings of 1238

How the events of 1238 should be read has itself changed. In the older account the holder of the Khmer-style title was rendered as the commander of a Khmer garrison, which implied a prior military occupation, and the episode became the liberation of Sukhothai from Khmer suzerainty and the founding of an independent kingdom under a Tai dynasty. Baker and Pasuk argue that the ethnic framing and the idea of liberation were both imported from a later era, and read the inscription instead as recording a victory by one local lord associated with Angkor over another warrior holding a Khmer title. Walailak Songsiri reads the title the same way. Chinese records give kamrateng to the rulers of Sukhothai, Phrip Phri and Chen Li Fu alike, and she takes it, with the Indic royal names that accompany it, to have been adopted from the Khorat Plateau and the Tonlé Sap for formal address to the Chinese court rather than as a mark of subordination; the sixty and more settlements dependent on Chen Li Fu had rulers of their own who did not bear it. Wyatt had set the ethnic framing aside in 2001, holding that the line between the two sides was religious and cultural rather than ethnic. He also reported that he could find no adequate explanation for the timing, on his own premise that Angkor held the region. The grievances he takes the Ram Khamhaeng inscription to list would have held over a long period, and a weakening Angkor would on that premise predict comparable risings at other moments, such as after the Cham sack of Angkor in 1177, which did not follow.

What the epigraphy attests bears on all of these readings. For the reign of Jayavarman VII, 1181 to 1218, Baker and Pasuk report that the Chao Phraya plain has yielded none of the temple-endowment inscriptions characteristic of Angkorian provinces, and that his hospital and fire-house foundations, 107 and 121 in all, reach no further west than Prachin Buri; they take the spread of Angkorian styles across the plain to show cultural influence rather than administration. Wyatt reaches the same result from the other side. Of the sixteen dated inscriptions of 1168 to 1219 he surveys, those from Grahi and Lopburi show no indication of Angkorian political or administrative power, while Prachinburi and the Khorat Plateau remain within it, the plateau on seven hospital inscriptions of 1186; he adds that the absence of such references is not conclusive.

The associations of the winning side also bear on this reading. Pha Mueang received from the ruler at Angkor a Khmer title, a regalia sword and a princess in marriage, while Bang Klang Hao later adopted the regnal name Si Inthrathit, the same title conferred on Pha Mueang, when Pha Mueang declined the two towns and invested him instead. Baker and Pasuk compare this sequence with the founding of Lan Xang, in which a local chief travelled to Indaprasthanagara, returned with a princess from its ruling court as his wife, and subdued the surrounding chiefs, arguing that in both cases local rulers derived legitimacy from association with a dominant polity rather than from separation from it. As Si Inthrathit he secured Sukhothai and founded the Phra Ruang dynasty, extending its influence over neighbouring settlements in the upper Chao Phraya valley.

Region, population and culture

Wyatt sets the polity in a region he treats as distinct from the rest of the Menam world. He divides the country of the period into three, a cosmopolitan west living by sea trade, a more urbanised east within the Angkorian cultural orbit, and a north on the Yom and the Nan that was a frontier where incoming and resident populations mixed. He traces the ancestry of the late-13th-century rulers to families who came down the Nan from the U River valley, notes that the Sukhothai dialect stands close to the Phuan of Xiang Khouang, and reads their movement as the working of an ultimogeniture in which elder sons were sent south to find towns of their own while the youngest inherited; they moved into country already held by Mōn and Khmer speakers. He also treats Sukhothai and Si Satchanalai as a paired-city polity rather than as a capital and a dependency, and uses the pairing as a model for other twin names of the period.

Through the 13th and 14th centuries Sukhothai drew heavily on Khmer culture by way of Lavo, the regional centre. Some fifty kilometres north stood its sister town Sri Sajanalaya, later Si Satchanalai, a political centre second only to the capital. Monuments in that idiom survive in the Sukhothai Historical Park, among them the Ta Pha Daeng Shrine, Wat Phra Phai Luang and Wat Si Sawai. Baker and Pasuk caution that buildings and images of the Angkorian type are not by themselves evidence of rule. Of the Jayabuddhamahānātha images sent to twenty-three cities in 1191 they write that without corroborating evidence of military or administrative power a better characterisation is cultural diplomacy. The style turned towards Tai Yuan Lan Na work early in the 14th century, and from the reign of Ram Khamhaeng came under steady Mon and Sinhalese influence through Theravada Buddhism.

The mixture shows in the language of rule as well as in the art. The earliest Sukhothai inscription, dated 1292, carries titles of five separate origins. Kamraten an and somdet are Khmer, phra and phraya Mon, rajakumar generally Indic, khun Chinese, and chao and thao Tai. Baker and Pasuk take the cultural innovation of the period to have come from a collision of peoples, a social crisis and an influx of new ideas rather than from what earlier writing treated as a Tai genius.

The claim of the Ram Khamhaeng inscription of 1292 to have invented Tai letters has been read narrowly. Hans Penth argued that Tai had been written in South Indian, Grantha, Mōn and Khmer alphabets for as much as two centuries earlier, and Wyatt notes that the inscription speaks of "these Tai letters", claiming only one particular form. What was devised was the writing of vowels on the line and the dropping of tone marks. The reckoning of time points the same way. A northern sixty-year cycle of days and years appears in at least nine early inscriptions and is, on Wyatt's account, unique to Tai-language texts, where it is regularly identified as Thai in contradistinction to Khōm. The revolt that briefly restored Mon authority at Sukhothai coincided with Angkor's reassertion of control over Lavapura.

Expansion under Ram Khamhaeng

A Māravijaya Buddha from Sukhothai, dated to the second half of the 13th century, at the Walters Art Museum.

Si Inthrathit died in 1270 and was succeeded by his son Ban Mueang, and Ban Mueang in turn by his brother Ram Khamhaeng the Great. Both carried Sukhothai beyond the borders their father had set. To the south, Ram Khamhaeng subjugated the mandala kingdoms of Suvarnabhumi (likely present-day Suphan Buri) and Tambralinga (present-day Nakhon Si Thammarat). Through Tambralinga he is said to have adopted Theravada Buddhism as the state religion, a claim of the traditional historians that is disputed.

To the north, Ram Khamhaeng placed Phrae and Muang Sua (present-day Luang Prabang, Laos), among other mandala city-states, under tribute. To the west he supported the Mon people under Wareru, said to have eloped with his daughter, in their revolt against Pagan. Wareru went on to found a kingdom at Martaban, the predecessor of Hanthawaddy at present-day Bago. Martaban is traditionally counted a Sukhothai tributary, though Sukhothai's reach may not have extended so far. By gathering vassals in this way he could claim suzerainty from Luang Prabang to Nakhon Si Thammarat and from Vientiane to Pegu. The southern end of that claim rests on a passage of contested date. Baker and Pasuk read the naming of Ligor as a dependency, on the fourth face of the inscription and in the corresponding clause of the Ayutthaya Palace Law, as a later insertion in both texts. His success rested largely on his reputation in the field, and the bonds of vassalage he had built fell apart soon after his death in 1298, his successors commanding no comparable authority.

A Lankan-trained monk later reordained 7,520 monks at Sukhothai, after which the king had his ministers and a thousand citizens ordained into the new order. The most fully recorded of these conversions is that of Si Sattha, a grandson of Pha Mueang. By his own inscription he saw that the world of rebirths was impermanent, destroyed his weapons, renounced his princely caste and left his home for the forest. He took the name Si Sattha, travelled the region founding and restoring religious sites, and on one occasion went through a market buying up every living creature and setting it free.

In religion and culture, Ram Khamhaeng brought monks from Sri Thamnakorn to propagate Theravada Buddhism. The Sukhothai script was probably his work, in 1283; its earliest witness is the Ram Khamhaeng Inscription, found by Mongkut nearly six centuries later. From it the modern Thai script developed.

Relations with Yuan China began in the same reign, and Sukhothai started sending trade missions.

Decline and tributary status

By the early 14th century Sukhothai held the Chao Phraya plain, with spurs west to the Hanthawaddy kingdom and south to the Nakhon Si Thammarat Kingdom. A Chinese notice of the same years gives a different picture. The Guangzhou gazetteer of 1297–1307 has Xiān controlling Shang-shui Sù gū dǐ, Sù gū dǐ being Sukhothai; Baker and Pasuk leave Shang-shui open, as either a further place name or a statement that Sukhothai lay upriver from Xiān. Ram Khamhaeng was succeeded by his son Loe Thai.

The tributaries fell away quickly after his death. The dominions north of Uttaradit, among them the Lao kingdoms of Muang Sua and Vieng Chan Vieng Kham, present-day Vientiane, broke free. In 1319, Martaban in the west broke away. After 1321, Lan Na (the successor state to Ngoenyang) gained influence over Tak, one of the oldest towns in Sukhothai. To the south, Suphannaphum Kingdom and Nakhon Si Thammarat left early in Loe Thai's reign, cutting Sukhothai off from its vassals beyond them. The kingdom was soon back to what it had been, a small local power.

Baker and Pasuk describe the same decades as a reorganisation of the region rather than a simple contraction. Between the end of the 13th century and the middle of the 14th, three loose confederations took shape. Lan Na emerged in the far north with its capital at Chiang Mai, legendarily founded in 1296. Lan Xang formed around the middle Mekong in the mid-14th century. The third, along the fringe of the hills, acquired no name of its own and was known from Ayutthaya as the Northern Cities. Sukhothai belonged to the third, where its house was first among equals rather than sovereign. Under Ram Khamhaeng's successor the territory fragmented, nine or ten local chiefs going their own way.

In 1323, Loe Thai was succeeded by his cousin, Ngua Nam Thum. In 1347, he was succeeded by Li Thai (Maha Thammaracha I), the son of Loe Thai. In 1349 armies from Ayutthaya invaded and made Sukhothai a tributary. The centre of power shifted to Song Khwae, present-day Phitsanulok, and in 1378 Lue Thai submitted as a vassal. He was succeeded by Sai Lue Thai (Maha Thammaracha III) in 1399.

Baker and Pasuk read those years differently at two points. Li Thai took Sukhothai by force, attacking the city and breaking its gates, and the title Phra Maha Thammaracha that he adopted then spread beyond him. Branches of his clan broke away to rule other cities; at times more than one town ruler held the title at once, and other clans developed titles of their own, particularly at Phichai and Kamphaeng Phet. They ascribe the move of the political centre to Phitsanulok not to the subjection of 1349 but to strategic or commercial advantage, or to a hinterland too poor to support a large population, and note that Sukhothai's prominence as a political centre lasted less than a century.

In 1424, after the death of Sai Lue Thai, his sons Phaya Ram and Phaya Ban Mueang fought for the throne. Intharacha of Ayutthaya intervened and installed Ban Mueang as Borommapan (Maha Thammaracha IV). When Borommapan died in 1438, Borommarachathirat II of Ayutthaya installed his son Ramesuan (the future Borommatrailokkanat of Ayutthaya) as Upparat in Sukhothai, a position similar to both that of a viceroy and an heir presumptive, establishing a form of personal union and creating the Siamese Front Palace system. Ramesuan presumably brought Ayutthayan officials and a garrison with him, which ended Sukhothai's independence.

Annexation and further influence

Under tributary status, the former territories of Sukhothai, known to the people of Ayutthaya as the Northern Cities (Thai: เมืองเหนือ, RTGS: Mueang Nua), continued under local aristocrats within Ayutthaya's overlordship, on the mandala pattern common to both. The two merged politically and culturally over the 15th and 16th centuries, and Sukhothai warfare, administration, architecture, religion and language all left marks on Ayutthaya. Sukhothai nobles linked themselves with the Ayutthayan elite through marriage alliances, and often played the role of kingmaker in Ayutthayan succession conflicts. Sukhothai commanders served prominently in the Ayutthayan army, its military tradition being reckoned the tougher.

How that process should be described is contested. Baker and Pasuk reject the older account of conquest or absorption, holding that it applies a model of sovereignty foreign to a region where a defeated ruler remained a king and an overlord imposed no administration. They note that Borommaracha I's five expeditions of the 1370s fall on the same places again and again, and that the chronicle verb ao means to take or attack rather than to hold. They also reject reading the tears of blood reported of the Phra Jinaraja image in 1438 as a figure for Sukhothai's subjection, since the chronicles use no such metaphor elsewhere. In its place they set the marriages, following Phiset Jiajanphong. Borommaracha I, Intharacha and Borommarachathirat II each took a daughter of Li Thai as consort, and the exchange ran both ways, a senior queen at Sukhothai bore an Ayutthaya title and donated an Ayutthaya-style Buddha image. Queens travelled with entourages of nobles, monks and craftsmen, while northern nobles went south to serve a wealthy merchant city that needed soldiers.

From 1456 to 1474, former Sukhothai territory became a battleground during the Ayutthaya-Lan Na War (1441–1474). In 1462, Sukhothai briefly rebelled against Ayutthaya and allied itself with their enemy, Lan Na. In 1463 Borommatrailokkanat moved the royal residence to Song Khwae, presumably to be nearer the front. He walled it together with its twin town of Chainat and probably gave the joined towns the name Phitsanulok. How long he stayed is disputed. The chronicles keep him there until his death in 1488, the Sangitiyavamsa has him abdicate after twenty years, and Chinese records report an abdication in 1482/3 on grounds of age. Contemporary Portuguese traders described Ayutthaya and Phitsanulok as "twin states".

The Northern Cities remained royal through this period, their traditional titles still in use in the 15th and early 16th centuries, Maha Thammaracha at Phitsanulok, Phaya Chaliang at Chaliang and Sawankhalok, Phaya Ramaraj at Sukhothai, and Phaya Saen Soi Thao or Dhammasokaraja at Kamphaeng Phet. Tomé Pires wrote of the ruler of Kamphaeng Phet that within his own territory he was like the king of the land, and an inscription of 1510 shows him restoring the relic stupa, casting a Shiva image, dredging a river, setting boundary markers and repairing irrigation channels. The cities were flourishing rather than reduced. Chaliang–Satchanalai and Kamphaeng Phet were refortified and given new temple complexes in the manner of a royal capital, and the walls of Sukhothai gained two further rings. Piriya Krairiksh has argued partly on that ground that many buildings conventionally dated to the 13th and 14th centuries were built or much extended later. Kessara Srinaka reports that Piriya reached those datings from contemporary foreign maps, drawings and travel accounts, and that some of the works he redated were moved two to three centuries from the conventional attributions. Writing in the 1550s from the reports of traders and mercenaries, João de Barros presented the core territory as two kingdoms: Chaumua, which he glossed as the northern people and in which he named Sukhothai and Sawankhalok, and Muantay below it, which he said was more properly called Sião. He added that the two spoke different languages, and some Portuguese maps of the period show Odia and Sian as separate places.

In 1548, Maha Chakkraphat named Khun Phirenthorathep, a noble of royal Phra Ruang descent, as the ruler of Phitsanulok. He was given the name Maha Thammaracha, after the historical kings of Sukhothai, and married a daughter of Maha Chakkraphat, which strengthened his claim on both the old line and the new. Despite this, the title of Upparat went to Maha Chakkraphat's son Ramesuan (who died in 1564) and later his brother Mahinthrathirat. After a series of wars with the Burmese Toungoo Empire he took the Burmese side against Ayutthaya. In 1569, Ayutthaya under Mahinthrathirat fell to the Burmese, and Bayinnaung installed Maha Thammaracha (Sanphet I) as the vassal king in Ayutthaya and the first king of the Sukhothai dynasty.

In 1584, Maha Thammaracha and his son, the Upparat and future Naresuan the Great (Sanphet II), would free Ayutthaya from Burmese overlordship in the Burmese-Siamese War of 1584–1593. After the Battle of the Sittaung River, Naresuan forcibly relocated people from the northern cities of Phitsanulok, Sukhothai, Phichai, Sawankhalok, Kamphaeng Phet, Phichit, and Phra Bang closer to Ayutthaya. Since then, the ruins of the capital city of the former Sukhothai Kingdom have been preserved as the Sukhothai Historical Park and designated a World Heritage Site.

Ceramic industry

Bowl with incised peony designs, Sri Satchanalai, 15th century

Further information: Sangkhalok ceramic ware

Sukhothai’s best-known export was sangkhalok ware; this was the only period in which Siam made Chinese-style ceramics, and they are usually said to have fallen out of use by the 14th century. Baker and Pasuk give the industry a much longer life, with celadon from the Sukhothai kilns to the 1480s and a darker Sawankhalok ware from Chaliang–Satchanalai until the 1580s, the export trade ending only when Ming China lifted its ban on ceramic exports in 1567.

Excavation has since given the industry absolute dates. At Tao Thuriang, the kiln field beside the moat of Wat Phra Phai Luang, 61 kilns have been recorded, 11 of cross-draft and 50 of up-draft type; three radiocarbon determinations on charcoal calibrate to 1340–1400, 1350–1390 and 1424–1460. Thongchai Sako reads these as two periods of building, the first from about 1340 to 1400 and the second from the early 15th century to about 1530. At Si Satchanalai 186 kilns have been recorded on the Yom, 182 on the west bank and four on the east, and one kiln type, cut into the ground and lined with slabs, is found there but not at Sukhothai. From ten thermoluminescence dates taken in 2012, Bundit Thongaram places the kiln 61 complex at about 1478–1555; he rejects the five radiocarbon dates obtained in 1986 as too broadly spread to be relied on, and reports without adopting an 11th-century date proposed for kiln 101 by Don Hein in 1980. Architectural ornament from the same kilns is found in monasteries of the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya kingdoms but not abroad, while the export wares reached wrecks in the Gulf of Thailand and sites in Java, Sumatra, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and the Ryukyus. Suthipob Chantrapakajee states that the sale of the ware was a royal monopoly of Ayutthaya between 1438 and 1530.

Legacy

The Ram Khamhaeng Inscription at the Bangkok National Museum

The Silajaruek of Sukhothai are hundreds of stone inscriptions that form a historical record of the period. Among the most important inscriptions are the Ram Khamhaeng Inscription (also known as Inscription No. 1), Silajaruek Wat Srichum (an account on the history of the region itself and of Sri Lanka), and Silajaruek Wat Pamamuang (a politico-religious record of Loe Thai).

Mongkut (Rama IV) is considered the champion of Sukhothai narrative history due to his discovery of Inscription No. 1, the "first evidence" of the history of Sukhothai. Mongkut said that he found a "first stone inscription" in Sukhothai which told of heroic kings such as Ram Khamhaeng, the administrative system, and other developments in what was considered the "prosperous time" of the kingdom. The story of Sukhothai was incorporated into Thailand's "national history" in the late 19th century by Mongkut as a historical work presented to the British diplomatic mission.

Replica of a Sukhothai royal temple at Mueang Boran

From then on, as a part of modern nation-building process, modern national Siamese history included the history of the Sukhothai Kingdom. Sukhothai was said to be the "first national capital", followed by Ayutthaya and Thonburi, until Rattanakosin, or today Bangkok. Sukhothai history was crucial among Siam's "modernists", both "conservative" and "revolutionary". Sukhothai history became even more important after the Siamese Revolution of 1932. Research and writing on Sukhothai history were abundant. Ideas derived from the inscription were studied and "theorised".

That succession was set out by Prince Damrong in 1914. For the period before Ayutthaya he worked from the Sukhothai inscriptions and from the Chinese dynastic annals, which Khun Chenchin'aksorn (Sudchai) translated for him. It was the translator who identified 暹國 in those annals as Sukhothai; Cœdès accepted the identification and carried it into The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. Yamamoto Tatsuro challenged it in 1989 from the Guangzhou gazetteer of 1297–1307, in which Sukhothai stands as the object of a verb meaning to control and Xiān as its subject, so the two cannot name one place. Yoneo Ishii accordingly argued for an approach free of the unilinear scheme, giving more weight to Sukhothai's western Mon neighbour. He read Ayodhya before 1351 as a trading centre of the post-Srivijayan order rather than a continuation of Sukhothai.

One of the most well-known topics was Sukhothai's "democracy" rule. Stories of the close relationship between the king and his people, vividly described as a "father-son" relationship, were considered the "seed" of ancient Thai democracy; however, changes in government took place when later society embraced "foreign" traditions, like those of Angkor, influenced by Hinduism and "mystic" Mahayana Buddhism. The story of Sukhothai became the model of "freedom". Chit Phumisak, a "revolutionary" scholar, saw the Sukhothai period as the beginning of the Thai people's liberation from their foreign ruler in Angkor.

During military rule beginning in the 1950s, Sukhothai was increasingly featured in the Thai national history curriculum. Sukhothai's "father-son" model for Thai democracy in contrast to Angkorian tradition became one of freedom from the "foreign ideology" of Cambodian communism. Other aspects of Sukhothai were also explored under the new curriculum, such as the commoner and slave status as well as economics. These topics became the subject of ideological controversy during the Cold War and the communist insurgency in Thailand.

See also

• Mandala (political model)
• List of Thai monarchs
• Sangkhalok ceramic ware

Further reading

• Ekachai, Sanitsuda (28 September 2019). "Opening minds with an ancient 'mandala'". Bangkok Post. Retrieved 28 September 2019.