From Ancient Siam to Modern Bangkok
You’ve arrived in Bangkok for the 1st time, jet-lagged, dizzy, and excited.
The Big Mango is juicy as hell. It drips chaos. There are gleaming skyscrapers and a never-ending maze of streets and alleys buzzing with Thai rhythm, Thai food, Thai energy. Fish sauce wafts in the air. Sinewy men, golden-skinned women, and exotic creatures in-between seem everywhere. When it rains, it pours. The tropical heat never relents.
Bangkok. You are a stranger in the strange land of Siam.
Welcome to the tip of the spear. While Thailand is the spear of Siamese culture, Bangkok is its tip. It is the culmination of nearly two thousand years of cultural progression.
But where did this Siamese spear come from? And who threw it?
An answer lies openly in the modern city of Lopburi. A thousand years ago it was called Lavo 1, and centuries before that was known by its Sanskrit name of Lavapura.
It was from this ancient city-state, and others like it, that the spear of modern Thai culture took flight.
The Dvaravati:
Thai culture evolved on the central plain of Thailand. Scholars are not certain when the first puzzle pieces of modern Thailand began to fall into place. Best estimates are the first half of the first Millennium A.D.-sometime after 100 A.D. but prior to 500 A.D.
Not that anyone called themselves Thai back then. You’ll need to wait another thousand years or so for that to happen. Nor did any inhabitants yet call themselves Siamese. The cultural identities of first Siamese and later Thai will have to wait for the 12th and 13th Centuries respectively.
In the first half of the First Millennium, the central plain had become populated with the Mon. The Mon are Southeast Asia’s most ancient people. They descended from China thousands of years ago and first established kingdoms in today’s Burma before migrating into Thailand’s central plain.
There had always been a rabble of prehistoric people that eeked out an existence on the Central Plain. And probably starting in the First Millennia, there were people of Khmer stock who also lived there. But the Mon migration set in motion a course of history that would result in modern Thailand.
The Mon migration into the central plain was no coincidence. First, starting sometime in the late First Millennium B.C. the central plain became habitable for large populations. The Gulf of Siam had been receding for millennia and finally the Central plain changed from marshland to terra firmer where rice thrived. Second, the Kingdom of Funan centered in southern Vietnam and Cambodia, which had some control over the central plain, shriveled and died. This left Thailand’s heartland wide open for Mon migration.
The Mon of Thailand’s central plain built towns surrounded by moats. Dozens. These town developed into quasi-independent city-states, bound together by language, religion, and culture.
This new “civilization” was called the Dvaravati. The Dvaravati are who first threw the Thai cultural spear.
The Dvaravati civilization is shrouded in the vagaries of prehistory. We don’t know that much. Archeologists and art historians have had to connect dots long ago buried by the debris of time.
What we know about the Dvaravati:
- The early Dvaravati were Mon and spoke the Mon Language.
- The Dvaravati were heavily influenced by the religions and culture of ancient India.
- We know they called themselves “Dvaravati” because coins were found at an ancient site and minted with the name.
- They built city-states surrounded by moats across the central plain of Siam and these locations are known by archaeological excavations.
- The Golden Age of the Dvaravati was between the 7th and 10th Centuries A.D. (600-1,000 A.D.).
- A few of the Dvaravati city-states sent diplomatic delegations to the Tang Dynasty (649-907 A.D.) of China in Chang’an.
- The Dvaravati engaged in extensive trade throughout the region including India and China.
- Most importantly, we know they practiced Theraveda Buddhism which is the same type of Buddhism practiced in Thailand today.
Buddhism
So you’re clubbing in Bangkok. You’re trying to figure out the gender of the person who has their body pressed against yours. You’ve been drinking. Maybe smoking ganja which is legal in Thailand. Maybe you took a yaba hit to keep your eyes open. Music and dancing. You’re being seduced by a pair of beautiful almond eyes.
What may not be evident to you at this moment is that the city and country you’re in is profoundly Buddhist. Thais are Theravada Buddhists to be exact. (I won’t get into the doctrinal differences of Buddhism.)
Wat Arun, the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Wat Pho, and countless golden spires (stupas) and wats that dot Bangkok are not tourist trifles. They are the some of the most sacred cultural monuments of the Thai people.
What has that to do with the Dvaravati? Everything.
Buddhism began flowing into Southeast Asia from India during the last half the 1st Millennium B.C. First through today’s Burma, then into the Central Plain of Thailand carried by the Mon.
The dominate religion of the Dvaravati was Theravada Buddhism. But some also practiced other forms of Buddhism. There is also evidence that Hinduism was also practiced in their city-states.
They left behind an impressive array of statuary and other objects that proclaimed their Buddhist faith. Much of what we know about the Dvaravati comes from Art Historians, not archaeologists.
The Theravada Buddhism of Thailand today is a direct descendent of the Theravada Buddhism of the Dvaravati nearly two thousand years ago.
The Buddha, The Dharma, The Sangha (monks) are the basic trilogy of the faith. That trilogy originated in India and Sri Lanka, was brought to the Mon in Burma, who then brought it to the Central Plain of Siam (Thailand).
The Dvaravati are the original Buddhists of Siam.
Back to the Bangkok nightclub. That seductress with those Siamese almond eyes, wearing a form fitting dress, pressing themself against you is in all probability a Theravada Buddhist. Thank the Dvaravati.
Ancient Lavo/Lavapura is Lopburi
Wandering about modern Lopburi today, you can’t help but witness the Dvaravati city-state of Lavo. Scattered throughout Lopburi are the ruins of Lavo.
If you’ve been to Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the above ruin will look familiar. It should. It’s the same design. Here’s why.
Lavo, aka Lavapura, came into being sometime in the first half of the 1st Millennium, probably 300-500 A.D. By the mid-7th Century A.D. (circa 650), Lavo was a city-state of the Dvaravati civilization. During the late 10th Century, the Khmer Empire, aka Angkor Wat, began to exercise control over much of Siam, including Lavo. By the early 11th Century, Lavo was under the hegemony of the Angkor king.
The ruins in Lopburi today are the remnants of Lavo a thousand years ago when it bent to the desires of the Angkor Empire. Lavo would remain a vassal state of the Khmers until circa the 13th Century.
But the times they were a’changing. In the 13th Century a new wave of immigrants came to the Central Plain. Lots of them. From Southern China and lands to the north came the Tai peoples.
These Tai migrants formed a new kingdom, not far from Lavo, called Sukothai in the late 13th Century. Sukothai would absorb Lavo into its Kingdom and the Theravada Buddhism of Lavo became the Theravada Buddhism of Sukothai.
The King Narai National Museum
The King Narai National Museum in Lopburi has one of the finest Dvaravati art collections in Thailand.
The museum is located on the grounds of King Narai’s Palace in Lopburi. King Narai was an Ayuttaya ruler (reigned 1656 to 1688) who built his palace in Lavo in 1666.
If you visit King Narai’s Palace, you may well have the museum and Palace grounds to yourself. In quietude you can stroll and linger about and reflect on ancient Lavo.
The Monkeys of Lopburi
The famous monkeys of Lopburi are mostly gone now. Lopburi drew tens of thousands of tourists annually to witness the monkey madness. Thousands of monkeys who claimed the ancient ruins for themselves.
But tourists fed the monkeys. When tourism was halted during the Covid pandemic, the monkeys suffered a food shortage and grew angry.
The monkeys became aggressive toward humans, and divided themselves in warring gangs. (No, I’m not making this up.) To the horror of Lopburi residents, the monkeys wage violent fights against each other.
Thai authorities began capturing the monkeys and neutering them. They were then kept in large cages much to their dislike.
At one point, 300 angry monkey’s escaped their cage and attacked a nearby police station. The officers had to barricade themselves inside until help arrived.
Here and there you can still see a few monkeys hanging around the ruins or on the streets. But the days of Lopburi’s monkey madness are gone.
A Personal Reflection
Buddha, Dharma, Sangkha
Buddha, Dharma, Sangkha
Buddha, Dharma, Sangkha
I chant the above every night with my wife as part of her Theravada Buddhist recitations. I’m not Buddhist. My wife is. In fact, she’s a very devout Buddhist. Me, I’m skeptical of any religion.
She is from Lamphun, which during the Golden Age of Lavo, was also a Mon Kingdom called Haripunchai.
She insists we chant every evening her Theravada Buddhist recitations, including “Buddha, Dharma, Sangkha” (the Buddha, the Dharma, the Monks). Those words are just sounds to me.
But in reality, “those words” are a direct cultural link to modern Thailand’s earliest beginnings-the Dvaravati.
Now when I wander about Bangkok, I see the Dvaravati everywhere.
Recommended Reading
Stephen Murphy, “The case of proto-Dvaravati: A Review of the Art Historical and Archeological Evidence”, Journal of Asian Studies, pp. 366-392 (Oct. 2016)
Ian G. Glover, “Connecting Prehistoric and Historic Cultures in Southeast Asia“, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 506-510 (2016)
Ian G. Glover, “The Dvaravati Gap – Linking Prehistory and History in Early Thailand”, Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association 30, (July, 2011)
Anna Bennett and Hunter Watson, Defining Dvaravati, Silkworm Books (2020)
H.G. Quaritch Wales, “Dvaravati in Southeast Asian Cultural History”, The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1/2 (April, 1966)
David Wyatt, “Relics, Oaths, and Politics in 13th Century Siam”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 3-66, (Feb., 2001)
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