The Ayutthaya Kingdom or the Empire of Ayutthaya was a Thai kingdom that existed in Southeast Asia from 1351 to 1767, centered around the city of Ayutthaya, in Siam, or present-day Thailand. European travellers in the early 16th century called Ayutthaya one of the three great powers of Asia alongside Vijayanagara and Ming China. Ayutthaya is considered the precursor of modern Thailand.
The name derives from the Sanskrit Ayodhya, by way of the Ramakien, Thailand's national epic. The kingdom emerged in the late 13th and 14th centuries from a mandala of four maritime city-states in the lower Chao Phraya valley, including Ayodhya, Lavo, Phrip Phri, and Suphannaphum. The early kingdom was a maritime confederation oriented to post-Srivijaya maritime Southeast Asia, raiding it and drawing tribute from it. Two centuries of organization from the Northern Cities and a shift to a hinterland state followed, after which Ayutthaya centralized. From 1569 to 1584 it was a vassal of Toungoo Burma, then regained independence. In the 17th and 18th centuries it became a centre of international trade and its culture flourished. Under Narai (r. 1657–1688) Persian and then European influence was strong, and an embassy went to the court of Louis XIV in 1686. The late period saw the French and English leave and the Chinese rise, and has been called a "golden age" of Siamese culture, with Chinese trade and the introduction of capitalism into Siam continuing to grow in the centuries after the kingdom fell.
Ayutthaya's failure to settle a peaceful order of succession, and the arrival of capitalism, undermined the organization of its elite and the bonds of labour control on which its army and administration rested. In the mid-18th century, the Burmese Konbaung invaded Ayutthaya in 1759–1760 and 1765–1767. In April 1767, after a 14-month siege, the city fell and was destroyed, ending the 417-year-old kingdom. Siam recovered quickly, and within fifteen years the seat of authority had moved to Thonburi and Bangkok.
Toponymy
Foreign names
In foreign accounts, Ayutthaya was called "Siam" but people of Ayutthaya called themselves Tai, and their kingdom Krung Tai (กรุงไท) meaning 'Tai country' (กรุงไท). The Fra Mauro map of the world, made in circa 1450, features Ayutthaya city under the Latin name "Scierno". This name was derived from the Persian "Shahr-I-Naw", meaning 'New City'. Early Iberian and Italian sources preserve several related variant spellings that also appear to refer to Ayutthaya, including forms such as Cernouem and Cernomé in Portuguese and Spanish compilations, and Xarnauz and Sarnau in other accounts. A handwritten nautical chart attributed to Vesconte de Maggiolo (c. 1508) labels Ayutthaya as Zerena. Some early Portuguese descriptions characterize Xarnauz as a "Christian" kingdom, a wording that may reflect European assumptions about non-Muslim states rather than local religion.
It was also referred to as Iudea (and Iudiad) in a c. 1662–1663 bird's-eye view painting of Ayutthaya attributed to Johannes Vingboons, commissioned by the Dutch East India Company. Alternative spelling is Iudia in a 1683 illustration by Alain Mallet.
Official name
The capital city of Ayutthaya is officially known as Krung Thep Dvaravati Si Ayutthaya (กรุงเทพทวารวดีศรีอยุธยา), as documented in historical sources. The Dvaravati element of that style is attested from the Ayutthaya period into the early Rattanakosin period. The preambles to three sections of the Three Seals Law, those on witnesses, on royal legislation, and on ordeal by water or fire, give the capital as Krung-deb-dvāravatī-śrī-ayudhyā-mahātilakabhaba-nabaratana-rājadhānī-purīramya (กรุงเทพทวารวดีศรีอยุธยา มหาดิลกภพ นพรัตน์ราชาธาณีบูรีรมย์). The same pairing appears in a letter from the governor of Tenasserim to the Danish court in 1620, in the Thai text of the 1664 treaty with the Dutch East India Company, in a Pāli letter to Kandy in 1757, in the chronicle compiled by Somdet Phra Phonarat at Wat Pho, and as late as 1842 in an inscription set up in Cambodia by Chaophraya Bodindecha.
The name was not used consistently, however: other sections of the same law code use forms of Ayutthaya without Dvāravatī, as do the Ratanabimbavaṃsa (1429), the Jinakalamali (c. 1516), the Yuan Phai and the Dansai inscription of 1560, and Prince Dhani Nivat, whose 1939 study in the Journal of the Siam Society remains the standard treatment of the question, observed that most official and literary works of the Ayutthaya and Bangkok periods name the capital simply as Ayutthaya or Krung Rattanakosin. Skilling has accordingly treated it as an open question whether the surviving instances preserve a continuous memory of Dvaravati or represent a later literary and diplomatic revival of the name. Even though Baker and Pasuk regard the use of Dvāravatī in Ayutthaya's official titles as a possible invention of tradition, a Burmese inscription on a bronze gun captured at the city's fall in 1767 also identifies Siam as Dvāravatī. This provides independent evidence for the use of the name for Siam at the end of the Ayutthaya period.
History
Menam basin before Ayutthaya
Political geography
In the early second millennium, the lower central plain was anchored by Lavo to the east and Suphannabhum, a former Dvaravati centre, to the west, with Chen Li Fu between them. Lavo, conventionally described as under Angkorian suzerainty, occupied the eastern basin, while Suphannabhum in the west shows Angkorian cultural influence that need not imply direct political or military control. Evidence for varying degrees of Angkorian political and cultural involvement includes Suryavarman I's campaigns in the Kra Isthmus, Khmer-influenced architecture, the place of local elites in the Khmer hierarchy, and Jayavarman VII's patronage of cities in Ratchaburi and Phetchaburi. Kanjanajuntorn and colleagues nonetheless find the strongest Bayon influence in the Mae Klong valley, at Mueang Kosi Narai, Wat Maha That Ratchaburi and Wat Kamphaeng Laeng, while Dvaravati forms persisted along the Tha Chin, including Suphanburi. The evidence is consistent with Angkorian influence in the Mae Klong valley, but suggests selective borrowing rather than imposition.
Chen Li Fu, known from Chinese records and placed by Songsiri at Phraek, occupied the central position between Lavo and Suphannabhum. Songsiri notes, however, that archaeological evidence has not established when the settlement became its seat or whether it succeeded an earlier inland centre. It administered more than sixty settlements, appears in Chinese merchant records by about 1103–1115, and sent embassies to the Song in 1200, 1202 and 1205. Its ruler used the Angkorian title kamretan-an, and Chinese officials eventually excused the polity from further tribute. Songsiri proposes that after the first half of the 13th century its network developed into Suphannabhum, incorporating settlements around the Khwae rivers and the western basin, while Sing Buri and Phrom Buri belonged to the Lavo network.
Suzerainty and autonomy
Angkorian relationships with the basin polities have increasingly been interpreted in terms of a mandala, in which titles, cultural forms, and religious gifts circulated without necessarily implying sovereignty. The Preah Khan inscription of Jayavarman VII names cities of the western basin, including Suphanburi as Suvarnapura, Phetchaburi as Srijayavajrapuri, Mueang Kosi Narai as Samphukapatthana, and Ratchaburi as Srijayarajapura, but records no authority over them. Its record of sending Jayabuddhamahanatha images to western polities, together with the absence of Angkorian hospitals and fire houses west of Prachinburi, likewise suggests cultural diplomacy rather than direct rule.
The material and epigraphic record is similarly regionalized. Mueang Sing follows the Bayon style of Jayavarman VII's reign, but local irregularities and later inscriptions suggest local construction and modification rather than a wholly Angkorian foundation. Inscriptions from the basin, including the Dong Mae Nang Mueang inscription (K. 766) of 1167, the Phra Phuttharup Nak Prok inscription (K. 995) of 1213 and the Mueang Sing inscription, contain Thai lexical elements and script forms distinct from those of Phimai, Surin, Buriram and Angkor.
Titulature alone does not establish subordination. Wolters inferred from the Khmer title Kamrateng used by the rulers of Chen Li Fu that the polity was a Khmer dependency, but the comparable title used by the ruler of Phetchaburi in 1295, does not by itself demonstrate Khmer control. Songsiri notes that Chinese records apply kamrateng to rulers of Sukhothai, Phetchaburi and Chen Li Fu alike, whereas the settlements dependent on Chen Li Fu had rulers who did not bear the title. Charnvit Kasetsiri sees a Khmer-dominated east and broadly independent west as early as the eleventh century, while Vickery dates Angkor's loss of control later and interprets the fragmentation as part of internal Angkorian politics. By the mid-thirteenth century, however, the region's political autonomy is clearer: envoys sent to China presented their states independently, while local art styles increasingly diverged from the classical Khmer manner.
Pre-Ayutthaya period
On Kasetsiri's account, Ayutthaya emerged from the merger of four port polities of the lower basin: Lopburi, Suphanburi, Ayodhya and Phetchaburi. Each had sent missions to China in its own name, including Suphanburi to the Song in 1180 and Phetchaburi to the Yuan in 1294, with further missions to Vijayanagara between 1400 and 1500.
Ayodhya
The city that became Ayutthaya is known in the Thai chronicle tradition as Ayodhya (อโยธยา). The Northern Chronicle places its earliest settlement in the in the 930s–940s in the area around the Nong-sano Lake (หนองโสน), founded by Phuttha Sakhon (พระมหาพุทธสาคร), whose lineage was associated with Bang Pan in present-day Kamphaeng Phet. The settlement was then called Mueang Nong-sano (เมืองหนองโสน), and his son succeeded him in 974.
The son was subsequently deposed by Sindhob Amarin, also known as Phraya Kreak (พญาแกรก), ruler of Phraek or Indaprasthanagara, who brought Mueang Nong-sano under his authority; Lavo is likewise said to have come under his rule.
According to a later chronicle tradition, the Lavo court moved to the site in the 1080s. Narai I, son of Chandrachota of Lavo, was enthroned at Lavapura in 1082 and subsequently transferred his seat to Mueang Nong-sano, renaming it Ayodhya; the older capital thereafter became known as Lopburi. Proposed explanations for the move include changes in the course of the Lopburi River, political or religious divisions within the Lavo elite, and the recovery of Lavo from Angkorian influence by forces associated with Suphannabhum and Haripuñjaya.
Narai I died in 1087 without an heir, and nine amatya clans contested the throne until Phra Chao Luang prevailed in 1089. He married his only daughter to Sai Nam Peung, whose descendants are said to have ruled Ayodhya until 1351. A second line is interpreted by scholars as becoming connected to Ayodhya in 1205, when Uthong II, son of Phanom Thale Sri of Chen Li Fu–Phetchaburi, married a daughter of Dhammikaraja, who belonged to the earlier line. His descendants subsequently ruled Ayodhya for more than a century.
Other three port polities
The three remaining polities of Kasetsiri's account had ruling lines of their own. At Suphannabhum, Pansa, a son of Balaraj of Dvaravati Nakhon Pathom, is said to have ruled at Phanthumburi (พันธุมบุรี) on the left bank of the Tha Chin before moving his seat to Uthong, dying in 1006, and was followed by Ramapandita (1006 – c. 1046) and Anga Indra (c. 1046–1081). The throne then passed to Kar Tayy, a Pagan noble, who ruled until about 1121 and moved the principal centre back to Phanthumburi, thereafter called Songphanuri. Mueang Uthong was abandoned during the 12th century, and Songphanuri stood vacant until Uthong I took it in 1163, conventionally the start of the Xiān period at Suphanburi. Baker and Pasuk attribute the abandonment of Mueang Uthong to a shift in the river that cut the town off from easy access to the gulf, and suggest that its people moved some 30 kilometres north-east to Suphan Buri, whose strictly rectangular moat of 1.9 by 0.7 kilometres and central relic stupa in Angkorian style may both date to the 12th century.
Phrip Phri, at present-day Phetchaburi, was re-established in the same generation by Uthong I's brother Phanom Thale Sri, dated 1157/58 in the Instructions Given to the Siamese Envoys Sent to Portugal of 1684 and 1188 in Du Royaume de Siam. The 1684 Instructions count four kings over 163 years, the last of them Uthong V. Phanom Thale Sri extended his reach north to Mueang Phraek in 1180, appointing his preceptor to govern, over territory that also covered the region proposed for Chen Li Fu; to the south, a dispute with Tambralinga in 1196 ended in negotiation and a lasting dynastic tie, which bore fruit late in the 13th century when princes of Phetchaburi revived that polity after its collapse, thereafter known as Nakhon Si Thammarat. Both were tributaries of Sukhothai between about 1283 and 1298 on the Ram Khamhaeng Inscription, and both broke away after Ramkhamhaeng's death. Phrip Phri's standing in Chinese eyes is telling: its ruler bore the Khmer-derived style Gan-mu-ding, yet the texts call the place chéng (城, "city" or "city-state") rather than guó (國, "country").