Mueang Uthong

For King of Ayutthaya, see Uthong. For the district, see Amphoe U Thong. For the style of Buddha iconography, see U Thong Style.

Mueang Uthong
เมืองอู่ทอง (Thai)
Bronze double denarius of the Gallic Roman emperor Victorinus (r. 269–271 AD), reportedly found at the ancient city of U Thong, Suphan Buri Province, Thailand; now in the U Thong National Museum.
Interactive map of Mueang Uthong
Type	Human settlement
Periods	Ancient history
Cultures	Dvaravati
Associated with	Mon people
Location	Amphoe U Thong, Suphan Buri, Thailand
History
Built	c. 300–600 AD
Abandoned	1st: c. 1000 AD 2nd: 1767 AD
Site notes
Area	1.02 square kilometres (102 ha)
Architectural styles	Dvaravati Ayutthaya
Excavation dates	1930
Archaeologists	Damrong Rajanubhab George Cœdès
Discovered	1903
Condition	Partial restoration
Owner	Public
Management	Fine Arts Department, no entry fee
Public access	Yes

Mueang Uthong (Thai: เมืองอู่ทอง) is an archaeological site located in the U Thong district, Suphan Buri province. It was inhabited from about the 10th century BC and developed into a complex state society between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE. Uthong was among the largest of the city-states that emerged on the plains of central Thailand in the first millennium, and was abandoned about 1000 AD after epidemic and the loss of its standing as a trading centre. It was resettled in the Ayutthaya period but was abandoned again after the fall of Ayutthaya in the 1760s.

Uthong is also considered the first city-state that practiced Brahmanism and Buddhism in present-day central Thailand. O. W. Wolters speculated that Mueang Uthong was the centre of Chen Li Fu, an ancient kingdom mentioned in the Chinese text Sung Hui Yao Kao in 1200 and 1205; however, archaeological findings indicate the city was already deserted during the period mentioned. Meanwhile, Paul Wheatley posited that the site in question was the city-state of Chin Lin, the kingdom King Fan Man of Funan endeavored to annex during the 4th century. Jean Boisselier further suggested that Mueang Uthong may have served as a political center within the Funan sphere during certain periods.

The city of "Balangka, an inland town" (บลังกา), mentioned in the Geographike Hyphegesis of Ptolemy in the 2nd century, has been assumed by Thai scholars to have been Mueang Uthong. The same has been proposed for Chia-mo-lang-chia, or Kamalanka, which the Chinese monk Xuanzang placed in the 7th century south-east of Sri Ksetra kingdom and west of Dvaravati, and which has likewise been placed at Mueang Uthong. Others place it at the ancient Nakhon Pathom instead.

Mueang Uthong is often regarded in local tradition as an early religious center in central Thailand; however, despite extensive archaeological investigation, no material remains securely attributable to the Mauryan period, or to the reign of Ashoka (3rd century BCE), have been identified. The identification of the site with the mythical Suvarnabhumi, advanced by some Thai scholars and widely held in local tradition, therefore lacks archaeological corroboration. The neighbouring settlement of Pong Tuek, by contrast, is an important site for the early presence of Buddhism in the region.

History

Prehistory

The results of archaeological studies revealed that the area around U Thong has been inhabited since about the 10th century BC, between the Neolithic and Metal Ages. The evidence found was tools made of stone and metal, such as bronze spear blades, bronze axes, and earring molds made of stone.

Chin Lin and Funan Kingdoms: before 7th century

Higham reports that radiocarbon determinations from the U Thong sites suggest that the transition into complex state societies in the area took place between about 300–600 AD. A copper inscription from the mid-7th century states, "Sri Harshavarman, grandson of Ishanavarman, having expanded his sphere of glory, obtained the lion throne through regular succession," and mentions gifts to a linga. The site includes a moat, 1,690 by 840 m, and the Pra Paton caitya.

According to the archaeological evidence found in the area, Boisselier suggests that Uthong was probably the centre or used to be a colony of the Funan Kingdom since the 1st century AD; however, when the Funan Kingdom had lost its power, Uthong therefore became an important trade city of the succeeding kingdom, Dvaravati, in the 7th–11th century AD.

Paul Wheatley suggests that the city-state of Chin Lin which was mentioned in the Chinese archives of the Liang dynasty as the last state that was occupied by Fan Man, the Great King of Funan Kingdom, in the 4th century AD, might be located in the area of Uthong, since the word Chin Lin means land of gold or Suvarnabhumi; as mentioned in the archive, it was a state located approximately 2,000 li (800 kilometers) west of the Funan Kingdom, which corresponded to the area of Uthong.

The city of Uthong was located on the bank of the Nam Chorakhe Suphan River (currently called Khlong Chorakhe Sam Phan). Because the boundary of the Palaeo-gulf extended more northward than the present-day shoreline, the trading ship easily navigated to the city by the Nam Chorakhe Suphan River, which made Uthong an important port of the region, along with the Funan's port city of Óc Eo in present-day southern Vietnam. Baker and Pasuk report that recent research has the sea receding earlier than once thought, the coastline settling near its present position by 500 CE, which revises the long-held view that the lower gulf was under water in the first millennium and that many Dvaravati sites then stood on the coast.

The ancient city of Uthong also had trade contacts with the West, from the Indians to the Greeks and Romans in the Mediterranean Sea, that expanded the sea trade to countries in Southeast Asia and China. Evidence found in the area, including glazed Chinese ceramics from the Tang dynasty, beads and jewelry from India, Persian wares, and many other decorations from Greece, Rome, China, and the Middle East, proves the area was contacted by external territories. The trade also brought Brahmanism and Buddhism from India to U-Thong, making it the first settlement to practice such religions in the region.

Dvaravati Kingdom: 7th–11th century

Early 7th century political entities in the Menam and Mekhong Valleys.

Main article: Dvaravati

The hills behind the town carry a group of sanctuaries and inscriptions. The Pushyagiri inscription was found at the foot of Khao Tham Thiam, and the votive tablets from the shrine of Phu Hang Nak on Khao Rang Kabit are Mahayana in type and Pallava-influenced. Walailak Songsiri reads the Mahayana material as Pala influence reaching U Thong from Odisha and Kalinga, and describes the town as the inland end of routes running from the coast and the Tenasserim range by the Mae Klong and the Phachi to the tin of Suan Phueng, Thung Kha and Chom Bueng in Ratchaburi and to the lead worked between the Khwae Noi and the Khwae Yai, with Lawa highlanders collecting aromatic wood, horn, hide, beeswax and stream minerals for the middlemen.

During the 6th–7th centuries, Uthong was considered one of the centres of Dvaravati culture. Antiques were found scattered in the ancient ruins as well as along the banks of Khlong Chorakhe Sam Phan from Phanom Thuan District of Kanchanaburi Province to Don Chedi District and U Thong District of Suphan Buri Province.

One of the Phu Hang Nak tablets carries an inscription in Mon in post-Pallava script naming a king Marata as its donor, of the 9th or 10th century.

According to the Thai Chronicles, the old capital of Dvaravati was sacked by Chenla in the 8th or 9th century. A royal lineage fled and founded a new city of Suvarnabhumi in the present-day Ladya subdistrict, Kanchanaburi, and the same line is said to have resettled U Thong early in the 9th century. A different account of the 8th century has been proposed on art-historical grounds. Hiram Woodward, who places Si Thep within the polity known from Tang Chinese records as Wen Dan, suggests that a Si Thep powerful enough to dominate that century may have exercised some control not only over Lopburi but over centres further west, including Nakhon Pathom, U Thong and Khu Bua. He asks whether central Dvaravati should accordingly be understood as having pre- and post-Wen Dan phases, and offers as an alternative that Dvaravati features at Si Thep resulted from a peaceful movement of monks preceding Wen Dan's rise rather than from conquest; he presents the whole as a possibility rather than a finding. Woodward also cites the stuccos of U Thong or Nakhon Pathom as the source of the facial modelling of a stone Buddha in the Cleveland Museum of Art which he attributes to an 8th-century Si Thep workshop.

Karen Mudar's locational analysis of 63 moated settlements on the central plain gives U Thong a different standing. Measuring the moat-enclosed area from aerial photographs at 73.3 ha, she ranked it a district centre, the third of four administrative levels, below Nakhon Pathom at 602 ha and the regional centres at Suphanburi and Phraek Si Racha; the figure does not agree with the moat dimensions of 1,690 by 840 m that Higham reports. On that reading U Thong was no more than a minor centre by the 10th century, and Mudar suggested that the copper plate found there may record the loss of an earlier autonomy and the town's absorption into a wider regional system rather than the presence of a court, against the sequence of capitals from U Thong to Nakhon Pathom that she attributes to Higham.

The Nam Chorakhe Suphan River silted, grew shallow in places and ceased to be navigable, and epidemics followed. Uthong lost its standing as a port and was abandoned about the 11th century, before Khmer influence reached its height in the 12th century under Jayavarman VII. Songsiri reads the evidence otherwise, holding that U Thong and the country around it were occupied continuously from the Iron Age through the Funan and Dvaravati periods and into the 13th century, and citing the Phra Tham Suea votive tablets of the 11th to 13th centuries from the caves of the same hills.

As a result of the mentioned circumstances, the city was moved eastward, but the epidemic did not abate, causing the city to be relocated again to the east bank of Tha Chin River, which is known as Suphan Buri in the present-day.

Ayutthaya Kingdom: 14th–18th century

Main article: Ayutthaya Kingdom

The area was re-settled during the Ayutthaya period since some chedis discovered by Damrong Rajanubhab appear to be of more recent origin and would appear to date from the time of Ayutthaya. No historical chronicle directly mentions Uthong in this period; the area was controlled by Suphan Buri. However, after Ayutthaya was sacked by troops of the Burmese Konbaung dynasty in 1767, both Suphan Buri, then a frontier town, and the settlements around it were destroyed and left abandoned.

U Thong also became the origin of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, as the first King of Ayutthaya, Ramathibodi, was the prince of U Thong when the city was struck by an epidemic, prompting him to relocate east and found Ayutthaya.

Rattanakosin era: 1782–Present

In 1836, according to the Journey to Suphan, a poem written by a royal poet, Sunthorn Phu, Suphanburi as well as its surrounding area, which includes Uthong, was still wasteland; however, the area was resettled with limited numbers of villagers about four years later, around 1840. Later in 1895, during the reign of Chulalongkorn, due to the country's administration reform, the area was governed by a newly established district, Bueng Chorakhe Sam Phan (บึงจระเข้สามพัน), with its seat in the present-day Chorakhe Sam Phan sub-district. However, to conform with local history, the district government head office was relocated to the ancient city of Uthong, and the district was also renamed to such in 1939.

The ancient city of Uthong was officially excavated by Damrong Rajanubhab and George Cœdès in 1930.

General references

• Thepthani, Phra Borihan (1953). Thai National Chronicles: the history of the nation since ancient times (in Thai). S. Thammasamakkhi. Archived from the original on 5 November 2023. Retrieved 5 November 2023.