Pha Mueang

Pha Muang
ผาเมือง
Khun of Mueang Rat[1]
The Statue of Pho Khun Pha Mueang, Khun Pha Mueang barrack, Phetchabun Province.
SpouseSukhara Mahadevi
Naovarongdevi
DynastySri Naw Nam Thum
FatherSri Naw Nam Thum

Pha Mueang or Pho Khun Pha Mueang (Thai: พ่อขุนผาเมือง; late 12th century – mid 13th century) was the ruler of Mueang Rat and a son of Sri Naw Nam Thum. He was one of the two commanders of the campaign that took Sukhothai in about 1238, and so had a part in the founding of the Sukhothai Kingdom.[2]: 195–196  He is known almost entirely from the Wat Si Chum Inscription, a stele of 1357 composed by his grandson. From the ruler at Angkor he had received a Khmer title, a sword of victory and a princess in marriage, and after the campaign he declined Sukhothai for himself, installing his ally Bang Klang Hao there instead and passing on to him his own conferred title of Sri Indraditya.

Two questions dominate the writing about him. Where Mueang Rat lay is disputed, with proposals in the Pasak valley near Lom Sak, in the Nan valley near Uttaradit, and at the old Khorat site in Sung Noen. How the campaign should be read has also changed. In the older account, the defeated Khom Sabat Khlon Lamphong commanded a Khmer garrison and the episode was the liberation of Sukhothai from Khmer rule; more recent work treats it as a contest between two local lords who both held Khmer honours.

Origin

Pha Mueang was the son of Sri Naw Nam Thum, whom Baker and Pasuk describe as a warrior chief who raided across the upper Chao Phraya basin early in the 13th century.[3]: 35 [a] Both men are named in the Wat Si Chum Inscription, Inscription 2, a stele of 1357 composed by Pha Mueang's grandson,[5]: 318 [6] which gives Pha Mueang as ruler of a city-state called Mueang Rat (เจ้าเมืองราด). The inscription presents 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.[5]: 315 

The location of Mueang Rat is disputed. Many believe that it could be found in the valley of the Pasak. Therefore, the inhabitants of the Phetchabun district Lom Sak built a large statue of Pha Mueang (อนุสาวรีย์พ่อขุนผาเมือง). The historian Alexander Brown Griswold, however, is of the opinion that Mueang Rat must have been located in the valley of the Nan River near Uttaradit due to geographical characteristics. Baker and Pasuk likewise suggest that it may have been Thung Yang, in the same area, citing Phiset Jiajanphong.[3]: 35 

A third proposal, put forward by Manit Vallibhotama and followed by Chit Phumisak, places it at the old Khorat site in Sung Noen district, Nakhon Ratchasima province, reading Khorat as a contraction of Nakhon Rat.[5]: 323  Chit supported it from the career of Pha Mueang's grandson Sri Sattha, who is recorded as fighting Thao Ji Chan in his late teens: Dong I Chan lies about 70 km south-east of that site, which would make the two territories adjacent.[5]: 324  He added that Sri Sattha is said to have been ordained from a place called Rattanabhumi, which he took to be one of Mueang Rat's dependent towns.[5]: 326 

Relations with Angkor

The "God of Sri Mueang Sodharapura" (God: ผีฟ้า, corresponding to Skt Deva raja),[7][b] the king of Angkor, bestowed the titles of "Sri Indraditya" together with the "sword of victory" (Preah Khan Chey Srey, Khmer: ព្រះខន្ធជ័យស្រី, Thai: พระขรรค์ชัยศรี) upon Pha Mueang and he additionally received the "Kamrateng An Pha Mueang" or "กมรเตง อัญ ผาเมือง"". At the same time he was given Preah Neang Sukhara Mahadevi, a "daughter" of King Jayavarman VII of the Yaśodharapura.[8] An "oath of loyalty" to Angkor was probably demanded as well.[9]

Chit Phumisak cautioned that the sword carries less evidential weight than it appears to. Jayavarman VII prefixed jaya to a great many things, but a sword of the same name remained in Khmer use long afterwards, chaiyasi was a general expression for glorious victory — it appears in the water-oath formula attached to the law on ordeal of 1355 — and the object itself may be older than any king of that name. A khan chaiyasi is listed among the Sukhothai regalia in the inscription of Lithai, and the term recurs in Lao literature.[5]: 321–2  Baker and Pasuk record the same three gifts, a Khmer title, a regalia sword and a princess in marriage, but attribute them to the ruler at Angkor without naming him.[3]: 35  Angkorian influence in the region waned after the death of Jayavarman VII in 1220.

Campaign against Sukhothai

Bang Klang Hao (full name Pho Khun Bang Klang Hao, พ่อขุนบางกลางหาว) ruled the city-state of Mueang Bang Yang (เจ้าเมืองบางยาง). He was Pha Mueang's brother-in-law, having married Pha Mueang's sister Nang Sueang, a daughter of Sri Naw Nam Thum.[10] Where Mueang Bang Yang lay is not agreed. It has been placed in the present-day Nakhon Thai district, where Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri had earlier been based,[8][11] while Griswold put it between Mueang Rat and Si Satchanalai, possibly at Ban Yang about seven kilometres south of New Sukhothai.

In "Inscription II" it is described that at some point, probably around 1238–1240, Pha Mueang marched his army united with Bang Klang Hao towards Sukhothai, then held by Khom Sabat Khlon Lamphong (ขอมสบาดโขลญลำพง), whose name incorporates a Khmer-style title.[3]: 35  The inscription sets the campaign out in stages: Bang Klang Hao first asked for the levies of Mueang Rat, after which the two moved by separate routes, Bang Klang Hao taking Si Satchanalai while Pha Mueang advanced by way of Bang Khlong, whose ruler submitted and handed the town over, and then brought up the levies of Mueang Rat and Mueang Sa Kot.[5]: 315–16 

Chit read an earlier move by Pha Mueang's father Sri Naw Nam Thum as a first attempt that failed, the city holding out, and dated the point at which Mueang Rat ceased to answer to any outside power to about 1220, on the ground that it could commit its whole levy to the campaign.[5]: 314  Baker and Pasuk give that earlier episode differently, having Sri Naw Nam Thum take Sukhothai by an elephant duel with a Mon and hold it together with Si Satchanalai, where he built a large stupa, before losing both towns.[3]: 35 

Chit read the inscription as describing a counter-attack by Khlon Lamphong to retake Si Satchanalai, after which the two allies mustered, performed a rite riding a single elephant's neck together, and caught him between them.[5]: 316–17  In the ensuing battle at the gates of the city, Bang Klang Hao fought against Khom Sabat Khlon Lamphong, both from the back of their war elephants: "The bold Klon Lamphong was completely defeated".[8] Chit read the phrase describing the outcome as ไพร่พง rather than ไพร่พัง, giving the sense that Khlon Lamphong fled into the forest rather than that his force was broken.[5]: 317 

After the victory, Pha Mueang entrusted the government of Sukhothai to Bang Klang Hao. He then retired with his men to Si Satchanalai; on Chit's reading of the inscription, Bang Klang Hao would not enter the city until Pha Mueang had withdrawn his troops from it.[5]: 317  A little later Bang Klang Hao was ordained by Pha Mueang as "Chao Mueang Sukhothai" (ruler of Sukhothai, เจ้าเมืองสุโขทัย). Here Pha Mueang transferred his title "Sri Indraditya" to his comrades in arms. The new king of Sukhothai also received the "sword of victory" as a sign of his success and the palladium of the New Kingdom. Sri Indraditya is now regarded as the founder of the Phra Ruang Dynasty, the Kingdom of Sukhothai. Chit observed that the account survives only because the Wat Si Chum inscription was composed by Pha Mueang's grandson: the part Pha Mueang played was well enough known at Sukhothai that the house of Sri Indraditya had to concede it, while Ram Khamhaeng's own inscription passes over it in silence.[5]: 318 

How the campaign should be read has changed. In the reading of Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, Khom Sabat Khlon Lamphong was the commander of a Khmer garrison holding the city, which implied a prior military occupation, and the campaign against him was the liberation of the city 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.[3]: 35  They place Pha Mueang among the local chiefs of the period who drew legitimacy from association with Angkor, and compare the founding of Lan Xang, where a local chief travelled to the dominant power Indaprasthanagara, returned with a princess from its ruling court as his wife and subdued the chiefs around him.[3]: 35 

Consorts

  • Preah Neang Sukharadevi, daughter of the king Jayavarman VII. Appointed to the Queen Consorts.
  • Phra Nang Naovarongdevi, consorts had married before marriage with Preah Neang Sukharadevi. In the local legend of Lom Kao District, Phetchabun Province.

In Media

  • Nang Sueang — a thai TV drama in 1992 Portrayed by Sirakupt Methani.
  • Phra Ruang Rise Of The Empire — a 2025 movies film Portrayed by Pongsakorn mettarikanon.[12][13]

Notes

  1. ↑ Betty Gosling gives Pha Mueang instead as a descendant of a Nam Thum whose name appears in the legends of many Tai peoples.[4]
  2. ↑ Chit Phumisak offered two readings of ผีฟ้า in this passage: a rendering of deva in Khmer regnal styles, or the Thai idiom ผีสาง, used before the name of a person no longer living. He inclined to the second, on the strength of the inscription's phrasing "in former times, Phi Fa lord of…".[5]: 320 

References

  1. ↑ จารึกวัดศรีชุม ด้านที่ ๑
  2. ↑ Coedès, George (1968). Walter F. Vella (ed.). The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. trans.Susan Brown Cowing. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-0368-1.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Chris Baker; Pasuk Phongpaichit (4 July 2017). "Before Ayutthaya". A History of Ayutthaya: Siam in the Early Modern World. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–42. doi:10.1017/9781108120197.002. ISBN 978-1-108-12019-7. Archived from the original on 11 March 2026. Retrieved 29 August 2026.
  4. ↑ Gosling, Betty. Sukhothai Its History, Culture, And Art Asia Books (Oxford University Press), Bangkok 1991, ISBN 974-8206-85-8
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Phumisak, Chit (1983). Vichai Naparassamee (ed.). สังคมไทยลุ่มแม่น้ำเจ้าพระยาก่อนสมัยศรีอยุธยา [Thai society in the Chao Phraya basin before the Ayutthaya period] (PDF) (in Thai). Mai Ngam.
  6. ↑ "Inscription II" is a stone stele from 1357, which was found at Wat Si Chum, the Sukhothai Historical Park; Coedes, George. "L'Inscription de Nagara Jum." The Siam Society, Bangkok, 1919 (PDF)
  7. ↑ Griswold: King Lodaiya of Sukhodaya, p 110
  8. 1 2 3 Cœdès, G. (1921). "The Origins of the Sukhodaya Dynasty" (PDF). Journal of the Siam Society. 14 (1). Siam Heritage Trust. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 31, 2013. Retrieved March 17, 2013. (1) The translation of this paper, which has been read at a joint session of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, Société Asiatique, and American Oriental Society, and published in the Journal asiatique (April–June 1920), is the work of Mr. J. Crosby, to whom the author begs to tend his heartfelt thanks.
  9. ↑ Wyatt, David K. Thailand A Short History. Silkworm Books, Chiang Mai, 1984 ISBN 974-7047-44-6, pp. 52
  10. ↑ สุจิตต์ วงษ์เทศ (January 25, 2013). ""นางเสือง" เป็นนิยาย ประวัติศาสตร์การเมือง". มติชนออนไลน์. Retrieved November 23, 2014.
  11. ↑ Simon de La Loubère (1693). "Du royaume de Siam". ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 8 September 2025. Retrieved 8 September 2025.
  12. ↑ "เปิดคาแรกเตอร์นักแสดงหนัง "พระร่วง..มหาศึกสุโขทัย" พร้อมตอกย้ำความสนุกครบรสที่มีมาให้แบบจัดเต็ม". news.nangdee.com. Retrieved 2025-08-14.
  13. ↑ "อย่าดราม่า "พระร่วง..มหาศึกสุโขทัย" ถอดรหัส คาแรกเตอร์ ก็จึ้งอยู่นะ | คมชัดลึก". Archived from the original on 2025-05-09. Retrieved 2025-08-14.

Further reading

  • Griswold, A. B. Towards a History of Sukhothai Art. The Fine Arts Department, Bangkok 1967.
  • Griswold, A. B.; Na Nagara, Prasert. Epigraphic and Historical Studies, No.10: "King Lodaiya of Sukhodaya and his contemporaries." The Siam Society, Bangkok, 1972
  • Rooney, Dawn F. Ancient Sukhothai, Thailand's Cultural Heritage. River Books, Bangkok 2008, ISBN 978-974-9863-42-8
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