Burma and the T’ai Kingdoms in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

Three years after the foundation of Ayut’ia in 1350 another T’ai kingdom, later known as the kingdom of Laos or Luang Prabang, was founded in the upper Mekong valley. It came into existence through the union of a number of small Laos states under the leadership of a chief of Muong Swa named Fa Ngum, who had been brought up at the Court of Angkor and was married to a Khmer princess. The origin of the Laos states on the Mekong is obscure and legendary. The T’ai seem to have settled there in the second half of the thirteenth century, and to have been first under the suzerainty of Angkor and later under that of Sukhot’ai. Through such channels they came into contact with Indian culture. Under Fa Ngum they were converted to Hinayana Buddhism. His father-in-law sent him a mission of monks bearing with them the Pali scriptures and a famous statue of the Buddha, which had been sent much earlier by a King of Ceylon as a present to Cambodia and was called the Prabang. It was installed at Lang Chang, Fa Ngum’s capital, in a temple specially built for it, and at a later date the city came to be named after it.