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Thawathotsamat

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Title page of the first printing of the 15th-century Thai poem "Thawathotsamat" in 1904. The cover page is lost.

Thawathotsamat (Template:Lang-th), meaning "Twelve Months," is a poem of 1,042 lines in Thai, probably composed in the late fifteenth century CE. The title is a Thai adaptation of the Pali-Sanskrit words dvā dasa māsa, two ten months. The male speaker laments over a lost lover through the course of one year, drawing on the seasonal weather for similes of his emotions. Both the speaker and beloved are addressed with royal forms. A late verse declares that the poem was written by a "young-king" with the help of three court poets. The work has sometimes been mistakenly classified as a treatise on Siamese royal ceremonies. The work is less studied and less well-known than other early works of Thai literature, partly because of the obscurity of its archaic language, and partly because of conservative concerns over its erotic passages. A new annotated Thai edition appeared in 2017.

Dating and authorship

Early attempts to date the work ranged from the fifteenth to seventeenth century, but there is now a rough consensus that it was written in or around the reign of King Trailokanat (1448–?1488).

Verse 258 states that a yaowarat (Template:Lang-th), "young-king" composed the whole work with the help of three men whose titles suggest they were official court poets.

กานทกลอนนี้ตั้งอาทิ กวี หนึ่งนา
เยาวราชสามนตไตร แผ่นหล้า
ขุนพรหมมนตรีศรี กวีราช
สารประเสริฐฦๅช้า ช่วยแกล้งเกลากลอน ฯ[1]

the cantos of this verse by one sole poet were composed
the young-king who's beside three worlds
illustrious Khun Phrom-montri, Si Kawirat
and San Prasoet helped polish up the verse

Forms of address used throughout the poem confirm that the author was royal. The phrase "three worlds" may be a reference to King Trailokanat, whose name means "refuge of the three worlds." Around 1463 CE, he moved to Phitsanulok to conduct wars against Lan Na, and elevated a relative to rule in Ayutthaya with the title Boromracha. [2]

Trongjai Hutangkura and Winai Pongsripian propose that the author was this Boromracha, probably a younger brother of King Trailokanat, who succeeded him as king in 1488 CE. [3]

Gilles Delouche proposes that the author was an unnamed son of King Trailokanat who appears in the poem Yuan Phai traveling to Sri Lanka to invite Sinhalese monks to attend his father's ordination as a Buddhist monk.[4]

According to Chinese records, King Trailokanat, abdicated around 1480-1482 and elevated a son named Intharacha as king. This son may have been the author.[5]

Texts, publications and translations

The National Library of Thailand holds nine manuscript versions of Thawathotsamat in the form of samut thai or samut khoi accordion books, of which only three are complete. All appear to stem from a single original, though there is a great deal of minor variation that has probably arisen in the process of copying.[6]

In 1904, a text of Thawathotsamat was printed in Vajirañāṇa (Wachirayan), the journal of the Vajirañāṇa Library, and reprinted as a booklet in 1904 or 1905. This printing used an incomplete manuscript, omitting from v. 230 onwards.[7][8]

In 1925, Thawathotsamat was printed as a cremation book with a preface by Prince Damrong Rajanubhab and the seal of the Vajirañāṇa Library on the title page. This and all subsequent printings used the complete text.[9]

In 1962, Chulalongkorn University printed the text of Thawathotsamat under a policy "to print books of literature, which have not been widely printed and distributed, for use in the Faculty of Arts," using a text prepared by Prince Sommot Amoraphan (1860-1915), with no annotations.[10]

In 1969, an annotated edition by Chanthit Krasaesin (Template:Lang-th) was printed by Trimit Press.[11]

In 2017, an annotated edition prepared by a team including Trongjai Hutangkura, Winai Pongsripian and Samoe Bunma was published by the Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre.[12]

Under an ASEAN literature project, Maneepin Phromsuthirak published an edition with a version in modern Thai in 1996, and an English translation (done with Panit Boonyavatana) in 1999.[13][14] Winai Pongsripian contributed an English translation to the 2017 edition by Trongjai Hutangkura.[12]

Structure and themes

The poem is set in Ayutthaya, the old capital of Siam. The speaker laments over a lost lover through a calendar year. The beloved is also of royal status. She is addressed with royal forms, and named as Si Julalak (Template:Lang-th, Sanskrit: śrī cuḷalakṣana), the official title of one of the king's four primary consorts according to the Three Seals Law.

Structure of Thawathotsamat
No. Section Verses
1 Invocations 1–5
2 Preface: love remembered 6–20
3 Literary comparisons 21–27
4 Twelve months (9–28 verses per month) 28–228
5 Retrospect and summary 229–250
6 Closing invocations 251–260

The poem begins and ends with invocations of the gods and the king, a convention found in much old Thai poetry. The opening invocation calls on the main Hindu gods but makes no mention of the Buddha.

The third section mentions couples in six other literary works with a theme of love lost and regained. The couples are: Rama and Sita; Aniruddha and Usa; Samuddaghosa and Vindumati; Sudhana and Manohara; Pacitta and Arabimba; and Sudhanu and Cirappa. Similar passages are found in other works, including Nirat Hariphunchai.[15]

After the invocations, the speaker recalls their lovemaking in the past. This is the most erotic passage of the poem.

The main portion of the poem is structured over a calendar year, beginning in the fifth month of the old Thai calendar, equivalent to March-April. Each month serves as a canto with an opening and sometimes a closing verse.

The year of Thawathotsamat
Month in the Thai calendar Thai (where used in the text) Pali name Modern calendar First verse Number of verses
5 เจตร, jet Citra March–April 28 22
6 ไพศาข, phaisak Vesākha April–May 50 8
7 เชษฐ, chet Jeṭṭha May–June 58 10
8 Āsāḷha June–July 68 14
9 Sāvana July–August 82 13
10 ภัทรบด, phatrabot Bhadda August–September 95 15
11 อาสยุช, atsayut Assayuja September–October 110 16
12 กรรดึก, kantuek Kattika October–November 126 15
1 มฤค, maruek Māgasira November–December 141 19
2 บุษยา, butsaya Phussa December–January 160 28
3 Māgha January–February 188 25
4 Phagguṇa February–March 213 16


The weather is used as metaphor and simile for the speaker's emotions. The poem begins in the hot season with images of fierce sunlight, searing heat, parched land, and withered vegetation. The image of the fire which incinerates the universe at the end of a Buddhist era era appears repeatedly throughout the work. From the second month, the monsoon storms, lowering skies, and rumbling thunder are metaphors for his turmoil and tears. The brightening of the sky at the close of the rains parallels the easing of his distress.

The speaker compares his beloved to the moon, its beauty, purity, and inconstancy. He notes, "you crossed sky's rim and failed to rise again" (v.94).

The speaker accuses many gods of having abducted his beloved. The gods named include Indra, Brahma, Yama, Surya, Kama (the god of love), Vayu (wind), Varuna (rain), and Phaisop (the spirit of rice). He offers the gods a bribe of "a hundred thousand maidens" for her return (v.77).

In the second month (December-January), the speaker describes a firework display. The sights and sounds of the fireworks serve as a metaphor for his inner turmoil. The ephemeral nature of the fireworks, the intensity of sound and color that is so startling and then so quickly gone, seems to mirror the intensity of their love followed by the finality of his loss.

The speaker is visited by graphic memories of her body and illusions of seeing her in the present day.

The speaker repeatedly wonders whether his separation from the beloved is the working of karma, the result of bad deeds in a former life (v. 76, 80, 100, 163).

The absence of the beloved is never explained. Perhaps she has died. Yama, the god of death, is one of the deities accued of taking her away. The speaker makes merit and shares the merit with her (v. 137, 228), a practice for assisting the passage of a deceased to a future life. He wishes to be reunited with her in a future life (v.228).

After the close of the calendar year, there is a retrospect which summarizes the main themes of the poem, and ends on a note of reconciliation and optimism (v. 259):

ทวาทศสิบสองมี สังเวจ
สังวาสเกษมสุขเท้า ทั้วหล้าเสวยรมย[1]

this Twelve is twelve of wretchedness
but love and happiness are found throughout the world

Poetic form

The work is written in the khlong meter except for the final six lines which are in rai. Most verses use the wiwitthamali (Template:Lang-th) variant of khlongdan si (โคลงดั้นสี่). The phrasing is extremely terse, perhaps imitating the Pali-Sanskrit verse that literati would have studied at the time. The work uses many archaic words drawn from Khmer, Lan Na Thai, and Sanskrit.

The work has sometimes been classified as a nirat, a travel poem incorporating a love lament.[16]

The author may have taken some inspiration from Sanskrit literature, especially Kālidāsa's Meghadūta or "The Cloud Messenger."[17]

Critical appraisal

The work was cited in the 17th-century literary manual, Jindamani, as an exemplar of khlong poetry.[18]

In the early 19th century, the poetry was praised by two leading authors, Phraya Trang and Nai Narintharathibet.[19][20]

Plueang na Nakhon, the pioneer historian of Thai literature, wrote: "Poets of later generations when dealing with love and loss did not stray from the ideas laid down by Thawathotsamat.[21]

Chanthit Krasaesin wrote that, for a Thai poet, "not having read Thawathotsamat is like not yet having entered the world of literature."[22]

Maneepin Phromsuthirak concluded that "the author of Thawathotsamat composed this work mainly to be a manual of poetics."[23]

Yet since the early 20th century, the work has been less studied than other early works of Thai literature, and is now much less known. There has been only one thesis on the work and, until recently, only one academic article.

In 1973, Duangmon Paripunna completed a master's thesis at Chulalongkorn University on "The Beauty of Thawathotsamat." An abbreviated version was published as an article.[24][25]

In 2005 Maneepin Phromsuthirak, editor and translator of the poem for the ASEAN project, published an article on "Thawathotsamat: Nirat or Manual of Poetics" in a Silpakorn University journal.[16]

According to Samoe Bunma, this neglect arose partly because of the work's obscure language and partly because "people call it ‘erotic literature' (Template:Lang-th, sangwat wannakam) as it deals with inappropriate matters such as the private organs of men and women, and uses words for erotic effect in some verses. This is too much for Thai society, even though the poet disguises these with double meanings that the modern reader may not understand."[26]

The 2017 annotated edition by Trongjai Hutangkura included three academic articles on the work by Trongjai Hutangkura, Samoe Bunma, and Sasithorn Sinvuttaya.[27][28][29]

Royal ceremonies

Several royal ceremonies are mentioned or alluded to. The poem has sometimes been mistakenly classified among treatises on royal ceremonial. Sujit Wongthes wrote that "Thawathotsamat is literature for ceremonies of the royal court.… it is not literature to be read for pleasure."[30] Yet the ceremonies are part of the background, and the mentions are mostly very brief. This classification probably arose because some works on royal ceremonies, collectively known as the Royal Ceremonies of the Twelve Months, have the words thawathotsamat or "twelve months" in their title.

Royal Ceremonies in Thawathotsamat
Month Ceremony Wording in the poem Explanation 1st verse
8 rains-retreat พรรษา, phansa Buddhist merit-making 71
10 Sarada ศารท, sat A harvest festival, also honoring the consorts of Hindu deities 97
11 Assayuja (description only) A ritual boat-race 111
12 chasing the waters ไล่ชล, lai chon, chase the waters A ceremony to lower the flood waters to facilitate the harvest 128
12 Jong Priang โคมถวาย, khom thawai, offering lanterns "Raising fat," a lantern festival probably derived from Karthikai Deepam same like Tamil Triyampawai 130
1 kite flying ดูว่าว, du wao, watching kites Flying kites to summon the seasonal wind 149
1 Trīyampawāi ตรียามพวาย, triyamphawai Propitiation of Siva; the Swinging Festival 154
2 Flower Anointment บุษยาภิเษก, butsayaphisek A re-enactment of the ceremony of royal installation, including a head anointment (murathaphisek) and fireworks 160
3 Sivaratri ไตรเพท, trai phet, Triple Veda A celebration of Siva by a ritual washing of the lingam 197
3 rice deity ส่งพระไพสพ, song phra phaisop, sending the rice deity Propitiating the rice deity to secure a good harvest 203
3 Thanya tho (description only) ธานยเทาะห์, thanyatho, Sanskrit: dhānya daha, burning rice; a harvest festival with prediction of the coming season 204
4 Cutting the year (description only) สัมพัจฉรฉินท์, samphatcharachin, Pali: saṃvacchara chinda, cutting the year. Ceremony of year end 216

References

  1. ^ a b Trongjai Hutangkura 2017, p. 164.
  2. ^ Cushman 2000, p. 17.
  3. ^ Trongjai Hutangkura 2017, p. 7-8.
  4. ^ Delouche 2017.
  5. ^ Wade 2000, p. 267.
  6. ^ Trongjai Hutangkura 2017, p. 102.
  7. ^ Vajirañāṇa 1904.
  8. ^ Vajirañāṇa 1905.
  9. ^ Khlong Thawathotsamat 1925.
  10. ^ Chulalongkorn University 1962.
  11. ^ Chanthit Krasaesin 1969.
  12. ^ a b Trongjai Hutangkura 2017.
  13. ^ Maneepin Phromsuthirak 1996.
  14. ^ Panit Boonyavatana & Maneepin Phromsuthirak 1999.
  15. ^ Prasert ma Nagara 1973.
  16. ^ a b Maneepin Phromsuthirak 2005.
  17. ^ Kalidasa 1933.
  18. ^ Fine Arts Department 2018, p. 46.
  19. ^ Phraya Trang 2018.
  20. ^ Nai Narintharabet 2018.
  21. ^ Plueang na Nakhon 1952, p. 132.
  22. ^ Chanthit Krasaesin 1969, p. 51-52.
  23. ^ Maneepin Phromsuthirak 2005, p. 96.
  24. ^ Duangmon Paripunna 1973.
  25. ^ Duangmon Paripunna 1982.
  26. ^ Samoe Bunma 2017, p. 21.
  27. ^ Samoe Bunma 2017.
  28. ^ Sasithorn Sinvuttaya 2017.
  29. ^ Trongjai Hutangkura & Jakkri Phothimani 2017.
  30. ^ Sujit Wongthet & 2017-03-05.

Sources

  • Chanthit Krasaesin (1969). Thawathotsamat Khlongdan: phrom thung phrawijan khong phraworawongthoe krommuen phithayalap phuethiyakon [Twelve Months, with Commentary by Prince Bidyalabh Bridhyakon]. Bangkok: Sirimitrakan Press.
  • Chulalongkorn University (1962). Thawathotsamat [Twelve Months]. Bangkok: Borikan Thong Press for Faculty of Fine Arts, Chulalongkorn University.
  • Cushman, Richard D., ed. (2000). The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya. Bangkok: Siam Society. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Delouche, Gilles (2017). "Une hypothèse d'attribution: Phra Yaowarat (พระเยาวรา), unique auteur du « Poème du roi Lo » (ลิลิตพระลอ), du « Poème des Douze Mois » (ทวาทศมาสโคลงดั้น) et de la « Lamentation de Sri-Prat » (กำสรวลศรีปราชญ์)"". Peninsule. 74: 117–140.
  • Duangmon Paripunna (1973). Khwam ngam nai thawathotsamat [The Beauty of Thawathotsamat] (Thesis). Chulalongkorn University.
  • Duangmon Paripunna (1982). "Khwam ngam nai thawathotsamat". In Trisin Bunkhajon; Cholada Rueangruglikhit; Phonthip Phukphasuk (eds.). Aksonsatniphon 2: ruam botkhwam thang phasa lae wannakhadi thai [Arts Writings: Collected Articles on Thai Language and Literature]. Bangkok: Faculty of Arts and Alumni, Chulalongkorn University. pp. 139–184.
  • Fine Arts Department (2018). Jindamani lem 1 lae jindamani chabap yai boribun [Jindamani, vol. 1 and Jindamani, complete edition]. Bangkok: Fine Arts Department.
  • Kalidasa (1933). "The Cloud Messenger". In Ryder, Arthur W. (ed.). Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works. London: J. M. Dent and Sons.
  • Khlong Thawathotsamat [Twelve Months]. Bangkok: Bamrung Nukunkit Press. 1925.
  • Maneepin Phromsuthirak (1996). "Khlong thawathotsamat thot khwam" [Twelve Months Interpreted]. In Kunlasap Ketmaenkit (ed.). Wannakam samai ayutthaya chabap thot khwam [Literature of the Ayutthaya Era, Interpreted]. Bangkok: ASEAN Literature Project, Thailand. pp. 71–155.
  • Maneepin Phromsuthirak (2005). "Thawathotsamat: nirat rue tamra kan praphan" [Twelve Months: Nirat or Manual of Poetics?]. In Kusuma Raksamani (ed.). Phasa-jaruek 10 [Language and Inscription 10]. Bangkok: Silpakorn University. pp. 79–97.
  • Nai Narintharabet. "Khlong nirat narin". Vajirayana. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  • Panit Boonyavatana; Maneepin Phromsuthirak (1999). "Khlong Thawa Thotsamat". Anthology of ASEAN Literatures, Volume IIa: Thai Literary Works of the Ayutthaya Period, Translated Version. Bangkok: Amarin for ASEAN. pp. 127–199.
  • Plueang na Nakhon (1952). Prawat wannakhadi thai [History of Thai Literature]. Bangkok: Thai Wathanaphanit.
  • Phraya Trang. "Khlongdan nirat tam sadet thap lamnamnoi" [Poem Following the Royal Army to Lamnamnoi]. Vajirayana. Retrieved June 10, 2018.
  • Prasert na Nagara, ed. (1973). Khlong Nirat Hariphunchai: sop kap ton chabap chiang mai [Nirat Hariphunchai: Examined with the Chiang Mai Original]. 3rd printing,]. Bangkok: Phrajan.
  • Samoe Bunma (2017). "Thawathotsamat wipak" [Critique of Twelve Months]. In Trongjai Hutangkura (ed.). Upathawathotsamat Khlongdan. Bangkok: Sirindhorn Anthropology Center. pp. 19–68.
  • Sasithorn Sinvuttaya (2017). "Upathawathotsamat khlongdan: bot kawi duai arom lae phitsawat rak" [Through All Twelve Months: A Poem of Emotion and Passionate Love]. In Trongjai Hutangkura (ed.). Upathawathotsamat Khlongdan. Bangkok: Sirindhorn Anthropology Center. pp. 69–82.
  • Sujit Wongthes (2017-03-05). "Thawathotsamat nirat 12 duen mai chai nangsue an len phloen phloem" [Thawathotsamat, Nirat of 12 Months is not a Book to be Read for Pleasure]. Matichon Weekly.
  • Trongjai Hutangkura, ed. (2017). Upathawathotsamat Khlongdan [Through All Twelve Months]. Bangkok: Sirindhorn Anthropology Center.
  • Trongjai Hutangkura; Jakkri Phothimani (2017). "Withi chao ban—withi chao wang' pathisamphan nai khlong thawathotsamat" [Folk Ways—Palace Ways: Relations in Twelve Months]. In Trongjai Hutangkura (ed.). Upathawathotsamat Khlongdan. Bangkok: Sirindhorn Anthropology Center. pp. 83–96.
  • Vajirañāṇa (1904). "Thawathotsamat". Vajirañāṇa (114).
  • Vajirañāṇa (1905). Thawathotsamat Ramakian jaruek thi sila salak pen phap ramakian thi phanak rop ubosot wat phra chetuphon [Twelve Months and Ramakian Verses Engraved with Murals in the Cloister of the Ordination Hall of Wat Phra Chetuphon]. Bangkok: Vajirañāṇa.
  • Wade, Geoff (2000). "The Ming shi-lu as a Source for Thai History—Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries". Journal of Southeast Asian Studies. 31, 2: 249–294.
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