Sacred Kingship under King Narai of Ayutthaya (1656-88)
Divinization and Righteousness
Abstract
This article analyses the system of sacred monarchy that maintained during the reign of King Narai of Ayutthaya (r. 1656-1688) in terms of a set of concepts designed to elucidate the relationship between religion and politics more generally in the pre-modern world. It argues that Ayutthayan kingship was unusually intensively sacralised in terms of two quite different modes simultaneously, the divinised and the righteous. These modes, both in themselves and in conjunction, produced somewhat paradoxical effects as well as forms of authority. The article thereby adopts a global perspective on Ayutthaya kingship while also offering some thoughts as to how and why it developed in the way it did and how Narai strove to manage the consequences.
References
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Baker, Chris and Pasuk Phongpaichit. 2016. The Palace Law of Ayutthaya and the Thammasat: Law and Kingship in Siam. Ithaca.
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Baker, Chris. 2013. ‘The Grand Palace in the Description of Ayutthaya: Translation and Commentary’, JSS 101: 69-112.
Bhawan Ruangsilp. 2007. Dutch East India Company Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya: Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom, ca. 1604-1765. Leiden and Boston.
Bhawan Ruangsilp. 2016. ‘Kromluang Yothathep: King Narai’s Daughter and Ayutthaya Court Intrigue’. JSS 104, 95-110.
Bourges, Jacques de. 1666. Relation du voyage de Monseigneur l’Evêque de Béryte, vicaire apostolique du royaume de la Cochinchine, par la Turquie, la Perse, les Indes, &c. jusqu’au royaume de Siam & autres lieux. Paris.
Bowring, John. 1857. The Kingdom and People of Siam. 2 vols. London.
Breazeale, Kennon and Michael Smithies ed., trans. 2011. ‘About the mission in the Kingdom of Siam’ in Smithies, ed., 500 Years of Thai-Portuguese Relations: A Festschrift. Bangkok, 184–95.
Céberet, Claude. 1992. Étude historique et critique du Journal du voyage de Siam de Claude Céberet, Envoyé extraordinaire du Roi en 1687 et 1688, ed. Michel Jacq-Hergoualc’h. Paris.
Chandler, David. 1979. ‘Royally Sponsored Human Sacrifices in Nineteenth Century Cambodia: the cult of nak tū Me Sa (Mahisāsuramardini) at Ba Phnom.’ JSS 67: 54-62
Charnvit Kasetsiri. 1976. The rise of Ayudhya: a history of Siam in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Kuala Lumpur and Oxford.
Chaumont, Alexandre de. 1733 [1686]. Relation de l’ambassade de Monsieur le chevalier de Chaumont à la Cour du Roy de Siam, avec ce qui s’est passé de plus remarquable durant son voyage. La Haye.
Choisy, François-Timoléon de. 1687. Journal du voyage de Siam fait en 1685 et 1686. Paris.
Choisy, François-Timoléon de. 1995. Journal du Voyage de Siam, ed. Dirk van de Cruysse (Paris 1995), same as above, but includes the ‘Mémoire sur le commerce des Indes Orientales’, 1686 and the ‘Mémoire pour server à l’histoire de Louis XIV’.
Collins, Steven. 1998. Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities. Cambridge.
Cook, Nerida. 1989. ‘Astrology in Thailand: The Future and Recollection of the Past.’ Unpublished PhD thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.
Couto, Diogo do. 1778. Da Ásia de Diogo do Couto dos Feitos, que os Portuguezes fizeram na conquitsa, e descubrimento das terras, e mares do Oriente. Década Sexta, Parte Segunda. Lisbon.
Cushman, R., trans., and D. Wyatt, ed. 2001. ‘Translating Thai Poetry: Cushman, and King Narai’s “Long Song Prophecy for Ayutthaya”. JSS 89.
Dhiravat na Pombejra. 1984. ‘A Political History of Siam Under the Prasatthong Dynasty: 1629-1688’. PhD. thesis, University of London.
Dhiravat Na Pombejra. 1990. ‘Crown trade and court politics in Ayutthaya during the reign of King Narai (1656-88)’. In J. Kathirithamby-Wells and John Villiers, eds, The Southeast Asian Port and Polity: Rise and Demise. Singapore.
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Duindam, Jeroen. 2016. Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300-1800. Cambridge.
Dumont, Louis. 1980. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its implication. Chicago.
Duncan, James S. 1990. The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom. Cambridge.
Eisenstadt, Shmuel. 1986. The Origins and Diversity of Axial Civilization. Albany
Forbin, Claude de. 1991 [1729]. Le voyage du comte de Forbin à Siam, 1685-8. Cadeilhan, Zulma.
Forest, Alain. 1998. Les missionnaires francais au Tonkin at au Siam (XVIIe-XVIIe siècles). Analyse comparée d’un relatif succès et d’un échec total. 3 vols, Paris.
Fouser, Beth. 1996. The Lord of the Golden Tower. King Prasat Thong and the Building of Wat Chaiwatthanaram. Bangkok.
Geertz, Clifford. 1980. Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton.
Gervaise, Nicolas. 1688. Histoire naturelle et politique du Royaume du Siam. Paris, 1688.
Gesick, Lorraine. 1983. ‘The Rise and Fall of King Taksin: A Drama of Buddhist Kingship’. In Gesick, Centers, Symbols, and Hierarchies: Essays on the Classical States of Southeast Asia, New Haven, 87-105.
Gokhale, Balkrishna G. 1966. ‘Early Buddhist Kingship’. Journal of Asian Studies 26, 1: 15-22.
Grabowsky, Volker. 2007. ‘Buddhism, Power and Political Order in Pre-Twentieth Century Laos’. in Harris, 2007b: 121-42.
Guedes, Maria Ana Marques. 1994. Interferência e Integração dos Portugueses na Birmânia, Ca. 1580-1630. Lisbon.
Gunawardana, R.A.L.H. 1979. Robe and Plough: Monasticism and Economic Interest in Early Medieval Sri Lanka. Tucson.
Gyally-Pap, Peter. 2007. ‘Reconstructing the Cambodian polity: Buddhism, kingship and the quest for legitimacy’. In Ian Harris, ed., Buddhism, Power and Political Order, London and New York.
Halikowski Smith, Stefan C.A. 2011. ‘Floating European Clergy in Siam during the Years Immediately Prior to the National Revolution of 1688: The Letters of Giovanni Battista Morelli, O.F.M.’. In Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds: Essays in Honour of Kirti N. Chaudhuri, edited by Stefan C. A. Halikowski Smith, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Harris, Ian. 2007a. ‘Introduction – Buddhism, Power and politics in Theravada Buddhist lands’, in Harris ed., 2007b, 1-9.
Harris, Ian, ed. 2007b. Buddhism, Power and Political Order. London.
Ishii, Yoneo. 1986. Sangha, State and Society: Thai Buddhism in History. Honolulu.
Kaempfer, Engelbert. 1998. A Description of the Kingdom of Siam, 1690. Bangkok.
Kemp, Jeremy. 1969. Aspects of Siamese Kingship in the Seventeenth Century. Bangkok.
Kulke, Hermann. 1993. Kings and Cults: state formation and legitimation in India and Southeast Asia. New Delhi.
Launay, Adrien, ed. 1920. Histoire de la Mission de Siam. Documents historiques, Vol I. Paris.
Lieberman, Victor. 2003. Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Volume I: Integration on the Mainland. Cambridge.
Loubère, Simon de La. 1987 [1691]. Étude historique et critique du livre de Simon de La Loubère “Du Royaume de Siam”, ed. Michel Jacq-Hergoualc’h. Paris.
Love, Ronald S. 1999. ‘Monarchs, Merchants, and Missionaries in Early Modern Asia: The Missions Étrangères in Siam, 1662-1684’, International History Review, XXI/1.
Marcinkowski, M. Ismail. 2005. From Isfahan to Ayutthaya: Contacts Between Iran and Siam in the 17th Century. Singapore.
Matthee, Rudi. 2012. Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan. London.
Melvin‐Koushki, Matthew. 2018. ‘Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Religiopolitical Legitimacy’. In The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam, 353-75, Hoboken.
Mendes Pinto, Fernão. 1989. The Travels of Mendes Pinto, ed Rebecca D. Catz. Chicago.
Moin, A. Azfar. 2012. The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. Columbia.
Muhammad Rabi, Ibn Muhammad Ibrahim. 1972. The Ship of Sulaiman, translated from the Persian by John O’Kane. London.
Nidhi Eoseewong. 2005. Pen and sail: literature and history in early Bangkok. Chiang Mai.
Pieris, Paul, tr. 1908. Religious intercourse between Ceylon and Siam in the eighteenth century. Bangkok.
Pollock, Sheldon. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Ranikhet.
Puett, Michael. 2002.) To Become a God: cosmology, sacrifice, and self-divinization in early China. Cambridge, MA.
RCA: The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya. Editor, David K. Wyatt. Translated by Richard D. Cushman. 2nd Edition, Bangkok: The Siam Society, 2000.
Reid, Anthony. 1993. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680, Volume II: Expansion and Crisis. New Haven.
Reynolds, Craig J. 2006. Seditious Histories, Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts. Seattle.
Ribadeneira, Marcelo de. 1970. History of the Philippines and other Kingdoms [1601], Volume 1, trans. Pacita Fernandez. Manila.
Rubiés, Joan-Pau. 2005. ‘Oriental Despotism and European Orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu’. Journal of Early Modern History.
Sahlins, Marshall and David Graeber. 2017. On Kings. Chicago.
Sanson, Mr. 1695. Voyage ou l’état présent du Royaume de Perse. Paris.
Scubla, Lucien .2005. ‘Sacred King, Sacrificial Victim, Surrogate Victim or Frazer, Hocart, Girard’. In Declan Quigley, ed., The Character of Kingship. Berg.
Sharrock, Peter. 2009. ‘Garuda, Vajrapani, and religious change in Jayavarman VII’s Angkor’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 40: 111-51.
Silber, Ivana. 1995. Virtuosity, Charisma and Social Order: A Comparative Sociological Study of Monasticism in Theravada Buddhism and Medieval Catholicism. Cambridge.
Skilling, Peter. 2007. ‘Kings, sangha and brahamns: ideology, ritual and power in pre-modern Siam’. In Ian Harris, ed., Buddhism, Power and Political Order, London.
Smithies, Michael, ed, trans. 1995. Descriptions of Old Siam. Oxford.
Smithies, Michael, ed. 2011. Five Hundred Years of Thai-Portuguese Relations: A Festschrift. Bangkok.
Strathern, Alan. 2007. Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land. Cambridge.
Strathern, Alan. 2019. Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History. Cambridge.
Strathern, Alan. Forthcoming a. Converting Kings: Kongo, Japan, Thailand, and Hawaii Compared 1450-1950. Cambridge.
Strathern, Alan. Forthcoming b. ‘Tensions and Experimentations of Kingship: King Narai and his response to missionary overtures in the 1680s.’
Tachard, Guy. 1686. Voyage de Siam des Pères Jésuites Envoyez par le Roy aux Indes & à la Chine: avex leurs Observations, Astronomiques, et leurs Remarques de Physique, de Géographie, d’Hydrographie, & d’Histoire. Paris: Seneuze and Horthnels.
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Tambiah, Stanley. 1976. World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background. Cambridge.
Tun Aung Chain, ed. 2005. Chronicle of Ayutthaya: A translation of the Yodaya Yazawin. Yangon.
Van der Cruysse, Dirk. 2002. Siam and the West, 1500-1700, translated by Michael Smithies. Chiang Mai.
Van Leeuwen, Richard. 2017. Narratives of Kingship in Eurasian Empires, 1300–1800. Leiden.
Van Vliet, Jeremias. 2005. Van Vliet’s Siam, ed., and trans. Chris Baker, Dhiravat na Pombejra, Alfons van der Kraan, and David Wyatt. Chiang Mai.
Visudh Busayakul, trans. 2002. The Diary of Kosa Pan (Thai Ambassador to France. June-July 1686), introduced by Dirk Van der Cruysse and edited by Michael Smithies. Chiang Mai.
Vollant des Verquains, Jean. 1691. Histoire de la révolution de Siam arrivée en l’année 1688. Lille
Woodward, Hiram. 2001. ‘Review: Practice and Belief in Ancient Cambodia: Claude Jacques, Angkor and the Devarāja Question’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32, 2: 249-261.
Woraporn Poopongpan. 2007. ‘Thai Kingship during the Ayutthaya Period: A Note on Its Divine Aspects Concerning Indra’. Silpakorn University International Journal 7: 143-171.
Wright, Michael. 1990. ‘Sacrifice and the Underworld: Death and Fertility in Siamese Myth and Ritual.’ Journal of the Siam Society 78, 1: 43-53.
Wyatt David. 2001a. Thailand: A Short History. Chiang Mai.
Wyatt, David. 1982. ‘The Subtle Revolution of King Rama I of Siam’. In Wyatt and Alexander Woodside, eds, Moral Order and the Question of Change: Essays of Southeast Asian Thought, Yale.
Wyatt, David. 2001b. ‘Relics, Oaths and Politics in Thirteenth-Century Siam’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32: 3-65.
Asch, Ronald G. 2014. Sacral Kingship between Disenchantment and Re-enchantment: The French and English Monarchies, 1587–1688. New York and Oxford.
Baker, Chris and Pasuk Phongpaichit. 2016. The Palace Law of Ayutthaya and the Thammasat: Law and Kingship in Siam. Ithaca.
Baker, Chris and Pasuk Phongpaichit. 2017a. A History of Ayutthaya: Siam in the Early Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press..
Baker, Chris and Pasuk Phongpaichit. 2017b. Yuan Phai, the Defeat of Lanna: A Fifteenth Century Thai Epic Poem. Chiang Mai.
Baker, Chris. 2013. ‘The Grand Palace in the Description of Ayutthaya: Translation and Commentary’, JSS 101: 69-112.
Bhawan Ruangsilp. 2007. Dutch East India Company Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya: Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom, ca. 1604-1765. Leiden and Boston.
Bhawan Ruangsilp. 2016. ‘Kromluang Yothathep: King Narai’s Daughter and Ayutthaya Court Intrigue’. JSS 104, 95-110.
Bourges, Jacques de. 1666. Relation du voyage de Monseigneur l’Evêque de Béryte, vicaire apostolique du royaume de la Cochinchine, par la Turquie, la Perse, les Indes, &c. jusqu’au royaume de Siam & autres lieux. Paris.
Bowring, John. 1857. The Kingdom and People of Siam. 2 vols. London.
Breazeale, Kennon and Michael Smithies ed., trans. 2011. ‘About the mission in the Kingdom of Siam’ in Smithies, ed., 500 Years of Thai-Portuguese Relations: A Festschrift. Bangkok, 184–95.
Céberet, Claude. 1992. Étude historique et critique du Journal du voyage de Siam de Claude Céberet, Envoyé extraordinaire du Roi en 1687 et 1688, ed. Michel Jacq-Hergoualc’h. Paris.
Chandler, David. 1979. ‘Royally Sponsored Human Sacrifices in Nineteenth Century Cambodia: the cult of nak tū Me Sa (Mahisāsuramardini) at Ba Phnom.’ JSS 67: 54-62
Charnvit Kasetsiri. 1976. The rise of Ayudhya: a history of Siam in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Kuala Lumpur and Oxford.
Chaumont, Alexandre de. 1733 [1686]. Relation de l’ambassade de Monsieur le chevalier de Chaumont à la Cour du Roy de Siam, avec ce qui s’est passé de plus remarquable durant son voyage. La Haye.
Choisy, François-Timoléon de. 1687. Journal du voyage de Siam fait en 1685 et 1686. Paris.
Choisy, François-Timoléon de. 1995. Journal du Voyage de Siam, ed. Dirk van de Cruysse (Paris 1995), same as above, but includes the ‘Mémoire sur le commerce des Indes Orientales’, 1686 and the ‘Mémoire pour server à l’histoire de Louis XIV’.
Collins, Steven. 1998. Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities. Cambridge.
Cook, Nerida. 1989. ‘Astrology in Thailand: The Future and Recollection of the Past.’ Unpublished PhD thesis, Australian National University, Canberra.
Couto, Diogo do. 1778. Da Ásia de Diogo do Couto dos Feitos, que os Portuguezes fizeram na conquitsa, e descubrimento das terras, e mares do Oriente. Década Sexta, Parte Segunda. Lisbon.
Cushman, R., trans., and D. Wyatt, ed. 2001. ‘Translating Thai Poetry: Cushman, and King Narai’s “Long Song Prophecy for Ayutthaya”. JSS 89.
Dhiravat na Pombejra. 1984. ‘A Political History of Siam Under the Prasatthong Dynasty: 1629-1688’. PhD. thesis, University of London.
Dhiravat Na Pombejra. 1990. ‘Crown trade and court politics in Ayutthaya during the reign of King Narai (1656-88)’. In J. Kathirithamby-Wells and John Villiers, eds, The Southeast Asian Port and Polity: Rise and Demise. Singapore.
Dhiravat na Pombejra, tr. 2015. “Khlong chaloem phrakiat somdet phra narai” [Eulogy of King Narai], pp. 61-140 in Winai Pongsripian and Trongjai Hutangkura, Moradok khwam songjam haeng nopaburi si lawotayapura wa duai khlong chaloemphrakiat somdet phra narai lae jaruek boran haeng mueang lawo [Legacy of Nopaburi Si Lawotayapura in the eulogy of King Narai and ancient inscriptions of Lawo]. Bangkok.
Dhiravat na Pombejra and Michael Smithies. 2011. ‘The Instructions given to the Siamese envoys sent to Portugal’ in Smithies 2011.
Duindam, Jeroen. 2016. Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300-1800. Cambridge.
Dumont, Louis. 1980. Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its implication. Chicago.
Duncan, James S. 1990. The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom. Cambridge.
Eisenstadt, Shmuel. 1986. The Origins and Diversity of Axial Civilization. Albany
Forbin, Claude de. 1991 [1729]. Le voyage du comte de Forbin à Siam, 1685-8. Cadeilhan, Zulma.
Forest, Alain. 1998. Les missionnaires francais au Tonkin at au Siam (XVIIe-XVIIe siècles). Analyse comparée d’un relatif succès et d’un échec total. 3 vols, Paris.
Fouser, Beth. 1996. The Lord of the Golden Tower. King Prasat Thong and the Building of Wat Chaiwatthanaram. Bangkok.
Geertz, Clifford. 1980. Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton.
Gervaise, Nicolas. 1688. Histoire naturelle et politique du Royaume du Siam. Paris, 1688.
Gesick, Lorraine. 1983. ‘The Rise and Fall of King Taksin: A Drama of Buddhist Kingship’. In Gesick, Centers, Symbols, and Hierarchies: Essays on the Classical States of Southeast Asia, New Haven, 87-105.
Gokhale, Balkrishna G. 1966. ‘Early Buddhist Kingship’. Journal of Asian Studies 26, 1: 15-22.
Grabowsky, Volker. 2007. ‘Buddhism, Power and Political Order in Pre-Twentieth Century Laos’. in Harris, 2007b: 121-42.
Guedes, Maria Ana Marques. 1994. Interferência e Integração dos Portugueses na Birmânia, Ca. 1580-1630. Lisbon.
Gunawardana, R.A.L.H. 1979. Robe and Plough: Monasticism and Economic Interest in Early Medieval Sri Lanka. Tucson.
Gyally-Pap, Peter. 2007. ‘Reconstructing the Cambodian polity: Buddhism, kingship and the quest for legitimacy’. In Ian Harris, ed., Buddhism, Power and Political Order, London and New York.
Halikowski Smith, Stefan C.A. 2011. ‘Floating European Clergy in Siam during the Years Immediately Prior to the National Revolution of 1688: The Letters of Giovanni Battista Morelli, O.F.M.’. In Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds: Essays in Honour of Kirti N. Chaudhuri, edited by Stefan C. A. Halikowski Smith, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Harris, Ian. 2007a. ‘Introduction – Buddhism, Power and politics in Theravada Buddhist lands’, in Harris ed., 2007b, 1-9.
Harris, Ian, ed. 2007b. Buddhism, Power and Political Order. London.
Ishii, Yoneo. 1986. Sangha, State and Society: Thai Buddhism in History. Honolulu.
Kaempfer, Engelbert. 1998. A Description of the Kingdom of Siam, 1690. Bangkok.
Kemp, Jeremy. 1969. Aspects of Siamese Kingship in the Seventeenth Century. Bangkok.
Kulke, Hermann. 1993. Kings and Cults: state formation and legitimation in India and Southeast Asia. New Delhi.
Launay, Adrien, ed. 1920. Histoire de la Mission de Siam. Documents historiques, Vol I. Paris.
Lieberman, Victor. 2003. Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Volume I: Integration on the Mainland. Cambridge.
Loubère, Simon de La. 1987 [1691]. Étude historique et critique du livre de Simon de La Loubère “Du Royaume de Siam”, ed. Michel Jacq-Hergoualc’h. Paris.
Love, Ronald S. 1999. ‘Monarchs, Merchants, and Missionaries in Early Modern Asia: The Missions Étrangères in Siam, 1662-1684’, International History Review, XXI/1.
Marcinkowski, M. Ismail. 2005. From Isfahan to Ayutthaya: Contacts Between Iran and Siam in the 17th Century. Singapore.
Matthee, Rudi. 2012. Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan. London.
Melvin‐Koushki, Matthew. 2018. ‘Early Modern Islamicate Empire: New Forms of Religiopolitical Legitimacy’. In The Wiley Blackwell History of Islam, 353-75, Hoboken.
Mendes Pinto, Fernão. 1989. The Travels of Mendes Pinto, ed Rebecca D. Catz. Chicago.
Moin, A. Azfar. 2012. The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. Columbia.
Muhammad Rabi, Ibn Muhammad Ibrahim. 1972. The Ship of Sulaiman, translated from the Persian by John O’Kane. London.
Nidhi Eoseewong. 2005. Pen and sail: literature and history in early Bangkok. Chiang Mai.
Pieris, Paul, tr. 1908. Religious intercourse between Ceylon and Siam in the eighteenth century. Bangkok.
Pollock, Sheldon. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Ranikhet.
Puett, Michael. 2002.) To Become a God: cosmology, sacrifice, and self-divinization in early China. Cambridge, MA.
RCA: The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya. Editor, David K. Wyatt. Translated by Richard D. Cushman. 2nd Edition, Bangkok: The Siam Society, 2000.
Reid, Anthony. 1993. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680, Volume II: Expansion and Crisis. New Haven.
Reynolds, Craig J. 2006. Seditious Histories, Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts. Seattle.
Ribadeneira, Marcelo de. 1970. History of the Philippines and other Kingdoms [1601], Volume 1, trans. Pacita Fernandez. Manila.
Rubiés, Joan-Pau. 2005. ‘Oriental Despotism and European Orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu’. Journal of Early Modern History.
Sahlins, Marshall and David Graeber. 2017. On Kings. Chicago.
Sanson, Mr. 1695. Voyage ou l’état présent du Royaume de Perse. Paris.
Scubla, Lucien .2005. ‘Sacred King, Sacrificial Victim, Surrogate Victim or Frazer, Hocart, Girard’. In Declan Quigley, ed., The Character of Kingship. Berg.
Sharrock, Peter. 2009. ‘Garuda, Vajrapani, and religious change in Jayavarman VII’s Angkor’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 40: 111-51.
Silber, Ivana. 1995. Virtuosity, Charisma and Social Order: A Comparative Sociological Study of Monasticism in Theravada Buddhism and Medieval Catholicism. Cambridge.
Skilling, Peter. 2007. ‘Kings, sangha and brahamns: ideology, ritual and power in pre-modern Siam’. In Ian Harris, ed., Buddhism, Power and Political Order, London.
Smithies, Michael, ed, trans. 1995. Descriptions of Old Siam. Oxford.
Smithies, Michael, ed. 2011. Five Hundred Years of Thai-Portuguese Relations: A Festschrift. Bangkok.
Strathern, Alan. 2007. Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land. Cambridge.
Strathern, Alan. 2019. Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History. Cambridge.
Strathern, Alan. Forthcoming a. Converting Kings: Kongo, Japan, Thailand, and Hawaii Compared 1450-1950. Cambridge.
Strathern, Alan. Forthcoming b. ‘Tensions and Experimentations of Kingship: King Narai and his response to missionary overtures in the 1680s.’
Tachard, Guy. 1686. Voyage de Siam des Pères Jésuites Envoyez par le Roy aux Indes & à la Chine: avex leurs Observations, Astronomiques, et leurs Remarques de Physique, de Géographie, d’Hydrographie, & d’Histoire. Paris: Seneuze and Horthnels.
Tachard, Guy. 1689. Seconde Voyage du Père Tachard et des Jésuites envoyez par le Roy au Royaume de Siam. Contenant diverses remarques d’Histoire, de Physique, de Géographie, & d’ Astronomie. Paris.
Tambiah, Stanley. 1976. World Conqueror and World Renouncer: A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background. Cambridge.
Tun Aung Chain, ed. 2005. Chronicle of Ayutthaya: A translation of the Yodaya Yazawin. Yangon.
Van der Cruysse, Dirk. 2002. Siam and the West, 1500-1700, translated by Michael Smithies. Chiang Mai.
Van Leeuwen, Richard. 2017. Narratives of Kingship in Eurasian Empires, 1300–1800. Leiden.
Van Vliet, Jeremias. 2005. Van Vliet’s Siam, ed., and trans. Chris Baker, Dhiravat na Pombejra, Alfons van der Kraan, and David Wyatt. Chiang Mai.
Visudh Busayakul, trans. 2002. The Diary of Kosa Pan (Thai Ambassador to France. June-July 1686), introduced by Dirk Van der Cruysse and edited by Michael Smithies. Chiang Mai.
Vollant des Verquains, Jean. 1691. Histoire de la révolution de Siam arrivée en l’année 1688. Lille
Woodward, Hiram. 2001. ‘Review: Practice and Belief in Ancient Cambodia: Claude Jacques, Angkor and the Devarāja Question’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32, 2: 249-261.
Woraporn Poopongpan. 2007. ‘Thai Kingship during the Ayutthaya Period: A Note on Its Divine Aspects Concerning Indra’. Silpakorn University International Journal 7: 143-171.
Wright, Michael. 1990. ‘Sacrifice and the Underworld: Death and Fertility in Siamese Myth and Ritual.’ Journal of the Siam Society 78, 1: 43-53.
Wyatt David. 2001a. Thailand: A Short History. Chiang Mai.
Wyatt, David. 1982. ‘The Subtle Revolution of King Rama I of Siam’. In Wyatt and Alexander Woodside, eds, Moral Order and the Question of Change: Essays of Southeast Asian Thought, Yale.
Wyatt, David. 2001b. ‘Relics, Oaths and Politics in Thirteenth-Century Siam’. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32: 3-65.
