Yuan Phai

Map showing places mentioned in the poem

By the 14th century, there were three centers of power in the Chao Phraya River basin: Lanna, a confederation of cities in the upper reaches of the basin with a capital usually sited at Chiang Mai; Ayutthaya, a confederation of cities near the coast with a capital at Ayutthaya from 1350; the old Sukhothai Kingdom in the middle reaches, now generally known as the Northern Cities (Thai: เมืองเหนือ Mueang Nuea), with a capital at Phitsanulok. From the late 14th century, Lanna and Ayutthaya vied to control the Northern Cities and thus dominate the whole basin.

Ayutthaya gradually absorbed the Northern Cities by a process that was largely peaceful.[2] The Ayutthaya and Sukhothai ruling families exchanged marriage partners over several generations. People relocated between the two regions, particularly nobles from the Northern Cities absorbed into the Ayutthaya official nobility. The accession of King Trailokanat in 1448 was a significant step in this process as he was descended from the Ayutthaya and Sukhothai ruling families on the male and female side respectively.

Soon after this accession, Phraya Yutthisathian (Thai: ยุธิษเฐียร), a prince of the Sukhothai family, rebelled against Ayutthaya and took his followers to Chiang Mai. According to the Chiang Mai Chronicle, when Yutthisathian and Trailokanat were childhood friends in Phitsanulok, Trailokanat had promised that on becoming king he would appoint Yutthisathian as upparat or deputy king, governing the northern part of the merging domain, but reneged and made him only governor of Phitsanulok.[3] Possibly this story is the way the chronicle conveys a wider opposition to the creeping merger among the Sukhothai nobility.

King Tilokkarat of Chiang Mai (r.1441-1487) had already greatly expanded the Lanna domain by absorbing Phrae and Nan. Yutthisathian encouraged him extend his power over the Northern Cities, leading to a series of battles between Ayutthaya and Lanna over the next thirty years. In 1463, Trailokanat relocated his capital to Phitsanulok, probably as part of this struggle.[4] The city of Chiang Chuen (Thai: เชียงชื่น; the name for Si Satchanalai under Lanna rule) became key to this struggle because of its strategic position on a route between Phitsanulok and Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai seems to have controlled the place from the late 1460s.

Although the poem presents the battle as a great victory, it did not settle the contest between Ayutthaya and Lanna over the Northern Cities which continued intermittently until the mid 16th century.

The poem has four parts: a eulogy of King Trailokkanat (preamble and stanzas 1-60); a summary of key events from 1431 to c.1466 (stanzas 61-82); a main narrative of events from 1451 to the battle (stanzas 83 to 266); the battle and celebration of victory (stanzas 267 to 295).

The eulogy

The king's knowledge of Buddhism is presented through a one-to-nine series of numbered lists of Buddhist concepts. His skill in warfare is vaunted by comparison to the Hindu gods and characters from the Mahabharata. His other skills are celebrated include prediction of future events, literary composition and recitation, debating skills on religious issues, knowledge of history, and insight into the minds of others. The eulogy ends with the poet apologizing for his own shortcomings in composing the work.

Wat Chulamani, Phitsanulok, where King Trailokanat was ordained in 1464

The opening stanzas of Yuan Phai are an early and important source for one of the main theories of kingship in Ayutthaya. Eleven gods combine to create the king. These eleven are the Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva plus the eight guardians of the cardinal and sub-cardinal directions from Indian tradition: Indra (as 'golden Meru's lord'), guardian of the east; Yama, lord of the dead, guards the south; Maruti, lord of the wind, northwest; Viruna, lord of the waters, west; Agni, fire, southeast; Kuwera, lord of the Asura demons, north; Suraya, sun, southwest; Isana, moon, northeast. This notion that eleven gods contribute divine substance to create a king appears in the chronicles at the 1605 coronation of King Ekathotsarot.[8]

๏ พรหมพิษณุบรเมศรเจ้า จอมเมรุ มาศแฮ
ยำเมศมารุตอร อาศนม้า
พรุณคนิกุเพนทรา สูรเสพย
เรืองรวีวรจ้า แจ่มจันทร ฯ

๏ เอกาทสเทพแส้ง เอาองค์ มาฤๅ
เป็นพระศรีสรรเพชญ ที่อ้าง
พระเสด็จดำรงรักษ ล้ยงโลกย ไส้แฮ
ทุกเทพทุกท้าวไหงว้ ช่วยไชย ฯ

Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, golden Meru's lord,
great Yama, fine Maruti on his horse,
Viruna, Agni, demon-chief Kuvera,
the sky-illuming sun and lustrous moon;

these gods eleven joined with one resolve
to make a holy Lord All-Knowing one
to come, protect, sustain and feed this world.
All gods vouchsafed to help Him to succeed.

Map of Si Satchanalai Historical Park

In the poem, the town which is the site of the battle is called Chiang Chuen (Thai: เชียงชื่น) except in one place where it is called Cheliang (Thai: เชลียง). The identification of this location was uncertain; some believed it was at Long in Phrae province. In 1968, MC Chand Chirayu Rajani proposed that Chiang Chuen was the site now known as Si Satchanalai, although he had never visited the place. In 1970 Chanthit Krasaesin [9] showed that the geography sketched in stanzas 169-170 fits exactly with Si Satchanalai. The poem states that the town is screened by three hills, is flanked by rapids in the river and the Meng marsh on one side, and has a triple moat and laterite walls. The three hills, now known as Khao Yao, Khao Suwanakhiri, and Khao Phanom Phloeng, stretch across the north of the city. The rapids in the Yom River, now known as keng luang, the great rapids, are on the northeast side. The Meng marsh was probably to the southeast. The main moat can still be seen, and there are remaining stretches of laterite wall.

The poem does not mention any buildings at Chiang Chuen.

Yuan Phai is the only martial poem to have survived from the Ayutthaya era. Indeed, there is nothing similar in the Thai language until Lilit Taleng Phai, Defeat of the Mon, composed in the 1830s with many borrowing from Yuan Phai, including the echo in the title.

Yuan Phai references several characters from the Mahabharata—Karna, Arjuna, Krishna, Bhima, Duryodhana—as well as naming the Pandava and Kaurava, the two warring clans in the Indian epic. Phraya Yutthisathian is apparently also named after a Mahabharata character. Possibly, the Mahabharata had become popular in Ayutthaya in this era, and was the inspiration for Yuan Phai.

The poem was once generally known as Lilit Yuan Phai but this has been challenged. A lilit (Thai: ลิลิต) is a literary form which interleaves different forms of verse. However, virtually all of Yuan Phai is in one verse form. The only exception are a preamble and an insertion after stanza 264 to fill a lacuna in the story, both of which are probably later additions. On these grounds, the Royal Institute of Thailand titles the work as Khlong Yuan Phai,[1] where khlong (Thai: โคลง) is the form of verse used. Chanthit Krasaesin[9] and Chonlada Rueangraklikhit[10] prefer Yuan Phai Khlong Dan where dan (Thai: ดั้น) is a subcategory of the khlong verse form.

The main meter used is khlong bat kunchon, (Thai: โคลงบาทกุญชร, an elephant-foot khlong). Each stanza has four lines, and each line is five syllables with a two to four syllable tailpiece. Rhymes link one of the two final syllables in the line to the 4th or 5th syllable in the line next but one, crossing stanza boundaries throughout the poem. At certain positions in the stanza, the syllable must have a first or second tone mark (Thai: ไม้เอก ไม้โท).

This latter rule indicates that the verse was composed before the great tone shift in the Tai family of languages. Before that shift, there were only three tones, indicated by one of these two tone marks, or their absence. The meaning of the tone marks prior to the shift is unknown, but most likely an unmarked syllable was a mid tone while the first and second tone marks probably indicated low and high tones respectively. With unmarked, first, and second tones represented as da, do, and di respectively, a typical line (the exact position of the tone-marked syllables may vary slightly) can be represented as follows:

     da   da   da   da   di       da   da   da   da
     da   do   da   da   da       da   di
     da   da   da   da   da       da   da
     da   do   da   da   di       do   da

The preamble and insertion following stanza 264 are in rai (Thai: ร่าย) meter. Two stanzas following stanza 124 are believed to have been composed by Phraya Trang in the early 19th century to fill a lacuna and are not included in the numbering scheme. A stanza 294 appeared on the end in some earlier additions but is now considered a late addition and omitted.

As the poem is written to glorify King Trailokanat , most authorities agree that it was written before the end of his reign (1488) and probably very soon after the battle. MR Suphawat Kasemsi proposed that the author was a monk named Panya Phaisan whose name appears in stanza 58 as Thai: เบญญาพิศาล. Wipha Konkanan proposed that the author was female on grounds that a female pronoun is used, but others consider this unlikely. Phra Borihan Thepthani proposed that the author was a son of King Trailokanat who spent a long time in the monkhood as Phra Suriyawong. Prince Damrong Rajanubhab accepted that the authorship cannot be known for sure.[11][12]

The National Archives of Thailand has 24 samut thai manuscripts of all or part of the poem. However, all clearly stem from a single original as the content and obvious lacunae are the same; they differ in spelling and wording.

In 1970, Chanthit Krasaesin (Thai: ฉันทิชย์ กระแสสินธุ์) produced a critical edition of the poem with details on the variations in different manuscripts and his interpretation of each stanza in modern Thai prose.[13] In 1976, A. B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara published an article in English[14] setting the poem into its historical context, using material culled mainly from the Ayutthaya and Chiang Mai chronicles. They provided a rough translation of around half the stanzas, largely following Chanthit, and a summary of the rest.

In 2001 the Royal Institute of Thailand produced an edition based on Chanthit's format, with many reinterpretations devised by a 19-member committee.[1] As many words are obscure, and parts of the manuscript may have been corrupted by damage or faulty copying, the committee offered alternative readings of several lines.

The poem has been translated into English by Thailand's National Team on Anthology of ASEAN Literatures (คณะทำงานโครงการรวมวรรณกรรมอาเซียนประเทศไทย). The translation is featured in the Anthology of ASEAN Literatures of Thailand, Volume II a (วรรณกรรมอาเซียน ประเทศไทย เล่ม ๒ เอ), first published in 1999.[15]

In 2017, Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit published an English verse translation.[16]

Yuan Phai had a formative influence on a later tradition of royal-panegyric literature in Thai including works in praise of King Naresuan, King Prasat Thong, King Narai, King Taksin, and King Rama I.[17]

Taleng Phai (ตะเลงพ่าย, "Defeat of the Mon"), an epic poem composed by Prince Paramanuchitchinorot, is modelled on Yuan Phai.[18]

• Full text of Yuan Phai at the Vajirayana Digital Library (in Thai)