Thailand (Lonely Planet, 13th Edition) - China Williams [9]
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Lampang Man provides the first evidence of the existence of Homo erectus in Asia outside Indonesia and China.
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By the end of the first millennium AD, many Tai were already living in areas of modern Thailand. They had encountered, displaced, assimilated or were co-existing with Mon and Khmer people. Other groups of Tai-Kadai speakers split off and moved through mainland Southeast Asia; into Laos (the Lao people) and Myanmar (the Shan), for example. In the 9th and 10th centuries AD, the empires of southern China (Nanzhao), Vietnam (Champa) and Cambodia (Angkor) were thriving. The Tai, however, with no centralised administration of their own, were still living in the margins of history.
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THE RISE OF THE TAI KINGDOMS
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Dvaravati, Angkor & Srivijaya
Before the arrival of the Tai, present-day Thailand had been contested by Mon and Khmer in the central plain, by Khmer in the northeast and by Malays in the south.
Thailand’s central and northeastern regions from the 6th to 9th centuries AD witnessed the formation of a distinctive Buddhist culture associated with the Mon and the name Dvaravati. The discovery of several coins in Nakhon Pathom bearing the inscription ‘Lord of Dvaravati’ suggests that Dvaravati was a kingdom whose centre was Nakhon Pathom. It could have been a loose association of city-states sharing Mon and Buddhist culture, including Ku Bua (Ratburi), Srimahosot (Prachinburi), Nakhon Ratchasima and U Thong, with the centre in Nakhon Pathom. Evidence of recovered artefacts from Dvaravati sites and present-day mapping of these sites suggests overland trade routes – west to Burma, east to Cambodia, north to Chiang Mai and Laos, and toward the northeast and the Khorat Plateau.
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Thailand: A Short History (2003) by David K Wyatt and A History of Thailand (2005) by Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit are highly recommended reading.
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The urban civilisation of Dvaravati left behind its distinctive art, architecture and Mon-language stone inscriptions. Indian influences colour several aspects of Dvaravati civilisation, such as city names, religious beliefs and material culture. The process of state- and civilisation-building in ancient Southeast Asia, once understood as ‘Indianising’ or ‘Indianisation,’ is now often described as ‘localisation,’ rather than as a reception of Indian culture in a pure form.
In the 11th century, the influence of Mon-Dvaravati city-states declined quickly after the Khmer empire expanded westward across present-day central and northeastern Thailand. Lavo (Lopburi), Sukhothai and Phimai (Nakhon Ratchasima) were regional Khmer administrative centres. Between these centres and the capital at Angkor, roads and temples in Khmer style made travel easier and were a visible symbol of imperial power. Khmer elements – Brahmanism, Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism – mark the cultural products of this period in Thailand. Relief carvings at Angkor Wat from the early 12th century depict Tai mercenaries serving in Khmer armies. The Khmer called them ‘Syam’, a term for the Thai Kingdom which may have eventually become ‘Sayam’ or ‘Siam’.
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French historian Georges Cœdès suggested that ‘Indianisation’ was a common experience among the early states of Southeast Asia.
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Between the 8th and 13th centuries, southern Thailand was under the sway of the maritime empire of Srivijaya which controlled trade between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Chaiya (nearby Surat Thani) was its regional centre. A vital cultural differentiation in Southeast Asia occurred in Srivijaya: the city-state of Tambralinga (Nakhon Si Thammarat) adopted Buddhism, while the Malay city-states further south converted to Islam. By the 15th century, a permanent religious frontier existed on the peninsula between the Buddhist