The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

REVIEW ARTICLE 341
414, a pig year. Using the 10-year cycle [rrn] together with the era
as 'year 1' [ekasak] it will be thus: pig year, first of the decade,
poratf era 1. In the language of the northern Thai it would be
expressed as pora'! era 1, a kap kai year. When the porar} era bad
reached 17 years the 10-year cycle and the era would have completed
one full turn plus a remainder of 7. The remainder of 7 is
equal to sapra of the southern Thai or kat .of the northern Thai,
and corresponds to year of the bare {thau~ or mau) as well. Thus
it can be concluded that maha sakar'aja 17, kat cai year is really a
kat mau year, that is, hare year, 7th of the decade, [Buddhist] era
430". 40
If the foregoing appears very tortuous to uninitiated readers, let
me hasten to assure them that it is equally hard going for those in the
habit of working with Thai dating systems. As a matter of fact, and
for reasons which I shall set forth below, not only is kat cai incorrect for
the year in question, whether considered as pre-Buddhist poiaf) era or
equivalent to B.E. 430, but kat mau as well is both incorrect for the year
in question and, in addition, is an impossible combination. The true
cyclical combination for pre-Buddhist poraf} 17, had such a system been
in use at the time, would have been rahvay sana and the true cyclical date
of B.E. 430 was mo'h mau, which was indeed a bare (mau) year, as Manit
calculated, but kat mau is impossible, since in the way the system works
one of those terms, no matter what numerical year count is used, will
always accompany odd numbers and the other even.
Although most readers probably have some familiarity with these
cycles, an understanding of which is essential to the treatment of
Manit's analysis, the descripitons I h,ave seen often leave important
points in obscurity.
The so-called northern .cycle consists of two series, one of 10 and
the other of 12 terms, such as, for ex;ample, the numbers 1-10 and the
letters A-L, combined in the manner t~A, 2-B and so forth up to 10-J,
after which the first series starts again, 1-K, 2-L, 3-A, etc. The result
40) Manit, p. 16.