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

364 REVIEW Al\TICLE
The reader will note that the 1st and 3rd of the renewals coincided
with the establishment of new eras, while the 2nd was in B.E. 1000, a
type of date traditionally associated with important changes.ss In
another important Southeast Asian Buddhist work, Sasanavaf!!sa, the
latest of these eras, cula, is consistently called the Kali era, one of the 4
yuga of classical Indian cosmic time reckoning. Since one of the ideas
of the yuga system was that cities reappear with new identities in each
yuga (For example, Ujjain, in previous yuga was known as padmavati,
bhogavati, and hiranyavati), it would seem tbat this feature of TS was due
to an adaptation of the Indian yuga system to the history of Northern
Thailand.s6 The implication of this, of course, is that everything before
the last renewal of Chiang Saen, at least, is pure fiction.
We see now that nearly all of the structure and important details
of the early part ofTS are adaptations of international-Indian, Ceylonese,
Burmese-motifs which can have nothing to do with the history of
Northern Thailand. They were placed in the geographical framework
85) Dates at 500 and 1000-year intervals after the nirvana have been important
in prophecies concerning tb,e disappearance of Buddhism, See Presence, pp. 657-
662. For a belief in the importance of B.E. 1000 in Central Thailand see the
bahSavatar hiw'a/Phongsawadan No'a or the so-called British Museum Chronicle,
Bangkok, 1964, pp. 6-17, concerning Phra Ruong, who was believed to
have established a new era at that date. See also Sir John Bowring, The
Kingdom and People of Siam, Oxford in Asia Historical Reprints, 1969, I p. 36,
for an English translation of the same remarks. King Prasat Thong also
believed that 1000 of the cula era was a mystically important date. See the
various editions of the Royal Autograph, British Museum, or Bancandanumiis
chronicles under the year 1000. Of course, underlying the very term "millenarism"
is a conception of drastic changes occurring in thousand-year
. periods.
86) Heinrich Zimmer, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art aud Civilization, Bollingen
Series VI, N.Y. 1946, pp. 13-18; Sasanava~>,!sa, Law, ex:amples ofKali equiva·
lent to cula in introduction, p. ix, and p. 44; on Ujjain, see Kathasaritsagara,
The Ocean of Story, translated by C.H. Tawney, London 1922, vol. VII, p. 1.
It is interesting to note that hiranya·vati was established in the third
yuga and herana-nagara in the third (!a~iya) era. This suggests more .than ran·
dom borrowing by the compiler ofTS, although I have seen nQ material which
suggests why there should be a speqial connection between Ujjain and Chiang
Saen, ·