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

HEV!E\VS 421
o~ ~ ~ r.$v "\ rl t
111Wff11'J3./VtlftnJJ I'I~::E/1FJ1JH:i JJ'Uf111fi'HJUI1'mJJ7'J IV JJ'JV lNtJUW'1l P/fJnWf1311Vn':i 7u
..( /:j """' •
Tamcmn:mtmwmP~W1fi"JV ao 11 (Collected Articles of Francis H. Giles
(Phya Indramontri), published by the Revenue Department on its 60th
anniversary), pp. 260.
This anniversary volume does the academic community a great
service in focusing attention on the writings of Francis Henry Giles, a
keen and astute recorder of Siamese customs and folklore.
It is particularly
appropriate that the Revenue Department and the Siam Society
co-operated in making this volume available as Chaokhun Indra was both
a founding member of the Siam Society and the first Director-General
of the Revenue Department. Mr. Giles, better known as Chaokhun Indra,
served Siam not only as a faithful and efficient civil servant in the fiscal
realm for more than thirty years but as a scholar who studied Siamese
history, literary traditions, and customs and beliefs with insight, understanding
and appreciation. His interest and support of scholarship in
Siamese studies was in evidence during his fruitful years as President of
the Siam Society.
This collection of Chaokhun Indra's writings displays the breadth
of his academic interests and clearly demonstrates his exceptional
command of the Siamese language. Those concerned with the state of
youth in Siam today would do well to ponder the wisdom embodied in
Chaokhun Indra's lecture on moral education of youth delivered to the
Teachers' Association in B. E. 2473 (A.D. 1930). His articles on the Koh
Lak Tradition show his imaginative, inquiring and adventurous academic
spirit and are sufficiently provocative to encourage continuing debate
among historians and scholars of Thai literary traditions. In his
accounts of the ceremonies and rites performed by elephant and wild ox
hunters and by fishermen who catch the fabled Pla Bi.ik, Chaokhun lodra
provides us with exhaustive verbatim renditions of magical chants and
descriptions of rites performed. He traces the derivation of ideas, words
and symbols and evidences his erudition in drawing on Sanskrit literature
and Brahmanic lore and tradition. These studies will remain as classics
in descriptive ethnography.