The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXXI, Part 1-2, 1983 - Khamkoo

226 S. Sivaraksa
mittee set up to improve the 1950 edition, without mentioning names of those scholars
who painstakingly met so often to have a complete Thai dictionary of which we could
all be proud. In fact the 1982 edition seems to be a discontinuation of the 1950 one, as
it appears that the regime of October 1976 ordered that a new edition of the Dictionary
was needed, so the 1982 edition was the Royal Institute's effort to fulfil· that Govern
ment's instructions. Luckily the outcome is not as. bad as what happened to our
language during the Second World War. If the 1976 Government had last~ u~til
1982, and if it had the same kind of idiotic ideas as the first Pibul cabinet, as indeed it
had towardS education and national sec1.1rity - not to. mention foreign relaiions, the
Dictionary would really be a mockery to the Thai people. As it stands now, it is only
a mediocre product with hardly any improvement on the 1950 edition, except that
more 1;110dern words have been recorded. Such a dictionary could have been produced
by any private publisher. In fact a private firm has even published a better dictionary
than the one recently produced by the Royal Instiiute, which perhaps is in a declining
state beyond redemption. ·
We only have to look at the names of those responsible for the 1950 edition
and compare them with those responsible for the 1982 edition. We would at once
realize that the former drew all the leading scholars from every walk of life to work on
the national dictionary, whereas the latter had only official representatives from .a, few
disciplines of the Institute and its employees. None of these disciplines cover the field
of linguistics or literature. And the three academicians representing each discipline are
at best second-rate scholars. Besides, those employees of the Institute, however good
they are, should only serve and not dominate the scholarly world. Yet in the field of
Thai languages, now we have many distinguished professors in quite a few universities, ·
not to. mention those who are in command of Sanskrit, Pali, and Khmer. How could
a royal instit~te function without bringing in leading scholars in those fields. Of course
the Institute said it had the full collaboration of various government offices and THE
PEOPLE. Yet it did not name any individual or "institution I
What co~clusion can one draw from such a dictionary ? Now that the g~vernment
celebrated in 1983 the Seven Hundredth Anniversary of the Thai alphabet
invented by King Rama Kamhaeng of Sukhodaya, let 'us wait and see whether the
Royal Institute will produce any publication to mar~ the occasion, and let us hope that
it will do a better job than the Dictionary published to mark the two hundredth1ll1nive.t:­
saty of Bangkok in 1982. But without a drastic reorganisation of the Institut~,-it will
not be in a position to lead the public acadeinically, intellectually, or culturally;·
. t;•·
s. SIVARAKSA
Asian Cultural Forum on Development,
Banskok