Saen Pom

Transmission and literary adaptations

Thao Saen Pom appears in the folk traditions of Kamphaeng Phet Province and subsequently spread throughout the upper central region of Thailand. The narrative is recorded in several historical chronicles, including the Dan Beach Bradley recension of the Royal Chronicle of Ayutthaya [th],^[2] the Yonok Chronicle [th], the Legend of Singhanavati, and the Cūlayuddhakāravaṃśa [th].^{[3]: 26 [4]}

King Rama VI composed a dramatic adaptation of the story of Thao Saen Pom in 1913 in the form of a dance-drama. In 1925, the final year of his reign, he produced another version in the style of a Lakhon Dukdamban (ละครดึกดำบรรพ์; lit. 'classical operatic drama'). In these adaptations, episodes originally framed in terms of supernatural intervention and divine agency were revised to accord with rational interpretation and historical consideration. According to the legend, Thao Saen Pom was previously identified as the father of King Uthong, the founder of Ayutthaya.^[5]

Narrative

Saen Pom is described as a man of unattractive appearance, his body covered with numerous bumps and swellings, which gave rise to the name “Saen Pom,” meaning “a thousand bumps.” He lived near the city ruled by King of Tri Trueng [th] and worked as a vegetable farmer. King Tri Trueng [th] had a daughter renowned for her beauty. Through divine influence, the princess developed a craving for eggplant. A lady-in-waiting obtained eggplants from the garden of Thao Saen Pom. After consuming them, the princess became pregnant. When questioned by the king regarding the identity of the child’s father, she refused to disclose it.^[2]

When the child was born and had grown old enough to recognize people, King Tri Trueng [th] ordered that nobles and citizens assemble at the palace, each bringing food. He declared that the man to whom the prince crawled and from whom he accepted food would be acknowledged as the royal son-in-law. The prince did not approach any of the assembled men. Thao Saen Pom, who had not initially participated, was summoned and offered a lump of cold rice to the prince. The prince crawled directly to him. King Tri Trueng [th], angered by the result, banished Thao Saen Pom, the princess, and their son.^[2]

During their exile, Indra, disguised as a monkey, presented Thao Saen Pom with a magical drum capable of granting wishes. After striking the drum, the bumps covering his body disappeared and he was transformed into a handsome man. He then struck the drum again and wished for the creation of a city, which came into being and was named Thep Nakhon (เทพนคร). There he crowned himself king. He later named his son Uthong. According to the legend, King Uthong subsequently founded Ayutthaya and established the Uthong Dynasty.^[2]

Theories of identification

Earlier scholarship regarded Saen Pom as a purely legendary figure incorporated into royal drama and chronicle tradition. Later scholars, such as King Rama VI, suggested that the legend may preserve elements of political memory from the relevant historical period.^[6][5] Katitham Singkhaselit proposed, on the basis of etymological analysis, that Saen Pom may have been identical with Khom Sabat Khlon Lamphong,^[7] who ruled Sukhothai until 1238, when he was overthrown by the combined forces of Pha Mueang and Si Intharathit.^{[8]: 195–6} In a literary adaptation by King Rama VI refers to Saen Pom as a local prince of Srivijaya or modern Nakhon Pathom.^[6][5]

Phiset Chiajanpong further proposed that Tri Trueng [th] should be located at present-day Thung Yang in Uttaradit province rather than in Kamphaeng Phet province. He suggested that Saen Pom may have had a dynastic connection with the Tai Gao rulers of Mueang Rat (เมืองราด), namely Sri Naw Nam Thum and his son Pha Mueang, situating Mueang Rat in the area related to Thung Yang.^{[9]: 54–9} In this period, this city is mentioned in the Legend of Sawankalok as being governed by Phra Ruang III, the eldest (half) brother of Si Intharathit.^[10]: 28 However, the identification among Saen Pom, Khom Sabat Khlon Lamphong, and Phra Ruang III remains debated.

Chit Phumisak raised a separate objection to one element of the tradition. The Tamnan Ton Phongsawadan gives Saen Pom the style Siri Chai Chiang Saen (ศิริชัยเชียงแสน), whereas the northern Tamnan Singhanavati and the Yonok Chronicle agree in attaching it instead to Ong Chaisiri (องค์ชัยศิริ), a son of Chao Phrom of the Yonok line who crossed the Ping to the abandoned Mueang Paep (เมืองแปบ) and built Tri Trueng there. The two figures are separated by some three centuries in these traditions and are each given a different father, so that on Chit's reading they cannot be the same man: Saen Pom appears in the central tradition as the son-in-law of a later lord of Tri Trueng, not as its founder. Chit held that the northern traditions preserve the style correctly and that the central tradition transferred it because the two names share the element saen. He supported this by noting that the Singhanavati gives a reason for the style — a census returning a hundred thousand households — and that Tai numeral styles were normally taken from such a count or from an extent of rice-land, as with Sam Saen Thai of Lan Xang and Kuena of Lan Na, called Thao Song Saen Na in the Wat Phra Yuen inscription, rather than from a personal peculiarity.^{[1]: 133–4} The force of this objection depends on the chronology assigned to Ong Chaisiri. Chit placed his flight south in 1004 CE, following the reading of the Tamnan Singhanavati that equates the chronicle's Tertiary Era with the Chula Sakarat, an identification later regarded as mistaken and as the cause of an overlap between the Singhanavati line and Ngoenyang. On the alternative reading, which takes the era as the Shaka, the corresponding episode — the month-long invasion of Chai Prakan under Chaiyasiri by the Mon of Thaton — falls in the fifth century rather than the eleventh, several centuries before any date proposed for Saen Pom, which would remove the competition between the two attributions of the style.^[11]

Association with the Suphannaphum dynasty

Because the legend states that Saen Pom bore a son named Uthong, earlier scholars identified him as the father of King Uthong, the first monarch of the Ayutthaya Kingdom.^[6] In this interpretation, Saen Pom was equated with Chaiyasiri of Yonok, who is said to have migrated southward and established Kamphaeng Phet as his principal center,^[12][11] thereby linking King Uthong to Mueang Uthong,^[6] and even further equated Chaiyasiri with Phanom Thale Sri.^[13] Archaeological evidence, however, indicates that Mueang Uthong had been abandoned several centuries prior to the period associated with King Uthong.^[14]: 3 Subsequent analysis concluded that King Uthong of Ayutthaya was instead a prince of Baramaraja of Mueang Chaliang who married Princess Sunandhadevi of Ayodhya.^[15]

According to the architectural style analysis, interpretations of political developments,^[16] and the identification of Thep Nakhon (เทพนคร) with Suphan Buri,^{[17]: 60–1} a subsequent theory proposes that Saen Pom was a progenitor of the Suphannaphum dynasty and may have had a dynastic connection with the Phra Ruang dynasty of the Sukhothai Kingdom.^[16] This view suggests that this lineage may have exercised control over Suphannaphum around the early 13th century.^[17]: 61 According to this interpretation, a later ruler of this line potentially married his daughter to King Uthong of Ayutthaya, culminating in the establishment of the Ayutthaya Kingdom in 1351.^[17]: 61 According to Dhanit Yupho, this line shared the same dynastic origin as Uthong I, who ruled Suphannaphum in 1163.^[17]: 61

Chit Phumisak set the question on a different footing. He argued that Uthong is not derived from the town of Mueang Uthong but is a personal name meaning golden cradle, u being an old Thai and Lao word for a cradle that survives in the royal term phra u and in everyday Isan and Lao usage, and he noted that boys are still named Uthong in Laos. On his reading the discovery of the ruins at Mueang Uthong led earlier scholars to treat the cradle story, and with it the whole account of Thep Nakhon, as fable.^{[1]: 113–15} He further held that the name recurred across generations of one family, so that the tradition may preserve a grandfather, a grandson and even a great-grandson of the same name, and that the differing accounts need not be reconciled into a single figure.^[1]: 206

On that basis Chit proposed a sequence in which Saen Pom stands between two of them: Thao Phichai Thep Chiang Kwa, then the Uthong who subdued Nakhon Si Thammarat, then Saen Pom of Tri Trueng, then a further Uthong whom he took to be the founder of Ayutthaya. He presented it as a working hypothesis for further research rather than a conclusion. The sequence was framed on the assumption, current when he wrote, that Ayutthaya's first king came from the Uthong line.^{[1]: 206–7} Readings of the chronicles that instead derive Ramathibodi I from the line of Baramaraja leave the kinship sequence intact but change its end point, so that the Uthong who follows Saen Pom is Uthong III, who succeeded his father at Suphannaphum, and the Uthong who precedes him is Uthong II; on that reading Thao Phichai Thep Chiang Kwa has been identified with Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri on the strength of his recorded dealings in the south.