Traveling Monks and the Troublesome Prince: On the Aftermath of the Dutch VOC’s Mediation of Buddhist Connection between Kandy and Ayutthaya (original) (raw)

Kandyan historical chronicles and biographies of its influential monks and monarchs have tended to characterize the mid-eighteenth-century arrival of Ayutthayan monks, and the rescue of Laṅkā’s defunct Buddhist monastic lineage, as a singular instance of meritorious religious patronage carried out by wholly virtuous agents. This article aspires to interject a more complex apprehension of these activities and the experiences of king, bhikkhu, and Dutch trader, especially in the decade following three importations of Siamese monks and royals on Dutch East India Company (hereafter VOC) ships between 1753-1759. This article considers the failed assassination attempt against Kandy’s King Kīrti Śrī Rājasiṃha (r. 1747-1782) in 1760, plotted by disaffected courters together with Kandyan and Siamese monks, and especially its aftermath. I focus on the VOC’s extensive efforts to track down one of the Siamese plotters, a troublesome Ayutthayan monk-prince named Krommuang Thep Phiphit. Between 1760 and 1764, in the context of the Kandyan-Dutch war, the Company attempted twice to bring him back to the island and install him themselves as a puppet king. By engaging VOC colonial surveillance in both Kandy and Ayutthaya alongside Siamese historical chronicles, this article suggests that the tendentious and short-lived moment of religious diplomacy between two independent and predominantly Buddhist kingdoms and the VOC had the effect of magnifying destabilizing political intrigue and perilous personal animosity in addition to reviving a defunct monastic lineage for Kandyan Buddhist monks.