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

Dangerous Friendships in Eighteenth-Century Buddhist Laṅkā and Siam

Itinerario: Journal of Imperial and Global Interactions, 2022

The kingdoms of Kandy (now Sri Lanka) and Ayutthaya (now Thailand) were briefly connected across Indian Ocean waters in the mid-eighteenth century by Dutch East India Company (hereafter VOC) traders, leading to the importation of valuable Siamese Buddhist monks and their ordination lineage to the island. Two series of events related to the VOC's search for and delivery of these monks demonstrate that the patronage of connected religious dynamics—not just the contingencies of trade, land, labour, and statecraft—was an essential aspect of Company business. At the same time, mediating Buddhist connection was a dangerous, sometimes perilous undertaking. Analysing VOC records alongside Laṅkān and Siamese historical chronicles and travelogues reveals that what were initially friendly connections at first necessitated, and later intensified certain forms of danger. We begin with perilous shipwrecks and diplomatic impasses across monsoon waters that eventually led to the restoration of an important but defunct Kandyan Buddhist ordination lineage, and conclude with the aftermath of a failed assassination attempt in 1760 against the royal patron of that lineage transmission. I advance the notion of “dangerous friendships” to characterise how Buddhist courts and European traders worked together to first generate, and then exploit, friendly religious connections.

Tensions and Experimentations of Kingship: King Narai and his Response to Missionary Overtures in the 1680s

Journal of the Siam Society, 2019

Following a piece published in the previous issue of this journal analysing the nature of sacred kingship in 17th century Ayutthaya, this article proceeds to show how these tensions in the performance of royal office shaped King Narai's response to Christian proselytism in the 1680s. This involves a consideration of his increasing residence in Lopburi; his fractious relationship with the Buddhist monastic order; his desire to innovate in the field of astrology and chronicle writing; the appeal of French culture and monarchical grandeur; and the possibility that his metaphysical worldview underwent a significant shift towards deism. With the exception of the latter, for which the evidence is dubious, all these themes helped stimulate hopes among the French that his conversion was indeed a real possibility. This was largely an illusion: while Narai chafed within the confines of his role, and remained curious and cosmopolitan in his tastes, there was no great structural crisis which the French could take advantage of, and nor were they able to precipitate one.

Seventeenth-Century Foreign Lives of Ayutthaya: Sources of Cross-Cultural Cooperation and Integration in the Asian Trading Entrepôt

Journal of World History, 2022

This article analyzes and discusses the modes and forms of cooperation between various groups of foreign nationals sojourning in Ayutthaya during the seventeenth century. It argues that Siamese monarchs' religious and ethnic tolerance toward foreigners as well as the large scope of autonomy they granted to overseas incomers was paralleled by the kings' predatory usage of law and inherently conflictual system of exploitation of foreign merchants that satisfied the court's fiscal needs. In effect, traders residing in Siam reacted by creating among themselves cross-national informal networks and by reaching out to court officials and Buddhist clergy. These networks superseded global conflicts raging between the kingdoms and treading companies (such as Portuguese and Dutch wars and the Dutch East India Company war against Ming loyalists, etc.). Moreover, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, the long-standing cooperation between various nations led to a significant cultural amalgamation and growing uniformization in customs and modes of consumption. Due to the strong state institution and specific multiethnic and multireligious social structure, Ayutthaya provides a fascinating early example of reasons, forms, and limits for social and cultural integration within the globalizing entrepôts of early modern Asia.

Buddhism in the re-ordering of an early modern world: Chinese missions to Cochinchina in the seventeenth century

Journal of Global History, 2007

In the seventeenth century, Chan Buddhist masters from monasteries in South China boarded merchant ships to Chinese merchant colonies in East and Southeast Asian port cities to establish or maintain monasteries. Typically, Chinese seafarers and merchants sponsored their travel, and sovereigns and elites abroad offered their patronage. What were these monks and their patrons seeking? This study will investigate the question through the case of one Chan master, Shilian Dashan, who journeyed to the Vietnamese kingdom of Cochinchina (Dang Trong) in 1695 and 1696. In Dashan, we see a form of Buddhism thought to have vanished with the Silk Road: that is, Buddhism as a ‘missionary religion’ able to propagate branch temples through long-distance networks of merchant colonies, and to form monastic communities within the host societies that welcomed them. This evident agency of seafaring Chan monks in early modern times suggests that Buddhism’s role in commerce, diaspora, and state formation ...

Among a people of unclean lips: Eliza and John Taylor in Siam (1833–1851)

John Taylor Jones (1802-1851) and his first wife, Eliza Grew Jones (1803-1838), were the first American Baptist missionaries working in Siam during the reign of King Rama III. They arrived in Bangkok in 1833, started preaching the Gospel in the Siamese capital and in subsequent years prepared a translation of the New Testament as well as other religious tracts in Thai explaining the basic elements of the Christian faith. The couple's arduous proselytizing work in Siam did not lead to a significant number of converts, however, but by offering religion in tandem with science and technology their teachings posed a challenge to traditional Thai world views. This paper examines the social, religious and literary sources that shaped the life writings of the Joneses and seeks to grasp the nature of conflict which informed cross-cultural debates between Buddhists and Christians at that time.

From Merchants to Musketeers in Ayutthaya: The Portuguese and the Thais and their Cultures of War in the Sixteenth Century

Five Hundred Years of Thai- Portuguese Relations: A Festschrift.. Edited by Smithies, Michael. Bangkok: Siam Society., 2011

The paper will examine the transition of Portuguese residents of Ayutthaya from traders to soldiers in the mid-sixteenth century as a result of their mobilisation against the Burmese invaders, to the early seventeenth century. While the details of this transformation and their place in Thai armies is important, one of the key areas to be discussed is how the Portuguese community in Ayutthaya helped to encourage cultural interchange between the Thais and the growing Portuguese maritime world in their respective cultures of warfare.