Page:Origins of Sukhodaya dynasty - Coedes - 1921.pdf/2

 d'Extrême-Orient, XVI, iii, p. 23): "The old Thai inscriptions have a great historical interest — not only the general interest which results from the scarcity of authentic documents and from the insufficiency of narrative sources, — but also that which they derive from the abundance of details foreign to their proper subject-matter. The Kings of Sukhodaya very fortunately do not aim at imperatoria brevitas: they take pleasure in talking about themselves, they are prolix in their own praise, but instead of drowning themselves, like the kings of Cambodia, in a flood of monotonous and common-place rhetoric, they are fond of real and precise details." The inscriptions hitherto published shew us the Kingdom of Sukhodaya already constituted and in all its brilliance, but they teach us nothing as to the origin of that Kingdom or as to the personality of the King Śrī Indrāditya who seems to have been the founder of the dynasty.

The Pāli historical texts composed at Xieng-Mai at the beginning of the XVIth. century, to which attention was first drawn by H.R.H. Prince Damroog Rajanubhab and which have been translated by myself give dynastic lists coinciding partly with those of the inscriptions and disclose interesting details concerning the fall of the Kingdom. Moreover, they furnish in especial an early form of the legend of Phra Ruang.

This legend, as preserved in the "Northern Annals" appears to be a medley of all the popular recollections relative to the various Kings of Sukhodaya. It is a curious fact that this text, of no great historical value in itself, is the only one which alludes to an event of first-rate importance for the history of the Thai, namely, their release from the domination of Cambodia.

The Chinese texts translated by Professor P. Pelliot make