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Journal of Asian History
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EDWARD VAN ROY
(Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok)
The [...] premodern Theravada kingdoms, including those in Thailand, were quite
self-consciously constituted as microcosms in which the main lineaments of the cos-
mography and the hierarchical, merit-determined order of the cosmos were replicated
at the level of human social organizations.2
* The author thanks his colleagues in the Department of History and Institute of
Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, as well as Chatri Prakitnonthakarn,
Carl Trocki, Kritika Ratanaphruks, and Ralph Van Roy for comments on ear-
lier drafts of this paper. He also thanks Craig Johnson for assistance in applying
Maplnfo Professional software to historical reconstructive mapping, and to
Sutee Boonmee for preparing the sketch maps appearing in this paper. The six
maps appearing in this paper are black-and-white sketches abstracted from the
author's color-coded, annotated computer maps of Thonburi's and Bangkok's
physical history, 1767-1910, which were compiled from a wide variety of
primary-source data on the urban area's morphological evolution.
1 Among the many studies that deal with the political applications of the man-
dala metaphor in the premodem Southeast Asian context are: Tambiah (1977);
Sunait (1990); Eck (1987); Wolters (1999). Surprisingly, however, none of
those many studies considers the application of the mandala motif to nineteenth
century Bangkok, the subject of this paper.
2 Frank E. and Mani B. Reynolds, "Translators' Introduction," in Reynolds and
Reynolds (1982), p. 23.
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86 EDWARD VAN ROY
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 87
[...] the layout of [old Bangkok] showed an obvious lack of concern for th
arrangement of the Indie ritual space [viz., the mandala] in which to carry into
performative form of government that Clifford Geertz has famously termed (wi
ence to Bali) the "theater state".6
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88 EDWARD VAN ROY
7 Thipakorawong(1988),p. 1.
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 89
8 A section of that abandoned Thonburi moat was deepened and widened in the
1860s for the Nantha Uthayan Palace, a sprawling royal retreat developed for
Rama IV. Remnants of other segments of the old moat were still observable as
late as the close of the nineteenth century, as indicated in an 1897 survey map of
greater Bangkok, but all those lingering traces were subsequently obliterated to
cut the right-of-way for one of Thonburi's major thoroughfares, Isaraphap Road.
See Royal Thai Survey Department (1984).
9 That royal chronicle ( Phrarachaphongsawadan krung thonburi) was originally
prepared by order of King Taksin around 1779. A revised manuscript, the version
referred to here, was prepared in 1795 by Phan Chantanumat (Choem), a royal
scribe serving King Rama I. Along with other manuscript accounts of the Thon-
buri period available only as edited versions dating from the early Bangkok era,
that recension "involved everything from correcting the style and spelling, to ex-
tending the coverage, inserting new material, and altering old material [with the
primary objective of placing the Chakri dynasty in a favourable light]," according
to Nidhi (2005), pp. 290 and 3 1 6-3 1 7.
10 See Ivarsson (1995), p. 58, and C. Reynolds (2006), p. 169.
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90 EDWARD VAN ROY
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 9 1
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92 EDWARD VAN ROY
1 7 Thipakorawong ( 1 988), p. 1 .
1 8 Intimations of such a possibility are offere
sible is the contention that Phraya Thammat
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 93
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94 EDWARD VAN ROY
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 95
Table 1. Bangkok palaces: Locations over the course of the first five Chakri
1782-1 9 10a
Second Reign
(1809-1824)
King's entourage 10 4 - 14
Viceroy's entourage - 1 12
King's entourage 2 14 3 19
Viceroy's entourage - 1 -
1885-1910
King's entourage 1 2 19 22
Viceroy's entourage0 - 2 5 7
Total 46 52 36 134d
Notes:
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96 EDWARD VAN ROY
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 97
and Front Palace (Wang Na, the viceroy's residence) dominated the
bank while the Rear Palace (Wang Lang, residence of the deputy vic
and Former Grand Palace (Wang Doem, briefly occupied by Rama I, then
a royal family elder, and later by the king's senior son) dominated the w
Of the remaining seven palaces, three lined the west bank and four lined
east bank. Furthermore, the city's leading west-bank temples, Wat Rakh
and Wat Aran, were paired with Wat Mahathat and Wat Phra Chetuphon
city's principal east-bank temples.27
Not only did the city's initial palaces and temples form a symmet
cross-river arrangement, they also straddled the city's latitudinal axi
flecting the north-south division of the city into separate zones of occu
tion and control by the king and viceroy, the latter often referred to in
lish translation as the "second king" or "second sovereign." Five pa
occupied the southern (Grand Palace) zone, while six were located i
northern (Front Palace) zone. The positioning of the residential comp
of senior members of the nobility serving the king and the viceroy, res
tively, also fit that zonal division. Just as the Grand Palace and Fo
Grand Palace served as the chief redoubts of the king and his entourage,
the Front Palace and Rear Palace stood in command over the vicero
retinue. That dualistic, north-south division of the city became increasin
apparent in the later years of the First Reign and subsequent reigns as t
numbers of palaces and mansions multiplied with the intergenerat
proliferation of the kingdom's aristocracy and nobility.
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98 EDWARD VAN ROY
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 99
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1 00 EDWARD VAN ROY
32 The new city's perimeter, too, took on enhanced mandala attributes during the
First Reign with the installation of the ritually appropriate number of 16 spired
gates and 16 bastions along the city wall. (The conventional view that only 14
bastions punctuated the city wall - for instance, Naengnoi (1991), pp. 24-25 -
overlooks the two corner bastions along the Grand Palace's original riverside
wall, paralleling those of the Front Palace which are included among the other
14.) The resulting total of 32 alternating gates and bastions corresponds un-
equivocally with the 32 lesser deities surrounding Indra's palace atop Mount
Mera.
33 The military weakness of the bisected riparian city of Phisanulok, the kingdom's
key northern guardpost, in the face of repeated Burmese attack during the 1760s
and 1770s has been cited in Wenk, op. cit., p. 17, in justification of the First
Reign decision to abandon Bangkok's west bank precinct.
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 101
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1 02 EDWARD VAN ROY
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 1 03
crowd the citadel by the close of the Third Reign (table 1). Given t
cumstances, growing pressure on the available terrain encourage
struction of new palaces outside the citadel bounds, resulting in th
ment of 24 palaces within the walled city's noble precinct by the e
Third Reign.37 Even outside the citadel, however, those palaces con
be sited, with rare exceptions, in conformity with the north-south
the king's and viceroy's respective zones of occupation and control.
lack of comparable demographic and residential data on the lower e
the elite, it can be inferred that an equivalent tendency to crowding a
precincts populated by the city's similarly polygynous nobility.38
Adding to the walled city's increased crowding and clutter
successive reigns was the emergence of a number of commone
ments in the interstices between the various princely and noble re
tracts.39 Select coteries of slaves and freemen had from the start f
substratum of servants and staff within the city's sprawling elite
compounds. Gradually, however, commoners' independent acc
walled city eased with the relaxation of curfew, residency, and lan
regulations, construction of metalled roads and sturdy bridges, dra
marshlands, and introduction of rental shophouses and tenements.
ingly, growing prosperity and the accompanying demand for luxur
and specialized services induced an influx of marketplaces
workshops, retail outlets, and transport agents at the city's m
roads and along its principal waterways and roadways. With t
peared a number of new commercial neighborhoods within the
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 107
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 111
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112 EDWARD VAN ROY
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 113
pedestrian use. By the close of the Fifth Reign that policy had been
phatically reversed, with the many transport and drainage canals threadi
the thickly settled deltaic metropolis being spanned by handsome br
featuring carriageways supported by steel and ferro-concrete frames, stu
coed-brick superstructures, and wrought-iron balustrades.63 By 19
total of eight substantial bridges spanned the Former City Moat, s
spanned the City Moat, and another eight spanned the later-dug Khl
Phadung Krung Kasem (or Outer City Moat), virtually erasing the m
traditional ceremonial function of demarcating the city bounds (see map
The construction of a number of those bridges as well as many other
sponsored by members of the royal family and nobility vying for the k
favor, and many of them were named in their sponsors' honor as reward
It is said that as many as 2,000 bridges had been erected by the close of t
Fifth Reign to accommodate the deltaic terrain of Bangkok's ra
spreading road network.65 Though probably an exaggeration, that estima
emphasizes the general impression among Bangkok's expatriate com
nity that led to the romantic fin de sicle sobriquet for the cosmopo
Bangkok metropolis as "Venice of the East," a reference that contr
dramatically with the vision of the traditional, firmly bounded, iso
mandala city and its citadel.
The unrestrained expansion of the modern Bangkok metropolis t
spelled the waning of the old ceremonial capital of Krung Ratanakosin. In
enterprise the aesthetics of Indra's celestial city were abandoned in favor
the secular architectonics of the nineteenth-century Western imperial ca
A new, more public expression of sovereign power and regal charism
been introduced, with "monumental public spaces as suitable stage sets fo
performance of [royal] spectacles," fitting the temper of the times.66 Th
63 Sirichai (1977).
64 In addition, a series of 17 bridges were built to celebrate King Chulalongk
successive birthdays, starting with the king's forty-second birthday in 1895.
was named a "celebration bridge" (saphan chaloem asmuiojj) plus the r
birthday year. Of those commemorative bridges only three crossed canals wi
the walled city. The others spanned canals along the outer districts' newly-b
roads, further corroborating the Bangkok aristocracy's intensifying emphas
the larger metropolis. Sirichai (1977), pp. 38-69.
65 Wright and Breakspeare ( 1 908), p. 24 1 .
66 Peleggi (2002), p. 94.
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114 EDWARD VAN ROY
References
ihsnraunio^tr^ifliiitiiJiJiifsiiinj [Procl
Construction of Rachadamnoen Avenue], Ra
mufim [Government Gazette] 16 (October 1
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 1 1 5
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(2006), p. 143-160.
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RISE AND FALL OF THE BANGKOK MANDALA 117
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