Wikipedia / Haripuñjaya
Wikipedia / Haripuñjaya
Haripuñjaya (; ; , ), also spelled Haribhuñjaya, was an ancient Mon kingdom in what is now Northern Thailand, existing from the 7th or 8th to 13th century CE. Its capital was at Lamphun, which at the time was also called Haripuñjaya. In 1292 the city was besieged and captured by Mangrai of the Tai kingdom of Lan Na.
The kingdom is referred to as K'un-lun in ancient Chinese records.
Founding
According to the Cāmadevivaṃsa, Jinakalamali and Singhanavati chronicles, the city was founded between 629–57 AD by four hermits named Sudeva, Sukatanata, Tapanana, and Chantasikatungka. Hermit Sukatanata requested the Mon ruler of the Lavo Kingdom (present-day Lopburi) to send his daughter, Jamadevi, to become the first queen of the city. However, this date is now considered too early, and the actual beginning is placed at around 750 AD. At that time, most of what is now central Thailand was under the rule of various Mon city-states, known collectively as the Dvaravati kingdom. Sarasawadee Ongsakul reads the invitation of a princess from Lavo as the point at which the north passed from tribal community to complex society, the earliest such transition in the region, and divides the art of Haripuñjaya into a phase of the eighth to tenth centuries that resembles that of Dvaravati and one of the eleventh to thirteenth that diverges from it under Burmese and Indian influence. Charles Higham and Rachanie Thosarat likewise argue for successive periods, dating Dvaravati-style ceramics at Lamphun to about 570 to 760 CE. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit set the foundation later still. They note that one chronicle dates the migration from Lavo to 663 but hold that the archaeological evidence favours the 11th or 12th century, and place it within a general spread of settlement northward from the lower Chao Phraya plain towards the end of the first millennium. Queen Jamadevi gave birth to twins, the older succeeding her as the ruler of Lamphun, and the younger becoming ruler of neighboring Lampang.
The local legend said that at the beginning of her reign, Haripuñjaya's Jamadevi defeated the Lawa dynasty's Khun Luang Wilangka, the 13th king of Raming Nakhon (), but her 2 princes married the 2 princesses of King Vilanga and both dynasties became allies.
Flourishing and downfall
In the twelfth century, during the reign of King Adityaraja, who, together with his brother Chadachota (), were previously princes of Suphannabhum but fled to Haripuñjaya after the kingdom was annexed by Lavo of Tambralinga's prince Kampoch, came into conflict with the Khmers who took over Lavo from Tambralinga in 1002. Adityaraja, with an assist from Suphannabhum, annexed Lavo in 1052 and appointed his brother, Chadachota, the king of Lavo. This marked the end of Khmer influence in the Menam Valley. A king of Haripuñjaya was for a time the favoured candidate for the donor of the Dong Mae Nang Mueang inscription of 1167 or 1168, found far to the south in what is now Nakhon Sawan province. George Cœdès proposed either Ādityarāja or his successor Dhammikarāja, arguing from the Pali of its first face, from the bilingual Mōn and Pali epigraphy that would soon be cut at Lamphun, and from the tradition that Ādityarāja had enshrined there a relic of the Buddha first worshipped by Aśoka. He withdrew the proposal in a footnote added while his article was in press, on evidence that Lopburi had sent its own mission to China in 1155, and in 1968 stated a preference for Lopburi.
Lamphun inscriptions from 1213, 1218, and 1219, mention King Sabbadhisiddhi endowing Buddhist monuments. The last of these is the Mōn Vat Don inscription, LPh.01, which records that on Tuesday 28 May 1219 the king was briefly ordained a monk, attended by his two sons, before a teacher who had reached the age of 82 and witnessed by 80 monks and 102 novices resident in the temple, Jetavana; an uposatha hall for the rites of the monkhood had been built five years earlier. Wyatt reads the whole text as the king setting out his meritorious acts, and takes the ordination as a sign that Buddhism at Lamphun was by then thriving and closely tied to royal power.
The chronicles say that Austroasiatic-speaking people, possibly Kuy people and/or Lawa people, from the northern polity of Umongasela () in the present-day Fang unsuccessfully besieged Haripuñjaya several times during the 10th–11th century. In 957, due to such invasions, a Haripuñjaya noble named Aphai Kamini () went south and refounded Sukhothai, which previously was abandoned around the 6th century.
The early 13th century was a golden time for Haripuñjaya, as the chronicles talk only about religious activities or constructing buildings, not about wars. Haripuñjaya accounts for the third and last phase of Old Mon epigraphy in Thailand, of about the eleventh to thirteenth centuries and found nowhere else in the country. Unlike the brief donative texts of the earlier phases, the seven large steles from Lamphun are substantial documents, recording personal and place names, donations and building works, an account of an earthquake and of the renovations that followed it, and a ceremony at which palm-leaf manuscripts and an umbrella were interred in what may have been a man-made chamber. Nevertheless, Haripuñjaya was besieged in 1292 by the Tai Yuan king Mangrai, who incorporated it into his Lan Na ("One Million Rice Fields") kingdom. The plan set up by Mangrai to overpower Haripuñjaya began by dispatching Ai Fa () on an espionage mission to create chaos in Haripuñjaya. Ai Fa managed to spread discontent among the population, which weakened Haripuñjaya and made it possible for Mangrai to take the kingdom over. Phraya Yi Ba, the last king of Haripuñjaya, was forced to flee south to Lampang.
Haripuñjaya and the Chinese record
Tatsuo Hoshino names no Chinese notice of Haripuñjaya itself, and the connection he proposes is indirect. He identifies the Qian Tuo Huan that fought Chenla in the New Book of Tang with pre-Khmer Lopburi, notes that many wars between Chenla and Lopburi are recorded for the Tang period, and suggests that some of them may be the conflicts between Lopburi and Haripuñjaya described in the Cāmadevivaṃsa, the Jinakalamali and the Munlasatsana. The suggestion rests on that identification rather than on any record of Haripuñjaya, and he offers it as a possibility.
List of rulers
Names of monarchs of the Haripuñjaya kingdom according to Jinakalamalipakorn:
Camadevi (662–669)
Mahayos (669–749), son of the previous
Kumañ (749–789), son of the previous.
Ruthanta (789–816), son of the previous.
Sonamañchusaka (816–846)
Samsara (846–856), son of the previous.
Paduma (856–886)
Kuladeva (886–894)
Maharaj (conquer Haripuñjaya)
Lakkhunsriya (Milakkha conquerer of Haripuñjaya)
Kuladeva (2nd reign)
Traphaka (924–927)
Uchitta jakraphad, King of Lavo (927–930)
Kampol (930–951)
Jakraphad, King of Atikuyaburi or Jinghong (951–960)
Adhijja (1039-1119)
Thayya ammat (Ammat of Phantoñña, coup the throne from Lampang)
Trangal (1195–1196)
Ñotta (1196–1270)
Ñiba (1270–1292)
Notes
References
'Historic Lamphun: Capital of the Mon Kingdom of Haripunchai', in: Forbes, Andrew, and Henley, David, Ancient Chiang Mai Volume 4. Chiang Mai, Cognoscenti Books, 2012.
Swearer, Donald K. and Sommai Premchit. The Legend of Queen Cama: Bodhiramsi's Camadevivamsa, a Translation and Commentary. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998.