Cornelius Beach Bradley

“ If I am not entirely wrong, there is no other document extant which records the achievement of letters for an untamed speech by one to whom that speech was native, and which at the same time fully illustrates that achievement. When we recall the part these very letters of this very inscription have played in the culture and the life of the Thai race both north and south, and when we reflect that the very form in which we read and write Siamese today is the lineal descendant of that,—not far removed and but little changed,—we may be interested to know something more about it. ”

“ It is that alone, for example, which has made possible for all western tongues the immense advantage of a perfectly fixed order of words in vocabularies and lists. The lack of such an absolute word-order is a difficulty and hindrance to scholarship more or less distinctly felt throughout the Eastern world, and everywhere for the same reason:—the vowels have no place in the alphabetical order. Prince Ram Khămhæng, so far as we can learn, is the only man in all this interval who has come at all near to duplicating that old Grecian thought. ”

“ The absolute losses are mostly of one or two letters out of a word, and these the context often enables one to supply beyond a peradventure. There are not more than twenty words completely lost from the whole inscription, and the restoration of a number of these is scarcely conjectural. In all this matter the recurrent or the aphoristic phrase, the metrical balance, the clue of rhyme—things dear to the elder Siamese speech—are often the surest guides out of the difficulty. ”

“ But late northern Făk Khám is already so nearly like southern Siamese of the 18th century, that there can be no doubt of their common relationship. From that time to this its course is a matter of common knowledge. The use of better surfaces and better instruments for writing, long practice, with resulting sureness and swiftness of stroke, have operated to lessen the stiffness, to reduce the more intricate turns, to diminish the aldermanic breadth of the original letters, and to give them the physiological slant. ”

“ The most interesting thing in the whole writing is the man himself, Prince Khŭn Ram Khămhæng. The inscription commemorates his reign. He himself is the speaker, at least throughout the body of the document. The perspective is that of a man of large and generous nature looking back with not unreasonable satisfaction over a long and strenuous career. In it he has risen from being the youngest son of a petty feudal chieftain—as we gather from the atmosphere and background of the opening scenes—to a point where he challenges the allegiance of the whole Thăi race (ll. 99—100) . ”

“ Fall short it must. But to have known and loved the Highest, and with all one's heart to have striven to establish that Highest in the world, is distinction high enough for any man.—Indeed there is no higher. ”

“ It should be remembered also that because nearly all its words are monosyllables, the Siamese is fairly compelled to secure by some such means as these the needed rhetorical amplification of its otherwise highly condensed diction.
In the midst of this serious writing ช่าง sounds surprisingly like a bit of modern half-slang in the sense of "are great hands to" "are forever⸻". But there seems no escape from it. Nor need we flinch, I imagine, from the obvious suggestion of the set phrase which follows, that children and wives are sought in order to help in cultivating the fields. ”

“ Our Siamese scholars are quite as much at a loss. A solution seemed as hopeless as ever, when a Lao friend recognized in it a slangy colloquialism still current in the North, used in speaking of great numbers, amounts, and the like—comparable perhaps to such western slang as 'fit to bust', 'till you can't rest', etc.
59. อฎฐารศ is simply the Indian numeral eighteen used as a substantive designation of an image of standard dimensions, much as the Englishman says "a sixty-four pounder" or "a six-footer". B has rendered the word correctly. ”

“ Bradley arrived in Bangkok in the reign of King Phra Nang Klao in the year 1835. He lived throughout that reign and the reign of King Mongkut and died in the present reign in 1873, after having recorded in his Calendar and other publications what was noteworthy in Siamese customs and history. Through his profession he was brought into contact with all sorts and conditions of men and what strides have been made in the knowledge of surgery in Siam we owe to him. ”

“ The word ◌ีหน fled, near the end of the line, illustrates one of the difficulties growing out of the fact that when the vowels were given their place in the line, they were not also given their place in the sequence of letters in the syllable. Since the vowel ◌ี must appear at the beginning of the syllable in which it is used, no matter where in the syllable it is actually pronounced, it comes about that 'ni' fled, is spelled exactly as is 'hin' stone, ll. ”

“ But among some hundreds of elephant's names encountered in reading, I cannot recall a single monosyllabic one; and that city's name occurs in this text spelled แพล่ l. 121.
10. เพื่อ, 'because.' In modern Siamese the word is almost exclusively prospective 'with a view to,' 'in order that,' 'for.'
In this text the use of the nikhahit (◌ํ) seems quite unsettled. It was, of course, the 'anusvara' used in Indian writing to indicate a nasalized final short a. In modern Siamese and Lao, in combination with า—as in อํา—it is the regular spelling of the syllable am. ”

“ Such balance, either simple or complex, is found in almost every second line of the inscription. It is sometimes varied in rhythm, as the examples cited show; sometimes it is massed so as to fill a whole passage.
In primitive speech, the rhetorical effect of balance is Mnemonic value. scarcely more important than its mnemonic effect—the clue it affords the memory of speaker as well as of hearer. To a speaker a sonorous phrase, well-coined, is more valuable than a single word expressive of the same idea. The phrase has greater weight and momentum ”

“ The word was originally a Pali adjective, araññaka, derived from arañ 'forest' and meaning 'of or in the forest'. In Siamese it became a noun, and means 'a forest-monastery' The correct Siamese spelling now should be either อรัญญิก, with modified vowel, or อรัญญกะ, which is the precise equivalent of the Pali form. The discrepant spelling admits of complete explanation. The Sŭkhothăi scheme, it will be remembered, included no direct symbol for short a, but indicated that vowel by the device of doubling the consonant. The consonant here is already doubled ”

“ The difference concerns the five simple (unvoiced) , non-aspirate stops which stand each at or near the head of its particular order of consonants: ก, จ, ฏ, ต, ป. In Siamese these are all "middle" letters, while in Lao they are all "high." The question as to which more nearly represents the original scheme, can never be positively answered, because we can never recover the Sŭkhothăi pronunciation. But the probabilities seem all on the side of the Lao. In the first place, the Lao certainly seems the more primitive in type, preserving many archaic features which the Siamese has lost. ”

“ One group of consonant-sounds, chiefly the non-aspirates and the aspirates, was actually provided with two letter symbols for each sound, the two letters indicating different tonal quality. The two parallel sets so formed were the so-called "high" and "low" letters. Each naturally gave its tone to the vowel which followed it. These two "inherent" tones were further susceptible of different modification by the use of two accent marks, the "ek" and the "tho," and also to some extent by final consonants ”

“ It is not always necessary that all the words of such a phrase should have now, or ever should have had, either independent or pertinent meaning. It is quite permissible in many languages to invent them outright, if only the result prove sufficiently "taking." In such cases, however, it is generally desirable to invoke the aid of balance, alliteration, or assonance Thus we come at length to the "sŏi khăm" as the The "jingle." Siamese call it, or the "jingle" as we may term it. Examples are: "kha sük kha süa" enemies l. ”

“ Professor Bradley has shown in the case of the Sukotai stone that it has been possible to improve on former readings of it, and if that achievement is not to be accomplished in every case, the publication of inscriptions in the Journal, with their translations, will be of the greatest interest to those of us who have not the learning to decipher, while to those who can do so the means will be increased of indulging in the exercise of their science and skill. ”

“ In such a case the native scholar is utterly at a loss to understand the European's remorseless pursuit of the individual word. It may have been, as he well knows. no word at all, but only an extemporized rhyme or a hazarded jingling pendant. For him all considered speech it Fine Art, quite as valuable for its sensuous effect and suggestion as for its logical and definable content. Fine Art it is too in that the whole is something far other and greater the mere sum of its parts. In such cases the native trusts himself absolutely to the total impression, and questions not the uncertain detail. ”

“ Words no longer current either in Siamese or in Lao are marked obsolete. Those found only in the northern dialect are marked Lao. No attempt has been made to isolate elements common to Shan and Thai, nor the inherited Chinese element. ”

“ But Pali words had then a long orthographic tradition behind them. The scribe would be far less likely to misspell one of them than one from his own hitherto untamed mother-tongue.
64. ปิฎกไตร the 'Three Baskets', name of the collected Buddhist Scriptures.
65. ลุก แต่ เมือง . . . . มา, a Lao idiom answering to the Siamese มา แต่ เมือง . . . . . . S displaces ทุก คน from its natural connection with the words before it, in order, as it would seem, that he may enlarge thereby the Aryan aristocracy which he has discovered in the word 'araññic'. ”

“ People in this city of Sŭkhothăi 44 are given to alms, Religion. are given to observing the precepts, are given to making offerings. Prince Khŭn Ram Khămhæng, 45 lord of this realm of Sŭkhothăi, with the matrons and nobles of the city, their retinues of servants and maidens, 46 the gentry one and all, both male and female, 47 and the mass of common folk, have reverence for the teaching of Buddha. ”

“ The second word is certainly ใด 'any', and not ดู 'look', S, nor กู 'I', P.
13—14. The phrase ตี หนัง วัง ช้าง has been the source of much perplexity to all students of this text, native as well as foreign. For what seems a very happy solution I am indebted to the kindness of Chau Suriyawong of Chieng Mai. The expression, he assured me, is a stereotyped phrase readily understood by the Lao, meaning 'to hunt wild elephants'. The apparent irrelevance of the terms used he explained as follows:—ตี is used in the same sense it still has in the phrase ตีเกลียว 'to lay up the strands of rope'. ”

“ The suggestion is not universally abhorrent to human nature. The invariable precedence given to ลูก 'children' in the phrase ลูก เมีย, meaning 'family', is, I imagine, wholly a matter of euphony. The more sonorous เมีย is reserved for the final place and the heavy phrase-accent. See Note 2 p. 18. The introduction of the subject, ไพร่ ฝ้า ข้า ไท 'people of the realm', after the statement is apparently complete, is quite foreign to present literary usage, but is a frequent device of racy talk, and follows well the lead given by ช่าง above. ”

“ The second เผือ S gets r1d of by transliterating it as เมื่อ, which gives an impossible syntax. In the second word beyond this S was puzzled by the unfamiliar แฏ่ (แต่) , and writes the word แล in his text, and sẽ in his transliteration,—with no intelligible meaning in either case. RS gives a modern gloss ตั้ง แต่ for ตยม แต่, which no doubt gives the true meaning. But ตยม seems wholly obsolete.
The reader will notice that division of words at the end of a line caused the early scribe no difficulty whatever. ”

“ The editors did not know the letter ฎ.
18. The first word is involved in a break in the stone, but enough of it remains to make sure that its second letter is ล, and that its first is a letter closed above like ก or ด. The word cannot be สี่ 'four' as B's rendering gives it. S in his text writes กล, which not only satisfies the requirements of the stone, but makes perfect sense in the prase ทั้ง กล, not yet obsolete, and equivalent to the modern ทั้ง นั้น 'altogether.' But S's transliteration reads 'phonla' and his translation follows suit with 'avec ses revenus'. ”