Founding of Ayutthaya, 1351

Founding of Ayutthaya

According to the Luang Prasoet chronicle, the city of Ayutthaya, on an island in the Chao Phraya, was founded on 4 March 1351; its founder, the ruler known as U Thong, reigned there as Ramathibodi I. The kingdom of Ayutthaya became the dominant power of the Chao Phraya basin and, for four centuries, the heart of Siam.

Date

4 March 1351exact dateDate in the Julian calendar

Place

Ayutthayatoday: Ayutthaya Historical Park, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya, Thailand · Southeast Asia and Oceania

Participants

Ramathibodi I (U Thong), Ayutthaya Kingdom

Threads

Southeast Asia and Oceania (14th – mid-15th c.)

Also known as

Founding of the Ayutthaya Kingdom; Dvaravati Sri Ayudhya; U Thong; Ramathibodi I; Krung Si Ayutthaya; Основание Аютии; У Тхонг

The date comes from the Luang Prasoet chronicle, the oldest surviving royal chronicle of Ayutthaya, ordered in 1680: Friday, the sixth day of the waxing moon of the fifth month, in the year of the Tiger, 712 of the Chula era — conventionally 4 March 1351. George Coedès gives 1350 for Ramathibodi's coronation. The founder's origins are obscure: later traditions make him a prince of U Thong in the Suphan region, while a 17th-century Dutch account calls him a Chinese merchant who had become ruler of Phetchaburi; both versions are disputed. In the account Coedès follows, an epidemic drove the ruler of U Thong from his town about 1347, and he moved to an island some 50 km south of Lopburi, at a crossroads of river routes, naming his city Dvaravati Sri Ayudhya after Rama's Ayodhya.

The site was not empty: a town called Ayodhya existed there before 1351, and the Luang Prasoet chronicle itself dates the great Buddha image of Wat Phanan Choeng to 1324/1325. Ramathibodi united through family ties the old centres of Lopburi (Lavo) and Suphanburi, whose two ruling houses then contended for the throne of Ayutthaya for half a century. Coedès dates the submission of Sukhothai to an expedition that the future king led in 1349; in other accounts Sukhothai became a tributary only by 1378 and was absorbed in 1438. In 1352 Ramathibodi laid siege to Angkor, which, if the annals of Ayutthaya are to be believed, fell the following year.

Known to Persian merchants as Shahr-i Naw, the ‘New City’ — the name appears, in the form Scierno, on Fra Mauro's world map (c. 1450–1459) — Ayutthaya became a great port and the capital of Siam until the Burmese destroyed it in 1767. It sent sixty tribute missions to the Ming court between 1369 and 1429, more than any other state of Southeast Asia (Champa sent forty-eight).

Connections

Related events

Ram Khamhaeng Inscription1292 · Southeast Asia and OceaniaSukhothai, whose power the Ram Khamhaeng inscription celebrates, submitted in 1349 to the future founder of Ayutthaya, according to Coedès (by 1378, according to other accounts), and was absorbed by Ayutthaya in 1438

Zhou Daguan’s embassy to AngkorMarch 1296 – 30 August 1297 · Southeast Asia and OceaniaZhou Daguan noted in 1296–1297 that repeated wars with the Siamese had laid Cambodia waste; in 1352 the founder of Ayutthaya laid siege to Angkor itself

Fa Ngum founds the kingdom of Lan Xang1353 · Southeast Asia and OceaniaAccording to the Lao chronicle, the king of Ayutthaya stopped Fa Ngum on the Khorat Plateau by recalling their common descent from Khun Borom and promising him a daughter in marriage

Majapahit at its height under Gajah Mada and Hayam Wurukbetween 1331 and 1336 – 1389 · Southeast Asia and OceaniaIn Coedès's words, Ayutthaya and Majapahit became ‘the two poles of Farther India’, and their lists of dependencies overlapped in the south of the Malay Peninsula

Prapanca completes the Nagarakretagama1365 · Southeast Asia and OceaniaPrapanca names Syangkayodhyapura — in Coedès's reading, Siam with Ayutthaya — first among the countries friendly to Majapahit

Zhu Yuanzhang proclaims the Ming dynasty23 January 1368 · East AsiaAyutthaya sent sixty tribute missions to the new Ming court between 1369 and 1429, more than any other state of Southeast Asia

Founding of Ayutthaya

Connections

Related events

Meanwhile in the world

Western and Central Europe

Eastern Europe

Balkans and Anatolia

Middle East and Egypt

Africa

Central and Northern Asia

South Asia

East Asia

North America

Latin America

The same period

Sources