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A letter in Thai from Thalang in 1777

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

E. H. S. Simmonds
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Abstract

The subject of this communication is a letter in Thai (Siamese), dated the equivalent of 1777, to Francis Light who occupied the island of Penang as agent of the East India Company in 1786 and became its first Superintendent. Light had been a trader on the coast since about 1771 where he was particularly concerned with Kedah and with the island of Thalang (Salang)usually known to Europeans as Junk Ceylon. His sphere of activity extended westward to the ports of the Coromandel coast and to Bengal and eastward as for as Bangkok. At the date in question thecapital of Siam was at Thonburi on the west bank of the Chao Phya river before its transfer to its present site on the east bank in 1782. The whole area had long been konwn as Bankok or Bankok to foreign traders

Type
Notes and Communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , October 1987 , pp. 529 - 531
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1987

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References

1 The terms Siam and Siamese rather tha Thailand and Thavi have been retained as repesenting the European usage of the Period.

2 Elisha, Trapaud: A short account of the Prince of Wales's Island or Pulo Peenang in the East-Indies: given to Captain Light, King of Quedah, London, 1788.Google Scholar

3 E.H.S Simmonds: ‘The Thanlang letters, 1773–94: Political aspects ang the trade in arms’, BSOAS, XXVI, 3, 1963, 592–619;Google ScholarSimmonds, E.H.S.: ‘Francis Light and the ladies of Thaland’, JMBRAS, XXXVIII, 2, 1965, 213–28.Google Scholar

4 For comment on Features of the script see: Simmonds (1963). Khoi paper is manufactured from the back of the shrub Strebhus Asper which was a common material used for writing paper in Central and Southern Siam at the period, V., pallegoix: Dictionarium Linguae Thai (Paris, 1854). 302;Google ScholarMcFartang, G.: Thai-English Dictionary (Standard and Oxford, 1944), 148.Google Scholar

5 Southern usage.

6 The term used is Tai la–ǫng thulī phrabāt somdet phraphuthacau yū hua.

7 The term used is Krung Thēp Phramahānakhǫn.

8 E.H.S Simmonds: ‘An eighteenth century travel document in Thai’. Felicitaion volumes of South East Asian Studies. Siam Socity. Bankok, 1965, vol I, 157–65.