Sukhothai Kingdom

The Sukhothai Kingdom was a post-classical Siamese kingdom (maṇḍala) in Mainland Southeast Asia centred on the ancient city of Sukhothai in present-day north-central Thailand. A trading town on the routes between the Mon, Tai and Xiān polities, it had become a city-state by 1127. Its political order took shape over the late 12th and 13th centuries through contests among neighbouring centres, among them Chaliang–Si Satchanalai, Kamphaeng Phet, and Mueang Rat. The events of 1238, which brought Si Inthrathit to power, are traditionally taken as the kingdom's formation, though how they should be read is disputed. Sukhothai remained a separate polity until 1438, when it passed under Ayutthaya after the death of Borommapan. Chronicle traditions date Sukhothai's beginnings to the 5th or 7th century and place it first under Lavo. They then have it ruled by a Monic dynasty from Haripuñjaya from the 950s, and from the mid-12th century by Siamese lines of the central Menam valley. Older scholarship held that the Xiān were briefly subordinate to Angkor between the late 12th and early 13th centuries, and read 1238 as Sukhothai's liberation from a Khmer garrison and the beginning of an independent Tai kingdom. Later work has questioned both points. It notes Siamese control of Sukhothai before 1238, and reads the events of that year as a contest between local lords who both drew on Khmer titles and alliances. After 1238, Sukhothai was paired with Si Satchanalai, a relationship read variously as one polity with two centres and as two distinct polities under separate ruling lines. The polity is traditionally held to have reached its greatest extent under Ram Khamhaeng the Great, whom some historians credit with introducing Theravada Buddhism and the initial Thai script. Later scholars read the extent claimed in his inscription as a network of relationships with neighbouring...