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Lopburi
Lopburi (Thai: ลพบุรี, RTGS: Lop Buri, pronounced [lóp bū.rīː]) is the capital city of Lopburi Province in Thailand, about 150 km (93 mi) northeast of Bangkok. The town (thesaban mueang) covers the whole of tambon Tha Hin and part of Thale Chup Son in Mueang Lopburi District, an area of 6.85 km2 (2.64 sq mi), and has a population of 58,000. It is known for the long-tailed macaques that live around its Khmer monuments, and the Royal Thai Army Special Warfare Command is based just outside it.
The site has been occupied since prehistory and was one of the larger moated settlements of the Dvaravati period, when it was a regional centre with more subordinate towns than any other on the central plain. As Lavapura, or Lavo, it was incorporated into the Khmer Empire under Suryavarman I, and Chinese and European records of the following centuries know it under further names. Under Ayutthaya it was a stronghold of the kings, and in the mid-17th century King Narai made it a second capital and lived there for much of the year.
The earliest confirmed occurrence of the name Lavapura is on silver coins inscribed "lava" on the obverse and "pura" on the reverse in a Pallava-derived script of the seventh or eighth century; several such coins were recovered in 1966 from a hoard found in an ancient jar in U Thong.
Foreign records give the name in other forms. Lopburi appears in Book III of Marco Polo's Travels as Locach, from the Cantonese pronunciation of Lavo, "Lo-huk", and as "Lo-ho" in chapter 20 of the History of Yuan. A scribal error in the same book of the Travels, which substituted Java for Champa as the point of departure of the route southward, placed Locach far to the south of its real position; Henry Yule observed that sixteenth-century geographers following those editions accordingly drew a southern continent there.
The city has a history dating back to the Dvaravati period more than 1,000 years ago. Karen Mudar's locational study of the moated settlements of the central plain gives the enclosure at Lopburi 137.5 ha and ranks it a regional centre, the second of four administrative levels; the region she assigns to it holds fourteen moated settlements, more than any of the other six. It also has the widest span of control in her sample, the capital's area standing to the summed area of the settlements under it at about one to four against about one to one west and north of the bay, a difference she attributed to different ways of raising grain rather than to different degrees of authority. Between Lopburi and the regional centre at Pra Rot lies a gap of 130 km, and halfway along it the settlement of Utapao, which grew from 15.3 to 83 ha; Mudar suggested it may have been a regional centre in its own right that was later absorbed, and that dating its moat expansion against the growth of the two capitals would settle the question. Epigraphic evidence indicates that the dominant population of the city was Mon.
The chronicle tradition gives the town a foundation in the seventh century. According to the Northern Chronicles, Lavo was founded by Phraya Kalavarnadishraj, who came from Takkasila in 648 CE. Thai records make his father Phraya Kakabatr, also of Takkasila, which has been taken to be either Tak or Nakhon Chai Si, the setter of the Chula Sakarat era in 638 CE, which the Siamese and the Burmese used until the 19th century; the son is said to have founded the city a decade later.
Lavapura became one of the most important centres in the Chao Phraya basin. Inscriptions record that it was incorporated into the administrative structure of the Khmer Empire during the reign of Suryavarman I, which gave the empire access to the trade passing through the Kra Isthmus. There is some evidence that the empire under Suryavarman II fought the Mon over suzerainty in the 12th century. Lopburi sent embassies to China in 1115 and 1155.
After the foundation of the Ayutthaya Kingdom in the 14th century, Lopburi was a stronghold of Ayutthaya's rulers. It became the capital of the kingdom during the reign of King Narai the Great in the mid-17th century, and the king resided there about eight months a year.
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Lopburi
Lopburi (Thai: ลพบุรี, RTGS: Lop Buri, pronounced [lóp bū.rīː]) is the capital city of Lopburi Province in Thailand, about 150 km (93 mi) northeast of Bangkok. The town (thesaban mueang) covers the whole of tambon Tha Hin and part of Thale Chup Son in Mueang Lopburi District, an area of 6.85 km2 (2.64 sq mi), and has a population of 58,000. It is known for the long-tailed macaques that live around its Khmer monuments, and the Royal Thai Army Special Warfare Command is based just outside it.
The site has been occupied since prehistory and was one of the larger moated settlements of the Dvaravati period, when it was a regional centre with more subordinate towns than any other on the central plain. As Lavapura, or Lavo, it was incorporated into the Khmer Empire under Suryavarman I, and Chinese and European records of the following centuries know it under further names. Under Ayutthaya it was a stronghold of the kings, and in the mid-17th century King Narai made it a second capital and lived there for much of the year.
The earliest confirmed occurrence of the name Lavapura is on silver coins inscribed "lava" on the obverse and "pura" on the reverse in a Pallava-derived script of the seventh or eighth century; several such coins were recovered in 1966 from a hoard found in an ancient jar in U Thong.
Foreign records give the name in other forms. Lopburi appears in Book III of Marco Polo's Travels as Locach, from the Cantonese pronunciation of Lavo, "Lo-huk", and as "Lo-ho" in chapter 20 of the History of Yuan. A scribal error in the same book of the Travels, which substituted Java for Champa as the point of departure of the route southward, placed Locach far to the south of its real position; Henry Yule observed that sixteenth-century geographers following those editions accordingly drew a southern continent there.
The city has a history dating back to the Dvaravati period more than 1,000 years ago. Karen Mudar's locational study of the moated settlements of the central plain gives the enclosure at Lopburi 137.5 ha and ranks it a regional centre, the second of four administrative levels; the region she assigns to it holds fourteen moated settlements, more than any of the other six. It also has the widest span of control in her sample, the capital's area standing to the summed area of the settlements under it at about one to four against about one to one west and north of the bay, a difference she attributed to different ways of raising grain rather than to different degrees of authority. Between Lopburi and the regional centre at Pra Rot lies a gap of 130 km, and halfway along it the settlement of Utapao, which grew from 15.3 to 83 ha; Mudar suggested it may have been a regional centre in its own right that was later absorbed, and that dating its moat expansion against the growth of the two capitals would settle the question. Epigraphic evidence indicates that the dominant population of the city was Mon.
The chronicle tradition gives the town a foundation in the seventh century. According to the Northern Chronicles, Lavo was founded by Phraya Kalavarnadishraj, who came from Takkasila in 648 CE. Thai records make his father Phraya Kakabatr, also of Takkasila, which has been taken to be either Tak or Nakhon Chai Si, the setter of the Chula Sakarat era in 638 CE, which the Siamese and the Burmese used until the 19th century; the son is said to have founded the city a decade later.
Lavapura became one of the most important centres in the Chao Phraya basin. Inscriptions record that it was incorporated into the administrative structure of the Khmer Empire during the reign of Suryavarman I, which gave the empire access to the trade passing through the Kra Isthmus. There is some evidence that the empire under Suryavarman II fought the Mon over suzerainty in the 12th century. Lopburi sent embassies to China in 1115 and 1155.
After the foundation of the Ayutthaya Kingdom in the 14th century, Lopburi was a stronghold of Ayutthaya's rulers. It became the capital of the kingdom during the reign of King Narai the Great in the mid-17th century, and the king resided there about eight months a year.
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