artThe epic in the technique list

รามเกียรติ์ในสังเวียน · ramakian nai sangwian

Fourteen of the thirty named techniques come out of one story cycle.

Ms Sarah Welch · CC BY-SA 4.0

What it is

The Ramakien — the Thai telling of the Ramayana — supplies the cast of the curriculum: Rama, Hanuman, Thotsakan, Sida, Erawan, the nagas, the kumbhanda, Hiranyaksha.

The long version

Counted off the two lists of fifteen: fourteen of the thirty name a figure from the epic or its Hindu antecedents, six name a person by their trade or their people, five name an object or a household job, four name an ordinary animal, and one names the movement.

Lopburi's school list is more concentrated still: five of six.

Inference — the Ramakien was the state's own narrative property — painted round the cloister at Wat Phra Kaew, performed as khon at court, versified by Rama I and Rama II. A technique list built out of it is not folk memory. It is a curriculum written by people who had that wall in front of them.

And it is why the names cannot be translated into instructions. Hanuman presents the ring is not a description of two fists going up. It is a pointer at a scene everybody in the room had seen painted.

Connected to

• The fifteen mother techniques The first list.
• The fifteen that come after The second.
• Hanuman presents the ring The scene.
• Muay Lopburi Five of six.

Named here by

• Breaking Erawan's neck Whose elephant.
• Hanuman presents the ring The scene it comes from.
• The fifteen that come after The cast list.
• The fifteen mother techniques Where half the names come from.
• Muay Lopburi Which its list is almost entirely made of.

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