Boxers at Angkor, 1431
นักมวยที่นครธม พ.ศ. 1974
King Borommarachathirat II of Ayutthaya sent four forces against Angkor Thom, and the victory inscription lists groups of Siamese boxers among them.
History and geography
A palm-leaf law of 1296, a dance in Lanna, boxers in an order of battle, and the reign that turned all of it into a national sport.
กสิณธร ราชโอรส · CC BY-SA 4.0The oldest law code of Lanna, compiled from the Indian Dharmaśāstra, in 27 sections. The English article on muay thai names it as the oldest recorded use of the word muay, in section seven, among eighteen kinds of quarrel.
Dated 1296, in the reign of Mangrai, who founded Chiang Mai four years earlier. Written in Northern Thai on palm leaf.
Its other sections say what kind of document it is: deserting a battle, dying in the middle of a battlefield, fighting a war and coming back with an enemy's head or without one, the death of a minister. It is a war-state's code.
Inference — and muay appears in it not as an art or a display but under quarrels — one of eighteen ways people get into a fight that the law then has to sort out. That is the earliest thing anyone can point to in writing, and it describes the sport as a public order problem in a northern kingdom.
Every founding story on this site is later, southern, and better dressed.
Full record — The Mangrai law, 1296
Where it starts
กสิณธร ราชโอรส · CC BY-SA 4.0Not in Ayutthaya
The Thai-language history of the sport begins it with jerng, the Lanna martial dance — and the oldest written muay is in a northern law code about quarrels.
History
Ayutthaya to the ring, in the episodes that are actually documented and the ones that are not.
The law that would not punish it
พระอัยการเบ็ดเสร็จ
A clause in the Miscellaneous Laws of the reign of King Ekathotsarot, 1590 to 1605, quoted in the English article.
What an evening is shaped like
รูปร่างของหนึ่งค่ำคืน
The running order of a card, and where in it to arrive.
The ring arrives, 1921
เวทีมาถึง พ.ศ. 2464
The first permanent ring in Siam, at Suan Kulap College, and everything that came in with it.
The King's Guard, 1455
กรมทนายเลือก พ.ศ. 1998
Under the Law of the Military and Provincial Hierarchy of 1455, boxing was folded into the Ayutthaya court as the King's Guard Department — with a…
A French diplomat, 1687
ทูตฝรั่งเศส พ.ศ. 2230
Simon de la Loubère, envoy of Louis XIV to the court of King Narai, wrote down what Siamese men did with their time.
The hermit's school
สำนักพระฤๅษีสุกกะทันตะ
A school at Khao Samo Khon in Lavo — now Lopburi — kept by a hermit called Sukkathanta, teaching a subject called *Mai Sastra*.
17 March, and where the date comes from
17 มีนาคม วันมวยไทย
Muay Thai Day, kept on 17 March for Nai Khanom Tom.
The same sport, four borders
กีฬาเดียวกัน สี่ชายแดน
Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and the Malay peninsula each have a striking art with the same eight weapons and a different name.
Rama V, and the making of a national sport
รัชกาลที่ 5 กับการทำให้เป็นกีฬาของชาติ
Under King Chulalongkorn, 1868 to 1910, boxing was organised from the top: nationwide tournaments, a Royal Boxing Centre — *Muay Luang* — and the…
What this site does not have
สิ่งที่เว็บนี้ไม่มี
The gaps, listed.
Why you thought he won
ทำไมคุณคิดว่าเขาชนะ
The most common experience a first-time spectator has, and the five reasons for it.
Thai troops in France, 1914–18
ทหารไทยในฝรั่งเศส
Thailand sent troops to France with the allies, and they taught what they knew. The English article records this as the route by which the word…
Places
Where the schools came from and where the fighters still come from.
Bangkok
กรุงเทพมหานคร
Where a fighter's career is decided, regardless of where he is from.
Chaiya
ไชยา
An old town on the Gulf coast, once a seat of Srivijaya, now best known outside Thailand for a boxing style and a forest monastery.
Chiang Mai
เชียงใหม่
The northern city, and the densest cluster of foreigner-facing gyms outside Phuket.
Isan
อีสาน
Twenty provinces on the Khorat plateau, Lao-speaking, the driest farmland in the country and the lowest household incomes.
Nakhon Ratchasima
นครราชสีมา
The largest province in Thailand by area and the entry point to Isan from the central plain.
Lanna
ล้านนา
The northern kingdom — Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Lamphun, Lampang, Phrae, Nan, Phayao — founded by Mangrai and independent of Ayutthaya and Siam for…
Uttaradit
อุตรดิตถ์
A northern province on the Nan river, home of Muay Thasao and of Phraya Phichai.