issueHow old is any of this

เรื่องนี้เก่าแค่ไหน · rueang ni kao khae nai

Scholars call the royal-nationalist history an invented tradition. The article says so itself.

What it is

The line between what is documented and what was assembled later, which runs through almost every origin claim on this site.

The long version

English Wikipedia carries the counter-reading in its own voice: scholars have described the royalist-nationalist history as an invented tradition, constructed for the needs of Thai nationalism, and that construction attached the sport to an official cultural institution and cut it off from its neighbours — muay Lao, lethwei in Myanmar, kun khmer.

Set the dates out and the pattern is visible without argument:

• 1910 — three provincial fighters win at a royal cremation and their home towns become the regional styles.
• 1913–1919 — the term muay thai first appears in the curriculum of a Bangkok school, to distinguish it from British boxing taught in the same room.
• 1921 — the first permanent ring, at that same school.
• Late 20th century — the official history is codified, and muay boran is coined for whatever came before.
• A cabinet resolution — the fifteen mae mai are attributed to a king who died in 1709.

Inference — none of that makes the fighting recent. Bare-hand fighting is in the Mungrai law of 1296 and in a French diplomat's account of Siam in 1687. What is recent is the package: a national art, with a founder, a date, a canon of thirty techniques and four schools. The sport is old. The story is a hundred years old, and the story is what gets sold.

Connected to

• Nai Khanom Tom The founder.
• The Tiger King The inventor.
• The four lines, and the rhyme that ranks them The four schools.
• Muay boran The name coined last.
• The same sport, four borders Who got cut off.

Named here by

• The four lines, and the rhyme that ranks them Who assembled the list, and when.
• Muay boran The argument about who assembled it.
• Nai Khanom Tom The wider argument this sits inside.
• The Tiger King The pattern.
• The ring arrives, 1921 The pattern.
• The hermit's school How to hold a tidy origin.
• The Mangrai law, 1296 What came later.
• 17 March, and where the date comes from The pattern.
• The same sport, four borders The mechanism.
• Rama V, and the making of a national sport The argument.
• muay When the compound was coined.

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