The swans are housed in a glass exhibit at the Kamphaengphet National Museum in Kamphaengphet Province. The two swans, Hong in Thai or Hongsa as they are known in Mon, are facing eastward, almost ready to take flight.
The Mon word Hongsa is derived from the Indian “Hamsa (हंस).” In Indian mythology, the Hamsa is a mythical bird of passage that represents the release of the soul from the cycle of life, a central goal in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism.
The two sandstone birds in Kamphaengphet may be lost among the dozens of Buddhist and pre-historical exhibits at the museum, but they are as important as any other exhibit because of what they symbolize.
“The Swans are part of the Mon Buddhist identity both in Thailand and Myanmar,” said Phacha Phanomvan, a lecturer in Medieval History at Oxford University.
And to understand the Mon people is to understand a central part of Thailand’s history.
A mysterious people
We do not know when the Mon first arrived in Indochina. Myanmar historian Than Tun estimates that the ancestors of the Mon arrived in the region around the turn of the first millennium from southern China.
Historians also say there was no one central mon identity but rather diverse tribes with loose artistic affinity and some common value.
What we do know is that the first instances of the Mon script, an Austronesian language distantly related to Khmer, was discovered in the caves of Saraburi province and dated to around 550 AD.
We also know that the first major cities and kingdoms within the region now known as Central Thailand were Mon speaking. The city-states of Thailand’s Dvaravati (ทวารวดี) period spoke a Mon derivation as did the Thaton Kingdom of first millennium Myanmar.
We know that the proliferation of Theravada Buddhism in Indochina was thanks to these ancient Mon-speaking cities and kingdoms who were the first to receive Buddhist missionaries from Sri Lanka.
We also know that by the 10th century, just 500 years after the first instance of their language being recorded, the Mon kingdoms began a rapid period of decline.
Pressure and decline
“There are records of disease outbreaks in [the Mon Kingdom of] Haripunjaya,” said Phacha. “There was also the little ice age during that time and we saw the collapse of a lot of cultures during that period.”
The Mon-speaking city states also had to deal with external pressures from several ethnic groups that were growing in power. Among them were the Khmers of present-day Cambodia to the East, the Pagans of Myanmar to the West and the newly-arrived Tai.
The Tais were an ethnic group that migrated from Southern China and eventually settled in areas near or around the declining Mon kingdoms.
“The Tais had access two main technology thanks to their relationship with the Nanzhao (Kingdom of Southern China), metallurgy and irrigation,” said Phacha.
The Mon cities had chiefly subsided on forestry and the growing of orchards.
“Domesticated rice did not spread in Southeast Asia until the second millennium,” said Phacha. “Sukhothai (a Tai settlement under the influence of the Khmer) became a huge agrarian centre thanks to dams and locks technology that helped them to mitigate droughts.”
Assimilation and heritage
Despite the pressures, “the Mons [in Thailand] continued to operate and adopted rising Siamese Court culture,” said Phacha.
Mon refugees from aggressive Burmese empires also began making their way to Siam both during the Ayutthaya period and the Ratanakosin period and assimilated with the now-expansive and growing Tai kingdoms.
Perhaps the clearest sign of successful assimilation would be to look at the current Chakri Dynasty. The founder of the Chakri line, Phra Phutthayotfa Chulalok or Rama I, had Mon heritage.
“Rama II was basically 80 per cent Mon,” said Phacha.
The swans of Ayutthaya
The swans of Ayutthaya themselves are unique because even though they are representative of Mon-art, they date only as far back as the Ayutthaya Kingdom.
The swans not only represent the Mon-heritage of a Tai/Siamese Kingdom but also the Indo-Buddhist traditions that inform so many cultures within the region.
It is thus a perfect example of the various influences that make up modern Thailand and the perfect first item for our History of Thailand in 100 objects.
