Rattanakosin

Rattanakosin lies at the heart of Bangkok. This artificial island (ko means island in Thai, the whole means island of Indra’s jewel) was created by King Rama I in the eighteenth century to house the royal palace complex which he constructed there. The king, intent on creating a city to compare with the grandeur of the old capital of Ayudhya, summoned experts who could recall details of the old city and replicate what had been destroyed. Because of the need to build Bangkok’s new defences quickly, with the meager resources available, rubble from the vanquished site was brought down river and imbedded into fortifications, palace buildings and monasteries. Ayudhya’s bricks then became quarry for Bangkok’s buildings, much like the antique marbles reused for Renaissance and Baroque Rome. The king ordered a second canal to be dug in a concentric arc some 800 meters east of the Klong Lawd canal, which had been dug during King Taksin’s reign. Ten thousand Cambodian prisoners of war were set to work on this. Five thousand Laotian captives herded from Vientiane then built a thick crenellated brick and stucco wall around the defensive moat with fourteen watchtowers punctuating it, of which two remain today: Pom Mahakan near the Golden Mount and Pom Phrasumane on the river at Banglampoo. The total surface area of the royal island was a mere four kilometers square, far smaller than the former capital.

A comparison of old maps of the two capitals shows how closely Bangkok’s general disposition echoed the layout of Ayudhya. The second palace or Wang Na (the Palace of the Front, now National Museum)) was built near the Grand Palace for the king’s brother, the deputy-king. Royal temples with the most important Buddhist relics were clustered around the palaces; these served religious, educational and recreational functions. Mandarin households ringed the royal complex; many nobles built family compounds and founded temples on the riverbanks and near major canal junctions. Artisans, merchants and traders often congregated on nearby waterways so as to profit from their patronage.

The royal citadel was to become the seat of the king and the dominion of the gods. Siamese kingship had inherited Hindu traditions of palace and religious life derived from eleventh-century Khmer polity. The devaraja (god-king) was a distant and imposing figure; commoners were forbidden to look at him. His city (muang), centre of his divine power, had three highly symbolic places: a royal palace for the ruler, a temple housing a Buddha images and relics, and a shrine to the spirit guardian of Siam, Phra Siam Devathiraj.

In 1785, three years after the birth of Bangkok, King Rama I staged a lavish ceremony to consolidate and legitimize the Chakri dynasty and the primacy of Buddhism. This splendid three-day festival at the start of the Siamese New Year was held “in honour of the king, for the well-being of the government, for the happiness of the people.” Buddhist monks chanted on the battlements and the festival offered the Thai equivalent of bread and circuses at royal expense. Food was distributed at key points around the city, coins were tossed to the crowds, and likay (traditional improvised Thai folk drama that runs in episodes like a TV sit-com) played day and night at theatres erected along the main path from the palace to Chinatown’s mall, Sampheng.

A Jesuit envoy to Ayudhya had noted that the Siamese “give pompous names to everything which they honour.” In this vein, the king conferred an auspicious title on the new island-citadel that yoked Brahmanic and Buddhist cosmology. A marble plaque in front of Bangkok City Hall spells out the forty-three syllables that constitute this, the longest city name in the world.

Great city of angels, the supreme repository of divine jewels, the great land unconquerable, the grand and prominent realm, the royal and delightful capital city full of nine noble gems, the highest royal dwelling and grand palace, the divine shelter and living place of reincarnated spirits.

Thais venerate their capital city as Krung Thep – The City of Angels – but the Portuguese called it Bangkok in the sixteenth century and this became its cosmopolitan name.

“It’s almost impossible to translate,” complained a Japanese interpreter and tour guide in Mishima’s The Temple of Dawn. He explains that: “Thai names are like temple decorations, unnecessarily pompous and flowery, ornate for the sake of ornateness… They choose exaggerated and ostentatious nouns and adjectives and string them together like beads on a necklace.” Joseph Conrad found it beautiful: “O Bangkok Magic name, blessed name/ Mesopotamia (recalling Odysseus) wasn’t a patch on it.”