them is to retrench their House to take away their Females to remove them from the Palace and to send them into Stables abroad They say that an Elephant having been punish'd after this manner and being set at liberty returns to his Lodge at the Palace and kills the Elephant which was put in his place which seems neither incredible nor strange provided the way be free and open for every Animal loves his usual Lodging and according as he is more or less Couragious he will use more or less Violence to drive out another Animal A Fight of Elephants To return to the Diversions of the Court of Siam we saw a Fight of two Elephants of War They were retained by the hind-feet with Cables which several Siameses held and which besides this were fasten'd to Capstains The Elephants could hardly cross their Trunks in the Fight two Men were mounted on each of them to animate them but after five or six Attacks the Combat ended and they brought in the Females who parted them At the great Mogul's Palace the Elephants are permitted to approach nearer and these Animals endeavor to beat off each other's Rider and frequently they knock him down and kill him At Siam they neither expose the Life of Men nor Beasts by way of Sport or Exercise Cock-fighting They love Cock-Fighting The most Couragious are not always the biggest but those which are naturally the best armed that is to say those which have the best Spurs If a Cock falls they give him drink by reason that they experimentally know that it is oftentimes only an effect of Thirst and indeed he generally renews the Fight after quenching his Thirst But as it almost always cost the life of one of the Cocks the King of Siam prohibited these sort of Duels because the Talapoins cry'd and said That the Owners of the Cocks would for their punishment be bastinado'd in the other World with Bars of Iron I forbore going to a Fight of an Elephant and a Tyger because the King of Siam would not be there and that I knew they would not permit to these Animals the liberty of using all their Courage Some inform'd me that the Tyger had been very Cowardly and that the Show had succeeded ill The hunting of Elephants perform'd by an enclosure of Fires in the Woods has been described by others the King of Siam went not to that which was perform'd whil'st the King's Ambassadors were at his Court neither were they invited but the other Diversions which were exhibited to them all at once and in a vast Court were these The one was a Chinese Comedy A Chinese Comedy which I would willingly have seen to the end but it was adjourned after some Scenes to go to Dinner The Chinese Comedians whom the Siameses do love without understanding them do speak in the Throat All their words are Monosyllables and I heard them not pronounce one single one but with a new breath some would say that it throttles them Their Habit was such as the Relations of China describe it almost like that of the Carthusians being clasp'd on the side by three or four Buckles which reach from the Arm-pit to the Hip with great square Placards before and behind whereon were painted Dragons and with a Girdle three Fingers broad on which at equal distances were little squares and small rounds either of Tortoise-Shell or Horn or of some sort of Wood And these Girdles being loose they were run into a Buckle on each side to sustain them One of the Actors who represented a Magistrate walk'd so gravely that he first trod upon his Heel and then successively and slowly upon the Sole and Toes and as he rested on the Sole he rais'd the Heel and when he rested on his Toes the Sole touch'd the ground no more On the contrary another Actor walking like a Madman threw his Feet and Arms in several extravagant Postures and after a threatning manner but much more excessive than the whole Action of our Captains or Matamores He was the General of an Army and if the Relations of China are true this Actor naturally represented the Affectations common to the Soldiers of his Country The Theater had a Cloth on the bottom and nothing on the sides like the Stages of our Rope-dancers and Jack-puddings The Puppets are mute at Siam Puppets and those which come from the Country of Laos are much more esteemed than the Siamese Neither the one nor the other have any thing which is not very common in this Country But the Siamese Tumblers are excellent Rope-dancers and other sorts of excellent Tumblers and the Court of Siam gives the diversion thereof to the King when he arrives at Louvo Aelian reports that Alexander had some Indian Rope-dancers at his Wedding and that they were esteem'd more nimble than those of other Nations These are their Actions which it is necessary to confess I did not closely and carefully consider because I was more attentive to the Chinese Comedy than to all the other Shows which were at the same time exhibited to us They plant a Bambou in the ground and to the end of this they join another and to the end of this second a third and to the end of the third a Hoop so that this makes as it were the wood of a round Racket the Handle of which would be very long A Man holding the two sides of the Hoop with his two Hands puts his Head upon the inferior and inward part of the Hoop raises his Body and his Feet on high and continues in this posture an hour and sometimes an hour and half then he will put a Foot where he had plac'd his Head and without standing otherwise and without fixing the other Foot he will dance after their manner that is to say without raising himself but only by making Contorsions And what renders all this more perilous and difficult is the continual wavering of the Bambou A Bambou dancer of this sort they call Lot Bouang Lot signifies to pass and Bouang a Hoop There dyed one some Years since who leap'd from the Hoop A Tumbler exceedingly honour'd by the King of Siam supporting himself only by two Vmbrella's the hands of which were firmly fix'd to his Girdle the Wind carry'd him accidentally sometimes to the Ground sometimes on Trees or Houses and sometimes into the River He so exceedingly diverted the King of Siam that this Prince had made him a great Lord he had lodged him in the Palace and had given him a great Title or as they say a great Name Others do walk and dance after the mode of the Country without raising themselves but with Contorsions on a Copper-wire as big as the little Finger and stretch'd after the same manner as our Rope-dancers do stretch their Rope And they say that the more the Wire is stretched the more difficult it is to stand by reason it gives a greater spring and is so much the
are in all houses a little furnished they make use of spitting-pots which they carry in their hand In the Kings Palace they neither cough nor spit nor wipe their Nose The Betel which they continually chew and the juice of which they swallow at pleasure hinders them Nevertheless they cannot take Betel in the Prince's presence but only continue to chew that which they have already in their Mouth They refuse nothing that is offered them and dare not to say I have enough As the most eminent place is always amongst them the most honourable What is the greatest Affront among the Siameses the head as the highest part of the body is also the most respected To touch any person on the head or the hair or to stroke ones hand over the head is to offer him the greatest of all affronts To touch his Bonnet if he leaves it any where is a great incivility The mode of this Country amongst the Europeans which dwell there is never to leave their Hat in a low place but to give it to a Servant who carries it higher than his Head at the end of a Stick and without touching it and this Stick has a foot to the end that it may stand up if he that carries it be obliged to leave it The most respectful or to say better the most humble posture What postures are more or less respectful is that in which they do all keep themselves continually before their King in which they express to him more respect than the Chineses do to theirs They keep themselves prostrate on their knees and elbows with their hands joyned at the top of their forehead and their body seated on their heels to the end that they may lean less on their elbows and that it may be possible without assisting themselves with their hands but keeping them still joyned to the top of their forehead to raise themselves on their knees and fall again upon their elbows as they do thrice together as often as they would speak to their King I have remark'd that when they are thus prostrate they lean their back-part on one side or other as much as possibly they can without displacing their knees as it were to lessen and undervalue themselves the more By the same principle it is not only more honourable according to them to be seated on a high seat than on a low seat but it is much more honourable to be standing than sitting When Mr. de Chaumont had his first audience it was necessary that the French Gentlemen which accompany'd him should enter first into the Hall and seat themselves on their heels before the King of Siam appeared to the end that this Prince might not see them a moment standing They were prohibited to rise up to salute him when he appeared This Prince never suffered the Bishops nor the Jesuits to appear standing before him in the Audiences It is not permitted to stand in any place of the Palace unless while walking and if in this last Voyage of 1687 at the first audience of the Kings Ambassadors the French Gentlemen had the honour of entring when the King of Siam was already visible it was only because the Mandarins which had accompanied the Ambassadors of Siam into France were admitted into the Gallery of Versailles when the King was seated on the Throne which he had erected there How the King of Siam accomodates the Ceremonies of his Court to those of the Court of France The King of Siam had that respect for the King of France as to acquaint him by Mr. de Chaumont that if there was any Custom in his Court which was not in the Court of France he would alter it and when the King's Ambassadors arrived in this Country the King of Siam affected indeed to make them a Reception different in several things from that which he had made to Mr. de Chaumont to conform it the more to that which he understood the King had made to his Ambassadors He did one thing when Mr. des Farges saluted him which never had any Precedent at Siam for he commanded that all the Officers of his Court should stand in his presence as did Mr. des Farges and the other French Officers which accompany'd him Why I chose to speak to the King of Siam rather standing than sitting Remembring therefore that Mr. de Chaumont had demanded to compliment him sitting and knowing that his Ambassadors had spoken standing to the King an Honour which he highly esteem'd he informed me that he would grant me the liberty to speak to him sitting or standing and I chose to deliver all my Compliments standing And if I could have raised my self higher I should have received more Honour 'T was in the King of Siam as they informed me a mark of respect for the King's Letters not to receive them standing but sitting Another Siamese Civility To lay a thing upon one's head which is given or received is at Siam and in a great many other Countries a very great mark of respect The Spaniards for Example are obliged by an express Law to render this respect to the Cedules or written Orders which they receive from their King The King of Siam was pleas'd to see me put the King's Letter on my head in delivering it to him he cry'd out and demanded Where I had learnt that Civility us'd in his Country He had lifted up to his Forehead the King's Letter which Mr. de Chaumont deliver'd him but understanding by the report of his Ambassadors that this Civility was not known in the Court of France he omitted it in regard of the King's Letter which I had the Honour to deliver him The manner of saluting among the Siameses When a Siamese salutes he lifts up either both his hands join'd or at least his right hand to the top of his forehead as it were to put him whom he salutes on his head As often as they take the liberty to answer to their King they always begin again with these words Pra pouti Tchaou-ca co rap pra ouncan sai claou sai cramom That is to say High and Mighty Lord of me thy Slave I desire to take thy Royal Word and put it on my Brain and on the top of my Head And it is from these words Tchaou-ca which signifie Lord of me thy Slave that amongst the French is sprung up this way of speaking faire choca to signifie Ta vai bang com or to prostrate himself after the Siamese manner Faire la Zombaye to the King of Siam signifies to present him a Petition which cannot be done without performing the cocha I know not from whence the Portugueses have borrow'd this way of speaking If you stretch out your hand to a Siamese to take hold on his he puts both his hands underneath yours as to put himself entirely into your power 'T is an Incivility in their opinion to give only one hand as also not to hold
extreamly liquid the Portuguese of the Indies do call it cange Meat-Broths are mortal at Siam because they too much relax the Stomach and when their Patients are in a condition to eat any thing solid they give them Pigs flesh preferable to any other They do not understand Chymistry although they passionately affect it Their Ignorance in Chymistry and their Fables about this matter and that several amongst them do boast of possessing the most profound secrets thereof Siam like all the rest of the East is full of two sorts of persons upon this account Impostors and Fools The late King of Siam the Father of the present Prince spent two Millions a great summ for his Country in the vain research of the Philosophers Stone and the Chineses reputed so wise have for three or four thousand years had the folly of seeking out an Universal Remedy by which they hope to exempt themselves from the necessity of dying And as amongst us there are some foolish Traditions concerning some rare persons that are reported to have made Gold or to have lived some Ages there are some very strongly established amongst the Chineses the Siameses and the other Orientals concerning those that know how to render themselves immortal either absolutely or in such a manner that they can die no otherwise than of a violent death Wherefore it is supposed that some have withdrawn themselves from the sight of men either to enjoy a free and peaceable Immortality or to secure themselves from all foreign force which might deprive them of their life which no distemper could do They relate wonders concerning the knowledge of these pretended Immortals and it is no matter of astonishment that they think themselves capable of forcing Nature in several things since they imagine that they have had the Art of freeing themselves from Death CHAP. XI What the Siameses do know of the Mathematics The great Heat of Siam repugnant to all application of Mind THE quick and clear Imagination of the Siameses should seem more proper for the Mathematics than the other Studies if it did not soon weary them but they cannot follow a long thread of Ratiocinations of which they do foresee neither the end nor the profit And it must be confessed for their Excuse that all application of Mind is so laborious in a Climate so hot as theirs that the very Europeans could hardly study there what desire soever they might have thereunto The Ignorance of the Siameses touching the principal parts of Mathematics The Siameses do therefore know nothing in Geometry or Mechanics because they can be absolutely without them And Astronomy concerns them only as far as they conceive it may be assistant to Divination They know only some Practical part thereof the Reasons of which they disdain to penetrate but of which they make use in the Horoscopes of particular Persons and in the Composition of their Almanac which as it were is a general Horoscope Of the Siamese Calendar and why they have two Epocha's It appears that they have twice caused their Calendar to be reformed by able Astronomers who to supply the Astronomical Tables have taken two arbitrary Epocha's but yet remarkable for some rare Conjunction of the Planets Having once established certain Numbers upon these Observations they by the means of several Additions Substractions Multiplications and Divisions have given for the following Years the secret of finding the place of the Planets almost as we find the Epact of every Year by adding eleven to the Epact of the Year foregoing The most Modern is evidently Arbitrary The most Modern of the two Siamese Epocha's is referred to the Year of Grace 638. I gave to Mr. Cassini Director of the Observatory at Paris the Siamese Method of finding the place of the Sun and Moon by a Calculation the ground of which is taken from this Epocha And the singular Merit which Mr. Cassini has had of unfolding a thing so difficult and penetrating the Reasons thereof will doubtless be admired by all the Learned Now as this Epocha is visibly the ground only of an Astronomical Calculation and has been chosen rather than another only because it appear'd more commodious to Calculation than another it is evident that we must thence conclude nothing which respects the Siamese History nor imagine that the Year 638 has been more Famous amongst them than another for any Event from which they have thought fit to begin to compute their Years as we compute ours from the Birth of the Saviour of the World The most Ancient also appears Arbitrary By the same Reason I am persuaded that their most Ancient Epocha from which in this Year 1689 they compute 2233 Years has not been remarkable at Siam for any thing worthy of Memory and that it proves not that the Kingdom of Siam is of that Antiquity It is purely Astronomical and serves as a Foundation to another way of calculating the places of the Planets which they have relinquished for that new Method which I have given to Mr. Cassini Some person may discover to them the Mistakes where in process of time this ancient Method must fall as in time we have found out the Errors of the Reformation of the Calendar made by the Order of Julius Caesar And is not taken from the death of Sommona-Codom The Historical Memoirs of the Siameses re-ascending as I have remark'd in the beginning to 900 Years or thereabouts it is not necessary to seek the Foundation of their Kingdom in the 545th Year before the Birth of Jesus Christ nor to suppose that from this time they have enjoyed a Succession of Kings which they themselves are absolutely ignorant of And tho' the Siameses do vulgarly report that this first Epocha from which they compute as I have said 2233 Years is that of the death of their Sommona-Codom and altho' it refers almost to the time in which Pythagoras liv'd who has sowed in the West the Doctrine of the Metempsychosis which he had learnt from the Egyptians yet it is certain that the Siameses have not any Memoirs of the time in which their Sommona-Codom might have lived And I cannot persuade my self that their Sommona-Codom could be Pythagoras who was not in the East nor that their ancient Epocha is other than Astronomical and Arbitrary no more than their Modern Epocha But if the Siameses do still make use thereof in their Dates The Variety of Style in their Dates after having relinquish'd it in their Astronomical Calculations it is because that in things of Style they do not easily alter the Usages unto which they are accustomed and yet they cease not to date sometimes with respect to that modern Epocha which they have taken as I have said from the Year of our Lord 638. But their first Month is always the Moon of November or December in which they depart not from the ancient Style even then when they date the Year according to
certain copper Basons on each of which a man strikes a blow with a short stick at certain times * The Ear guides them no person beating the Time in each measure These Basons are hung up by a string each has a Pole laid a-cross upon two upright Forks the one is called Schoungschang and it is thinner broader and of a graver sound than the other which they call Cong The Tlounpounpan To this they add two sorts of Drum the Tlounpounpan and the Tapon The wood of the Tlounpounpan is about the size of our Timbrels but it is cover'd with skin on both sides like a true Drum and on each side of the wood hangs a leaden ball to a string Besides this the wood of the Tlounpounpan is run through with a stick which serves as a handle by which it is held They rowl it between their hands like a Chocolate-stick only that the Chocolate stick is held inverted and the Tlounpounpan strait and by this motion which I have described the Leaden Balls which hang down from each side of the Tlounpounpan do strike on each side upon the two Skins The Tapon The Tapon resembles a Barrel they carry it before them hung to the Neck by a Rope and they beat it on the two Skins with each fist They have another Instrument composed of ....... which they call Pat-cong The ...... are all placed successively every one on a short stick and planted perpendicular on a demi-circumference of Wood like to the felleys of a little Wheel of a Coach He that plays on this Instrument is seated at the center cross-legg'd and he strikes the ....... with two sticks one of which he holds in his right hand and the other in his left To me it seems that this Instrument had only a fifth redoubled in extent but certainly there was not any half notes nor any thing to stop the sound of one ....... when another was struck The Consort which follows the King in his Marches The March which they sounded at the entrance of the Kings Ambassadors was a confused noise with all these Instruments together The like is sounded in attending on the King of Siam and this noise as fantastical and odd as it is has nothing unpleasant especially on the River Instruments accompanying the Voice They sometimes accompany the Voice with two short sticks which they call Crab and which they strike one against the other and he that sings thus is stiled Tchang cap. They hire him at Weddings with several of those Instruments I have mentioned The people do also accompany the Voice in the Evening into the Courts of the Houses with a kind of Drum called Tong. They hold it with the Left hand and strike it continually with the Right hand 'T is an earthen Bottle without a bottom and which instead thereof is covered with a Skin tyed to the Neck with Ropes The Siameses do extreamly love our Trumpets theirs are small and harsh Trumpets and Drums they call them Tre and besides this they have true Drums which they call Clong But tho' their Drums be lesser than ours they carry them not hanging upon their Shoulder They set them upon one of the Skins and they beat them on the other themselves sitting cross-leg'd before their Drums They do also make use of this sort of Drum to accompany the Voice but they seldom sing with these Drums but to dance On the day of the first Audience of the King's Ambassadors They have false ones to make a show there were in the innermost Court of the Palace an hundred Men lying prostrate some holding for show those ugly little Trumpets which they sounded not and which I suspect to be of wood and the others having before them every one a little Drum without beating it By all that I have said The Exercises of the Body it appears that in some cases the Mathematics are as much neglected at Siam as the other Sciences They have Exercises of the Body in no more Esteem than those of the Mind They know not what the Art of Riding the Great Horse is Arms they have none except the King gives them some and they cannot purchase any till he has given them some They exercise them only by the Order of this Prince They never fire the Musquet standing no not in War To discharge it they place one Knee on the ground and frequently proceed to sit on their Heel stretching forward the other Leg which they have not bent They hardly know to march or keep themselves on their Feet with a good grace They never stretch out their Hams well because they are accustomed to keep them bended The French taught them how to stand to their Arms and till the arrival of the King's Ships at Siam their Sentinels themselves sat upon the ground So far are they from running Races purely for Recreation sake that they never walk abroad The heat of the Climate causes a great Consumption in them Wrestling and Fisty-cuffs are the Jugler's Trade The running of Balons is therefore their sole Exercise The Oar and Pagaye are in this Country the Trade of all the People from four or five years old They can Row three days and three nights almost without resting altho' they cannot undergo any other Work CHAP. XIII Of the Arts exercised by the Siameses THey have no Companies of Trades They are bad Artificers and why and the Arts flourish not amongst them not only by reason of their natural sluggishness but much more by reason of the Government under which they live There being no security for the wealth of particular persons but to conceal it well every one there continues in so great a simplicity that most of the Arts are not necessary to them and that the Workmen cannot meet with the just value of the Works on which they would bestow a great deal of Expence and Labour Moreover as every particular Person does Annually owe six Months service to the King and that frequently he is not discharged for six Months there is no Person in this Country that dares to distinguish himself in any Art for fear of being forced to work gratis all his life for the service of this Prince And because that they are indifferently employ'd in these Works every one applies himself to know how to do a little of all to avoid the Bastinados but none would do too well because that Servitude is the reward of Ingenuity They neither know nor desire to know how to do otherwise than what they have always done 'T is no matter to them to have 500 Workmen for several Months upon what a few Europeans well paid would finish in a few days If any Stranger gives them any direction or any Machine they forget it so soon as their Prince forgets it Wherefore no European offers his service to an Indian Prince who is not receiv'd as I may say with open Arms. How little Merit soever he may have
Appeals of the Kingdom do go they call Yumrat He generally bears the Title of Oc-ya and his Tribunal is in the King's Palace but he follows not the King when that Prince removes from his Metropolis and then he renders Justice in a Tower which is in the City of Siam and without the inclosure of the Palace To him alone belongs the determinative Voice and from him there also lyes an Appeal to the King if any one will bear the expence The Judiciary form before the King In this case the Process is referred and examined by the King's Council but in his absence to a Sentence inclusively consultative as is practised in the Council of the Tchaou-Meuang The King is present only when it is necessary that he pronounce a definitive Judgment and according to the general form of the Kingdom this Prince before passing the Sentence resumes all the opinions and debates with his Councellors those which to him seem unjust and some have assured me that the present King acquits himself herein with a great deal of Ingenuity and Judgment The Office of Pra-sadet which is pronounced Pra-sedet The Governor of the City of Siam is called Pra-sedet and generally also bears the Title of Oc ya His Name which is Baly is composed of the word Pra which I have several times explained and of the word Sedet which signifies say some the King is gone and indeed they speak not otherwise to say that the King is gone But this does not sufficiently explain what the Office of Pra-sedet is and in several things it appears that they have very much lost the exact understanding of the Baly Mr. Gervaise calls this Office Pesedet I always heard it called Pra-sedet and by able men altho they write it Pra-sadet The Reception which the Governors gave to the King's Ambassadors every one in his Government The course of the River from its Mouth to the Metropolis is divided into several small Governments The first is Pipeli the second Prepadem the third Bancock the fourth Talaccan and the fifth Siam The Officers of every one of these Governments received the King's Ambassadors at the enterance into their Jurisdiction and they left them not till the Officers of the next Jurisdiction had joyned and saluted them and they were the particular Officers of each Government that made the Head of the Train Besides this there were some Officers more considerable that came to offer the King their Master's Balons to the Ambassadors at the Mouth of the River and every day there joyned new Officers that came to bring new Compliments to the Ambassadors and who quitted not the Ambassadors after they had joined them The place where the King's Ambassadors expected the day of their entrance The King's Ambassadors arrived thus within two Leagues of Siam at a place which the French called the Tabanque and they waited there eight or ten days for the time of their entrance into the Metropolis Tabanque in Siamese signifies the Custom House and because the Officer's House which stands at the Mouth of the River is of Bamhou like all the rest the French gave the name of Tabanque to all the Bambou-houses where they lodged from the name of the Officers House which they had seen first of all The day therefore that the King's Ambassadors made their enterance The Governor of Siam came to fetch them Oc-ya Prasedet as Governour of the Metrpolis came to visit and compliment them at this pretended Tabanque CHAP. VII Of the State Officers and particularly of the Tchacry Calla-hom and of the General of the Elephants AMongst the Court Officers are principally those Of the chief Officers in general to whom are annexed the Functions of our Secretaries of State but before an enterance be made into this matter I must declare that all the chief Officers in any kind of Affairs whatever have under them as many of those Subaltern Officers which compose the Tribunal of the Tchaou-Meuang The Tchacry has the distribution of all the Interior polity of the Kingdom Of the Tchacry to him revert all the Affairs of the Provinces All the Governours do immediately render him an Account and do immediately receive Orders from him he is President of the Council of State The Calla-hom has the appointment of the War Of the Calla-hom he has the care of the Fortifications Arms and Ammunitions He issues out all the Orders that concern the Armies and he is naturally the General thereof altho the King may name whom he pleases for General By Van Vliet's Relation it appears that the Command of the Elephants belonged also to the Calla-hom even without the Army But now this is a separate Employment as some have assured me either for that the present King's Father after having made use of the Office of the Calla-hom to gain the Throne resolved to divide the Power thereof or that naturally they are two distinct Offices which may be given to a single Person However it be 't is Oc-Pra Pipitcharatcha corruptly called Petratcha Of the General of the Elephants who commands all the Elephants and all the Horses and it is one of the greatest Employments of the Kingdom because that the Elephants are esteemed the King of Siam's Principal Forces Some there are who report that this Prince maintains Ten Thousand but is impossible to be known by reason that Vanity always inclines these People to Lying and they are more vain in the matter of Elephants than in any thing else The Metropolis of the Kingdom of Laos is called Lan-Tchang and its name in the Language of the Country which is almost the same as the Siameses signifies Ten Millions of Elephants The King of Siam keeps therefore a very great number and it is said that three men at least are required for the service of every Elephant and these men with all the Offiers that command them are under the orders of Oc-Pra Pipitcharatcha who though he has only the Title of Oc-Pra is yet a very great Lord. The people love him because he appears moderate and think him invulnerable because he expressed a great deal of Courage in some Fight against the Peguins his Courage has likewise procur'd him the Favour of the King his Master His Family has continued a long time in the highest Offices is frequently allied to the Crown and it is publickly reported that he or his Son Oc-Louang Souracac may pretend to it if either of them survive the King that now Reigns The Mother of Oc-Pra Pip â—haratcha was the King's Nurse and the Mother of the first Ambassador whom we saw here and when the King commanded the great Barcalon the Brother of this Ambassador to be bastinado'd the last time 't was Oc-Louang Souracac the Son of Oc-Pra Pipitcharatcha that bastinado'd him by the King's order and in his presence the Prince's Nurse the Mother of the Barcalon lying prostrate at his Feet to obtain pardon for her Son CHAP.
This is thus practised in all the Courts of Asia but it is not true neither at Siam nor perhaps in any part of the East that the Queen has any Province to govern 'T is easie also to comprehend that if the King loves any of his Ladies more than the rest he causes her to remove from the Jealousie and harsh Usage of the Queen At Siam they continually take Ladies for the service of the Vang The King of Siam takes the Daughters of his Subjects for his Palace when he pleases or to be Concubines to the King if this Prince makes use thereof But the Siameses deliver up their Daughters only by force because it is never to see them again and they redeem them so long as they can for Money So that this becomes a kind of Extortion for they designedly take a great many Virgins meerly to restore them to their Parents who redeem them The King of Siam has few Mistresses that is to say eight or ten in all He has few Ministresses not out of Continency but Parsimony I have already declared that to have a great many Wives is in this Country rather Magnificence than Debauchery Wherefore they are very much surprized to hear that so great a King as ours has no more than one Wife that he had no Elephants and that his Lands bear no Rice as we might be when it was told us that the King of Siam has no Horses nor standing Forces and that his Country bears no Corn nor Grapes altho' all the Relations do so highly extol the Riches and Power of the Kingdom of Siam The Queen hath her Elephants and her Balons The Queen's House and some Officers to take care of her and accompany her when she goes abroad but none but her Women and Eunuchs do see her She is conceal'd from all the rest of the People and when she goes out either on an Elephant or in a Balon it is in a Chair made up with Curtains which permit her to see what she pleases and do prevent her being seen And Respect commands that if they cannot avoid her they should turn their back to her by prostrating themselves when she passes along Besides this she has her Magazine her Ships and her Treasures Her Magazine and her Ships She exercises Commerce and when we arrived in this Country the Princess whom I have reported to be treated like a Queen was exceedingly embroiled with the King her Father because that he reserved to himself alone almost all the Foreign Trade and that thereby she found herself deprived thereof contrary to the ancient Custom of the Kingdom Daughters succeed not to the Crown they are hardly look'd upon as free Of the Succession to the Crown and the Causes which render it uncertain 'T is the eldest Son of the Queen that ought always to succeed by the Law Nevertheless because that the Siameses can hardly conceive that amongst Princes of near the same Rank the most aged should prostrate himself before the younger it frequently happens that amongst Brethren tho' they be not all Sons of the Queen and that amongst Uncles and Nephews the most advanced in Age is preferred or rather it is Force which always decides it The Kings themselves contribute to render the Royal Succession uncertain because that instead of chusing for their Successor the eldest Son of the Queen they most frequently follow the Inclination which they have for the Son of some one of their Concubines with whom they were enamour'd The occasion which tendred the Hollanders Masters of Bantam 'T is upon this account that the King of Bantam for example has lost his Crown and his Liberty He endeavoured to get one of his Sons whom he had by one of his Concubines to be acknowledged for his Successor before his Death and the eldest Son which he had by the Queen put himself into the hands of the Hollanders They set him upon the Throne after having vanquished his Father whom they still keep in Prison if he is not dead but for the reward of this Service they remain Masters of the Port and of the whole Commerce of Bantam Of the Succession to the Kingdom of China The Succession is not better regulated at China though there be an express and very ancient Law in favour of the eldest Son of the Queen But what Rule can there be in a thing how important soever it be when the Passions of the Kings do always seek to imbroil it All the Orientals in the choice of a Governor adhere most to the Royal Family and not to a certain Prince of the Royal Family uncertain in the sole thing wherein all the Europeans are not In all the rest we vary every day and they never do Always the same Manners amongst them always the same Laws the same Religion the same Worship as may be judged by comparing what the Ancients have writ concerning the Indians with what we do now see Of the King of Siams Wardrobe I have said that 't is the Women of the Palace which dress the King of Siam but they have no charge of his Wardrobe he has Officers on purpose The most considerable of all is he that touches his Bonnet altho he be not permitted to put it upon the Head of the King his Master 'T is a Prince of the Royal blood of Camboya by reason that the King of Siam boasts in being thence descended not being able to vaunt in being of the race of the Kings his Predecessors The Title of this Master of the Wardrobe is Oc-ya Out haya tanne which sufficiently evinces that the Title of Pa-ya does not signifie Prince seeing that this Prince wears it not Under him Oc-Pra Rayja Vounsa has the charge of the cloaths Rayja or Raja or Ragi or Ratcha are only an Indian term variously pronounced which signifies King or Royal and which enters into the composition of several Names amongst the Indians CHAP. XIV Of the Customs of the Court of Siam and of the Policy of its Kings The Hours of Council THe common usage of the Court of Siam is to hold a Council twice a day about Ten a clock in the Morning and about Ten in the Evening reckoning the hours after our fashion The division of the day and night according to the Siameses As for them they divide the day into Twelve hours from the Morning to the Night The Hours they call Mong they reckon them like us and give them not a particular name to each as the Chineses do As for the Night they divide it into four Watches which they call Tgiam and it is always broad Day at the end of the Fourth The Latins Greeks Jews and other people have divided the Day and Night after the same manner Their Clock The People of Siam have no Clock but as the Days are almost equal there all the Year it is easie for them to know what Hour it is by
this Author who seems to rely too much on his memory we may believe what he says that the Elephants of the King of Pegu who then besieged the City of Siam did so nearly approach the Walls as with their Trunks to beat down the Palisado's which the Siameses had there placed to cover themselves It s Latitude according to Father Thomas the Jesuit is 14 d. 20 m. 40 S. and its Longitude 120 d. 30 m. It has almost the figure of a Purse the mouth of which is to the East and the bottom to the West The River meets it at the North by several Channels which run into that which environs it and leaves it on the South by separating itself again into several streams The King's Palace stands to the North on the Canal which embraces the City and by turning to the East there is a Causey by which alone as by an Isthmus People may go out of the City without crossing the water The City is spacious considering the Circuit of its Walls which as I have said incloses the whole Isle but scarce the sixth part thereof is inhabited and that to the South-East only The rest lies desart where the Temples only stand 'T is true that the Suburbs which are possessed by strangers do considerably increase the number of the People The streets thereof are large and strait and in some places planted with Trees and paved with Bricks laid edgewise The Houses are low and built with Wood at least those belonging to the Natives who for these Reasons are exposed to all the Inconveniences of the excessive heat Most of the streets are watered with strait Canals which have made Siam to be compar'd to Venice and on which are a great many small Bridges of Hurdles and some of Brick very high and ugly Its Names The Name of Siam is unknown to the Siamese 'T is one of those words which the Portugues of the Indies do use and of which it is very difficult to discover the Original They use it as the Name of the Nation and not of the Kingdom And the Names of Pegu Lao Mogul and most of the Names which we give to the Indian Kingdoms are likewise National Names so that to speak rightly we must say the King of the Peguins Laos Moguls Siams as our Ancestors said the King of the Franc's In a word those that understand Portuguese do well know that according to their Orthography Siam and Siaom are the same thing and that by the Similitude of our Language to theirs we ought to say the Sions and not the Siams so when they write in Latin they call them Siones The true Name of the Siameses signifies Francs A Map of the Citty of SIAM A. The Citty B. The Pallace C. The Port D. the Arsenall for the Ships E. the Arsenall for the Ballons Galleys F. The Street of the Bazars G. The Seminary H. The Portuguese Iacobins I. The Portuguese Iesuites K. The Dutch Factory L. The Inclosur where the Elephants are taken M. A House begun for the French Ambassadors 800 French Toises The Bambou Tree The Arvore de Raiz A Map of Bancock A Vessell of filigran A Plaugh The Arc Kier As for the City of Siam the Siameses do call it Si-yo-thi-ya the o of the Syllable yo being closer than our Dipthong an Sometimes also they call it Crung the-papra maha nacon But most of these words are difficult to understand because they are taken from this Baly Language which I have already declared to be the learned Language of the Siameses and which they themselves do not always perfectly understand I have already remark'd what I know concerning the word Pra that of Maha signifies Great Thus in speaking of their King they stile him Pra Maha Crassat and the word Crassat according to their report signifies living and because the Portugues have thought that Pra signifies God they imagin that the Siameses called their King The great living God From Si-yo-thi ya the Siamese Name of the City of Siam Foreigners have made Judia and Odiaa by which it appears that Vincent le Blanc and some other Authors do very ill distinguish Odiaa from Siam In a word the Siameses of whom I treat do call themselves Tai Noe Two different People called Siameses little Siams There are others as I was informed altogether savage which are called Tai yai great Siams and which do live in the Northern Mountains In several Relations of these Countries I find a Kingdom of Siammon or Siami but all do not agree that the People thereof are savage In fine the Mountains which lie on the common Frontiers of Ava Other Mountains and other Frontiers Pegu and Siam gradually decreasing as they extend to the South do form the Peninsula of India extra Gangem which terminating at the City of Sincapura separates the Gulphs of Siam and Bengala and which with the Island of Sumatra forms the famous Strait of Malaca or Sincapura Several Rivers do fall from every part of these Mountains into the Gulphs of Siam and Bengala and render these Coasts habitable The other Mountains which rise between the Kingdom of Siam and Laos and extend themselves also towards the South do run gradually decreasing till they terminate at the Cape of Camboya the most Eastern of all those in the Continent of Asia toward the South 'T is about the Latitude of this Cape that the Gulph of Siam begins and the Kingdom of this Name extends a great way towards the South in form of an Horseshoe on either side of the Gulph viz. along the Eastern Coast to the River Chantebon where the Kingdom of Camboya begins and opposite thereunto viz. in the Peninsula extra Gangem which lies on the West of the Gulph of Siam it extends to Queda and Patana the Territories of the Malayans of which Malaca was formerly the Metropolis After this manner it runs about 200 Leagues on the side toward the Gulph of Siam and 180 or thereabouts on the Gulph of Bengal The Coasts of Siam an advantageous situation which opens unto the Natives of the Countrey the Navigation on all these vast Eastern Seas Add that as Nature has refus'd all manner of Ports and Roads to the Coast of Coromandel which forms the Gulph of Bengal to the West it has therewith enrich'd that of Siam which is opposite to it and which is on the East of the same Gulph A great number of Isles do cover it Isles of Siam in the Gulph of Bengal and render it almost everywhere a safe Harbor for Ships besides that most of these Isles have very excellent Ports and abundance of fresh water and wood an invitation for new Colonies The King of Siam affects to be called Lord thereof altho' his People who are very thin in the firm Land have never inhabited them and he has not strength enough at Sea to prohibit or hinder the enterance thereof to strangers The City of Merguy
countervail ours by much but their Sails have this advantage that spontaneously supporting themselves they do better receive the Wind when it is near it that is to say when it blows as much against us as possibly it can without being contrary to the Course In fine the Siameses have Timber proper for building of Houses Wood for other uses for Wainscotting and Carving they have both light and very heavy Wood some easie to cleave and others which cleaveth not what Wedges soever it receives This last is called by the Europeans Wood-Mary and is better than any to make the Ribs of Ships That which is heavy and tough is called Iron-wood very well known in our Islands of America and it is affirmed in process of time it eats the Iron They have a Wood which for its Lightness and Colour some conceive to be Fur but it takes the Carver's Chisel in so many different ways without splitting that I question whether we have any like it in Europe But above all the Siameses have Trees so high and so strait Trees for Balons that one alone is sufficient to make a Boat or Balon as the Portugueses speak between 16 and 20 Fathom long They hollow the Tree and then by the heat of the Fire enlarge the Capacity thereof which done they raise the sides with an edge that is to say with a Board of the same length And in fine at both the ends they fasten a Prow and a Poop very high and a little bending out frequently adorn'd with sculpture and gilding and with some pieces of Mother of Pearl Nevertheless amongst so many different sorts of Wood They have none of our Wood. they have none of those which we know in Europe They have not been able to raise any Mulberry Trees and for this reason they have no Silk-worms No Flax also grows amongst them nor in any other place of India or at least it is not in any esteem The Cotton which they have in abundance is they say more agreeable and more healthful to them by reason that Cotton-cloth grows not cold by being wet with sweat and consequently occasions not the catching cold as Linnen does They have the Cinnamon Tree The Cinnamon and Fir Tree inferior indeed to that of the Island of Ceylon but better than any other they have the Sapan and other Woods proper for Dying They have also the Wood Aquila or Aloes Wood Aquila not so good indeed as the Calamba of Cochinchina but better than the Wood Aquila of any other Country This Wood is found only in pieces by reason they are only certain rotten places in Trees of a certain kind And every Tree of this same Species has it not and those which have have them not all in the same place so that it requires a tedious search in the Wood. 'T was formerly very dear at Paris but is at present to be had at a reasonable rate CHAP. V. Concerning the Mines of Siam NO Country has a greater Reputation of being rich in Mines than the Country of Siam The Reputation of the Mines of Siam and the great quantity of Idols and other cast works which are there seen evinces that they have been better cultivated there in former times than now they are 'T is believed likewise that they thence extracted that great quantity of Gold wherewith their Superstition has adorned not only their almost innumerable Idols but the Wainscot and Roofs of their Temples They do likewise daily discover Pits anciently dug and the remains of a great many Furnaces which are thought to have been abandon'd during the ancient Wars of Pegu. Nevertheless the King that now reigns has not been able to find any Vein of Gold or Silver that is worth the pains that he has therein employed The State of the Mines at present although he hath applied unto this work some Europeans and amongst the rest a Spaniard that came from Mexico who found if not a great fortune at least his Subsistence for twenty years even to his Death by flattering the Avarice of this Prince with the imaginary promises of infinite Treasures After having dug and min'd in several places they light only on some very mean Copper Mines tho intermixt with a little Gold and Silver Five hundred weight of Ore scarce yielding an Ounce of Metal neither understood they how to make the separation of Metals Tambac But the King of Siam to render his mixture more precious caus'd some Gold to be added thereunto and this is what they call Tambac 'T is said that the Mines of the Isle of Borneo do naturally produce it very Rich and the scarceness augments the price thereof as it formerly increased that of the famous Corinthian Brass but certainly that which makes the true value thereof amongst the Siameses is the quantity of Gold wherewith it is thought to be mixed When their Avarice creates desires it is for the Gold and not for the Tambac and we have seen that when the King of Siam has ordered Crucifixes to be made to present to the Christians the most noble and smallest part which is the Christ has been of Gold the Cross alone of Tambac Vincent le Blanc relates that the Peguins have a mixture of Lead and Copper which he calls sometimes Ganze and sometimes Ganza and of which he reports that they make Statues and a small Money which is not stampt with the Kings Coin but which every one has a right to make Mr. Vincent the Physitian retained by the King of Siam to work in his Mines From Siam we brought back Mr. Vincent the Physitian He departed from France to go into Persia with the late Bishop of Babylon and the report of the arrival of the King 's first Ships at Siam made him to go thither as well out of a desire to travel as in hopes of procuring his return into France He understood Mathematicks and Chymistry and the King of Siam retained him some time at the work in his Mines What he relates concerning the Mines of Siam He informed me that he rectified the labours of the Siamese in some things so that they obtain a little more profit than they did He show'd them a Mine of very good Steel at the top of a Mountain which had been already discovered and which they perceived not He discovered to them one of Crystal one of Antimony one of Emeril and some others with a Quarry of white Marble Besides this he found out a Gold Mine which to him appear'd very rich as far as he was able to judge without trying it but he has not showed it them Several Siameses most Talapoins came secretly to consult him about the Art of purifying and separating Metals and brought him divers specimens of very rich Ore From some he extracted a very good quantity of fine Silver and from others the mixture of several Metals Tin and Lead As for Tin and Lead the Siameses have long
since improved it from very plentiful Mines and though not very skilful yet they cease not to get a considerable revenue by it This Tin or Calin as the Portuguese report is sold through all India 'T is soft and basely purified and a specimen thereof is seen in the common Tea Boxes or Cannisters which come from this Country But to render it harder and whiter like that of the finest Tea Boxes they mix it with Cadmia a sort of Mineral easily reducible to powder which being melted with the Copper makes it yellow but it renders both these Metals more brittle And 't is this white Tin which they call Tontinague This is what Mr. Vincent relates on the subject of the Mines of Siam Mines of Loadstone In the Neighbourhood of the City of Louvo they have a Mountain of Loadstone They have another also near Jonsalam a City seated in an Island of the Gulph of Bengal which is not above the distance of a Mans voice from the Coast of Siam but the Loadstone which is dug at Jonsalam loses its vertue in three or four Months I know not whether it is not the same in that of Louvo Precious Stones In their Mountains they find very curious Agate and Mr. Vincent inform'd me that he has seen in the hands of the Talapoins who secretly busie themselves in these researches some samples or pieces of Saphires and Diamonds that came out of the Mine He assured me also that some particular Persons having found some Diamonds and given them to the King's Officers were retired to Pegu by by reason they had not receiv'd any recompence Steel I have already said that the City of Campeng-pet is famous for Mines of excellent Steel The Inhabitants of the Country do forge Arms thereof after their fashion as Sabres Poniards and Knives The Knife which they call Pen is used by all and is not look'd upon as Arms although it may serve upon occasion The blade thereof is three or four Fingers broad and about a Foot long The King gives the Sabre and the Poniard They wear the Poniard on the left side hanging a little before The Portuguese do call it Christ a word corrupted from Crid which the Siameses use This word is borrow'd from the Malayan Language which is famous throughout the East and the Crids which are made at Achim in the Isle of Sumatra do pass for the best of all As for the Sabre a Slave always carries it before his Master on his right shoulder as we carry the Musquet on the left They have Iron Mines which they know how to melt Iron and some have inform'd me that they have but little thereof besides they are bad Forge-men For their Gallies they have only wooden Anchors and to the end that these Anchors may sink to the bottom they fasten stones unto them They have neither Pins nor Needles nor Nails nor Chisels nor Saws They use not a Nail in building their Houses altho' they be all of Wood. Every one makes Pins of Bambou even as our Ancestors us'd Thorns for this purpose To them there comes Padlocks from Japan some of Iron which are good and others of Copper which are very naught They do make very bad Gunpowder The defect they say Salt-Petre and Powder proceeds from the Salt-Petre which they gather from their Rocks where it is made of the dung of Batts Animals which are exceeding large and very plentiful throughout India But whether this Salt-Petre be good or bad the King of Siam sells a great deal of it to Strangers Having described the natural Riches of the Mountains and Forests of Siam 't would be proper in this place to speak of the Elephants Rhinoceros Tygers and all other savage Beasts wherewith they are stored yet seeing this matter has been sufficiently explicated by a great many others I shall omit it to pass on to the inhabited and cultivated Lands CHAP. VI. Of the cultivated Lands and their Fertility THey are not Stony it being very difficult to find a Flint The Country of Siam is Clayie and this makes me to believe of the Country of Siam what some have reported of Egypt that it has been gradually formed of the clayish Earth which the Rain-waters have carry'd down from the Mountains Before the mouth of the Menam there is a Bank of Owse which in the Sea-phrase is call'd the Bar and which prohibits entrance to great Ships 'T is probable that it will increase itself by little and little and will in time make a new Shore to the firm Land 'T is therefore this Mud descending from the Mountains The annual Inundation fattens the Lands of Siam that is the real cause of the Fertility of Siam where-ever the Inundation extends itself In other and especially on the highest places all is dry'd and burnt with the Sun in a little time after the Rains Under the Torrid Zone and likewise in Spain whose Climate is more temperate if the Lands are naturally fertile as for Example between Murcia and Carthagena where the Seed yields sometimes an hundred fold they are nevertheless so subject to Drought Insects and other Inconveniences that it frequently happens that they are deprived of the whole Harvest several years together And 't is this which betides all the Countries of India which are not subject to be overflowed and which besides the barrenness of the Soil do suffer the ravages of contagious and pestilential Distempers which succeed it But the annual Inundation gives to Siam the assurance and plenty of the Rice Harvest and renders this Kingdom the Nourisher of several others Besides the Inundations fatning the Land it destroys the Insects It destroys the Insects altho' it always leaves a great many which extremely incommode Nature instructs all the Animals of Siam to avoid the Inundation The Birds which perch not in our Countries as Partridges and Pigeons do all perch in that The Pismires doubly prudent do here make their Nests and Magazines on Trees White Ants at Siam There are white Ants which amongst other ravages which they make do pierce Books through and through The Missionaries are oblig'd to preserve theirs by varnishing them over the cover and edges with a little Cheyram which hinders them not from opening After this precaution the Ants have no more power to bite and the Books are more agreeable by reason that this Gum being mixt with nothing that colours it has the same lustre as the Glasses wherewith we cover Pictures in Miniature This would be no dear nor difficult Experiment to try whether the Cheyram would not defend the wood of our Beds against Buggs 'T is this same Cheyram which being spread upon Canvas makes it appear like Horn. Therewith they us'd to environ the great Cresset-lights which some reported to be of Horn and all of a piece Sometimes also those little Cups varnish'd with red which come to us from Japan and whose lightness astonishes us do consist
reason that the heat of the day dissipates all their Spirits Our Flowers have most scent about the Evening and we have some but few that smell only at Night Whatever has not naturally a great deal of taste and smell Why there is no Muscadine Grapes in Persia nor at Suratt cannot keep them in Countries extreamly hot Thus though there be Grapes in Persia and at Suratt yet there can be no Muscadine Grapes what care soever is therein employed The best Plants which are transported thither from Europe do presently degenerate and yield the second year ordinary Grapes only But at Siam where the Climate is much hotter there are no good Grapes Nor Grapes at Siam The few Vines which are planted at Louvo in the King's Garden produce only some bad Grapes which are small and of a bitter taste Pure Water is their ordinary Drink they love only to drink it perfum'd Pure water the ordinary drink of the Siameses whereas to our Palate Water which has no smell is the best As the Siameses go not to draw it at the Springs which are doubtless too remote it is wholesom only when it has been setled more or fewer days according as the Inundation is higher or lower or wholly run out For when the Waters retire and they are filled with Mud and perhaps with the ill Juices which they take from the Earth or when the River is re-entred into its Channel sufficiently muddy they are more corrosive do cause Disenteries and Lasks and cannot be drunk without danger till they have let them stand in great Jars or Pitchers the space of three Weeks or a Month. At Louvo the Waters are much more unwholsome than at Siam The Waters of Louvo and of Tlee Poussone by reason that the whole River flows not thither but only an Arm which has been turned thither which runs always decreasing after the Rains and at last leaves its Channel dry The King of Siam drinks water from a great Cistern made in the Fields on which is kept a continual Watch. Besides that this Prince has a little house called Tlee Poussone or Rich Sea about a League from Louvo It is seated on the brink of certain Low-lands about two or three Leagues in extent which receive the Rain-waters and preserve them This little Sea is of an irregular figure its Shores are neither handsom nor even but its Waters are wholesome by reason they are deep and setled and I have also heard that the King of Siam drinks thereof For pleasure and conversation the Siameses do take Tea Tea I mean the Siameses of the City of Siam For the use of Tea is unknown in all the other places of the Kingdom But at Siam the Custom is throughly setled and 't is amongst them a necessary Civility to present Tea to all that visit them They call it Tcha as do the Chineses and have not two Terms the one for what we call Tea and the other for what we call Cha or Flower of Tea 'T is certain that it is not a Flower But to assert whether they are the budding Leaves and consequently the tenderest or the highest and consequently the less nourished or the point of the Leaves which have been boil'd at China or a kind of particular Tea is what I cannot determine by reason that various Accounts have been given me thereof The Siameses do reckon three sorts of Tea the Tchaboui or Boui Tea Three sorts of Tea which is reddish which some say fattens and is astringent 't is look'd upon at Siam as a Remedy for the Flux The Somloo Tea which on the contrary purges gently And the third sort of Tea which has no particular Name that I know and which neither loosens nor binds The Chineses and all the Orientals use Tea as a Remedy against the Head-ach Tea is a sudorifick But then they make it stronger and after having drunk five or six Cups they lye down in their bed cover themselves up and sweat It is not very difficult in such hot Climates for Sudorificks to operate and they are looked upon there almost as general Remedies The manner of preparing Tea They prepare the Tea in this manner They have Copper Pots tinn'd on the inside wherein they boil the Water and it boils in an instant by reason the Copper thereof is very thin This Copper comes from Japan if my Memory fails me not and 't is so easie to work that I question whether we have any so pliant in Europe These Pots are called Boulis and on the other hand they have Boulis of red Earth which is without taste tho without Varnish They first rince the Earthen Bouli with boiling water to heat it then they put in as much Tea as one can take up with the Finger and Thumb and afterwards fill it with boiling water and after having covered it they still pour boiling water on the outside they stop not the Spout as we do When the Tea is sufficiently infused that is to say when the Leaves are precipitated they pour the Liquor into China dishes which at first they fill only half to the end that if it appear too strong or too deep they may temper it by pouring in pure water which they still keep boiling in the Copper Bouly Nevertheless if they will still drink they do again fill the Earthen Bouly with this boiling water and so they may do several times without adding any more Tea until they see that the water receives no tincture They put no Sugar into the Dishes by reason they have none refin'd which is not candy and the candy melts too slowly They do therefore take a little in their mouth which they champ as they drink their Tea When they would have no more Tea they turn the Cup down on the Saucer because that 't is the greatest incivility among them to refuse any thing and that if they leave the Cup standing they fail not to serve them again with Tea which they are oblig'd to receive But they forbear to fill the Dish unless they would testifie to him unto whom they present it full that 't is as some say for once and that it is not expected that he ever come again to the House Excellent water necessary for Tea The most experienced do say that the Water cannot be too clear for Tea that Cistern-water is the best as being the most pure and that the finest Tea in the world becomes bad in water which is not excellent Whether it is necessary to drink the Tea hot In a word if the Chineses drink Tea so hot 't is not perhaps that they have found it either more wholesom or more pleasant after this manner for they drink all sorts of Liquor at the same degree of heat unless the Tartars have now taught them as it is said to drink Ice 'T is true that the infusion of Tea is perform'd quicker in hot water than cold but I have
our selves against the Cold under our Wastcoats he puts this Vest under the Shirt which I have described and which he adorns with Lace or European Point 'T is not lawful for any Siamese to wear this sort of Vest unless the King gives it him and he makes this Present only to the most considerable of his Officers A sort of Military Vest He sometimes also gives them another Vest or Garment of Scarlet which is to be worn only in War or at Hunting This Garment reaches to the Knees and has eight or ten Buttons before The Sleeves thereof are wide but without Ornament and so short that they touch not the Elbows The Red Colour for War and Hunting 'T is a general Custom at Siam that the Prince and all his Retinue in the War or Hunting be cloath'd in Red. Upon this account the Shirts which are given to the Soldiers are of Muslin dy'd Red and on the days of Ceremony as was that of the Entry of the King's Ambassadors these Red Shirts were given to the Siameses which they put under their Arms. The high and pointed Cap. The white high and pointed Cap which we saw on the Ambassadors of Siam is a Coif of Ceremony whereof the King of Siam and his Officers do equally make use but the King of Siam's Cap is adorn'd with a Circle or a Crown of precious Stones and those of his Officers are embellish'd with divers Circles of Gold Silver or Vermilion gilt to distinguish their Dignities or have not any Ornament The Officers wear them only before the King or in their Tribunals or in some Ceremony They fasten them with a Stay under their Chin and never pull them off to salute any person Babouches The Moors have introduc'd amongst them the use of Babouches or Slippers a kind of pointed Shoes without quarter or heel They leave them at the Gates of their own and others Houses to avoid dirtying the places where they enter But where-ever their King or any other person is to whom they owe Respect as is for instance a Sancrat or Superior of their Talapoins they appear not with Slippers The Neatness of the Palace of Siam Nothing is neater than the King of Siam's Palace as well by reason of the few persons admitted therein as of the Precautions with which they enter Hats for Travelling They esteem of Hats for Travelling and this Prince causes them to be made of all Colours in almost the same shape with his Bonnet but very few persons amongst the People vouchsafe to cover their Head against the heat of the Sun and they do it but with a linnen Clout and only when on the River where the Reflexion most incommodes The Habit of the Women The difference of the Womens Habit from the Mens is that the Women fastning their Pagne length-wise round their Bodies as likewise the Men do they let it fall down broad-ways and imitate a close Coat which reaches down half-way their Leg whereas the Men raise up their Pagne between their Thighs by pulling through one of the ends which they leave longer than the other and which they tie to the Girdle behind in which they do in some sort resemble our Breeches The other end of the Pagne hangs before and as they have no Pockets they do frequently tye thereunto their Purse for the Betel after the manner that we tye any thing in the corner of our Handkercheif They do sometimes also wear two Pagnes one over the other to the end that the uppermost may sit more neat A Nakedness almost entire Excepting the Pagne the Women go all naked for they have no Muslin Shifts only the Rich do constantly wear a Scarf They do sometimes wrap the ends thereof about their Arms but the best Air for them is to put it singly over their Bosom at the middle to make smooth the wrinkles thereof and to let the two ends hang down behind over their Shoulders Modesty in this Nakedness Nevertheless so great a Nudity renders them not immodest On the contrary the Men and Women of this Country are the most scrupulous in the world of shewing the parts of their Body which Custom obliges them to conceal The Women who sat stooping in their Balons the day of the King 's Ambassador's Entry turn'd for the most part their Backs to the Show and the most Curious hardly look'd over their Shoulder 'T was necessary to give the French Soldiers some Pagnes to wash in to remove the Complaints which these People made at seeing them go all naked into the River The Infants go there without a Pagne to four or five years of age but when once of that age they are never uncover'd to chastise them and in the East it is an exceeding Infamy to be beaten naked on the parts of the Body which are generally conceal'd 'T is from hence perhaps Why they chastise with the Cudgel that the use of the Cudgel sprang up amongst them in chastising by reason that neither the Whip nor the Rod would be sufficiently felt through their Cloaths Moreover they pluck not off their Cloaths to lie down Modesty in the Bed and also in the Bath or at least they only change the Pagne as they do to bathe themselves in the River The Women bathe themselves like the Men and do exercise themselves in swimming and in no part of the world do they swim better Their Modesty renders the Custom of Bathing almost insupportable unto them and few amongst them can resolve to do it Other Proofs of their Modesty They have affixt Infamy to Nakedness And they are no less careful about the Modesty of the Ears than of the Eyes seeing that impure and baudy Songs are prohibited by the Laws of Siam as well as by those of China Yet I cannot affirm that they may not be us'd at all for the Laws prohibit no other than the Excess already too much establish'd And from China there comes some Porcelane Figures and Paintings so immodest that they are no more permitted than the Baudiest Songs Those Pagnes that are of an extraordinary beauty and gaudiness What Pagnes are permitted as those of Silk with Embroidery or without Embroidery and those of painted Linnen very fine are permitted to those only to whom the Prince presents them The Women of Quality do greatly esteem the black Pagnes and their Scarf is frequently of plain white Muslin They wear Rings on the three last Fingers of each Hand Rings Bracelets Pendants and the Fashion permits them to put on as many as possibly can be kept on They freely give half a Crown for Rings with false Stones which at Paris cost not above two Sols They have no Necklaces to adorn their Necks nor their Wives but the Women and Children of both Sexes wear Pendants They are generally of Gold Silver or Vermilion gilt in the shape of a Pear The young Boys and Girls of a good Family
into this set of Buildings the more indeed he ascends and the greater distinction he perceives The great Officers will have three parts one higher than another which are divided by three Roofs of different elevation But at the Palace of the City of Siam I have seen seven Roofs proceeding one from under another before the Building I know not whether there were not others behind Some square Towers which are in the Palace do seem also to have several Roofs one three another five another seven as if they were square Goblets laid one upon another and in one of these Towers is a very great Drum headed with an Elephants Skin to beat the Tocsin or Alarum in case of need The same in the Temples or Pagodes As to the Pagodes in those that I have seen I observed only one single Pent-house before and another behind The highest Roof is that under which the Idol stands the other two which are lower are thought to be only for the People although the People forbear not to enter every where on the days when the Temple is open Pyramids But the Principal Ornament of the Pagodes is to be accompanied as generally they are with several Pyramids of Lime and Brick the Ornaments of which are very grosly performed The highest are as high as our ordinary Steeples and the lowest not exceeding two Fathom They are all round and do little diminish in bigness as they rise so that they terminate like a Dome It is true that when they are very low there proceeds from this Dome-like extremity a Tin Spire very small and sharp pointed and high enough in relation to the rest of the Pyramid Some there are which diminish and grow thick again four or five times in their heighth so that the Profile of them goes waving But these Bellyings out are smaller as they are in a higher part of the Pyramid They are adorn'd in three or four places of their Contour with several Furrows or Flutings at Right Angles as well as in that they have some hollow as in that they have some raised which diminishing gradually in proportion to the Diminution of the Pyramid do run terminating in a point at the beginning of the next bellying out from whence do again arise new Flutings A Description of certain Halls of the Palace I cannot tell what the King of Siam's Apartments are I have only seen the first piece thereof which is the Hall of Audience at Siam and Louvo 'T is said that no person enters further not the King 's Domesticks themselves excepting his Wives and Eunuch in which if it is true this Prince maintains a greater heighth than the King of China I likewise saw the Council-chamber in the Palace of Louvo but it was also a first Room of another Pile of Building I mean that it was not preceeded by any Anti-Chamber At the Front and two sides of this Hall lyes a Terrass which commands as well over the Garden which environs it as it is commanded by the Hall and it is on this Terrass and under a Canopy purposely erected on the North-side that the King's Ambassadors were at a private Audience which the King of Siam gave them and this Prince was in a Chair of State at one of the Hall Windows In the middle of the Garden and in the Courts there are some single open Rooms which are called Halls I mean those square places that I have already described which inclosed with a Wall no higher than one may lean over and cover'd with a Roof which bears only upon Pillars placed at equal distances in the Wall These Halls are for the chief Mandarins who do there sit cross-legg'd either for the Functions of their Offices or to make their Court or to expect the Prince's Orders viz. in the Morning very late and in the Evening until the approach of the Night and they stir not thence without Order The less considerable Mandarins sit in the open Air in the Courts or Gardens and when they know by certain signals that the King of Siam sees them altho he be invisible they do all prostrate themselves on their Hands and Knees When we din'd in the Palace of Siam The places of the Palace where we dined 't was in a very pleasant place under great Trees and at the side of a store-pond wherein it was said that amongst several sorts of Fish there are some which resemble a Man and Woman but I saw none of any sort In the Palace of Louvo we dined in the Garden in a single Hall the Walls of which supported the Roof They are plaistered with a Ciment extremely white smooth and shining upon occasion of which it was told us there was much better made at Suratt The Hall has a Door at each end and is encompast with a Ditch between two or three Fathoms in breadth and perhaps one in depth in which there are twenty little Jet-deaus at equal distances They play like a watering pot pierced with several very little holes and they spurt no higher than the edge of the Ditch or thereabouts because that instead of raising the Water they have dug away the Earth to make the Basons low The Garden is not very spacious The Garden of Louvo the Compartments and Borders thereof are very little and formed by Bricks laid edgeways The Paths between the Borders cannot contain two a brest nor the Walks more But the whole being planted with Flowers and several sorts of Palmites and other Trees the Garden Hall and Fountains had I know not what Air of Simplicity and Coolness which caused Delight 'T is a remarkable thing that these Princes should never be inclined to use Magnificence in their Gardens altho from all Antiquity the Orientals have admired them The King of Siam exercising the Chace sometimes for several days Palaces of Bambou in the Woods there are in the Woods some Palaces of Bambou or if you please some fixed Tents which only need furnishing to receive him They are red on the outside like those of the great Mogul when he goes into the Country and like the Walls which serve as an Inclosure for the King of China's Palace I have given the Model thereof not only that the Simplicity of it may be seen but principally because some assur'd me that the King of Siam's Apartments in his Palaces of Siam and Louvo is according to the same Model 'T is only a little Dormitory where the King and his Wives have each a little Cell Nevertheless the truth of what few persons do see is always hard to know However some also assur'd me concerning this Prince what I have heard reported of Cromwel which is that for fear of being surprized by any Conspiracy this Prince hath several Apartments wherein he locks himself at night it being impossible to divine exactly in which he lyes Strabo reports of the Indian Kings in his time that this very reason obliged them to change their Bed
Lizards and most Insects Nature doubtless framing their Appetite to things the Digestion whereof is more easie to them And it may be that all these things have not such an ill taste as we imagine Whatever smells ill is not always ill tasted Navarette in Pag. 45. Tom. I. of his Historical Discourses of China relates that he at first exceedingly detested the Brooded Eggs of a Bird which he calls Tabon but that when he eat thereof he found them excellent 'T is certain that at Siam new-laid Eggs are very unwholsom we do here eat Vipers we draw not certain Birds to eat them and sometimes Venison a little over-hunted is best relisht A Siamese makes a very good Meal with a pound of Rice a day What a Siamese expends a day in Food which amounts not to more than a Farthing and with a little dry or salt Fish which costs not more The Arak or Rice Brandy is not worth above two Sols for that quantity which amounts to a Parisian Pint after which it is no wonder if the Siameses are not in any great care about their Subsistence and if in the Evening there is heard nothing but Singing in their Houses Their Sauces are plain a little Water with some Spices Garlic Chibols Their Sauces or some sweet Herb as Baulm They do very much esteem a liquid Sauce like Mustard which is only Cray-Fish corrupted because they are ill salted they call it Capi. They gave Mr. Ceberet some Pots thereof which had no bad Smell They yellow their Children That which serves them instead of Saffron is a root which has the Taste and Colour thereof when it is dry and reduc'd to Powder the Plant thereof is known under the Name of Crocus Indicus They account it very wholesom for their Children to yellow the Body and Face therewith So that in the streets there are only seen Children with a tawny Complexion What Oil they eat They have neither Nuts nor Olives nor any eating Oil save that which they extract from the Fruit of Coco which tho always a little bitter yet is good when it is fresh drawn but it presently becomes very strong insomuch that it is not eatable by such as are not accustomed to eat bad Oil. The Taste is always made and it happened at my return from a very long Voyage where I met with no extraordinary Oil that I found the excellent Oil of Paris insipid and tasteless How Relations must be understood with reference to him that writes them Wherefore I cannot forbear making a remark very necessary truly to understand the Relations of Foreign Countries 'T is that the words good excellent magnificent great bad ugly simple and small equivocal in themselves must always be understood with reference to the Phantasie of the Author of the Relation if otherwise he does not particularly explain what he writes As for example if a Dutch Factor or a Portuguese Monk do exaggerate the Magnificence and good Entertainment of the East if the least House of the King of China's Palace appears unto them worthy of an European King it must be supposed that this is true in reference to the Court of Portugal And yet some may doubt hereof seeing that in truth the Apartments of the Palace of China are no other than Wood varnished on the inside and outside which is rather agreeable and neat than magnificent Thus because it would not be just to contemn every thing that resembles not what we do now see in the Court of France and which was never seen before this great and glorious Reign I have endeavour'd to express nothing in ambiguous Terms but to describe exactly what I have seen thereby to prevent the surprising any person by my particular Fancy and to the end that every one make as true a Judgment of what I write as if he had performed the Voyage that I have done Another Reflection on the same Subject Another defect in Relations is the Translation of the Foreign Words As for instance amongst the King of China's Wives there is only one that hath the Honours and Title of Queen the rest are under her although they be all legitimate that is to say permitted by the Laws of the Country They are called verbatim the Ladies of the Palace and at Siam they have the same Name The Children of these Ladies honour not their natural Mothers as the Chineses are obliged theirs but they render this Respect and give the Name of Mother to the Queen as if the second Wives bore Children only for the principal Wife And this is also the Custom at China in the Houses of private Persons who have several Wives to the end that there may be an entire subordination which maintains Peace there as much as possible And that the Children be not permitted to dispute amongst them the merit of their Mothers We read almost the same thing of Sarah who gave Hagar her Bond-maid unto Abraham to have as she said some Children by her Slave being past Child-bearing her self Some other Wives of the Patriarchs practised the same and it is evident that being the principal Wives every one was thought the Mother of all her Husband's Children But to return to what I have spoken concerning the danger of being deceived by the Translations of the Foreign words in Relations who sees not the Equivocation of these words the Ladies of the Palace put into the mouth of a Chinese or Portuguese or in the mouth of a French-man who translates a Portuguese Relation of China The same Equivocations are found in the names of Offices Because that all Courts and all Governments do not resemble All Functions are not found every where and the same are not every where attributed to the same Offices that is to say to Offices of the same name besides that such a Function will be great and considerable in one Country which may be inconsiderable in another As for example the Spaniards have Marshals which they at first design'd in imitation of the Marshals of France and yet an Ambassador would find himself exceedingly mistaken if being accompanied to the Audience of the King of Spain by a Marshal of Spain he should think himself as highly honoured as if he were accompany'd to the King's Audience by a Marshal of France Now the more remote the Courts are the greater is the defect when the same Words and the same Idea's are transferred from the one to the other At Siam it is a very honourable Employment to empty the King's Close-stool which is always emptied in a place appointed and carefully kept for this purpose it may be out of some superstitious Fear of the Sorceries which they imagine may be perform'd on the Excrements At China all the Splendor and Authority is in the Offices which we call the Long Robe And their Military Officers at least before the Domination of the Tartars consisted only of unfortunate Wretches who were not thought endow'd with Merit
Crown Volatiles do multiply exceedingly at Siam All Volatiles do multiply extreamly at Siam the heat of the Climate almost hatches the Eggs. Venison also is not wanting notwithstanding the spoil which the wild Beasts make thereof if the Siameses were greedy of Dainties But when they kill Bucks and other Beasts it is only to sell the Skins thereof to the Dutch who make a great Trade thereof to Japan The Distempers of the Siameses Yet to the discredit in my opinion of Sobriety or because that in proportion to the heat of their Stomach the Siameses are not more sober than us they live not longer and their Life is not less attack'd with Diseases than ours Amongst the most dangerous the most frequent are Fluxes and Dissenteries from which the Europeans that arrive at this Country have more trouble to defend themselves than the Natives of the Country by reason they cannot live sober enough The Siameses are sometimes attackt with burning Fevers in which the transport to the Brain is easily formed with defluxions on the Stomach Moreover Inflamations are rare and the ordinary continual Fever kills none no more than in the other places of the Torrid Zone Intermitting Fevers are also rare but violent tho' the cold Fit be very short The External does so exceedingly weaken the Natural Heat that here are not seen almost any of those Distempers which our Physitians do call Agues and this is so throughout India and also in Persia where of an hundred sick persons Mr. Vincent the provincial Physician whom I have already mention'd declar'd that he scarce found one which had the Fever or any other hot distemper Coughs Coqueluches or Quinancies and all sorts of Defluxions and Rheumatisms are not less frequent at Siam than in these Countries and I wonder not thereat seeing that the weather is inclined to Rain so great a part of the year but the Gout Epilepsy Apoplexy Pthysick and all sorts of Cholick especially the Stone are very rare There are a great many Cankers Abcesses and Fistula's Fresipeli are here so frequent that among twenty men nineteen are infected therewith and some have two thirds of their body cover'd therewith There is no Scurvy nor Dropsie but a great many of those extraordinary distempers which the people conceive to be caused by Witchcraft The ill consequences of a debauch are here very frequent but they know not whether they are ancient or modern in their Country In a word there are some contagious diseases What is the Plague at Siam but the real Plague of this Country is the Small Pox It oftentimes makes dreadful ravage and then they interr the bodies without burning them but because their Piety always makes them desire to render them this last respect they do afterwards dig them up again and that which exceedingly surprizes me is that they dare not do it till three years after or longer by reason as they say that they have experimented that this Contagion breaks out afresh if they dig them up sooner CHAP. V. Concerning the Carriages and Equipage of the Siameses in general BEsides the Ox and Buffalo which they commonly ride Their domestick Animals the Elephant is their sole Domestick Animal The Hunting of Elephants is free for all but they pursue this Chase only to catch them and never to kill them They never cut them but for ordinary service they use only the Female Elephants the Males they design for the War Their Country is not proper for the breeding of Horses or they know not how to breed them but I believe also that their Pastures are too course and moorish to give Courage and Mettle to their Horses and this is the reason that they need not to cut them to render them more tractable They have neither Asses nor Mules but the Moors which are settled at Siam have some Camels which come to them from abroad The King of Siam only keeps about two thousand Horses The King of Siam's Horses He has a dozen of Persian which are now nothing worth The Persian Ambassador presented them to him about four or five years since from the King his Master Ordinarily he sends to buy some Horses at Batavia where they are all small and very brisk but as resty as the Javan people are mutinous either for that the Country makes them so or that the Hollanders know not to manage them I have more than once seen in the streets of Batavia the Burgesses of the City on Horseback but in an instant their Ranks were broken The Cavalry and Infantry of Batavia by reason that most of their Horses would stop on a sudden and would refuse to march and mine Host hereupon inform'd me that the common fault of the Javan Horses was to prove very resty The Dutch Company maintain Infantry at Batavia amongst which there is a good number of French As for what concerns the Cavalry there is no other than the Burgesses who notwithstanding the heat of the Climate do cloath themselves with good Buff with rich trappings embroider'd with Gold and Silver No Burgher serves in the Infantry but if a Souldier demonstrates that he has wherewith to settle and maintain himself at Batavia either by a Marriage or a Trade they never refuse him neither his liberty nor his right of Burghership The King of Siam rides little or not at all on Horseback When we arriv'd there were two Siameses to buy two hundred Horses for the King their Master about an hundred and fifty of which they had already sent away for Siam 'T is not that this Prince loves to ride on Horseback this way seems to him both too mean and of too little defence for the Elephant appears to them much more proper for Battel though when all comes to all it may reasonably be doubted whether he be more proper for War as I shall show in the sequel They report that this Animal knows how to defend his Master and to set him upon his back again with his Trunk if he is faln and to throw his Enemy on the ground When the King of Siam seiz'd on the Crown the King his Unkle fled from the Palace on an Elephant and not on Horseback altho a Horse seems much properer to fly A Guard Elephant in the Palace In the Palace there is always an Elephant on the Guard that is to say Harnessed and ready to mount and no Guard-Horse Yet some have assur'd me that the King of Siam disdains not absolutely to ride on Horseback but that he does it very rarely The King of Siam never seen on Foot In this place of the Palace where the Guard-Elephant stands there is a little Scaffold to which the King walks from his Apartment and from this Scaffold he easily gets upon his Elephant But if he would be carry'd in a Chair by men which he sometimes is he comes to this sort of carriage at the due heighth of placing himself therein either by a
more uncertain But what they account most difficult is to get upon this Wire by the part of that same Wire which is fasten'd to the ground and to descend thence by one of the Bambou's which are plac'd like a St. Andrew's Cross to support it as also to sit on the Wire cross-leg'd to hold there one of those Bands which serves them as a Table to eat on it and to raise themselves on their Feet They cease not likewise to ascend and dance upon an extended Rope but without a Counterpoise and with Babouches or Slippers on their Feet and with Sabres and Buckets of water fasten'd to their Legs There are such who plant a very high Ladder in the ground the two sides of which are of Bambou's and the steps of Sabres the edges of which are turned upwards He goes to the top of this Ladder and stands and dances without any support on the edge of the Sabre which makes the last step thereof whilst the Ladder has more motion than a Tree shaken by the wind then he descends Head foremost and passes nimbly winding between all the Sabres I saw him descend but observed not when he was on the highest Sabre and I went not to examine whether the Steps were Sabres not reckoning that the Sabres could be keen except perhaps the lowest because they are most expos'd to view I omit the rest of this matter as little important and because I have not sufficiently observ'd it to support it with my Testimony Tame Serpents The Emperor Galba being in his Praetorship exhibited to the Roman People the sight of some Elephants dancing upon Ropes The Elephants of Siam are not so experienc'd and the only Animals that I know the Siameses instruct are great Serpents which they say are very dangerous These Animals do move themselves at the sound of the Instruments as if they would dance But this passes for Magic because that always in that Country as oftentimes in this those who have some extraordinary Artifice do pretend that it consists in some mysterious words Religious Shows An Illumination on the Waters and another on the Land and in the Palace The Siameses have also some Religious Shows When the Waters begin to retreat the People returns them Thanks for several Nights together with a great Illumination not only for that they are retired but for the Fertility which they render to the Lands The whole River is then seen cover'd with floating Lanthorns which pass with it There are of different Sizes according to the Devotion of every particular Person the variously painted Paper whereof they are made augments the agreeable effect of so many Lights Moreover to thank the Earth for the Harvest they do on the first days of their Year make another magnificent Illumination The first time we arriv'd at Louvo was in the Night and at the time of this Illumination and we saw the Walls of the City adorned with lighted Lanthorns at equal distances but the inside of the Palace was much more pleasant to behold In the Walls which do make the Inclosures of the Courts there were contrived three rows of small Niches all round in every of which burnt a Lamp The Windows and Doors were likewise all adorn'd with several Fires and several great and small Lanthorns of different Figures garnished with Paper or Canvas and differently painted were hung up with an agreeable Symmetry on the Branches of Trees or on Posts Excellent Artificial Fire-works I saw no Fire-works in which nevertheless the Chineses of Siam do excel and they made some very curious during our residence at Siam and Louvo At China there is also made a solemn Illumination at the beginning of their Year and at another time another great Festival on the Water without any Illumination The Chineses agree not in the Reasons they give thereof but they give none upon the account of Religion and those which they give are puerile and fabulous We must not omit the Paper-Kite in Siamese Vao A Paper-Kite the Amusement of all the Courts of the Indies in Winter I know not whether it be a piece of Religion or not but the great Mogul who is a Mahometan and not an Idolater delights himself also therein Sometimes they fasten Fire thereunto which in the Air appears like a Planet And sometimes they do there put a piece of Gold which is for him that finds the Kite in case the String breaks or that the Kite falls so far distant that it cannot be drawn back again That of the King of Siam is in the Air every Night for the two Winter-months and some Mandarins are nominated to ease one another in holding the String The Siameses have three sorts of Stage-Plays Three sorts of Stage-Plays amongst the Siameses That which they call Cone is a Figure-dance to the Sound of the Violin and some other Instruments The Dancers are masqued and armed and represent rather a Combat than a Dance And tho' every one runs into high Motions and extravagant Postures they ceasse not continually to intermix some word Most of their Masks are hideous and represent either monstrous Beasts or kinds of Devils The Show which they call Lacone is a Poem intermixt with Epic and Dramatic which lasts three days from eight in the Morning till seven at Night They are Histories in Verse serious and sung by several Actors always present and which do only sing reciprocally One of them sings the Historian's part and the rest those of the Personages which the History makes to speak but they are all Men that sing and no Women The Rabam is a double Dance of Men and Women which is not Martial but Gallant and they presented unto us the Diversion thereof with the others which I have before mentioned These Dancers both Men and Women have all false Nails and very long ones of Copper They sing some words in their dancing and they can perform it without much tyring themselves because their way of dancing is a simple march round very slow and without any high motion but with a great many slow Contorsions of the Body and Arms so they hold not one another Mean while two Men entertain the Spectators with several Fooleries which the one utters in the name of all the Men-dancers and the other in the name of all the Women-dancers All these Actors have nothing singular in their Habits only those that dance in the Rabam and Cone have gilded Paper-Bonnets high and pointed like the Mandarins Caps of Ceremony but which hang down at the sides below their Ears and which are adorned with counterfeit Stones and with two Pendants of gilded wood The Cone and the Rabam are always call'd at Funerals and sometimes on other occasions and 't is probable that these Shows contain nothing Religious since the Talapoins are prohibited to be present thereat The Lacone serves principally to solemnize the Feast of the Dedication of a new Temple when a new Statue of
great Wife and then for her Children who inherit from their Parents by equal Portions The little Wives and their Children may be sold by the Heir and they have only what the Heir gives them or what the Father before his death has given them from hand to hand for the Siameses know not the use of Wills The Daughter 's born of the little Wives are sold to be themselves little Wives and the most powerful purchasing the handsomest without having any regard to the Parents from whom they descend do after this manner make very unequal Alliances and those with whom they make them do not thereby acquire any more Honour or Protection Wherein consists the Fortune of a Siamese The Estate of the Siameses consist chiefly in Moveables If they have Lands they have not much by reason they cannot obtain the full Property thereof It belongs always to their King who at his pleasure takes away the Lands which he has sold to particular persons and who frequently takes them again without returning the value Nevertheless the Law of the Country is that Lands should be hereditary in Families and that particular persons may sell them one to another But this Prince has regard only to this Law as far as it suits him because it cannot prejudice his Demesnes which generally extend over all that his Subjects possess This is the Reason that they get as few Immoveables as they can and that they always endeavor to conceal their Moveables from the knowledge of their Kings and because that Diamonds are Moveables the most easie to hide and transport they are mightily sought after at Siam and in all India and they sell them very dear Sometimes the Indian Lords do at their death give part of their Estate to the King their Master to secure the rest to their Family and this generally succeeds The Families are almost all happy at Siam A Divorce as may be judged by the Fidelity of the Wives in nourishing their Husband whilst he serves the King A Service which by a kind of Oppression lasts not only six Months in a Year but sometimes one two and three Years together But when the Husband and Wife cannot support one another they have the remedy of Divorce 'T is true that it is in practice only amongst the Populace the Rich who have several Wives do equally keep those they love not and those they love The Husband is naturally the Master of the Divorce What are the Laws thereof but he never refuseth it to his Wife when she absolutely desires it He restores her Portion to her and their Children are divided amongst them in this manner The Mother has the first the third the fifth and so all the odd ones The Father has the second fourth sixth and all the even ones Hence it happens that if there is no more than one Child it is for the Mother and that if the number of Children is unequal the Mother has one more whether that they judge the Mother would take more care thereof than the Father or that having born them in her womb or nourished them with her milk she seems to have a greater Right therein than the Father or that being weaker she has more need of the succor of her Children than he After the Divorce And the Consequences it is lawful for the Husband and Wife to marry again with whom they please and it is free for the Woman to do it in the very day of the Divorce they not troubling themselves with the Doubt that may thence arise touching the Father of the first Child that may be born after the second Marriage They rely on what the Wife says thereof a great sign of the little Jealousie of this People But tho' the Divorce be permitted them yet they consider it as a very great Evil and as the almost certain Ruine of the Children which are ordinarily very ill treated in the second Marriages of their Parents So that this is one of the Causes assigned why the Country is not populous altho' the Siameses are fruitful and do very frequently bring Twins The power of the Husband is despotical in his Family Of the Paternal Power even to the selling his Children and Wives his principal Wife excepted whom he can only repudiate The Widows inherit the power of their Husbands with this restriction that they cannot sell the Children which they have of the even number if the Father's Relations oppose it for the Children dare not After the Divorce the Father and Mother may each sell the Children which fell to them by lot according to the Division I have mentioned But the Parents cannot kill their Children nor the Husband his Wives by reason that in general all Murder is prohibited at Siam The Love of free persons is not ignominious at least amongst the Populace Amorous Conversations It is there look'd upon as a Marriage and Incontinency as a Divorce Nevertheless the Parents do carefully watch their Daughters as I have said and Children are no where permitted to dispose of themselves to the prejudice of the paternal Power which is the most natural of all Laws Moreover the Siameses are naturally too proud easily to give themselves to Foreigners or at least to invite them The Peguins which are at Siam as being Strangers themselves do more highly esteem of Foreigners and do pass for debauched persons in the minds of those who understand not that they seek a Husband Thus they continue faithful until they are abandon'd and if they prove big with Child they are not less esteem'd amongst those of their Nation and they do even glory in having had a white Man for a Husband It may be also that they are of a more amorous Complexion than the Siameses they have at least more spirit and briskness 'T is an established opinion in the Indies that the people have more or less vigor and spirit according as they are nearer or remoter from Pegu. CHAP. VIII Of the Education of the Siamese Children and first of their Civility The love of the Siamese Children for their Parents THE Siamese Children have docility and sweetness provided they be not discountenanc'd Their Parents know how to make themselves extreamly beloved and respected and to inspire an extream Civility in them Their Instructions are marvellously assisted by the Despotic Power which I have said they have in their Family but the Parents do also answer unto the Prince for the Faults of their Children They share in their Chastisements and more especially are obliged to deliver them up when they have offended And tho' the Son be fled he never fails to return and surrender himself when the Prince apprehends his Father or his Mother or his other collateral Relations but older than himself and to whom he owes Respect And this is a great proof of the love of the Siamese Children to their Parents Civility necessary to the Siameses As to Civility it is so great
time also demonstrate that they have not any sort of Theology and that we might perhaps justifie them about the worshipping of the false Deities whereof they are accused by an Impiety more culpable which is not to acknowledge any Divinity neither true nor false They study not the Civil Law How they study their Laws They learn the Laws of their Country only in Employments They are not Public as I have said for want of Printing but when they enter into any Office they put into their hands a Copy of the Laws which concern it And the same thing is practised in Spain tho' the Laws be there in the hands of all persons and that there are publick Schools to teach them As for example in the Provisions of a Corregidor they will insert the whole Title of the Corregidors which is in the compiling of their Ordinances and Decrees I have likewise seen some example of this in France CHAP. X. What the Siameses do know in Medicine and Chymistry The King of Siam has his Physicians from divers Countries MEdicine cannot merit the name of a Science amongst the Siameses The King of Siam's principal Physicians are Chineses and he has also some Siameses and Peguins and within two or three years he has admitted into this quality Mr. Paumart one of the French Secular Missionaries on whom he relies more than on all his other Physicians The others are obliged to report daily unto him the state of this Prince's health and to receive from his hand the Remedies which he prepares for him They understand not Chyrurgery nor Anatomy Their chief Ignorance is to know nothing in Chyrurgery and to stand in need of the Europeans not only for Trapans and for all the other difficult Operations of Chyrurgery but for simple Blood-lettings They are utterly ignorant of Anatomy and so far from having excited their Curiosity to discover either the Circulation of the Blood or all the new things that we know touching the structure of the body of Animals that they open not the dead bodies till after having roasted them in their Funeral solemnities under pretence of burning them and they open them only to seek wherewith to abuse the superstitious credulity of the people For example they alledge that they sometimes find in the Stomach of the dead great pieces of fresh Pig 's flesh or of some other Animal about eight or ten pound in weight and they suppose that it has been put therein by some Divination and that it is good to perform others They have not any principle but Receipts They trouble not themselves to have any principle of Medicine but only a number of Receipts which they have learnt from their Ancestors and in which they never alter any thing They have no regard to the particular symptoms of diseases and yet they fail not to cure a great many because that the natural Temperance of the Siameses preserves them from a great many evils difficult to cure But when at last it happens that the Distemper is stronger than the Remedies they fail not to attribute the cause thereof to Inchantment The Chinese Physicians are great Mountebanks The King of Siam understanding one day that I was somewhat indisposed tho it was so little that I kept not my Chamber he had the goodness to send all his Physicians to me The Chineses offer'd some Civility to the Siameses and Peguins and then they made me sit and sat down themselves and after having demanded silence for the company was numerous they felt my pulse one after the other a long time to make me suspect that it was not only a grimace I had read that at China there is no School for Physicians and that one is there admitted to exercise the profession thereof at most by a flight examination made by a Magistrate of Justice and not by Doctors in Physick And I knew moreover that the Indians are great Cheats and the Chineses much greater so that I had throughly resolved to get rid of these Doctors without making any experience of their Remedies After having felt my pulse they said that I was a little feverish but discerned it not at all they added that my Stomach was out of order and I perceived it not save that my voice was a little weak The next morning the Chineses return'd alone to present me a small Potion warm in a China Cup cover'd and very neat The smell of the remedy pleas'd me and made me to drink it and I found my self neither better nor worse The difference of the Chinese Mountebanks from ours 'T is well known that there are Mountebanks every where and that every Man who will boldly promise Health Pleasures Riches Honors and the knowledge of Futurities will always find Fools But the difference that there is between the Mountebanks of China and the Quacks of Europe on the account of Medicine is that the Chineses do abuse the sick by pleasant and enticing Remedies and that the Europeans do give us Drugs which the humane Body seeks to get rid off by all manner of means so that we are inclined to believe that they would not thus torment a sick person if it was not certainly very necessary When any person is sick at Siam What Remedies are used at Siam he begins with causing his whole body to be moulded by one that is skilful herein who gets upon the Body of the sick person and tramples him under his feet 'T is likewise reported that great belly'd women do thus cause themselves to be trodden under foot by a Child to procure themselves to be delivered with less pain for in hot Countries though their Deliveries seem to be more easie by the natural Conformation of the women yet they are very painful by reason perhaps that they are preceded with less Evacuation Antiently the Indians apply'd no other Remedy to plenitude than an Excessive diet and this is still the principal subtilty of the Chineses in Medicine The Chineses do now make use of Blood-letting provided they may have an European Chyrurgion and sometimes instead of Blood-letting they do use Cupping-glasses Scarifications and Leeches They have some Purgatives which we make use of and others which are peculiar to them but they know not the Hellebore so familiar to the Antient Greek Physicians Moreover they observe not any time in purging and know not what the Crisis is though they understand the benefit of Sweats in distempers and do highly applaud the use of Sudorificks In their Remedies they do use Minerals and Simples and the Europeans have made known the Quinquina unto them In general all their Remedies are very hot and they use not any inward Refreshment but they bath themselves in Fevers and in all sorts of diseases It seems that whatever concenters or augments the natural heat is beneficial to them Their sick do nourish themselves only with boiled Rice The Diet of the sick Siameses which they do make
highest in dignity yielded the first place and speech to the elder who was not above three or four years older The Siameses great Lyars Lying towards Superiours is punished by the Superiour himself and the King of Siam punishes it more severely than any other and notwithstanding all this they lye as much or more at Siam than in Europe Great Union in their Families The Union of Families there is such that a Son who would plead against his Parents would pass for a Monster Wherefore no person in this Country dreads Marriage nor a number of Children Interest divides not Families Poverty renders not Marriage burdensome Begging is rare and Shameful at Siam Our Domesticks observed only three sorts of Beggars Aged Impotent and Friendless persons Relations permit not their Kindred to beg Alms They charitably maintain those that cannot maintain themselves out of their Estate or Labour Begging is shameful there not only to the Beggar but to all his Family But Robbing is much more ignominious than Begging The Siameses are Robbers I say not to the Robber himself but to his Relations The nearest Friend dare not concern themselves about a Man accused of Theft and it is not strange that Thievery should be reputed so infamous where they may live so cheap Thus are their Houses much less secure then our worst Chests Nevertheless as it is not possible to have true Vertue but in the eternal prospects of Christianity the Siameses do seldome as I may say refuse to steal whatever they meet with 'T is properly amongst them that opportunity makes the Thief They place the Idea of perfect Justice in not gathering up lost things that is to say in not laying hold on so easie an occasion of getting After the same manner the Chineses to exaggerate the good Government of some of their Princes do say that under their Reign Justice was in so high an esteem among the People that no person meddled with what he found scattered in the high Road and this Idea has not been unknown to the Greeks Anciently in Greece the Stagyritae made a Law in these words What you have not laid down take not up and it is perhaps from them that Plato learned it when he inserted it amongst his Laws But the Siameses are very remote from so exquisite a probity Father d' Espagnac Some examples of Theft committed by the Siameses one of those pious and learned Jesuits which we carried to Siam being one day alone in the Divan of their House a Siamese came boldly to take away an excellent Persian Carpet from off a Table that was before him and Father d' Espagnac let him do it because he imagined not that he was a Robber In the Journey which the King caused the Ambassadors from Siam to make into Flanders one of the Mandarins which accompanied them took twenty Scions in a house where the Ambassadors were invited to dine as they sojourned in one of the principal Cities of Picardy The next day this Mandarin conceiving that these Scions were Money gave one to a Footman to drink and his Theft was hereby discovered but no Notice taken thereof Behold likewise an ingenious prank which proves that the opportunity of stealing has so much power over them that it sometimes sways them even when it is perilous One of the Officers of the King of Siam's Magazines having stolen some Silver this Prince ordered him to be put to death by forcing him to swallow three or four Ounces of melted Silver and it happened that he who had order to take those three or four Ounces of Silver out of that Wretch's throat could not forbear filching part of it The King therefore caused him to die of the same punishment and a third exposed himself to the same hazard by committing the like Offence I mean by stealing part of the Silver which he took out of the last dead Man's throat So that the King of Siam pardoning him his Life said there is enough punisht I should destroy all my Subjects if I should not resolve to pardon them at last It must not be doubted after this Robbers in the Woods of Siam and China which do very rarely kill of what is reported of the Siameses who live in the Woods to withdraw themselves from the Government that they frequently rob the Passengers yet without killing any The Woods of China have been continually pestered with such Robbers and there are some who after having enticed a great many Companions with them have formed whole Armies and at last rendered themselves Masters of that great Kingdom On the other hand Fidelity is exceeding great at Siam in all sorts of Traffick The fidelity of the Siameses in Commerce their boundless Usury and their Avarice as I have elsewhere remarked but Usury is there practised without bounds Their Laws have not provided against it though their Morality prohibits it Avarice is their essential Vice and what is more wonderful herein is that they heap not up riches to use them but to bury them As they traffick not almost with immoveables make no Wills They are very revengful and how nor publick Contracts and as in a word they have no Notaries it seems that they cannot almost have any Suits and they have indeed few Civil but a great many Criminal causes 'T is principally out of spight that they exercise their secret Hatreds and Revenges and they find facility therein with the Judges who in this Country as in Europe do live on their profession The Siameses have naturally an aversion to blood but when they hate even unto death which is very rare they assassinate or they poyson and understand not the uncertain Revenge of Duels yet most of their quarrels do terminate only in blows or reciprocal defamations Other qualities of the Siameses The Ancients have remark'd that it is the Humidity of the Elements which defends the Indians against that action of the Sun which burns the Complexion of the Negro's and makes their Hair to grow like Cotton The Nourishment of the Siameses is likewise more aqueous than that of any other People of the Indies and unto them may be safely attributed all the good and all the bad qualities which proceed from Phlegm and Spittle because that Phlegm and Spittle are the necessary effects of their Nourishment They are courteous polite fearful and careless They contain themselves a long time but when once their Rage is kindled they have perhaps less discretion than we have Their Timidity their Avarice their Dissimulation their Silences their Inclination to lying do increase with them They are stiff in their Customs as much out of Idleness as out of respect to their Ancestors who have transmitted them to them They have no curiosity and do admire nothing They are proud with those that deal gently with them and humble to those that treat them with rigour They are subtile and variable like all those that perceive their own
consists in Extorsions because that in this there is no Justice for the weak All the Officers do hold a correspondence in pillaging and the Corruption is greatest in those from whence the Remedy ought to come The Trade of Presents is publick the least Officers do give unto the greatest under a Title of Respect and a Judge is not there punished for having received Presents if otherwise he be not convicted of Injustice which is not very easie to do The Form of the Oath of Fidelity consists in swallowing the water The Oath of Fidelity over which the Talapoins do pronounce some Imprecations against him who is to drink it in case he fails in the Fidelity which he owes to his King This Prince dispenses not with this Oath to any persons that engage themselves in his Service of what Religion or Nation soever The Publick Law of Siam is written in three Volumes The Publick Law of Siam is written The first is called Pra Tam Ra and contains the Names Functions and Prerogatives of all the Offices The second is intituled Pra Tam Non and is a Collection of the Constitutions of the Ancient Kings and the third is the Pra Rayja Cammanot wherein are the Constitutions of the now Regent King's Father Nothing would have been more necessary than a faithful extract of these three Volumes The difficulty of procuring the Books thereof rightly to make known the Constitution of the Kingdom of Siam but so far was I from being able to get a Translation that I could not procure a Copy thereof in Siamese It would have been necessary upon this account to continue longer at Siam and with less business This is therefore what I could learn certainly about this matter without the assistance of those Books and in a Country where every one is afraid to speak The greatest token of Servitude of the Siameses is that they dare not to open their mouth about any thing that relates to their Country CHAP. IV. Concerning the Offices of Judicatory The Division of the Kingdom of Siam by Provinces THE Kingdom of Siam is divided into the upper and lower The upper lies towards the North seeing that the River descends from thence and contains seven Provinces which are named by their Chief Cities Porselouc Sanquelouc Lacontai Campeng-pet Coconrepina Pechebonne and Pitchai At Porselouc do immediately arise ten Jurisdictions at Sanquelouc eight at Lacontai seven at Campeng-pet ten at Coconrepina five at Pechebonne two and at Pitchai seven And besides this there are in the upper Siam one and twenty other Jurisdictions to which no other Jurisdiction resorts but which do resort to the Court and are as so many little Provinces In the lower Siam that is to say in the South part of the Kingdom they reckon the Provinces of Jor Patana Ligor Tenasserim Chantebonne Petelong or Bordelong and Tchiai On Jor do immediately depend seven Jurisdictions on Patana eight on Ligor twenty on Tenasserim twelve on Chantebonne seven on Petelong eight and on Tchiai two And besides this there are likewise in the lower Siam thirteen small Jurisdictions which are as so many particular Provinces which resort only to the Court and to which no other Jurisdiction resorts The City of Siam has its Province apart in the heart of the State between the upper and lower Siam The Governor is the Judge The whole Tribunal of Judicature consists properly only in a single Officer seeing that it is the Chief or President only that has the deliberate voice and that all the other Officers have only a consultative voice according to the Custom received also at China and in the other Neighbouring States But the most important prerogative of the President is to be the Governour of his whole Jurisdiction and to command even the Garrisons if there be any unless the Prince hath otherwise disposed thereof by an express order So that as in other places these Offices are hereditary it is no difficult matter for some of these Governors and especially the most powerful and for the most remote from Court to withdraw themselves wholly or in part from the Royal Authority Jor belongs no more to the Kingdom of of Siam Thus the Governor of Jor renders Obedience no longer and the Portugueses give him the Title of King And it may be he never intends to obey unless the Kingdom of Siam should extend it self as Relations declare to the whole Peninsula extra Gangem Jor is the most Southern City thereof seated on a River which has its Mouth at the Cape of Sincapura and which forms a very excellent Port. Nor Patana The People of Patana live like those of Achem in the Isle of Sumatra under the Domination of a Woman whom they always elect in the same Family and always old to the end that she may have no occasion to marry and in the name of whom the most trusty persons do rule The Portuguese have likewise given her the Title of Queen and for Tribute she sends to the King of Siam every three Years two small Trees the one of Gold the other of Silver and both loaded with Flowers and Fruits but she owes not any assistance to this Prince in his Wars Whether these Gold and Silver Trees are a real Homage or only a Respect to maintain the liberty of Commerce as the King of Siam sends Presents every three Years to the King of China in consideration of Trade only is what I cannot alledge but as the King of China honours himself with these sorts of Presents and takes them for a kind of Homage it may well be that the King of Siam does not less value himself on the Presents he receives from the Queen of Patana altho' she be not perhaps his Vassal The Siameses do call an Hereditary Governor Tchaou-Meuang The Governor is Lord. Tchaou signifies Lord and Meuang a City or Province and sometimes a Kingdom The Kings of Siam have ruin'd and destroy'd the most potent Tchaou-Meuang as much as they could and have substituted in their place some Triennial Governors by Commission These Commission-Governors are called Pouran and Pou signifies a Person Besides the Presents which the Tchaou-Meuang may receive as I have declar'd The Profits or Rights of the Tchaou-Meuang his other legal Rights are First Equally to share with the King the Rents that the arable Lands do yield which they call Naa that is to say Fields and according to the ancient Law these Rents are a Mayon or quarter part of a Tical for forty Fathom or two hundred Foot square 2dly The Tchaou-Meuang has the profit of all Confiscations of all the Penalties to the Exchequer and ten per Cent. of all the Fines to the Party The Confiscations are fixed by Law according to the Cases and are not always the whole Estate not even in case of sentence of Death but sometimes also they extend to the Body not only of the Person condemn'd but of
do generally appropriate the Trade of Salt to themselves Oc-Louang Couca has the Inspection over Foreigners he protects them or accuses them to the Governor Moreover there are some Officers in every superior Tribunal to send to the inferior Justices when the Tchaou-Meuang or Pouran are dead whilst that the King fills the place and the number of these Officers are as great as that of the inferior Justices Oc-Louang or Oc-Counne Coeng is the Provost he is always armed with a Sabre and has Painted Arms like Archers Oc-Counne Pa-ya Bat is the Keeper of the Goal or Prisons and the word Pa-ya which the Portugueses have translated by that of Prince seems exceedingly vilified in the Title of this Office Nai-Goug is the true Goaler Couc signifies a Prison and nothing is more cruel than the Prisons of Siam They are Cages of Bambou exposed to all the injuries of the Air. Oc-Counne Narin commands those that have the care of the Elephants which the King has in the Province for there are some in several places because it would be difficult to lodge and feed a very great number of Elephants together Oc-Counne Nai-rang is the Purveyor of the Elephants In a word there is an Officer in every Tribunal to read the Tara or Orders from the King to the Governor and an House in an eminent place for to keep them As within the inclosure of the King of Siam's Palace there is a single House on an eminent place to keep all the Letters which the King of Siam receives from other Kings These are the Officers which are called from within Besides these An important distinction into Officers within and Officers without there are others which are called from without for the Service of the Province All have an entire dependance upon the Governor and altho those without have the like Titles yet they are very inferior to the Officers within Thus an Oc-Meuang within the Palace is superior to an Oc-ya without and in a word it is not necessary to believe that all those who bear great Titles must always be great Lords That infamous fellow who buys Women and Maids to prostitute them bears the Title of Oc-ya he is called Oc-ya Meen and is a very contemptible person There are none but debauch'd persons that have any Correspondence with him Every one of the Officers within has his Lieutenant in Siamese Balat and his Register in Siamese Semien and in his House which the King gives him he has generally an Hall to give his Audiences CHAP. V. Of the Judiciary Stile and Form of Pleading THey have only one Stile for all matters in Law They have not a double Stile and they have not thought fit to divide them into Civil and Criminal either because there is always some punishment due to him that is cast even in a matter purely Civil or because that suits in matters purely Civil are very rare there 'T is a general Rule amongst them that all Process should be in writing They plead only in writing and by giving Bail The Function of the Nai in Law Suits and that they plead not without giving Caution But as the whole People of the Jurisdiction is divided by Bands and that their principal Nai are the Officers of the Tribunal whom I shall call by the general name of Councellors in case of process the Plaintiff goes first to the Councellor who is his Nai or to his Country Nai who goes to the Councellor Nai He presents him his Petition and the Councellor presents it to the Governor The Duty of the Governour is nicely to examin it and to admit or reject it according as to him it seems just or unjust and in this last case to Chastise the Party who presented it to the end that no person might begin any process rashly and this is likewise the Stile or form of China but it is little observed at Siam How a Process is prepared at Siam The Governor then admits the Petition and refers it to one of the Councellors and ordinarily he returns it to him that presented it if he is the common Nai of both parties but then he puts his Seal thereunto and he counts the lines and the cancelling thereof to the end that no alteration may be made The Councellor gives it to his Deputy and to his Clerk who make their report to him at his House in his Hall of Audience And this report and all those which I shall treat of in the sequel are only a Lecture After this the Councellor's Clerk presented by his Master reports or reads this very Petition in the Governour 's Hall at an Assembly of all the Councellors but in the absence of the Governor who vouchsafes not to appear at whatever serves only to prepare the Cause The Parties are there called in under pretence of endeavouring to reconcile them and they are summon'd three times more for fashions sake than with a sincere intention of procuring the accommodation This Reconciliation not succeeding the Court orders if there are witnesses that they should be heard before the same Clerk unless he be declared suspected And in such another Session that is to say where the Governor is not present the Clerk reads the Process and the depositions of the Witnesses and they proceed to the Opinions which are only consultative and which are all writ down beginning with the Opinion of the last Officer The Form of the Judgments The Process being thus prepar'd and the Council standing in presence of the Governor his Clerk reads unto him the Process and the Opinions and the Governor after having resumed them all interrogates those whose Opinions seem to him not just to know of them upon what reasons they grounded them After this Examination he pronounces in general terms that such of the Parties shall be condemned according to the Law The Law or Custom is read Then it belongs to Oc-Louang-Peng to read with a loud voice the Article of the Law which respects the suit but in that Country as in this they dispute the sense of the Laws They do there seek out some accommodations under the title of Equity and under pretence that all the circumstances of the fact are never in the Law they never follow the Law The Governour alone decides these disputes and the Sentence is pronounced upon the parties and set down in Writing But if it be contrary to all appearance of Justice it belongs to the Jockebat or the Kings Attorney General to advertise the Court thereof but not to oppose it Suits are a long time depending They have no Advocate nor Attorney Every suit ought to end in three days and some there are which last three years The parties do speak before the Clerk who writes down what they tell him and they speak either by themselves or by another but it is necessary that this other who herein performs the office of an Attorney or Advocate should be at least Cousin
The King of Siam's Revenues arise from two Sources and Revenues of the Country The Country Revenues are received by Oc ya Pollatep according to some or Vorethep according to Mr. Gervase They are all reduced to the Heads following 1. On Forty Fathom Square of cultivated Lands His Duties on cultivated Lands a Mayon or quarter of a Tical by year but this Rent is divided with the Tchaou-Meuang where there is one and it is never well paid to the King on the Frontiers Besides this the Law of the Kingdom is that whoever ploughs not his ground pays nothing though it be by his own negligence that he reaps nothing But the present King of Siam to force his Subjects to work has exacted this duty from those that have possessed Lands for a certain time although they omit to cultivate them Yet this is executed only in the places where his Authority is absolute He loved nothing so much as to see Strangers come to settle in his States there to manure those great uncultivated Spaces which without comparison do make the most considerable part thereof in this case he would be liberal of untilled grounds and of Beasts to cultivate them though they had been cleared and prepared for Tillage 2. On Boats or Balons On Boats the Natives of the Country pay a Tical for every Fathom in length Under this Reign they have added that every Balon or Boat above six Cubits broad should pay six Ticals and that Foreigners should be obliged to this duty as well as the Natives of the Country This duty is levied like a kind of Custom at certain places of the River and amongst others at Tchainat four Leagues above Siam where all the Streams unite 3. Customs on whatever is imported or exported by Sea Besides which Customes the body of the Ship pays something in proportion to its Capacities like the Balons 4. On Arak or Rice-Brandy or rather on every Furnace where it is made On Arak which they call Taou-laou the People of the Country do pay a Tical per Annum This Duty has been doubled under this Reign and is exacted on the Natives of the Country and on Strangers alike 'T is likewise added that every Seller of Arak by re-tail should pay a Tical a year and every Seller by whole-sale a Tical per Annum for every great Pot the size of which I find no otherwise described in the Note which was given me 5. On the Fruit called Durion for every Tree already bearing On Durions or not bearing Fruit two Mayons or half a Tical per annum 6. On every Tree of Betel a Tical per annum On Betel 7. On every Arekier they formerly paid three Nuts of Arek in kind On the Arek under this Reign they pay six 8. Revenues entirely new or established under this Reign New Imposts are in the first place a certain Duty on a School of Recreation permitted at Siam The Tribute which the Oc-ya Meen pays is almost of the same Nature but I know not whether it is not ancienter than the former In the second place on every Coco-Tree half a Tical per Annum and in the third place on Orange-Trees Mango-Trees Mangoustaniers and Pimentiers for each a Tical per Annum There is no duty on Pepper by reason that the King would have his Subjects addict themselves more to plant it A Demesn reserved to the King 9. This Prince has in several places of his States some Gardens and Lands which he causes to be cultivated as his particular demesn as well by his Slaves as by the six Months Service He causes the Fruits to be gathered and kept on the places for the maintenance of his House and for the nourishment of his Slaves his Elephants his Horses and other Cattle and the rest he sells 10. A Casual Revenue is the Presents which this Prince receives as well as all the Officers of his Kingdom the Legacies which the Officers bequeath him at their death or which he takes from their Succession and in fine the extraordinary Duties which he takes from his Subjects on several occasions as for the Maintenance of Foreign Ambassadors to which the Governors into whose Jurisdiction the Ambassadors do pass or sojourn are obliged to contribute and for the building of Forts and other publick works an expence which he levies on the People amongst whom these works are made Confiscations and Fines Six Months Service 11. The Revenues of Justice do donsist in Confiscations and Fines 12. Six Months service of every one of his Subjects per Annum a Service which he or his Officers frequently extend much further who alone discharges it from every thing and from which there remains to him a good Increase For in certain places this Service is converted into a payment made in Rice or in Sapan-wood or Lignum-aloes or Saltpetre or in Elephants or in Beasts Skins or in Ivory or in other Commodities and in fine this Service is sometimes esteemed and paid in ready Money and it is for the ready Money that the Rich are exempted Anciently this Service was esteemed at a Tical a Month because that one Tical is sufficient to maintain one Man and this computation serves likewise as an assessment on the days Labour of the Workmen which a particular Person employs They amount to two Ticals a Month at least by reason that it is reckon'd that a Workman must in 6 Months gain his Maintenance for the whole year seeing that he can get nothing the other six Months that he serves the Prince The Prince now extorts two Ticals a Month for the exemption from the six Months Service Commerce a Revenue extraordinary or casual 13. His other Revenues do arise from the Commerce which he exercises with his Subjects and Foreigners He has carried it to such a degree that Merchandize is now no more the Trade of particular persons at Siam He is not contented with selling by Whole-sale he has some Shops in the Bazars or Markets to sell by Re-tail Cotton-cloath The principal thing that he sells to his Subjects is Cotton-cloath he sends them into his Magazines of the Provinces Heretofore his Predecessors and he sent them thither only every Ten Years and a moderate quantity which being sold particular persons had liberty to make Commerce thereof now he continually furnishes them he has in his Magazines more than he can possibly sell and it sometimes happens that to vend more that he has forced his Subjects to cloath their Children before the accustomed Age. Before the Hollanders came into the Kingdom of Laos and into others adjacent the King of Siam did there make the whole Commerce of Linnen with a considerable profit The Calin or Tin All the Calin is his and he sells it as well to Strangers as to his own Subjects excepting that which is dug out of the Mines of Jonsalam on the Gulph of Bengal for this being a
enough to be free from touch and sight tho' they believe that if any one be wounded the blood which flows from its wound may appear Such were the Manes and Shades of the Greeks and Romans and it is by this figure of the Souls like unto that of the Bodies that Virgil supposes that Aeneas knew Palinurus Dido and Anchises in Hell The Absurdity of their Opinion Now what is altogether impertinent in this Opinion is that the Orientals cannot tell why they attribute the humane Figure rather than any other to the Soul which they suppose able to animate all sorts of Bodies besides the humane Body When the Tartar which now reigns at China would force the Chineses to shave their hair after the Tartarian fashion several of them chose rather to suffer death than to go they said into the other World to appear before their Ancestors without hair imagining that they shaved the head of the Soul by shaving that of the Body Of the Punishments and Recompences of the Soul after death The Souls therefore tho' material are yet imperishable in their Opinion and at their departure out of this life they are punished or recompenced with Punishments or Pleasures proportioned in greatness and duration to their good or evil works until they re-enter into the humane Body wherein they must enjoy a Life more or less happy according to the Good or Evil they have committed in a former Life How they explain the Prosperity of the Wicked and the Misfortunes of the Good If a Man is unfortunate before he has done amiss as if he is dead-born the Indians believe that he has merited it in a former Life and that then perhaps he caused some Great-belly'd Woman to miscarry If on the contrary they observe a wicked Man to prosper they believe that he enjoys the Recompence which he has merited in another Life by good Actions If the Life of the Man is mixt with Prosperity and Adversity 't is because every Man they say has done Good and Evil when he formerly lived In a word no Person suffers any Misfortune according to their Opinion if he has always been innocent nor is he always happy if he has at any time been culpable nor does he enjoy any Prosperity which he has not merited by some good Action Of the several places where the Soul passes after death Besides the divers manners of being of this World as of Plant or of Animal to which the Souls are successively linked after death they reckon several places out of this World where the Souls are punished or rewarded Some are more happy and others more miserable than the World wherein we are They make all these places as Stages in the whole extent of Nature and their Books do vary in the number tho' the most common Opinion is that there are nine happy and as many unhappy The nine happy places are over our heads the nine unhappy are under our feet and the higher a place is the happier it is as also the lower it is the more unhappy it is so that the happy extend far above the Stars as the unhappy do sink a great way beneath the earth The Siameses do call the Inhabitants of the superior Worlds Theuada those of the inferior Worlds Pii and those of this World Manout The Portugueses have translated the word Theuada by that of Angels and the word Pii by that of Devils and they have given the Name of Paradice to the superior Worlds and that of Hell to the inferior It there revives again But the Siameses do not believe that the Souls in departing out of the Body do pass into these places as the Greeks and Romans thought that they went into Hell they are born according to them at the places where they go and there they do live a life which from us is conceal'd but which is subject to the infirmities of this and unto death Death and a new Birth are always the road from one of these places to another and it is not till after having lived in a certain number of places and during a certain time which ordinarily extends to some thousands of years that the Souls there punished or recompenced do happen to spring up again in the World wherein we are Now as they suppose that the Souls have a new habitation in the places where they revive they think they stand in need of the things of this Life To live a life full of Cares like this and all the ancient Paganism believed the same With the body of a dead man the Gauls burnt the things which he had most esteemed during his Life Moveables Animals Slaves and even free Persons if he had any singularly devoted to his Service They still practice worse than this if it is possible Why the Indian women burn themselvs with the body of their Husband among the Pagans of the true India where the Wife glories in burning herself alive with the body of her Husband to meet his Soul in the other world I well know that some presume that this Custom was formerly introduced in the Indies to secure the Husbands from the Treason of their Wives by forcing them to die with them Mandesh reports this opinion and Strabo had reported it before him and had disapproved it thinking it improbable either that such a Law was established or that such a reason for establishing it was true Indeed besides that this Custom is extended to the Moveables and Animals things all innocent it is free in regard of the Women none of which dies after this manner if she desires it not and it has been received in too great a part of the Country to imagine that the Crimes of the Women have given occasion thereunto Wives to be Slaves or as Slaves to their Husbands are not either more dissatisfied with their Condition nor greater Enemies to their Husbands and they change no part of the Condition as to this regard by a second Marriage Thus it is observed that the Indian Women have always look'd upon the Liberty they have of dying with their Husbands not as a Punishment but as a Felicity which is offered them The Women Slaves do sometimes follow their Mistress to the Funeral Pile but voluntarily and without compulsion And moreover it is not a thing without precedent in the Indies that an Husband enamour'd with his Wife will burn himself with her in hopes of going to enjoy another Life with her Navarette reports it is a Custom of the Tartars This Custom is received among the Tartars and is not without example among the Chineses that when there dies one amongst them one of his Wives hangs herself to follow him into the other World but that the Tartar which reigned at China in 1668. abolished this Custom and he adds that though it be not common to the Chineses nor approved by Confucius yet it is not without example He relates one in his time of the
they gild them but the Wood of their Coffins is not so precious as at China because they are not so rich as the Chineses Out of a respect they place the Coffin on some high thing and generally on a Bedsted which hath feet and so long as the body is kept at the house whether to expect the Head of the Family if he is absent or to prepare the Funeral Solemnities they burn Perfumes and Tapers by the Coffin and every night the Talapoins come to sing in the Balie Language in the Chamber where it is exposed they do range themselves along the Walls They entertain them and give them some Money and what they sing are some moral Subjects upon Death with the Road to Heaven which they pretend to show to the Soul of the deceased Mean while the Family chuses a place in the Field How they burn the bodies there to carry and burn the body This place is generally a Spot near the Temple which the Deceased or some of his Ancestors had built or near some other Temple if there is none peculiar to the Family of the deceased This space is inclosed with a square inclosure made of Bambou with some kind of Architecture almost of the same work as the Arbours and Bowers of our Gardens and adorned with those Papers Painted or Gilded which they cut to represent the Houses Moveables and Domestic and Savage Animals In the middle of this Inclosure the Pile composed entirely or partly of Odoriferous wood as are the white or yellow Saunders and Lignum Aloes and this according to the Wealth and Dignity of the deceased But the greatest honor of the Funeral consists in erecting the Pile not in eagerly heaping up Wood but in great Scaffolds on which they do put Earth and then Wood. At the Burial of the late Queen who died seven or eight years ago the Scaffold was higher than ever was yet seen in this Country and a Machine was desired of the Europeans to raise the Coffin decently to that heighth When it is resolved to carry the Corps to the Pile which is always done in the Morning the Parents and Friends do carry it with the sound of a great many Instruments The Body marches first then the Family of the deceased The Train Men and Women all cloathed in White their Head covered with a White Vail and lamenting exceedingly and in fine the rest of the Friends and Relations If the Train can go all the way by water it is so done In very magnificent Funerals they carry great Machines of Bambou covered with painted and gilded Paper which represents not only Palaces Moveables Elephants and other common Animals but some hideous Monsters some of which resemble the humane Figure and which the Christians take for the Figures of Devils They burn not the Coffin but they take out the body which they leave on the Pile and the Talapoins of the Convent near which the body is burnt do sing for a quarter of an hour and then retire to appear no more Then begin the shows of the Cone and of the Rabam which are at the same time and all the day long but on different Theaters The Talapoins think not that they can be present thereat without Sin and these Shows are not exhibited at Funerals upon any religious Account but only to render them more magnificent To the Ceremony they add a festival Air and yet the Relations of the deceased forbear not to make great Lamentations and to shed many Tears but they hire no Mourners as some have assured me About Noon the Tapacaou or Servant of the Talapoins sets fire to the Pile The Servant of the Talapoins lights the Funeral Pile which generally burns for two hours The Fire never consumes the body it only roasts it and oftentimes very ill but it is always reputed for the Honor of the deceased that he has been wholly consumed in an eminent place and that there remains only his Ashes If it is the Body of a Prince of the Blood or of a Lord whom the King has loved the King himself sets fire to the Pile without stirring out of his Palace He le ts go a lighted Torch along a Rope which is extended from one of the Windows of the Palace to the Pile As to the cut Papers which are naturally designed for the Flames the Talapoins do frequently secure them and seize them to lend them to other Funerals and the Family of the deceased permits them to do it In which it appears that they have forgot the reason why the neighbouring Nations dispence not from burning such Papers effectually and in general it may be asserted that there are no Persons in the world which do ignore their own Religion so much as the Talapoins It is very difficult say some to find any one amongst them that knows any thing It is necessary to seek their Opinions in the Balie Books which they keep and which they study very little Alms at Funerals The Family of the deceased entertains the Train and for three days it bestows Alms viz. On the day that the body is burnt to the Talapoins which have sung over the body the next day to their whole Convent and the third day to their Temple Funerals redoubled This is what is practised at the Funerals of the Siameses to which it is requisite only to add that they imbellish the Show with a great many Fire-works and that if the Funerals are for a man of great consequence they last with the same Shows for three days Bodies dug up to receive greater Funeral Honors It sometimes also happens that a Person of great Quality causes the body of his Father to be digged up again though a long time dead to make him a pompous Funeral if when he died they made him not such a one as was worthy of the present Elevation of the Son This participates of the Customs of the Chineses who communicate as much as they can to their dead Relations the Honors to which they arrive Thus when a man not born a Kings Son arrives at the Crown of China he will with certain Ceremonies cause the Title of King to be given to his deceased Father What the fire consumes not is buried under Pyramids and how the Siameses do call these Pyramids After the body of a Siamese has been burnt as I have said the whole Show is ended they shut up the remains of his Body in the Coffin without any Order and this depositum is laid under one of those Pyramids wherewith they encompass their Temples Sometimes also they bury precious Stones and other Riches with the body because that it is to put them in a place which Religion renders inviolable Some there are who say that they cast the Ashes of their Kings into the River and I have read of the Peguins that they make a Paste of the Ashes of their Kings with Milk and that they bury it at the
have often said that the Indians do own the distinction of good or bad Works it is necessary to set down the Principles of of their Morality CHAP. XXI Of the Principles of the Indian Morals Five Negative Precepts THey are reduced to five Negative Precepts very near the same in all the Cantons of the Indies Those of the Siameses are such as follow 1. Kill nothing 2. Steal nothing 3. Commit not any impurity 4. Lye not 5. Drink no intoxicating Liquor which in general they call Laou The first Precept extends to Plants and Seeds The first Precept is not limited to the Killing either Men or Animals but it extends to Plants and to Seeds because that by a very probable Opinion they believe that the Seed is only the Plant it self in a Cover The Man therefore observing this Precept as they understand it can live only on Fruit forasmuch as they consider the Fruit not as a thing which has Life but as a part of a thing which has Life and which suffers not though its Fruit be pluck'd In eating the Fruit it is necessary only not to eat the Kernel nor Stone because they are Seeds and it is necessary not to eat Fruit out of season that is to say in my opinion before the Season because that it is to make the Seed which the Fruit contains abortive by hindering it from ripening And to the not destroying any thing in Nature Besides this the Precept of not killing extends to the not destroying any thing in Nature by reason they think that every thing is animated or if you will that there are Souls every where and that to destroy any thing whatever is forceably to dispossess a Soul They will not for instance break a Branch of a Tree as they will not break the Arm of an innocent Person They believe that it is to offend the Soul of the Tree But when once the Soul has been expelled out of a body they look upon this as a Destruction already wrought and think nothing to be destroyed in nourishing themselves with this Body The Talapoins make not any scruple of eating what is dead but of killing what they think alive In several things they do more abhor Blood than Murder In several things they testify a greater Abhorrence of Blood than of Murder It is prohibited them to make any Incision from whence there gushes out Blood as if the Soul was principally in the Blood or that it was only the Blood And this perhaps is a confused remembrance of the ancient Command of God who permitting unto man the use of Meats prohibited him from eating the Blood of the Animals because that the Blood supplys in them the place of the Soul There are some Indians which dare not to cut a certain Plant because there comes out a red Juice which they take for the Blood of this Plant. The Siameses do scruple to go a fishing only on the days when the Talapoins shave their Head This done it seems to them that when they fish they commit no Crime by reason they think not themselves guilty of the Death of the Fishes They say they only pull them out of the Water and shed not their Blood The least evasion sufficeth them to elude the Precepts Thus they think not to sin by killing in War because they shoot not direct at the Enemy though at the bottom they endeavour to kill as I have already explained it discoursing of their manner of fighting But if any one tells them that according to the opinion of the Metempsychosis The Opinion of the Metempsychosis favourable to the Murder of the unhappy if it renders not all Murder indifferent Murder oftentimes appears laudable seeing that it may deliver a Soul from a miserable Life They answer that forceably to dispossess Souls is always to offend them and that moreover they are not relieved because they re enter into the like Bodies there to fill up the rest of the time during which they are designed for this sort of Life But they consider not that this reason would also prove that they did no real Injury in killing and the Chineses who in this do think otherwise than the Siameses do kill their Children when they have too many and they alledge that it is to make them spring up more happy To kill themselves appears to them a very laudable thing Moreover all the Indians do think that to kill themselves is not only a thing permitted because they believe themselves Masters of their selves but that it is a Sacrifice advantageous to the Soul and which acquires it a great degree of Vertue and Felicity Thus the Siameses do sometimes hang themselves out of Devotion on a Tree which in Balie they call Pra sa maha Pout and in Siamese Ton po These Balie words do seem to signifie the excellent or the holy Tree of the great Mercury for Pout signifies Mercury in the Balie Name of Wednesday The Europeans do call this Tree the Tree of the Pagodes because the Siameses do plant it before the Pagods It grows in the Woods like the other Trees of the Country but no particular Person can have thereof in his Garden and it is of this Wood that they make all the Statues of Sommona-Codom which they would make of Wood. But in that Zeal which sometimes determines the Siameses to hang themselves there is always some evident subject of a great distaste of Life or of a great Fear as is that of the Anger of the Prince The Story of a Peguin which burnt himself 'T is about six or seven years since a Peguin burnt himself in one of the Temples which the Peguins at Siam have called Sam-Pihan He seated himself cross-leg'd and besmear'd his whole body with a very thick Oil or rather with a sort of Gum and set fire thereunto 'T was reported that he was very much discontented with his Family which nevertheless lamented exceedingly about him After the Fire had smother'd and roasted him well his body was covered with a kind of Plaister and thereof they made a Statue which was gilded and put upon the Altar behind that of the Sommona-Codom They call these sorts of Saints Pra tian tee tian signifies true tee signifies certainly Behold then how the Siameses understand the first Precept of their Moral Law The Prohibition of Impurity extends to the Prohibition of Marriage I have nothing particular to say upon the second but as to the third which prohibits all manner of Uncleanness it extends not only to Adultery but to all carnal Commerce of a Man with a Woman and to Marriage itself Not only Celibacy is amongst them a state of Perfection but Marriage is a state of Sin either through that Spirit of Modesty which amongst all Nations is annext to the use of Marriage and which seems therein to suppose an evil whereat they blush or through a general Aversion to all natural indecencies some
and so of the rest And in a word they are not humble and they have rather the Idea's of Humiliations and Mortifications than of Humility They seem to understand Entertaining and Retirement A Talapoin sins Some Appearances of certain Monastick Vertues in the Talapoins if in walking along the Streets he has not his Senses composed A Talapoin sins if he meddles with State Affairs They concern not themselves therein without a great deal of Distraction and without attracting the Envy and Hatred of several which suits not to a Talapoin who ought only to mind his Convent and to edifie every one by his Modesty But moreover I believe that a wise Policy has greatly contributed to interdict State-Affairs to persons who have so great a Power upon the Minds of the People They understand Religious Obedience Obedience is the Vertue of every one in this Country and it is no wonder that it is found in their Cloisters They likewise understand Chastity A Talapoin sins if he coughs to attract on him the Eyes of the Women if he beholds a Woman with Complacency or if he desires one if he uses Perfumes about his Person if he puts Flowers to his Ears and in a word if he adorns himself with too much Care And some would likewise say they understand Poverty because it is prohibited them to have more than one Vestment and to have it precious To keep any thing to eat from the Evening till the next day to touch either Gold or Silver or to desire it But at the bottom as they may abandon their Profession they act so well that if they live poorly whilst they are Talapoins they fail not to heap wherewith to live at their Ease when they cease to be so And these are the Idea's which the Siameses have of Vertue CHAP. XXII Of the Supream Felicity and Extream Infelicity amongst the Siameses IT remains for me to explain wherein they place perfect Felicity Perfect Felicity that is to say the supream Recompence of good Works and the utmost Degree of Unhappiness that is to say the greatest Punishment of the Guilty They believe therefore that if by several Transmigrations and by a great number of good Works in all the Lives a Soul acquires so much Merit that there is not in any World any mortal Condition that is worthy of it they believe I say that this Soul is then exempt from every Transmigration and every Animation that it has nothing more to do that it neither revives nor dies any more but that it enjoys an eternal Unactivity and a real Impassibility Nireupan say they that is to say this Soul has disappeared it will return no more in any World What the Portugueses have called Paradice and Hell are neither the Perfect Felicity nor the extream Infelicity according to the Siameses and 't is this word which the Portugueses have translated it is annihilated and likewise thus It is become a God though in the Opinion of the Siameses this is not a real Annihilation nor an Acquisition of any divine Nature Such is therefore the true Paradice of the Indians for tho' they suppose a great Felicity in the highest of the nine Paradices of which we have already discoursed yet they say that this Felicity is not eternal nor exempt from all Inquietude seeing that it is a kind of life where one is born and where one dies By the like reason their true Hell is not any of those nine places which we have called Hell and in some of which they suppose Torments and eternal Flames for tho' there may eternally be some Souls in these Hells these will not always be the same No Soul will be eternally punished they will revive again to live there a certain time and to depart thence by death The utmost degree of Infelicity But the true Hell of the Indians is only as I have already said the eternal Transmigrations of these Souls which will never arrive at the Nireupan that is to say will never disappear in the whole duration of the World which they do think must be eternal They believe that it is for the Sins of these Souls and for their want of ever acquiring a sufficient merit that they shall continually pass from one Body to another The Body whatever it be is always according to them a Prison for the Soul wherein it is punished for its Faults The Wonders which they relate of a Man that deserves the Nireupan and how they consecrate their Temples to him But before that a Man enters into the supreme Felicity before that he disappears to speak like them they believe that after the Action by which he concludes to merit the Nireupan he enjoys great Priviledges from this life They believe that it is then that such a Man preaches up Vertue to others with much more efficacy that he acquires a prodigious Science an invincible strength of Body the power of doing Miracles and the knowledge of whatever has befallen him in all the Transmigrations of his Soul and of whatever should happen to him till his death His death must likewise be of a singular sort which they think more noble than the common way of dying He disappears they say like a Spark which is lost in the Air. And it is to the memory of these sorts of Men that the Siameses do consecrate their Temples Tho' they believe in several they honour only one named Sommona-Codom Now tho' they say that several have attain'd to this Felicity to the end in my opinion that several may hope to arrive thereat yet they honour only one alone whom they esteem to have surpassed all the rest in Vertue They call him Sommona-Codom and they say that Codom was his Name and that Sommona signifies in the Balie Tongue a Talapoin of the Woods According to them there is no true Vertue out of the Talapoin-Profession and they believe the Talapoins of the Woods much more vertuous than those of the Cities No Idea of a Divinity amongst the Siameses And this is certainly the whole Doctrine of the Siameses in which I find no Idea of a Divinity The Gods of the ancient Paganism which we know govern'd Nature punished the wicked and recompenc'd the good and tho' they were born like Men they came of an immortal Race and knew not death The Gods of Epicurus took care of nothing no more than Sommona-Codom but it appears not that they were Men arrived thro' their Vertue at that state of an happy Inactivity they were not born neither did they dye Aristotle has acknowledged a first Mover that is to say a powerful Being who had ranged Nature and who had given it as I may say the swing which preserv'd the harmony therein But the Siameses have not any such Idea being far from acknowledging a God Creator and so I believe it may be asserted that the Siameses have no Idea of any God and that their Religion is reduced all
through their whole Body The Plate was soon empty and hereupon Anourout reflecting on the goodness of these Confects said unto himself It must needs be that my Mother has scarcely loved me till now seeing that she never gave me the Confects No there are no more Returning home he went to ask his Mother whether she loved her Son His Mother who passionately loved him was exceedingly surprized at this question and answered him that she loved him as her own Heart and Eyes And why if what you say is true have you never given me the Confects No there are no more For the future I beseech you to give me no other I am resolved to eat only of these His Mother astonished to hear her Son speak thus addressed her self to the Servant who had carried the Plate and asked him secretly whether he saw any thing therein to whom he answered yes that he saw the Dish filled with a kind of Confects which he had never seen before and then the Mother of Anourout comprehended the Mystery and judged rightly that the Antient Merit of her Son had procured him these Confects and that the Superior Genij had rendered him this good Office Afterwards therefore when the Prince demanded these Confects of his Mother she only took an empty Dish covered it with another and sent it him and the Plate was always found full as I have said Anourout understood not likewise the meaning of these words to assume the Pagne or Talapoins Habit and having one day desired his elder Brother Pattia to explain them to him Pattia informed him what he knew that to assume the Talapoins Habit was intirely to shave his Hair and Beard to sleep on a Hurdle and to cloath himself with a yellow Pagne Which Anourout understanding he told his Brother that being accustomed to live at his ease and to have all things at pleasure he should find much difficulty to lead this Life And Pattia replyed seeing then my Brother that you will not resolve to turn Talapoin consider which is best but also not to live Idly learn to work and continue at my Father's House as long as you please Anourout asked him what he meant by this word to Work which he understood not Pattia then said unto him how can you know what it is to work seeing that you neither know where nor how the Rice grows One day indeed Quimila Pattia and Anourout discoursing together upon the Place where the Rice might grow Quimila replyed that it growed in the Barn Pattia said no and asserted that it grew in the Pot And Anourout told them both that they understood nothing and that it grew in the Dish The first having one day observed that the Rice was taken out of the Barn thought it was there that it grew The second had seen it taken out of the Pot and 't is that which gave him occasion to think that it grew in the Pot But the third who had never seen it otherwise than in the Dish really believed that the Rice grew in the Dish when one had a desire to eat and thus all three knew nothing of the matter Anourout declared afterwards to the other two that he was not inclined to work and that he chose rather to turn Talapoin and he went to ask leave of his Mother She refused him two or three times but as he would not be denied and as he continually pressed her more and more she told him that if Pattia would turn Talapoin she would permit him to follow him Anourout went therefore to sollicit his five other Companions to make themselves Talapoins and they resolved to do it seven days after These seven days being elapsed they went out of the City with a great Equipage seeming to go to divert themselves in the Country In their retinue they had a great many Mandarins mounted on Elephants with a good number of Footmen But principally they had in their Train a Barber by Profession named Oubbali Being atrived at the Confines of the Kingdom they sent back all their retinue except Oubbali then they stript themselves of their Cloaths folded them up very neatly and put them into the hands of Oubbali to make him a present thereof telling him that he should return into the City and that he had wherewithal to live at his ease the remainder of his days Oubbali very much afflicted to separate himself from these six Princes and yet not daring to contradict what they order'd him after having taken his leave of them departed weeping and took his road towards the Ciry from whence they had set out together But it presently came into his mind that if he returned and that the Parents of these young Princes should see the cloaths of their Children they would have reason to suspect him of their death and likewise to put him to death not believing that these young Princes would have quitted such precious Habits to give them to him Hereupon he hung up these Habits on a Tree and returned to seek out these young Lords So soon as they saw him they demanded the reason of his return and having declared it to them he testified that he would continue with them and assume the Habit of a Talapoin These young Princes presented him then to Sommona-Codom beseeching him to give the Habit to him rather than to them for finding themselves yet full of the Spirit of the World and proud of heart and willing to humble themselves they desired that Oubbali who was very inferior to them in the World might be their Elder in Religion to the end they might be obliged to respect him and to yield to him in all things the * I suppose that this is a remark which the Translator has inserted into the Text and we may therein remark some other Rule requiring that between two Talapoins the Eldest have all the Honours though the youngest be much the more Learned Sommona-Codom granted them their Request and they assumed the Habit a little while after Oubbali Being therefore entred into the time of Repentance Pattia by his merit had a Caelestial Heart Eyes and Ears that is to say he understood every thing he knew the Hearts of others he saw all things and heard every thing notwithstanding the distance and all obstacles One day after Sommona-Codom had preached Anourout was advanced to the degree of an Angel At the same time Aanon a Talapoin dear to Sommona-Codom went to Sonda the first degree of Perfection Packou and Quimila after having a long time exercised themselves in Prayer and Meditation were advanced to be Angels There was Thevetat alone that could obtain no other thing than a great strength and the power of doing Miracles * The Miracles of Jesus Christ perswade them that he is Thevetat but it is necessary to evince to them that the Miracles which they attribute to Thevetat are to do Evil and that those of Jesus Christ are for Good Sommona Codom being gone with
even in this Age that when the King was obstinate not to hear any important reproof the Officers of the Court to the number sometimes of two Thousand have entered into his Palace there to lay down the Badges of their Offices So that it is impossible that a King of China can continue King if he is vicious to a certain degree Thus some tell him incessantly that it is his example which must render the Magistrates and the People virtuous and that if he departs from the Vertue of his Ancestors the Magistrates and People growing debauched in their Morals would forget their fidelity which they owe him and which is their first duty and their first Vertue Examples hereof are frequent in their History in which they have not better provided for the security of their Master than all the other Despotic States According to them it is 4000 years that their Kingdom has continued in these Maxims which render it the admiration of all its Neighbors St. Francis Xavier reports in his Letters that the Japponeses incessantly objected to him that the Christian Religion could not be true seeing that it was not known by the Chineses Yet I know that the Chineses have some Vices but they perhaps sin less against their Moral Law than we do against ours How much have our Morals degenerated from those of our Ancestors and the Chineses more antient than us do still esteem it a disgrace to violate their Morals in public and to fail in the respects which they owe to one another either by any disobedience to their Parents or by any quarrel with their equals They are Infidels say some in Commerce but it may be they are only so with Strangers as the Hebrews lent money to usury to Strangers only and besides the Chineses which have Commerce with Strangers are those of the Frontiers whose manners this very foreign Commerce has depraved The greatest Vice of the Chineses is doubtless an extream Hypocrisy but besides that it reigns every where because it is a Vice which is free from the censure of the Laws it is perhaps a less evil than a publick corruption But if the Chinese History may be credited 't is Vertue alone that has formed this great Empire the love of their Laws which were at first established in a corner of this Country gradually drew all the Neighbouring Provinces under the same yoke it not appearing that the Chineses have conquered these Provinces by any war It is true that all these little States which were at the beginning as so many hereditary Fiefs given usually to the Princes of the Royal Blood have been reunited to the Crown by Civil Wars when the Royal race has changed and that Usurpers have expelled the lawful Kings from the Throne but it appears that the first subjection of all these little States to the Crown of China has been voluntary They say that 44 Kingdoms enamoured with the Vertue of Venvam submitted to his Laws He reigned over the two thirds of China when it was yet divided However it be the Chineses have been continually Enemies to war as the principal cause of the corruption of manners and they have preferred Morality before all the Glory of Conquests and all the advantages of Commerce with Strangers King Siven the ninth of the Race Hana 60 years before the birth of Jesus Christ dreading the consequences of any motion of the Tartars which sometime before had been confined within their Mountains by Hiaovu and who were returned to seize on the flat Country resolved to prevent them and make war upon them before they had put themselves in a condition to carry it into China In another Country this Prudence might have been approved but it was not at China where the care of good manners is the main affair of the State The History therefore relates that his Chief Minister disswaded him from this Enterprize by this discourse What Sir do you think to invade foreign Countrys when there are such great things to reform in your own A Prodigy to this hour unheard of amongst us in this year a Son has slain his Father seven younger Brothers have killed their 25 elder Brethren These are the signs of an intolerable boldness and which presage a very dangerous corruption in our manners 'T is what we ought to be alarumed at it is to what a speedy remedy must be applied for so long as these Crimes shall not be suffered at China China will have nothing to fear from the Tartars but if they were once permitted I fear that they would not only extend themselves into all the Territories of the Empire but even into the Imperial Palace Under Juen the Tenth King of the same race the Provinces of Qnantong and Quangsi and the Isle of Hainan revolting he levied as many forces as it was possible to reduce them to their Obedience but Kiasu whom he appointed for their General diverted him from this war by these words Anciently the Kingdom of China was bounded on the East by the Ocean on the West by the Sandy Desart and on the South by the River Kiang but by little and little it enlarged its limits less by Arms than by Vertue Our Kings do kindly receive under their Empire those who voluntarily submit themselves out of Love to our Justice and Clemency and several neighbouring Provinces submitted thereunto not any was compelled by force 'T is my advice that you abstain from this war and that imitating the good Kings which have lived before you you may make them to revive in your Maxims The way to reduce a rebelious People to Obedience is by the allurement of Vertue and not by the horror of Arms. Yet China has had some conquering Kings but two or three at most if I am not mistaken though they say that Hiaovu who was one of these repented of the wars which he had made and took no care to preserve his Conquests Gu-Cupn one of the Disciples of Confucius asked him one day what things were necessary to a good Government Plenty of Provisions replied he a sufficient quantity of Souldiers and Ammunition for War of Virtue in the King and his Subjects I understand what you tell me replied the Disciple but if it were necessary to lack one of these three things which will you quit the first The Souldiers answered the Philosopher But if there was a necessity also of lacking Provisions or Vertue which of these two losses would you chuse I would chuse saith he to want Provisions He could not better testifie the Contempt of War and the Love of good Morals Plato would have but a small number of Citizens in his Republic because that he dreaded the corruption in too great a Multitude and that he cared not so much as his Republic should last as that it should be happy and consequently virtuous so long as it did last In fine the Chineses have never neglected the instruction of the People Besides that it is easie to know
throughout the East even amongst Strangers that an European who has liv'd there a long time finds much difficulty to re-accustom himself to the Familiarities of these Countries The Indian Princes being very much given to Traffic they love to invite Strangers amongst them and they protect them even against their own Subjects And hence it is that the Siameses do for Example appear savage and that they eschew the Conversation of Strangers They know that they are thought always to be in the wrong and that they are always punish'd in the Quarrels they have with them The Siameses do therefore educate their Children in an extream Modesty by reason that it is necessary in Trade and much more in the Service which for six Months in the Year they render unto the King or to the Mandarins by order of their King Their Inclination to Silence Silence is not greater amongst the Carthusians than it is in the Palace of this Prince the Lords dispense not therewith more than others The sole desire of speaking never excites the Siameses to say any thing that may displease 'T is necessary that they be thoroughly convinced that you would know the truth of any thing to embolden them to declare it against your opinion They do in nothing affect to appear better instructed than you not in the things of their own Country altho' you be a Stranger The Raillery amongst them They appear'd to me very far from all sort of Raillery by reason they understand not any perhaps thro' the fault of the Interpreters 'T is principally in matter of Raillery that this ancient Proverb of the Indians is verified That things best weighed when delivered by an Interpreter are as a pure Spring which runs thro' mud Most safe it is to droll little with Strangers even with those that understand our Language because that Railleries are the last thing that they understand and that it is easie to offend them with a Raillery which they understand not I doubt not therefore that the Siameses know how to jest wittily one with another Some have assur'd me that they do it frequently amongst Equals and even in Verse and that as well the Women as the Men are all very readily verst therein the most ordinary method of which is amongst them a continued Raillery wherein emulously appears the briskness of the Answers and Repartees I have observ'd the same thing amongst the people of Spain The Politeness of the Siamese Language But when they enter into earnest their Language is much more capable than our's of whatever denotes Respect and Distinction They give for instance certain Titles to certain Officers as amongst us are the Titles of Excellence and Greatness Moreover these words I and Me indifferent in our Language do express themselves by several terms in the Siamese Tongue the one of which is from the Master to the Slave and the other from the Slave to the Master Another is from the Man of the people to a Lord and a fourth is us'd amongst Equals and some there are which are only in the mouth of Talapoins The word You and He are not expressed in fewer manners And when they speak of Women because that in their Tongue there is no distinction of Genders into Masculine and Feminine they add to the Masculine the word Nang which in the Balie Language signifies Young to imply the Feminine as if we should say for Example Young Prince instead of Princess It seems that their Civility hinders them from thinking that Women can ever grow old By the same Complaisance they call them by the most precious or most agreeable things of Nature as young Diamond young Gold young Crystal young Flower The Names of the Siameses The Princess the King's Daughter is called Nang fa young Heaven if he had a Son he would be called as some report Tchaou fa Lord of Heaven 'T is certain that the white Elephant which Mr. de Chaumont saw at Siam and which was dead when we arriv'd there had attain'd to an extream old Age yet because it was a Female and that they believe moreover that in the Body of white Elephants there is always a Royal Soul they called her verbatim Nang Paya Tchang peuac young Prince white Elephant The words which the Siameses use by way of Salute are cavai Tchaou The words which the Siameses use in saluting I salute Lord. And if 't is really a Lord that salutes an Inferior he will bluntly answer Raou vai I salute or ca vai which signifies the same thing altho' the word ca which signifies me ought to be naturally only in the mouth of a Slave speaking to his Master and that the word Raou which also signifies me denotes some dignity in him that speaks To ask How do you they say Tgiou de Kindi That is to say Do you continue well Do you eat well But it is a singular Observation How they are permitted to ask News of their King's health that it is not permitted a Siamese to ask his Inferior any News concerning their King's health as if it was a Crime in him that approaches near the person of the Prince to be less informed thereof than another that is obliged to keep at a greater distance Their civil posture of Sitting is as the Spaniards sit crossing their Legs How they sit and they are so well accustom'd thereunto that even on a Seat when given them they place themselves no otherwise When they bow they do not stand but if they sit not cross-leg'd Their Postures they bow themselves out of respect to one another The Slaves and the Servants before their Masters and the common People before the Lords keep on their knees with their Body seated on their heels their head a little inclin'd and their hands joined at the top of their forehead A Siamese which passeth by another to whom he would render Respect will pass by stooping with joined hands more or less elevated and will salute him no otherwise In their Visits if it is a very inferior person that makes it Their Ceremonies in Visits he enters stooping into the Chamber he prostrates himself and remains upon his knees and sitting upon his heels after the manner that I have described but he dares not to speak first He must wait till he to whom he pays the Visit speaks to him and thus the Mandarins that came to visit us on the behalf of the King of Siam waited always till I spake to them first If it is a Visit amongst Equals or if the Superior goes to see the Inferior the Master of the House receives him at the Hall-door and at the end of the Visit he accompanies him thither and never any further Moreover he walks either upright or stooping according to the degree of Respect which he owes to the Visitor He likewise observes to speak first or last according as he can or as he ought but he always offers