remote Frontier he leaves the Inhabitants in their ancient Rights so that they enjoy the Mines which they dig paying a small profit to this Prince Ivory Salt-petre Lead Sapan All the Ivory comes to the King his Subjects are obliged to vend him all that they sell and Strangers can buy only at his Magazine The Trade of Saltpetre Lead and Sapan belongs also to the King they can buy and sell them only at his Magazine whether one be a Siamese or Stranger Arek Arek a great deal of which is exported out of the Kingdom can be sold to Foreigners only by the King and for this end he buys some of his Subjects besides that which he has from his particular Revenues Prohibited Goods as Powder Sulphur and Arms Prohibited Goods Skins of Beasts can be bought or sold at Siam only at the King's Magazine As to the Skins of Beasts this Prince is obliged by a Treaty made with the Hollanders to sell them all to them and for this purpose he buys them of his Subjects but his Subjects do convey away a great many which the Hollanders buy of them in secret The rest of the Commerce at Siam is permitted to all as that of Rice Fish The Commerce free to all persons Salt Brown Sugar Sugar-Candy Ambergreese Wax the Gum with which Varnish is made Mother of Pearl those edable Birds-Nests which come from Tonquin and Cochinchina which Navaratte reports to be made of the Sea-froth in some Rocks by a kind of small Sea-Birds which resemble Swallows Gumme Gutte Incense Oyl Coco Cotton Cinnamon Nenuphar which is not exactly like ours Cassia Dates and several other things as well the growth of the Kingdom as brought from abroad Every one may make and sell Salt fish and hunt as I have declared Salt Fishing Hunting and without paying any thing to the King It is true that the necessary Policy is used in Fishing and Oc-Pra Tainam who receives the particular Revenues of the River hinders those ways of Fishing which destroy too much Fish at once To what Sum the King of Siam's Revenues amount The King of Siam has never been well paid his Revenues in lands remote from his Court 'T is said that the ready Money that he formerly received amounted to Twelve hundred thousand Livres and that what he now gets amounts to Six hundred thousand Crowns or to Two Millions 'T is a difficult thing to know exactly all that I can assert is that in this Country it is reported as a thing very considerable and which seems Hyperbolical that the present King of Siam has augmented his Revenues a Million CHAP. X. Of the Royal Seal and of the Maha Obarat THere is no Chancellor at Siam There is no Chancellor at Siam The King gives not his Seal to any person Every Officer that has the Power of giving the Sentences or Orders in Writing which they call Tara in general has a Seal which the King gives him and the King himself has his Royal Seal which he commits to no person whatever and of which he makes use for the Letters he writes and for whatever proceeds immediately from him The Figure which is in the Seals is not hollow but in Relievo The Seal is rub'd over with a kind of Red Ink and is printed on the Paper with the Hand An inferior Officer takes this Pains but 't is the duty of the Officer to whom the Seal belongs to pluck it with his own Hand from the Print After several remarks which I have made it seems to me Of the Maha-Oharat that whatever is done in the King of Siam's Name has no Power if it is not done at the place where this King actually resides Certain reasons have hindered why they have not certainly inform'd me thereof However it is certain that for the reason which I have alledged or for some other there is at Siam as it were a Vice-Roy who represents the King and performs the Regal Functions in the King's Absence as when this Prince is at War This Officer is called Maha-Oharat as it was given me in writing or Ommarat according to the Abbot de Choisy and Mr. Gervaise And the Abbot de Choisy adds that the Maha Omarat has a right of sitting down in the King's Presence a Circumstance which some have informed me to be peculiar to another Officer of whom I shall speak in the sequel At present they give him the Title of Pa-ya and they do thereunto add the word Tchaou which signifies Lord Tchaou Pa-ya Maha Omrat Sometimes he has only the Title of Oc-ya as in Vliet's Relation where he is called Oc-ya Ombrat He is thereunto qualified as Chief of the Nobility which signifies nothing but the first Officer of the Kingdom CHAP. XI Of the Palace and of the King of Siam's Guards Officers within and without IT now remains for me to speak of the King and of his House This Prince's Palace has its Officers within and its Officers without but so different in dignity that an Oc-Meuing within commands all the Oc-ya without They call Officers within not only those which lodge always in the Palace but those whose functions are exercised in the Palace And they call Officers without the Palace not all the Officers of the Kingdom which have no Function in the Palace but those which having no Function in the Palace yet have not any without which respects not the Service of the Palace Thus the Spaniards have Servants which they call de Escalera arriba and others which they call de Escalera abaxo that is to say Servants at the top of the Stairs or which may go up the Stairs to their Master and to those to whom their Master sends them and others who wait always at the bottom of the Stairs Three Inclosures in the King of Siam's Palace The King of Siam's Palaces have three Inclosures and that of the City of Siam has them so distant one from the other that the space thereof appears like vast Courts All that the inward Close includes viz. the King's Apartment some Court and some Garden is called Vang in Siamese The whole Palace with all its Inclosures is called Prassat though Vliet in the Title of his Relation translates the word Prassat by that of Throne The Siameses neither enter into the Vang nor depart thence without prostrating themselves and they pass not before the Prassat And if sometimes the stream of the Water carries them and forces them to pass thereby they are pelted with showers of Pease which the King's Servants shoot over them with Trunks Mr. de Chaumont and the King's Ambassadors landed and left their Umbrella's at the first entrance of the Prassat Of the Oc-ya Vang The Oc-ya Vang commands in the Vang and in him reunites all the Functions which respect the Reparations of the Palace the Order which must be observed in the Palace and the Expence which is made for the Maintenance of
the People of Countries extreamly hot or extreamly cold is sluggishness of Mind and Body with this difference that it degenerates into Stupidity in Countries too cold and that in Countries too hot there is always Spirit and Imagination but of that sort of Imagination and Spirit which soon flaggs with the least Application They have Imagination and Laziness The Siameses do conceive easily and clearly their Repartees are witty and quick their Objections are rational They imitate immediately and from the first day they are tolerable good Workmen so that one would think a little Study would render them very accomplisht either in the highest Sciences or in the most difficult Arts but their invincible Laziness suddenly destroys these hopes It is no wonder therefore if they invent nothing in the Sciences which they love best as Chymistry and Astronomy They are naturally Poets and their Poetry is Rhyme I have already said that they are naturally Poets Their Poetry like ours and that which is now used throughout the known World consists in the number of Syllables and in Rhyme Some do attribute the Invention thereof to the Arabians by reason it seems to have been they that have carried it every where The Relations of China report that the Chinese Poetry at present is in Rhyme but tho' they speak of their ancient Poetry of which they still have several Works they declare not of what nature it was because in my opinion They read the ancient Characters in the present Language it is difficult to judge thereof for tho' the Chineses have preserved the sense of their ancient Writing they have not preserved their ancient Language However I can hardly comprehend from a Language wholly consisting of Monosyllables and full of accented Vowels and compounded Dipthongs that if the Poetry consists not in Rhyme it can consist in Quantity as did the Greek and Latin Poems Their Genius in Poetry I could not get a Siamese Song well translated so different is their way of thinking from ours yet I have seen some Pictures as for Example of a pleasant Garden where a Lover invites his Mistress to come I have also seen some Expressions which to me appear'd full of Smootiness and gross Immodesty altho' this had not the same Effect in their Language But besides Love-Songs they have likewise some Historical and Moral Songs altogether I have heard the Pagayeurs sing some of which they made me to understand the sense The Lacone which I have mentioned is no other than a Moral and Historical Song and some have told me that one of the Brothers of the King of Siam compos'd some Moral Poems very highly esteem'd to which he himself set the Tune They are no Orators But if the Siameses are born Poets they neither are born nor do become Orators Their Books are either Narrations of a plain Style or some Sentences of a broken Style full of Idea's They have no Advocates the Parties do each declare their Cause to the Register who without any Rhetoric writes down the Facts and Reasons which are told him When they preach they read the Balie Text of their Books and they translate and expound it plainly in Siamese without any Action like our Professors and not our Preachers They know how to speak to a Business Their Compliments always the same and do therein manage themselves with a great deal of Insinuation but as for their Compliments they are all after one Model which is indeed very good but which is the reason that in the same Ceremonies they do always speak almost the same things The King of Siam himself has his words almost counted in his Audiences of Ceremony and he spake to the King's Ambassadors almost the same that he had deliver'd to Mr. de Chaumont and before him to the late Bishop of Heliopolis I have not forgot that excellent Speech which the Ambassador of Siam made to the King at his Audience of Leave The last Speech which the Ambassador of Siam made in France and which alone might cause a Belief that the Siameses are great Orators if we could judge of the merit of the Original by that of the Translation But this is difficult especially in two Languages which have so little similitude one to the other All that we ought to think thereof is that the main of the Design and Thought is the Siamese Ambassador's and I wonder not that he has admir'd the excellent Meen the Majestic Air the Power the Affability and all the extraordinary qualities of the King They ought to amaze him more than another because that these Virtues are absolutely unknown in the East and if he had dar'd to declare the Truth he would have confessed that the Flattery natural to those of his Country had made him all his life to extol those very things where they were not and that he saw the first Example thereof in the King When the Mandarins came on Board our Ship to carry the first Compliment of the King of Siam to the King's Ambassadors they took Leave of them by testifying unto them that they demanded it unwillingly and out of an indispensible necessity of going to satisfie the Impatience of the King their Master about the things which they had to relate unto him A Thought natural and good on which runs the whole beginning of the Ambassador's Speech of Leave And as to that excellent place where he ends that their Relation of him and his Colleagues would be put into the Archives of the Kingdom of Siam and that the King their Master would do him an Honour to send him to the Princes his Allies he was in this a less Orator than Historian He render'd an account of a Practice of his Country which is not omitted in great occasions and which is in use in other Kingdoms One Example there is in Osorius in the 8th Book of his History of Emanuel King of Portugal where he relates how Alphonsus the 2d Christian King of Congo inserted into his Argives the History of his Conversion and that of another famous Embassy which he had received from Emanuel and how he imparted it to all the Princes his Vassals We may therefore be assured that the Siameses are not Orators and that they never have need to be such Their Custom is not to make either Speech or Compliment to the Princes to whom they send them but to answer the things about which these Princes interrogate them They made a Speech at this Court to accommodate themselves to our Customs and to enjoy an Honour they highly valued which was to speak to the King before his Majesty spake to them This is all we can say of their Poetry and their Rhetoric They absolutely ignore all the parts of Philosophy They have a Moral Philosophy and no Theology except some Principles of Morality where as we shall see in discoursing of the Talapoins they have intermixt Truth with Falshood I will at the same
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
his Children too 3dly The King of Siam gives the Tchaou-Meuang some men to execute his Orders they accompany him everywhere and they row in his Balon The Siameses do call them Kenlai or Painted Arms by reason that they pink and mangle their Arms and lay Gunpowder on the wounds which paints their Arms with a faded Blue The Portuguese do call them Painted Arms and Officers and these Painted Arms are still used in the Country of Laos 4thly In the Maritime Governments the Tchaou-Meuang sometimes takes Customs of the Merchant Ships but it is generally inconsiderable At Tenasserim it is eight per Cent. in the kind according to the Relation of the Foreign Missions Some have assur'd me The Humanity of the Siameses towards those that have suffered Shipwrack that the Siameses have the Humanity not to appropriate any thing to themselves of what the Tempest casts on their Coasts by Shipwrack yet Ferdinand Mendez Pinto relates that Lewis de Monteroyo a Portuguese having suffer'd Shipwrack on the Coast of Siam near Patana the Chabaudar or Custom-house Officer which he names Chatir confiscated not only the Ship and its Cargo but Monteroyo himself and some Children alledging that by the ancient Custom of the Kingdom whatever the Sea cast upon the Coasts was the profit of his Office 'T is true that this Author adds with great Praises on the King of Siam who then reigned that this Prince at the Request of the Portugueses which were at his Court set Monteroyo at liberty and restor'd him all the Prize and the Children but he subjoins also that it was out of Charity and on the day that this Prince went through the City mounted on a white Elephant to distribute Alms to the People 5thly A continuance of the Rights or Profits of the Tchaou-Meuang The Tchaou-Meuang arrogating to themselves all the Rights of Soveraignty over the Frontiers do levy when they can extraordinary Taxes on the People 6thly The Tchaou-Meuang do exercise Commerce every where but under the name of their Secretary or some other of their Domestics And this last Circumstance demonstrates that they have some shame and that the Law perhaps prohibits them but that in this they are not more scrupulous than their King 7thly In some places where there are Fish-ponds the Tchaou-Meuang take the best of the Fish when the Pond is emptied but he takes for his own use only and not to sell and the rest he leaves to the People 8thly Venison and Salt are free throughout the Kingdom and the King himself has laid no Prohibition nor Impost thereon Salt is there of little value I have heard that they have Rock-salt and they make it of Sea-water some have told me with the Sun others with Fire and perhaps both is true At the places where the Shoars are too high to receive the Sea and in those where Wood is not near at hand the Salt may fail or cost too much to make as in the Island of Jonsalam the Inhabitants whereof do rather chuse to import their Salt from Tenasserim The Rights or Profits of the Pou-ran The Pou-ran or Governor by Commission has the same Honours and the same Authority as the Tchaou-Meuang but not the same Profits The King of Siam names the Pou-ran upon two Accounts either when he would have no Tchaou-Meuang or when the Tchaou-Meuang is obliged to absent himself from his Government for the Tchaou-Meuang has no ordinary Lieutenant who can supply his place in his absence as in France the Chancellor has none In the first Case the Pou-ran has only the Profits which the King assigns him at naming him in the second Case he takes the Moyety of the Profits from the Tchaou-Meuang and leaves him the other Moyety The Names and Functions of the Officers which compose a Tribunal Now follows the ordinary Officers of a Tribunal of Judicature not that there are so many in every one but that in any one perhaps there is not more Oc-ya Tchaou-Meuang The Tchaou-Meuang is not always Oc-ya he has sometimes another Title and the other Officers of his Tribunal have always some Titles proportion'd to his Oc-Pra Belat His Name signifies Second but he presides not in the absence of the Tchaou Meuang because he has no determinative Voice Oc-Pra Jockebatest a kind of Attorney-General and his Office is to be a strict Spy upon the Governor His Office is not Hereditary the King nominates some person of Trust but Experience evinces that there is no Fidelity in these Men and that all the Officers hold a private Correspondence to pillage the People Oc Pra Peun commands the Garrison if there is any but under the Orders of the Tchaou-Meuang and he has no Authority over his Soldiers but when they are in the Field Oc-Pra Maha-Tai is as it were the Chief of the People His Name seems to signifie the Great Siamese for Maha signifies Great and Tai signifies Siamese 'T is he that levies the Soldiers or rather that demands them of the Nai who sends Provisions to the Army who watches that the Rolls of the People be well made and who in general executes all the Governor's Orders which concern the People Oc-Pra Sassedi makes and keeps the Rolls of the People 'T is an Office very subject to Corruption by reason that every particular person endeavors to get himself omitted out of the Rolls for money The Nai do likewise seek to favor those of their Band who make Presents to them and to oppress those with labour who have nothing to give them The Maha Tai and the Sassedi would prevent this disorder if they were not the first corrupted The Sassedi begins to enter down Children upon the Rolls when they are three or four Years old Oc-Louang-Meuang is as it were the Mayor of the City for as I have already said Meuang signifies City but as for what concerns the Title of Oc-Louang it does not signifie Mayor and is no more applied to that Office than another Title This Mayor takes care of the Polity and Watch. They kept a Watch every Night round the Ambassador's Lodgings as round the King of Siam's Palace and this was a very great Token of Honour Oc-Louang Vang is the Master of the Governor's Palace for Vang signifies Palace He causes it to be repair'd he commands the Governor's Guards and even their Captain and in a word he orders in the Governor's Palace whatever has relation to the Governor's charge Oc-Louang-Peng keeps the Book of the Law and the Custom according to which they judge and when Judgment is passed he reads the Article thereof which serves for the Judgment of the Process and in a word it is he that pronounces the Sentence Oc-Louang Clang has the Charge of the King's Magazine Clang signifies Magazine He receives certain of the King's Revenues and sells to the People the King's Commodities that is to say those the Trade of which the King appropriates to himself as in Europe the Princes
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.
A NEW Historical Relation OF THE KINGDOM OF SIAM BY Monsieur DE LA LOVBERE Envoy Extraordinary from the FRENCH KING to the KING of SIAM in the years 1687 and 1688. Wherein a full and curious Account is given of the Chinese Way of Arithmetick and Mathematick Learning In Two TOMES Illustrated with SCULPTURES Done out of French by A. P. Gen. R. S.S. LONDON Printed by F. L. for Tho. Horne at the Royal Exchange Francis Saunders at the New Exchange and Tho. Bennet at the Half-Moon in St. Pauls Church-yard MDCXCIII A TABLE OF THE CHAPTERS The Occasion and Design of this Work PART I. Of the Country of Siam CHAP. I. IT s Geographical Description Page 3 CHAP. II. A Continuation of the Geographical Description of the Kingdom of Siam with an Account of its Metropolis Page 6 CHAP. III. Concerning the History and Origine of the Siameses Page 8 CHAP. IV. Of the Productions of Siam and first of the Woods Page 11 CHAP. V. Concerning the Mines of Siam Page 13 CHAP. VI. Of the Cultivated Lands and their Fertility Page 15 CHAP. VII Of the Grain of Siam Page 17 CHAP. VIII Of the Husbandry and the difference of the Seasons Page 18 CHAP. IX Of the Gardens of the Siameses and occasionally of their Liquors Page 20 PART II. Of the Manners of the Siameses in general CHAP. I. OF the Habit and Meen of the Siameses Page 25 CHAP. II. Of the Houses of the Siameses and of their Architecture in Publick Buildings Page 29 CHAP. III. Of the Furniture of the Siameses Page 34 CHAP. IV. Concerning the Table of the Siameses Page 35 CHAP. V. Concerning the Carriages and Equipage of the Siameses in general Page 39 CHAP. VI. Concerning the Shows and other Diversions of the Siameses Page 44 CHAP. VII Concerning the Marriage and Divorce of the Siameses Page 51 CHAP. VIII Of the Education of the Siamese Children and first of Their Civility Page 54 CHAP. IX Of the studies of the Siameses Page 58 CHAP. X. What the Siameses do know in Medicine and Chymistry Page 62 CHAP. XI What the Siameses do know of the Mathematicks Page 64 CHAP. XII Concerning Musick and the Exercises of the Body Page 68 XIII Of the Arts exercised by the Siameses Page 69 CHAP. XIV Of the Traffick amongst the Siameses Page 71 CHAP. XV. A Character of the Siameses in general Page 73 PART III. Of the Manners of the Siameses according to their several Conditions CHAP. I. OF the several Conditions among the Siameses Page 77 CHAP. II. Of the Siamese People Page 78 CHAP. III. Of the Officers of the Kingdom of Siam in general Page 80 CHAP. IV. Concerning the Office of Judicatory Page 82 CHAP. V. Of the Judiciary stile or form of Pleading Page 85 CHAP. VI. The Functions of Governor and Judge in the Metropolis Page 88 CHAP. VII Of the State Officers and particularly of the Tchacry Calla-hom and of the General of the Elephants Page 89 CHAP. VIII Concerning the Art of War amongst the Siameses and of their Forces by Sea and Land Page 90 CHAP. IX Of the Barcalon and of the Revenues Page 93 CHAP. X. Of the Royal Seal and of the Maha Oborat Page 95 CHAP. XI Of the Pallace and of the King of Siam's Guard Page 96 CHAP. XII Of the Officers which nearest approach the King of Siam's Person Page 99 CHAP. XIII Of the Women of the Palace and of the Officers of the Wardrobe Page 100 CHAP. XIV Of the Customes of the Court of Siam and of the Policy of its Kings Page 102 CHAP. XV. Concerning the form of Embassies at Siam Page 108 CHAP. XVI Of the Forreigners of different Nations fled to and setled at Siam Page 112 CHAP. XVII Of the Talapoins and their Convents Page 113 CHAP. XVIII Of the Election of the Superior and of the Reception of the Talapoins and Talapoinesses Page 118 CHAP. XIX Concerning the Doctrine of the Talapoins Page 119 CHAP. XX. Of the Burials of the Chineses and Siameses Page 122 CHAP. XXI Of the Principles of the Indian Moral Law Page 126 CHAP. XXII Of the supream Felicity and extream Infelicity amongst the Siameses Page 129 CHAP. XXIII Concerning the Origin of the Talapoins and of their Opinions Page 130 CHAP. XXIV Of the fabulous Stories which the Talapoins and their Brethren have framed on their Doctrine Page 135 CHAP. XXV Diverse Observations to be made in Preaching the Gospel to the Orientals Page 140 A NEW HISTORICAL RELATION OF THE KINGDOM OF SIAM The Occasion and Design of this Work AT my return from the Voyage I made to Siam The Occasion of this work in quality of his Most Christian Majesties Envoy Extraordinary they whose right it is to command requir'd me to render them an exact account of the things which I had seen or learnt in that Country which will be the whole matter of this work Others have sufficiently informed the Public of the Circumstances of this long Voyage But as to what concerns the Description of a Country we cannot have too many Relations if we would perfectly know it the last always illustrating the former But that it may be known from what time I write I shall declare only that we set Sail from Brest on the First of March Anno 1687. That we cast Anchor in the Road of Siam the 27th of September in the same Year That we departed thence for our return the 3d of January 1688. And that we landed at Brest the 27th of July following My Design is therefore to treat first of the Country of Siam its Extent The Design of this work Fertility and the qualities of its Soil and Climate Secondly I will explain the manners of the Siameses in general and then their particular Customs according to their various Qualities Their Government and Religion shall be comprehended in the last part and I flatter my self that the farther the Reader shall advance in the perusal of this work the more he will find it worthy of Curiosity by reason that the Nature and Genius of the Siameses which I have every where endeavoured to penetrate into will be discovered more and more In fine not to stay on things which would not please every one or which would interrupt my Narrative too much I will at the end insert several Memoirs which I brought from this Country and which I cannot suppress without injuring the Curiosity of the Public But if notwithstanding this precaution I do yet enlarge on certain matters beyond the relish of some I intreat them to consider that general expressions do never afford just Idea's and that this is to proceed no farther than the superficial Knowledge of things 'T is out of this desire of making the Siameses perfectly known that I give several notices of the other Kingdoms of the Indies and of China For though rigorously taken all this may appear foreign to my Subject yet to me it seems that the Comparison of the things of Neighbouring Countries with each
other does greatly illustrate them I hope also that a pardon will be granted me for the Siamese names which I relate and explain These remarks will make other relations intelligible as well as mine which without these Illustrations might sometimes cause a doubt concerning what I assert In a word those with whom I am acquainted do know that I love the Truth but it is not sufficient to give a sincere relation to make it appear true 'T is requisite to add clearness to sincerity and to be thoroughly inform'd of that wherein we undertake to instruct others I have therefore considered interrogated and penetrated as far as it was possible and to render my self more capable of doing it I carefully read over before my arrival at Siam several Antient and Modern Relations of divers Countreys of the East So that in my opinion this preparation has supplied the defect of a longer residence and has made me to remark and understand in the three Months I was at Siam what I could not perhaps have understood or remark'd in three Years without the assistance and perusal of those Discourses A MAPP of the KINGDOME of SIAM PART I. Of the Country of Siam CHAP. I. The Geographical Description NAvigation has sufficiently made known the Sea Coasts of the Kingdom of Siam and many Authors have described them How much this Kingdom is unknown but they know almost nothing of the Inland Country because the Siameses have not made a Map of their Country or at least know how to keep it secret That which I here present is the work of an European who went up the Menam the principal River of the Country to the Frontiers of the Kingdom but was not skilful enough to give all the Positions with an entire exactness Besides he has not seen all and therefore I thought it necessary to give his Map to Mr. Cassini Director of the Observatory at Paris to correct it by some Memorials which were given me at Siam Nevertheless I know it to be still defective but yet it fails not to give some notices of this Kingdom which were never heard of and of being more exact in those we already have Its Frontiers extend Northward to the 22d. Degree or thereabouts Its Frontiers Northward and the Road which terminates the Gulph of Siam being almost at the Latitude of 13 degrees and a half it follows that this whole extent of which we hardly have any knowledge runs about 170 Leagues in a direct Line reckoning 20 Leagues to a degree of Latitude after the manner of our Seamen The Siameses do say that the City of Chiamai is fifteen days journey more to the North than the Frontiers of their Kingdom that is to say at most The City of Chiamai and its Lake between sixty and seventy Leagues for they are Journeys by water and against the Stream 'T is about thirty years since their King as they report took this City and abandon'd it after having carried away all the People and it has been since repeopled by the King of Ava to whom Pegu does at present render Obedience But the Siameses which were at that expedition do not know that famous Lake from whence our Geographers make the River Menam arise and to which according to them this City gives its Names which makes me to think either that it is more distant than our Geographers have conceived or that there is no such Lake It may also happen that this City adjoyning to several Kingdoms and being more subject than another to be ruined by War has not always been rebuilt in the same place And this is not difficult to imagine of the Cities which are built only with wood as all in these Countreys are and which in their destruction leave not any Ruines nor Foundations However it may be doubted whether the Menam springs from a Lake by reason it is so small at its entrance into the Kingdom of Siam that for about fifty Leagues it carries only little Boats capable of holding no more than four or five Persons at most The Kingdom of Siam is bounded from the East to the North by high Mountains which separate it from the Kingdom of Laos The Country of Siam is only a Valley and on the North and West by others which divide it from the Kingdoms of Pegu and Ava This double Chain of Mountains inhabited by a few savage and poor but yet free People whose Life is innocent leaves between them a great Valley containing in some places between fourscore and an hundred Leagues in bredth and is watered from the City of Chiamai to the Sea that is to say from the North to the South with an excellent River which the Siameses call Me-nam or Mother-water to signifie a great water which being encreased by the Brooks and Rivers it receives on every side from the Mountains I have mentioned discharges it self at last into the Gulph of Siam by three months the most navigable of which is that toward the East Cities seated on the River On this River and about seven Miles from the Sea is seated the City of Bancok and I shall transiently declare that the Siameses have very few habitations on their Coasts which are not far distant from thence but are almost all seated on Rivers navigable enough to afford them the Commerce of the Sea As to the names of most of these places which for this reason may be called Maritime they are disguised by Foreigners Thus the City of Bancok is called Fon in Siamese it not being known from whence the name of Bancok is derived altho there be several Siamese Names that begin with the word Ban which signifies a Village The Gardens of Bancok The Gardens which are in the Territory of Bancok for the space of four Leagues in ascending towards the City of Siam to a place named Talacoan do supply this City with the Nourishment which the Natives of the Country love best I mean a great quantity of Fruit. Other Cities on the Menam The other principal places which the Menam waters are Me-Tac the first City of the Kingdom to the North North-West and then successively Tian-Tong Campeng pet or Campeng simple which some do pronounce Campingue Laconcevan Tchainat Siam Talacoan Talaqueou and Bancok Between the two Cities of Tchainat and Siam and at a distance which the Maeanders of the River do render almost equal from each other the River leaves the City of Louvo a little to the East at the 14 d. 42 m. 32 S. of Latitude according to the observations which the Jesuites have published The King of Siam does there spend the greatest part of the year the more commodiously to enjoy the diversion of Hunting but Louvo would not be habitable were it not for a channel cut from the River to water it The City of Me-Tac renders obedience to an Hereditary Lord who they say is a Vassal to the King of Siam whom some call Paya-Tac
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
The City of Merguy lies on the North-West Point of a great and populous Island which at the extremity of its course forms a very excellent River which the Europeans have called Tenasserim from the Name of a City seated on its Banks about 15 Leagues from the Sea This River comes from the North and after having passed through the Kingdoms of Ava and Pegu and enter'd into the Lands under the King of Siam's Jurisdiction it discharges itself by three Chanels into the Gulph of Bengal and forms the Island I have mention'd The Ports of Merguy which some report to be the best in all India is between this Isle and another that is inhabited and lies opposite and to the West of this wherein Merguy is situated CHAP. III. Concerning the History and Origine of the Siameses The Siameses little curious of their History THE Siamese History is full of Fables The Books thereof are very scarce by reason the Siameses have not the use of Printing for upon other Accounts I doubt of the report that they affect to conceal their History seeing that the Chineses whom in many things they imitate are not so jealous of theirs However that matter is notwithstanding this pretended Jealousy of the Siameses they who have attain'd to read any thing of the History of Siam assert that it ascends not very high with any character of truth The Epocha of the Siameses Behold a very dry and insipid Chronological Abridgment which the Siameses have given thereof But before we proceed it is necessary to tell you that the current year 1689 beginning it in the month of December 1688 is the 2233 of their Aera from which they date the Epocha or beginning as they say from Sommona-Codom's death But I am persuaded that this Epocha has quite another foundation which I shall afterwards explain Their Kings Their first King was named Pra Poat honne sourittep-pennaratui sonanne bopitra The chief place where he kept his Court was called Tchai pappe Mahanacon the situation of which I ignore and he began to reign An. 1300. computing after their Epocha Ten other Kings succeeded him the last of which named Ipoja sanne Thora Thesma Teperat remov'd his Royal Seat to the City of Tasco Nacora Louang which he had built the situation of which is also unknown to me The twelfth King after him whose Name was Pra Poa Noome Thele seri obliged all his People in 1731 to follow him to Locintai a City seated on a River which descends from the Mountains of Laos and runs into the Menam a little above Porselouc from which Locontai is between 40 and 50 Leagues distant But this Prince resided not always at Locontai for he came and built and inhabited the City of Pipeli on a River the mouth of which is about two Leagues to the West of the most occidental mouth of Menam Four other Kings succeeded him of which Rhamatilondi the last of the four began to build the City of Siam in 1894 and there established his Court. By which it appears that they allow to the City of Siam the Antiquity of 338 years The King Regent is the twenty fifth from Rhamatilondi and this year 1689 is the 56th or 57th year of his age Thus do they reckon 52 Kings in the space of 934 years but not all of the same Blood The Race of the present King Mr. Gervaise in his Natural and Political History of the Kingdom of Siam gives us the History of the now Regent King's Father and Van Vliet gives it us much more circumstanciated in his Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam printed at the end of Sir Thomas Herbert's Travels into Persia I refer the Reader thither to see an Example of the Revolutions which are common at Siam for this King who was not of the Royal Race tho' Vliet asserts the contrary took away the Scepter and Life of his Natural Lords and put to death all the Princes of their Blood except two which were alive when Vliet writ but of whom I could not learn any News Without all doubt this Usurper put them to death like the rest And in truth John Struys in the First Tome of his Voyages asserts that this was the Fate of the last of these two Princes who was alive in the year 1650 and was then 20 years old the Tyrant put him to death that very year with one of his Sisters upon an Accusation notoriously false But a remarkable Circumstance of the History of his Usurpation was that entering by force of Arms into the Palace he forced the King to quit it and flie into a Temple for refuge and having drag'd this unfortunate Prince out of this Temple and carry'd him back a Prisoner to the Palace he caus'd him to be declared unworthy of the Crown and Government for having deserted the Palace To this Usurper who died in 1657 after a Reign of 30 years succeeded his Brother because his Son could not or durst not then to dispute the Crown with him On the contrary to secure his Life he sought a Sanctuary in a Cloyster and cloath'd himself with the inviolable Habit of a Talapoin But he afterwards so politickly took his measures that he dispossess'd his Uncle who flying from the Palace on his Elephant was slain by a Portuguese with a Musquet Ferdinand Mendez Pinto relates that the King of Siam Another Example of the Revolutions of Siam who reigned in 1547 and to whom he gives great Praises was poyson'd by the Queen his Wife at his return from a military Expedition This Princess deliberated thus to prevent the vengeance of her Husband by reason that during his absence she had maintain'd an amorous Commerce by which she prov'd with Child And this Author adds that she soon after destroy'd the King her own Son in the same manner and had the Credit to get the Crown set upon her Lover's Head the 11th of November 1548. But in January 1549 they were both assassinated in a Temple and a Bastard Prince the Brother and Uncle of the two last Kings was taken out of a Cloyster to be advanced on the Throne The Crowns of Asia are always instable and those of India China and Japan much more than the others As for what concerns the Origine of the Siameses it would be difficult to judge whether they are only a single People A Doubt as to the Origine of the Siameses directly descended from the first Men that inhabited the Countrey of Siam or whether in process of time some other Nation has not also setled there notwithstanding the first Inhabitants The principal Reason of this Doubt proceeds from the Siameses understanding two Languages viz. the Vulgar which is a simple Tongue Two Languages at Siam consisting almost wholly of Monosyllables without Conjugation or Declension and another Language which I have already spoken of which to them is a dead Tongue known only by the Learned which is called the Balie Tongue and
which is enricht with the inflexions of words like the Languages we have in Europe The terms of Religion and Justice the names of Offices and all the Ornaments of the Vulgar Tongue are borrow'd from the Balie In this Language they compose their best Songs so that it seems at least that some Foreign Colony had formerly inhabited the Countrey of Siam and had carry'd thither a second Language But this is a Dispute that might be rais'd concerning all the Countries of India for like Siam they all have two Languages one of which is still remaining only in their Books The Siameses assert that their Laws are Foreign What the Siameses report concerning the Origine of their Laws and Religion and came to them from the Countrey of Laos which has perhaps no other Foundation than the Conformity of the Laws of Laos with those of Siam even as there is a Conformity between the Religions of these two Nations and with that of the Peguins Now this does not strictly prove that any of these three Kingdoms hath given its Laws and its Religion to the rest seeing that it may happen that all the three may have deriv'd their Religion and their Laws from another common Source However it be as the Tradition is at Siam that their Laws and Kings came from Laos the same Tradition runs at Laos that their Kings and most of their Laws came from Siam Of the Balie Language The Siameses speak not of any Country where the Balie Language which is that of their Laws and their Religion is now in use They suspect indeed according to the report of some amongst them which have been at the Coast of Coromandel that the Balie Language has some similitude with some one of the Dialects of that Country but they agree at the same time that the Letters of the Balie Language are known only amongst them The secular Missionaries established at Siam are of opinion that this Language is not entirely extinct by reason they saw in their Hospital a man come from about the Cape of Comorin who interspers'd several Balie words in his discourse affirming that they were used in his Country and that he had never studied and knew only his Mother Tongue They moreover averr for truth that the Religion of the Siumeses came from those Quarters because that they have read in a Balie Book that Sommona-Codom whom the Siameses adore was the Son of a King of the Island of Ceylon The Siameses resemble their Neighbours But setting aside all these uncertainties the vulgar Language of the Siameses like in its Simplicity to those of China Tonquin Cochinchina and the other States of the East sufficiently evinces that those who speak it are near of the same Genius with their Neighbours Add hereunto their Indian Figure the colour of their Complexion mixt with red and brown which corresponds neither to the North of Asia Europe nor Africk Add likewise their short Nose rounded at the end as their Neighbours generally have it the upper Bone of their Cheeks high and raised their Eyes slit a little upwards their Ears larger than ours in a word all the Lineaments of the Indian and Chinese Physiognomy their Countenance naturally squeez'd and bent like that of Apes and a great many other things which they have in common with these Animals as well as a marvellous passion for Children For nothing is equal to the Tenderness which the great Apes expressed to their Cubs except the Love which the Siameses have for all Children whether for their own or those of another The King of Siam loves Children till 7 or 8 years old The King of Siam himself is incompass'd with them and delights to educate them till seven or eight years old after which as they lose the childish Air they do also lose his Favour One alone say some was there kept till between twenty and thirty years of Age and is still his favourite Some do call him his adopted Son others suspect him to be his Bastard He is at least Foster Brother to his Lawful Daughter That the Siameses came not from far to Inhabit their Country But if you consider the extreamly Low Lands of Siam that they seem to escape the Sea as it were by miracle and that they lye annually under rain water for several Months the almost infinite number of very incommodious Insects which they engender and the excessive Heat of the Climate under which they are seated it is difficult to comprehend that others could resolve to inhabit them excepting such as came thither by little and little from places adjacent And it may be thought that they have been inhabited not many Ages if a Judgment may be made thereof by the few Woods that are stubbed as yet Moreover it would be necessary to travel more to the North of Siam to find out the warlike People which could yield those innumerable swarms of men which departed out of their own Country to go and possess others And how is it possible that they should not be stopp'd on the Road among some of those soft and effeminate People which lye between the Country of the Scythians and the Woods and impassable Rivers of the Siameses 'T is not therefore probable that the Lesser Siameses which we have spoken of are descended from the Greater and that the Greater withdrew into the Mountains which they inhabit to free themselves from the Tyranny of the neighbouring Princes under which they were born Three Baly Alphabets Kià Keù̈ Keuà Koù̈a Koüà Ké Kê Ko Kaou Koum Kam Karama Ko Koüaà Keua reu reû leu leû Ca Kha Kha go nga Tcha Tcha Tcha Tcha ya thá tha da na Ta tha tâ—a da na pa ppa da me Ca ra la ua ta ha la ang Ka Kaa Ki Ku Kou Koû Ke Kái Ko Káon KamÌ€ Ká Ka-na Ka nâ Kad-ni Kard Kanou Kanou Ka-ne Kanai Ka na Ka naoÅ„ Kananǵ Ka-na The Siamese Cyphers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 The Siamese numeral Names 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 20 30 A Smoaking Instrument which the Modâ—â— of Siamâ—do use AA a Pipe of Bambou 8 or 9 footlong The Chinese-Chese-Boord 1 The King 2 The Guards 3 The Elephants 4 The Knights 5 The Waggons 6 The Canons 7 The Pawns 8 The River A Musical Instrument w th Bells The Chinese Abacus or Arithmetical Instrume nt or Counting They inhabit different quarters in the City or Suburbs of Siam The people of the Kingdom of Siam not very numerous and yet this City is very little inhabited in respect to its Bigness and the Country much less in Proportion It must be imagined that they desire not a greater People for they count them every year and do well know what no person ignores that the only secret to encrease them would be to ease them in the Taxes and Impositions The Siameses do therefore keep an exact account
favour of those that love to reason on Philosophical matters The Siameses do not give many forms to their Lands The time of ploughing and reaping They till them and sowe them when the Rains have sufficiently softened them and they gather their harvest when the waters are retired and sometimes when they are yet remaining on the ground and they can go only by Boat All the land that is overflowed is good for Rice and 't is said that the Ear always surmounts the waters and that if they encrease a foot in twenty four hours the Rice grows a foot also in twenty four hours but though it be averr'd that this happens sometimes I cannot without much difficulty believe it in so vast an Inundation And I rather conceive that when the Inundation surmounts the Rice at any time it rots it They gather Rice also in divers Cantons of the Kingdom which the Rains do not overflow and this is more substantial better relisht and keeps longer Another sort of Rice When it has grown long enough in the Land where it was sown it is transplanted into another which is prepared after this manner They overflow it as we do the Salt Marshes until it be throughly soft and for this purpose it is necessary to have high Cisterns or rather to keep the Rain-water in the Field it self by little Banks made all round Then they let the water go to feed the Land level it and in fine transplant the Rice-Roots one after the other by thrusting them in with the Thumb I am greatly inclin'd to believe The original of Agriculture with the Siameses that the Ancient Siameses lived only upon Fruits and Fish as still do several people of the Coasts of Africk and that in process of time Husbandry has been taught them by the Chineses We read in the History of China that 't was anciently the King himself that annually first set his hand to the Plough in this great Kingdom and that of the Crop which his Labour yielded him he made the Bread for the Sacrifices The Lawful King of Tonquin and Cochinchina together who is called the Buado's likewise observe this Custom of first breaking up the Lands every year and of all the Royal Functions this is almost the only one remaining to him The most important are exercised by two Hereditary Governors the one of Tonquin and the other of Cochinchina who wage war and who are the true Soveraigns although they profess to acknowledge the Bua which is at Tonquin for their Soveraign The Ceremony of the Siameses touching Agriculture The King of Siam did formerly also set his hand to the Plough on a certain day of the year For about an Age since and upon some superstitious Observation of a bad Omen he labours no more but leaves this Ceremony to an imaginary King which is purposely created every year yet they will not permit him to bear the Title of King but that of Oc-ya-Kaou or Oc-ya of the Rice He is mounted upon an Ox and rides to the place where he must plough attended with a great train of Officers that are obedient to him This Masquerade for one day gets him wherewithal to live on the whole year And by the same superstition has deterred the Kings themselves It is look'd upon as ominous and unlucky to the person I suspect therefore that this custom of causing the lands to be ploughed by the Prince came from China to Tonquin and Siam with the Art of Husbandry It is Politick and Superstitious both together It may perhaps have been invented only to gain credit to Husbandry by the example of Kings themselves but it is intermixt with a great many superstitions to supplicate the good and evil Spirits whom they think able to help or hurt the goods of the Earth Amongst other things the Oc-ya-Kaou offers them a Sacrifice in the open field of an heap of Rice-sheaves whereunto he sets fire with his own hand CHAP. IX Of the Gardens of the Siameses and occasionally of their Liquors Their Pulse and Roots The Potatoe THE Siameses are not less addicted to the manuring of Gardens than to the ploughing of Arable Lands They have Pulse and Roots but for the most part different from ours Amongst the Roots the Potatoe deserves a parcular mention It is of the form and size almost of a Parsenep and the inside thereof is sometimes white sometimes red sometimes purple but I never saw any but the first sort Being roasted under the Ashes it eats like the Chesnut The Isles of America made it known to us it there frequently supplies as some report the place of Bread At Siam I have seen Chibbols and no Onions Garlick Turneps Cucumbers Citruls Water-melons Parsley Bawm Sorrel They have no true Melons nor Strawberries nor Raspberries nor Artichoaks but a great deal of Asparagus of which they do not eat They have neither Sallory nor Beets nor Coleworts nor Coleflore nor Turneps nor Parseneps nor Carrots nor Leeks nor Lettuce nor Chervil nor most of the Herbs whereof we compose our Sallads Yet the Dutch have most of all these Plants at Batavia which is a sign that the Soil of Siam would be proper thereunto It bears large Mushromes but few and ill tasted It yields no Truffles not so much as that insipid and scentless kind which the Spaniards do call Criadillas de tierra and which they put into their pot Cucumbers Chibbols Garlick Radishes The Siameses do eat Cucumbers raw as they do throughout the East and also in Spain and it is not impossible but their Cucumbers may be more wholsom than ours seeing that Vinegar doth not harden them They look upon them and call them a kind of Water-Melons Mr. Vincent inform'd me that a Persian will eat 36 pound weight of Melons or Cucumbers at the beginning of the season of these Fruits to purge himself The Chibbols Garlick and Radishes have a sweeter taste at Siam than in this Country These sort of Plants do lose their Rankness by the great Heat And I easily believe what those who have experienc'd it have assured me that nothing is more pleasant than the Onions of Aegypt which the Israelites so exceedingly regretted Flowers I have seen a great many Tuberoses in the Gardens of Siam and no Roses nor Gillyflowers but it is said there are plenty of Gillyflowers and few Roses and that these Flowers have less scent here than in Europe so that the Roses have hardly any The Jasmine is likewise so rare that 't is said there are none but at the King's House We were presented with two or three Flowers as a wonder They have a great many Amaranthus and Tricolors Except these most of the Flowers and Plants which adorn our Gardens are unknown to them But in their stead they have others which are peculiar to them and which are very agreeable for their Beauty and Odor I have remark'd of some that they smell only in the Night by
much spitting if they care not to swallow the Juice but it is good to spit out the two or three first Mouthfuls at least to avoid swallowing the Lime The other less sensible effects but which are not doubted in the Indies are to carry from the Gums perhaps by reason of the Lime whatever may prejudice them and to fortifie the Stomach either by reason of the Juice that is swallowed at pleasure and which may have this quality or by reason of the superfluous moistures which they discharge by spitting Thus have I never found any person at Siam with a stinking breath which may be an effect of their natural Sobriety Another effect of the Areca and Betel Now as the Areca and Betel do cause a red spittle independently on the red Lime which is mix'd therewith so they leave a Vermilion Tincture on the Lips and Teeth It passes over the Lips but by little and little it thickens on the Teeth till they become black So that persons that delight in neatness do blacken their Teeth by reason that otherwise the spittle of the Areca and Betel mix'd with the natural whiteness of the Teeth causes an unpleasant effect which is remarked in the common People I shall transiently declare that the Vermilion Lips which the Siameses saw in the Pictures of our Ladies which we had carried to this Country made them to say that we must needs have in France better Betel than theirs How they blacken their Teeth and how they redden the Nails of their little fingers To blacken their Teeth they do thereon put some pieces of very sowre Lemon which they hold on their Jaws or Lips for an hour or more They report that this softens the Teeth a little They afterwards rub them with a Juice which proceeds either from a certain Root or from the Coco when they are burnt and so the operation is perform'd Yet it pleases them sometimes to relate that it continues three days during which it is necessary they say to lye on their Belly and eat no solid Food But some have assur'd me that this is not true and that it is sufficient to eat nothing hot for two or three days I believe rather that their Teeth are too much set on edge to be able for some time to eat any thing solid It is necessary continually to renew this operation to make the effect thereof continue for this Blackness sticks not so strong to the Teeth but that it may be rub'd off with a burnt Crust of Bread reduc'd to Powder They love also to redden the Nails of their little Fingers and for this end they scrape them and then apply a certain Juice which they extract from a little Rice bruised in Citron Juice with some Leaves of a ree which in every thing resembles the Pomegranate Tree but bears no Fruit. Of the Palmites in general In brief the Arequier or Arectree and all the Trees which are called Palmites have no Branches but great long and broad Leaves like the Palm-tree and they have their Leaves only at the top of the stalk which is hollow These sorts of Trees do annually produce a new Shoot of Leaves which spring out of the middle of the Leaves of the preceeding year which then fall off and leave a mark round the Trunk so that by these marks which are so many knots and which are close together they can easily compute the Years or Age of the Tree This is what I had to say concerning the Extent and Fertility of the Kingdom of Siam I will now discourse of the Manners of the Siameses in general that is to say of their Habit Houses Furniture Table Equipage Diversions and Affairs A Siamese Mandarin A Siamese Mandarin A Siamise woman w th her Child The Kings Apartment I The Hall of Audience A House of a Siamese PART II. Of the Manners of the Siameses in general CHAP. I. Of the Habit and Meen of the Siameses THey hardly cloath themselves They wear few Cloaths not so much by reason of the heat as by the simplicity of their Manners Tacitus reports concerning the German Infantry in his time that it was either all naked or cover'd with light Coats and even at this present there are some Savages in the Northern America which go almost naked which proves in my opinion that the simplicity of Manners as well as the Heat is the cause of the Nakedness of the Siameses as it is of the Nudity of these Savages 'T is not but that Cloaths are almost insupportable to the French which arrive at Siam and who know not how to forbear acting and stirring but it is unhealthful for them to uncloath themselves by reason that the Injuries of the excessively hot Air are not less dreadful than those of the extreamly cold Air to which one is not accustom'd yet with this difference that in very hot Climats 't is sufficient for health to cover the Stomach The Spaniards do for this reason cover it with a Buffalo's Skin four double but the Siameses whose Manners are plain in every thing have chosen to habituate themselves from their Infancy to an almost entire Nudity They go with their Feet naked and their Head bare The Pagne the Habit of the Siameses and for Decency only they begirt their Reins and Thighs down to their Knees with a piece of painted Cloth about two Ells and an half long which the Portuguese do call Pagne from the Latin word Pannus sometimes instead of a painted Cloth the Pagne is a silken Stuff either plain or embroider'd with a border of Gold and Silver The Mandarins or Officers do wear besides the Pagne A Muslin Shirt serves them for a Vest a Muslin Shirt which is as their Vest They pluck it off and wrap it about their middle when they approach a Mandarin much higher than them in Dignity to express unto him their readiness to go where he shall please to send them And yet the Officers whom we saw at the Audiences of the King of Siam remain'd cloath'd therewith as with their Habit of Ceremony and by the same reason they always had their Bonnets high and pointed on the Head These Shirts have no Neck-band and are open before they taking no care to fasten them to cover their Stomach The Sleeves hang down almost to their Wrists being about two Foot wide but without being plaited above or below Moreover the Body thereof is so strait that not slipping nor falling down over the Pagne it sets in several wrinckles In Winter they do sometimes put over their shoulders a breadth of Stuff or painted Linnen either like a Mantle or a Scarf A Scarf against the Cold. the ends of which they wind very neatly about their Arms. But the King of Siam wears a Vest of some excellent Sattin brocaded How the King wears Vests of Silk the Sleeves of which are very strait and reach down to the Wrist and as we apparel
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
had also other Dignities in proportion to the Inhabitants which they contained But it is not necessary to believe that these Cities have ever been so populous as the Titles of their Governors import by reason as I have often alledged that these People are very proud in Titles Only the greatest Titles were given to the Governors of the biggest Cities and the least Titles to the Governors of the Cities less inhabited Thus the City of Me-Tac of which I have spoken at the beginning had a Governor called Pa-ya-Tac and the word Me which signifies Mother and which is joyned to Tac seems to intimate that the City of Me-Tac was very great The City of Porselouc had also a Pa-ya Tenasserim Ligor Corazema and other have still some Oc-ya Lesser Cities as Pipeli and Bancock have the Oc-pra others have the Oc-Louang or the Oc-Counnes and the least of all have the Oc-Meuing The Portuguese have translated these Titles according to their fancy by those of King Vice-Roy Duke Marquis Earl c. They have given the Title of Kingdom to Metac Tenassarim Porselouc Ligor and Pipeli either by reason of their hereditary Governours or for having been like Pipeli the residence of the Kings of Siam and to the Kings of Siam they have given the Title of Emperor because the Spaniards have ever thought the Title of Emperor ought to be given to Kings that have other Kings for Feudataries So that upon this single reason some Kings of Castille have born the Title of Emperor giving to their Children the Title of Kings of the several Kingdoms which were united to their Crown The dignities of the Siameses are not annext to the single Governments of City or Province To return to the Titles of the Siameses they are given not only to the Governors but to all the Officers of the Kingdom because that they are all Nai and the same Title is not always joyned to the same Office The Barcalon for example has sometimes had that of Pa-ya as some have informed me and now he has only that of Oc-ya But if a Man has two Offices he may have two different Titles in respect to his two Offices and it is not rare that one Man has two Offices one in the City and the other in the Province or rather one in Title and the other by Commission Thus Oc-ya Pra-Sedet who is Governor of the City of Siam in Title is now Oc-ya Barcalon by Commission the King of Siam finding it his interest because that upon this account he gives not to one Officer a double Sallery The Equivocations which this causes in Relations But this Multiplication of Offices on the same Head causes a great deal of Obscurity and Equivocation in the ancient Relations of Siam because that when a man has two Offices he has two Titles and two Names and when the Relation imports that such an Oc-ya for example is concerned in such a thing one is inclined to believe that the Relation has stil'd this Oc-ya by the title of the function which it attributes to him and frequently it has named him by the title of another Office Thus if a Relation of the Kingdom of France made by a Siamese should intimate that the Duke of Mayne is General of the Suisses the Siameses might groundlesly perswade themselves that every General of the Suisses bears the Title of Duke of Mayne And this is what I had to say touching the People of Siam CHAP. III. Of the Officers of the Kingdom of Siam in general The proper signification of the word Mandarin THE Portugueses have generally called all the Officers throughout the whole extent of the East Mandarins and it is probable that they have formed this word from that of Mandar which in their Language signifies to command Navarette whom I have already cited is of this opinion and we may confirm it because that the Arabian word Emir which is used at the Court of the Great Mogul and in several other Mahometan Courts of the Indies to signifie the Officers is derived from the Arabian Verb amara which signifies to command The word Mandarin extends also to the Children of the Principal Officers which are considered as Children of Quality called Mon in Siamese But I shall make use of the word Mandarin only to signifie the Officers The King of Siam therefore makes no considerable Mandarin The King of Siam gives Names to the considerable Mandarins but he gives him a new Name a Custom established also at China and in other States of the East This Name is always an Elogium sometimes it is purposely invented like that which he gave to the Bishop of Metelpolis and like those which he gives to the Forreigners that are at his Court but oftentimes these Names are ancient and known for having been formerly given to others and those are the most honourable which have been heretofore born by persons very highly advanced in Dignity or by the Princes of the Royal Blood And although such Names be not always accompanied with Offices and Authority they cease not to be a great Mark of Favour It likewise happens that the same Name is given to several persons of different Dignities so that at the same time the one for example will call himself Oc-Pra Pipitcharatcha and the other Oc-Counne Pipitcharatcha These Names of which the first words are only spoken and which do every one make a Period are taken almost all entire out of the Baly Tongue and are not always well understood But this and the Stile of the Laws which participate very much of the Baly and the Books of Religion which are Baly are the cause why the Kings of Siam ought not to ignore this Tongue Forasmuch as I have elsewhere said it lends all its Ornaments to the Siamese and that oftentimes they do elegantly intermix them either in speaking or in writing The Law of the State is that all Offices should be hereditary All Offices are hereditary and the same Law is in the Kingdom of Laos and was anciently at China But the selling of Offices is not there permitted and moreover the least fault of the Patent or the capricious Humor of the Prince or the Dotage of the Inheritor may take away the Offices from the Families and when this happens it is always without Recompence Very few Families do long maintain themselves therein especially in the Offices of the Court which are more than the rest under the Master's power Moreover no Officer at Siam has any Sallary The Prince lodges them The Profits of the Offices which is no great matter and gives them some moveables as Boxes of Glod or Silver for Betel some Arms and a Balon some Beasts as Elephants Horses and Buffalo's some Services Slaves and in fine some Arable Lands All which return to the King with the Office and which do principally make the King to be the Heir of his Officers But the principal gain of the Offices
VIII Concerning the Art of War amongst the Siameses and of their Forces by Sea and Land The Siameses not proper for War THe Art of War is exceedingly ignor'd at Siam the Siameses are little inclined to this Trade The over-quick imagination of the excessive hot Countries is not more proper for Courage than the slow imagination of Countries extreamly cold The sight of a naked Sword is sufficient to put an hundred Siameses to flight there needs only the assured Tone of an European that wears a Sword at his side or a Cane in his hand to make them forget the most express Orders of their Superiors How contemptible the men in the Indies are as to their Courage I say moreover that every one born in the Indies is without Courage although he be born of European Parents And the Portugueses born in the Indies have been a real proof thereof A society of Dutch Merchants found in them only the Name and the Language and not the Bravery of the Portuguese and if other Europeans went to seek out the Dutch they would not be found more Valorous The best constituted men are those of the Temperate Zones and amongst these the difference of their common aliments and of the places which they inhabit more or less hot dry or moist exposed to the Winds or to the Seas Plains or Mountains Woods or Champains and much more the several Governments do cause very great differences For who doubts for example that the Antient Greeks brought up in liberty where incomparably more Valorous then the present Greeks depressed by so long a Servitude All these reasons do concur to effeminate the Courage of the Siameses I mean the heat of the Climate the flegmatick Aliments and the Despotick Government The Siameses abhor blood The Opinion of the Metempsychosis inspiring them with an horror of blood deprives them likewise of the Spirit of War They busie themselves only in making Slaves If the Peguins for example do on one side invade the lands of Siam the Siameses will at another place enter on the Lands of Pegu and both Parties will carry away whole Villages into Captivity How in fighting they disguise the design of killing their Enemies But if the Armies meet they will not shoot directly one against the other but higher and yet as they endeavour to make these random Shots to fall back upon the Enemies to the end that they may be overtaken therewith if they do not retreat one of the two Parties do's not long defer from taking flight upon perceiving it never so little to rain Darts or Bullets But if the design be to stop the Troops that come upon them they will shoot lower than it is necessary to the end that if the Enemies approach the fault may be their own in coming within the reach of being wounded or slain Kill not is the order which the King of Siam gives his Troops when he sends them into the Field which cannot signifie that they should not kill absolutely but that they shoot not directly upon the Enemy How the King of Singor was taken by a Frenchman Some have upon this account informed me a thing which in my opinion will appear most incredible 'T is of a provincial named Cyprian who is still at Surat in the French Company 's Service if he has not quitted it or if he is not lately dead the name of his Family I know not Before his entrance into the Companies service he had served some time in the King of Siam's Army in quality of Canoneer and because he was prohibited from shooting strait he doubted not that the Siamese General would betray the King his Master This Prince sending afterwards some Troops against the Tchaou-Meuang or if you will against the King of Singor on the western Coast of the Gulph of Siam Cyprian wearied with seeing the Armies in view which attempted no persons life determin'd one night to go alone to the Camp of the Rebels and to fetch the King of Singor into his Tent. He took him indeed and brought him to the Siamese General and so terminated a War of above twenty years The King of Siam intended to recompence this service of Cyprian with a quantity of Sapan-wood but by some intrigue of Court he got nothing and retir'd to Surat Now though the Siameses appear to us so little proper for War The Siameses have little to fear from their Neighbours The King of Siam has no other Troops maintain'd than his foreign Guard yet they cease not to make it frequently and advantageously by reason that their Neighbours are neither more potent nor more valiant than them The King of Siam has no other Troops maintained than his foreign Guard of which I will speak in the sequel 'T is true that the Chevalier de Fourbin had showed the Exercise of Arms to four hundred Siameses which we found at Bancock and that after he had quitted this Kingdom an Englishman who had been a Sergeant in the Garrison of Madraspatan on the Coast of Coromandel showed this same exercise which he had learnt under the Chevalier de Fourbin to about eight hundred other Siameses to show the King of Siam that the Chevalier de Fourbin was not necessary to him But all these Soldiers have no other pay than the Exemption from the six Months Service for some of their Family And as they cannot easily maintain themselves from their own Houses by reason they receive no money they remain at their own Habitations the four hundred about Bancock and the other eight hundred at Louvo or thereabouts Only for the security of Bancock some Detachments went thither by turns to keep a continual Guard and the rest being thereabouts might render themselves in case of an Alarm But according to the common practice of the Kingdom of Siam the Garrisons which it may have are composed of persons who serve in this by six Months as they should serve in another thing and who are relieved by others when they have served their full time The Kingdom of Siam being very strong by its impenetaable Woods The Country of Siam is very strong without Forts and by the great number of Channels wherewith it is interspersed and in fine by the annual Innundation of six Months the Siameses would not hitherto have places well fortified for fear of losing them and not being able to retake them and this is the reason they gave me thereof The Castles they have would hardly sustain the first shock of our Soldiers and though they be small and ugly because they would have them such yet is it necessary to employ the skill of the Europeans to delineate them 'T is some years since the King of Siam designing to make a wooden Fort on the Frontier of Pegu The Siameses know not how to make a wooden Fort. had no abler a person to whom he could entrust the care thereof than to one named Brother Rene Charbonneau who
after having been a Servant of the Mission of St. Lazarus at Paris had passed to the Service of the Foreign Missions and was gone to Siam Brother Rene who by his Industry knew how to let blood and give a Remedy to a sick Person for it is by such like charitable Employments and by some presents that the Missionaries are permitted and loved in this Country defended himself as much as he could from making this Fort protesting that he was not capable but in short he could not prevent rendering obedience when it was signified to him that the King of Siam absolutely requir'd it He was afterwards three or four years Governor of Jonsalam by Commission and with great approbation and because he desired to return to the City of Siam to his Wife's Relations which are Portugueses Mr. Billi the Master of Mr. de Chaumont's Palace succeeded him in the Employment of Jonsalam The Siameses have not much Artillery A Portuguese of Macao Of their Artillery who died in their service cast them some pieces of Cannon but as for them I question whether they know how to make any moderately good though some have informed me that they have hammered some out of cold Iron As they have no Horses for what is two thousand Horse at most In what their Armies consist which 't is reported that the King of Siam keeps their Armies consist only in Elephants and in Infantry naked and ill armed after the mode of the Country Their order of Battel and Encampment is thus They range themselves in three lines What is their order of battle and of their Encampments each of which is composed of three great square Battalions and the King or the General whom he names in his absence stands in the middle Battalion which he composes of the best Troops for the security of his Person Every particular Captain of a Battalion keeps himself also in the midst of the Battalion which he commands and if the nine Battalions are too big they are each divided into nine less with the same symmetry as the whole body of the Army Elephants of War The Army being thus ranged every one of the nine Battalions has sixteen male Elephants in the rear They call them Elephants of War and each of these Elephants carries his particular standard and is accompanied with two female Elephants but as well females as males are mounted each with three armed Men and besides this the Army has some Elephants with Baggage The Siameses report that the female Elephants are only for the dignity of the males but as I have already declared in the other part it would be very difficult always to govern the males without the Company of the females The Artillery begins the Fight The Artillery at the places where the River grows shallow is carried on Waggons drawn by Buffalo's or Oxen for it has no carriage It begins the Fight and if it ends it not then they place themselves within reach to make use of the small shot and Arrows after the manner as I have explained but they never fall on with vigour enough nor defend themselves with constancy enough to come to a close Fight The Siameses easie to break and to rally They break themselves and fly into Woods but ordinarily they rally with the same facility as they are broken and if on some occasion as in the last Conspiracy of the Macassars it is absolutely necessary to stand firm they can promise themselves to retain the Soldiers only by placing some Officers behind to kill those that shall fly I have elsewhere related how these Macassars made use of Opium to endow themselves with Courage 't is a custom practised principally by the Ragipouts and the Melays but not by the Siameses the Siameses would be afraid to become too Couragious Elephants not proper for War They very much rely upon the Elephants in Combats though this Animal for want of Bitt or Bridle cannot be securely governed and he frequently returns upon his own Masters when he is wounded Moreover he so exceedingly dreads the fire that he is never almost accustomed thereunto Yet they exercise them to carry and to see fired from their back little pieces about three foot long and about a pound of Ball and Bernier reports that this very practice is observed in the Mogul's Country The Siameses incapable of Sieges As for Sieges they are wholly incapable thereof for men that dare not set upon the Enemies when in view will not vigorously attack a place never so little Fortified but only by Treachery in which they are very cunning or by Famine if the Besieged cannot have provision Their weakness by Sea They are yet more seeble by Sea than by Land Not without much ado the King of Siam hath five or six very small Ships which he principally makes use of for Merchandize and sometimes he arms them as Privateers against those of his Neighbours with whom he is at War But the Officers and Seamen on whom he confides are Foreigners and till these latter times he had chosen English and Portuguese but within these few years he hath employed some French The King of Siam's Intention is that his Corsairs should kill no person no more than his Land Forces but that they use all the Tricks imaginable to take some Prizes In his War at Sea he proposes to himself only some Reprizals from some of his Neighbours from whom he believes himself to have received some injury in Trade And the contrivances succeed whilst his Enemies are not in any distrust Besides this he has fifty or sixty Galleys whose Anchors I have said are of Wood. They are only moderate Boats for a Bridge which do every one carry fifty or sixty men to Row and to Fight These men do fight by turns as in every thing else There is only one to each Oar and he is obliged to Row standing because the Oar is so short for lightness sake that it would not touch the water if not held almost perpendicular These Gallies only coast it along the Gulph of Siam CHAP. IX Of the Barcalon and of the Revenues THe Pra-Clang or by a corruption of the Portugueses the Barcalon Of the Barcalon is the Officer which has the appointment of the Commerce as well within as without the Kingdom He is the Superintendent of the King of Siam's Magazines or if you will his chief Factor His name is composed of the Balie word Pra which I have so often discoursed of and of the word Clang which signifies Magazine He is the Minister of the foreign affairs because they almost all relate to Commerce and 't is to him that the fugitive Nations at Siam address themselves in their affairs because 't is only the liberty of Trade that formerly invited them thither In a word it is the Barcalon that receives the Revenues of the Cities The King of Siam's Revenues are of two sorts Revenues of the Cities
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
the King of his Wives and of his Eunuchs and of all those whom this Prince maintains in the Vang 'T was the Oc-ya Vang who after the Example of all the other Governours which had received the King's Ambassadors at the entrance of their Government came to receive them at the Gate of the Vang and who introduced them to the Audience of the King his Master The Gates of the Palace and of the precautions with which persons are admitted The Gates of the Palace are always shut and behind each stands a Porter who has some Arms but who instead of bearing them keeps them in his Lodge near the Gate If any one knocks the Porter advertises the Officer who commands in the first Inclosure and without whose permission no person enters in nor goes out but no person enters armed nor after having drunk Arak to assure himself that no drunken man enters therein Wherefore the Officer views and smells the breath of all those that must enter therein The Meuing Tchion This Office is double and those that are in it do serve alternately and by day The days of Service they continue twenty four whole hours in the Palace and the other days they may be at home Their Title is Oc-Meuing Tchion of rather Pra Meuing Tchion for at the Palace before the word Meuing there are some who put the word Pra instead of Oc though some have told me that it is Oc-Meuing and not Pra-Meuing that he must be always called 'T was one of these Meuing Tchions who brought the first Compliment from the King of Siam to the Ambassadors when they were in the Road and who stayed constantly with them after they were landed as Mr. Torpff continued always with the Ambassador of Siam Painted Arms. Between the two first Inclosures and under a Pent-house is a small number of Soldiers unarmed and stooping They are those Kenhai or Painted Arms of whom I have spoken The Officer who commands them immediately and who is a Painted-Arm himself is called Oncarac and he and they are the Prince his Executioners as the Officers and Soldiers of the Pretorian Cohorts were the Executioners of the Roman Emperors But at the same time they omit not to watch the Prince's person for in the Palace there is wherewith to arm them in case of need They row the Balon of State and the King of Siam has no other Foot-guard Their Employment is hereditary like all the rest of the Kingdom and the ancient Law imports that they ought not to exceed six hundred But this must doubtless be understood that there ought to be no more than six hundred for the Palace for there must needs be many more in the whole extent of the State because that the King as I have said elsewhere gives thereof to a very great number of Officers A Guard of Slaves for a Show But this Prince is not contented with this Guard on days of Ceremony as was that of the first Audience of the King's Ambassadors On such occasions he causes his Slaves to be armed and if their number is not sufficient the Slaves of the principal Officers are armed He gives to them all some Muslin Shirts dyed red Muskets or Bows or Lances and Pots of gilded wood on their Heads which for this purpose are taken out of the Magazine and the quantity of which in my opinion determines the number of these Soldiers of show They formed a double Rank at the reception of Mr. de Chaumont and so soon as he was past those which he had left behind made haste to get before by the by-ways to go to fill up the vacant places which were left for them In our time they marched by the sides of the Ambassadors till they stopt up the space through which they were to pass We also found part of these Slaves prostrate before the little Stairs which goes up to the Hall of Audience Some held those little useless Trumpets which I have spoken of and others had before them those little Drums which they never beat The Meuing Tchion are the Nai of all these Slaves and these Slaves row the Balons of the King's retinue and are moreover employed on several works Anciently the Kings of Siam had a Japponese Guard The King of Siam has no standing Japponese Guard composed of six hundred men but because these six hundred men alone could make the whole Kingdom to tremble when they pleased the present King's Father after having made use of them to invade the Throne found out a way to rid himself of them more by policy than force The King of Siam's Horse-guard is composed of Men from Laos The Horse-Guard from Meen and Laos and another neighbouring Country the chief City whereof is called Meen and as the Meens and Laos do serve him by six Months he makes this Guard as numerous as he pleases and as many Horse as he would employ therein Oc-Coune Ran Patchi commands this Guard on the right hand His Son is in France and has for some years learnt the Trade of a Fountain-maker at Triannon Oc-Coune Pipitcharatcha or as the People say Oc-Coune Petratcha commands the half of this Guard which serves on the left hand but over these two Officers Oc-ya Lao commands the Guard of the Laos and Oc-ya Meen the Guard of the Meen and this Oc-ya Meen is a different person from him that prostitutes lewd Women Besides this the King of Siam has a foreign standing Horse-guard A Foreign Horse-Guard which consists in an Hundred and Thirty Gentlemen but neither they nor the Meen nor the Laos do ever keep Guard in the Palace Notice is given them to accompany the King when he goes out and thus all this is esteemed the exterior Service and not the interior Service of the Palace This foreign Guard consists first in two Companies of thirty Moors each Of what it is composed Natives or originally descended from the States of the Mogul of an excellent Meen but accounted Cowards Secondly in a Company of twenty Chinese Tartars armed with Bows and Arrows and formidable for their Courage and lastly in two Companies of Twenty five Men each Pagans of the true India habited like the Moors which are called Rasbouts or Raggibouts who boast themselves to be of the Royal blood and whose Courage is very famous though it be only the effect of Opium as I have before remarked The King of Siam supplies this whole Guard with Arms and with Horses What it costs and besides this every Moor costs him three Catis and twelve Teils a year that is to say 540 Livres or thereabouts and a red Stuff Vest and every of the two Moorish Captains five Catis and twelve Teils or 840 Livres and a Scarlet Vest The Raggibouts are maintained according to the same rate but every Chinese Tartar costs him only six Teils or 45 Livres a year and their Captain fifteen Teils or 112 Livres ten Sols
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
second Ambassador whom we saw here Yet it happens also that in this Country they hang themselves in despair when they see themselves reduced from an high Employment to an extreme Poverty and to the six Months Service due to the Prince tho' this Fall be not shameful I have said in another place Others are included in the Punishments with the Criminals that a Father shares sometimes in the punishment of the Son as being bound to answer for the Education which he has given him At China an Officer answers for the Faults of all the persons of his Family because they pretend that he who knows not how to govern his own Family is not capable of any public Function The Fear therefore which particular persons have of seeing their Families turned out of the Employments which do make the Splendor and Support thereof renders them all wise as if they were all Magistrates In like manner at Siam and at China an Officer is punished for the Offences of another Officer that is subject to his Orders by reason that he is to watch over him that depends on him and that having power to correct him he ought to answer for his conduct Thus about three years since we saw at Siam for three days Oc-Pra-Simo-ho-sot by Nation a Brame who is now in the King of Siam's Council of State exposed to the Cangue with the head of a Malefactor which they had put to Death hung about his Neck without being accused of having had any other hand in the crime of him whose head was hung to his Neck than too great Negligence in watching over a Man that was subject to him After this 't is no wonder in my opinion that the Bastinado should be so frequent at Siam Sometimes there may be seen several Officers at the Cangue disposed in a Circle and in the midst of them will be the head of a man which they have put to death and this head will hang by several strings from the Neck of every one of these Officers The least pretence for a Crime is punished The worst is that the least appearance of guilt renders an action criminal To be accused is almost sufficient to be culpable An action in it self innocent becomes bad so soon as any one thinks to make a Crime thereof And from thence proceed the so frequent disgraces of the principal Officers They know not how for instance to reckon up all the Barcalons that the King of Siam has had since he reigned The Policy of the Kings of Siam cruel against all and against their own Brethren The Greatness of the Kings whose Authority is despotical is to exercise Power over all and over their own Brethren The Kings of Siam do maim them in several ways when they can they take away or debilitate their sight by fire they render them impotent by dislocation of Members or sottish by Drinks securing themselves and their Children against the Enterprizes of their Brethren only by rendring them incapable of reigning he that now reigns has not treated his better This Prince will not therefore envy our King the sweetness of being beloved by his Subjects and the Glory of being dreaded by his Enemies The Idea of a great King is not at Siam that he should render himself terrible to his Neighbours provided he be so to his Subjects The Government of Siam more burdensome to the Nobles than to the Populace Yet there is this Reflection to be made on this sort of Government that the Yoke thereof is less heavy if I may so say on the Populace than on the Nobles Ambition in this Country leads to Slavery Liberty and the other Enjoyments of Life are for the vulgar Conditions The more one is unknown to the Prince and the further from him the greater Ease he enjoys and for this reason the Employments of the Provinces are there considered as a Recompence of the Services done in the Palace How tempestuous the Ministry is at Siam The Ministry there is tempestuous not only thro the natural Inconstancy which may appear in the Prince's Mind but because that the ways are open for all persons to carry complaints to the Prince against his Ministers And though the Ministers and all the other Officers do employ all their artifices to render these ways of complaints ineffectual whereby one may attack them all yet all complaints are dangerous and sometimes it is the slightest which hurts and which subverts the best established favour These examples which very frequently happen do edifie the People and if the present King had not too far extended his exactions without any real necessity his Government would as much please the Populace as it is terrible to the Nobles The King of Siam's regards for his people Nevertheless he has had that regard for his People as not to augment his Duties on cultivated Lands and to lay no imposition on Corn and Fish to the end that what is necessary to Life might not be dear A moderation so much the more admirable as it seems that they ought not to expect any from a Prince educated in this Maxim that his Glory consists in not setting limits to his power and always in augmenting his Treasure The Inconveniences of this Government It renders the Prince wavering on his Throne But these Kings which are so absolutely the Masters of the Fortune and Life of their Subjects are so much the more wavering in the Throne They find not in any person or at most in a small number of Domesticks that Fidelity or Love which we have for our Kings The People which possess nothing in property and which do reckon only upon what they have buried in the ground as they have no solid establishment in their Country so they have no obligation thereto Being resolved to bear the same Yoke under any Prince whatever and having the assurance of not being able to bear a heavier they concern not themselves in the Fortune of their Prince and experience evinces that upon the least trouble they let the Crown go to whom Force or Policy will give it A Siamese a Chinese an Indian will easily die to exert a particular Hatred or to avoid a miserable Life or a too cruel Death but to die for their Prince and their Country is not a Vertue in their practice Amongst them are not found the powerful motives by which our People animate themselves to a vigorous Defence They have no Inheritance to lose and Liberty is oftentimes more burdensom to them than Servitude The Siameses which the King of Pegu has taken in war will live peaceable in Pegu at Twenty miles distant from the Frontiers of Siam and they will there cultivate the Lands which the King of Pegu has given them no remembrance of their Country making them to hate their new Servitude And it is the same of the Peguins which are in the Kingdom of Siam The Eastern Kings are looked upon as the
adoptive Sons of Heaven How uncertain the extream Respect of the Orientals is for their Kings 'T is believed that they have Souls celestial and as high above other Souls by their Merit as the Royal Condition appears more happy than that of other men Nevertheless if any one of their Subjects revolts the People doubt presently which of the two Soulâ— is most valuable whether that of the Lawful Prince or that of the Rebellious Subjectâ— and whether the Adoption of Heaven has not passed from the King to the Subject Their Histories are all full of these examples and that of China which Father Martinius has given us is curious in the ratiociniations by which the Chineses I mean the Chinese Philosophers are often perswaded that they followed the Inclination of Heaven in changing their Soveraign and sometimes in preferring a High-way-man before their Lawful Prince But besides that the despotick Authority is almost destitute of defence These Princes do oftentimes lose their Authority by being too jealous it is moreover rather usurped by him that possesses it in that the exercise thereof is less communicated Whoever takes upon him the Spirit or Person of a Prince has almost nothing more to do to dispossess the Prince because that the exercise of the Authority being too much reunited in the Prince there is none besides him that prohibits it in case of need Thus is it not lawful for a King to be a Minor or too easie to let himself be governed The Scepter of this Country soon falls from hands that need a support to sustain it On the contrary in Kingdoms where several permanent bodies of Magistracy divide the Splendor and the Exercise of the Royal Authority these same bodies do preserve it entire for the King who imparts it to them because they deliver not to the Usurper that part which is in their hands and which alone suffices to save that which the King himself knows not how to keep In the ancient Rebellions of China it appears The peril in re-uniting all the Royal Authority in the Seal that he who seized on the Royal Seal presently rendered himself Master of all because that the people obeyed the Orders where the Seal appear'd without informing themselves in whose hands the Seal was And the Jealousie which the King of Siam has of his that I have said he intrusts with no person persuades me that it is the same in his Country The danger therefore to these Princes is in that wherein they place their security Their Policy requires that their whole Authority should be in their Seal to exercise it more entire themselves alone And this Policy as much exposes their Authority as their Seal is easie to lose The same danger is found in a great Treasure A publick Treasure necessary to despotick Governments and what are the Inconveniences thereof The Conclusion of this Chapter the only spring of all the Despotick Governments where the ruin'd people cannot supply extraordinary Subsidies in publick necessities In a great Treasure all the Forces of the State reunite themselves and he that seizes on the Treasure seizes on the State So that besides a Treasures ruining the People on whom it is levied it frequently serves against those that accumulate it and this likewise draws the dissipation thereof The Indian Government has therefore all the defects of the Despotick Government It renders the Prince and his Subjects equally uncertain It betrays the Royal Authority and delivers it up entire under pretence of putting the more entire Management thereof into the hands of a single person and moreover it deprives it of its natural defence by separating the whole Interest of the Subjects from that of the Prince and State Having therefore related how the Kings of Siam do treat their Subjects it remains to show how they treat as well with foreign Princes by Embassies as with the foreign Nations which are fled to Siam CHAP. XV. Concerning the Form of Embassies at Siam The Eastern Ambassadors represent not their Masters and are less honored than in Europe AN Ambassador throughout the East is no other than a Kings Messenger he represents not his Master They honour him little in comparison of the respects which are render'd to the Letters of Credence whereof he is Bearer Mr. de Chaumont tho an Ambassador extraordinary never had a Balon of the Body not on the very day of his entrance and it was in a Balon of the Body that the Kings Letter was put which he had to deliver to the King of Siam This Balon had four Vmbrella's one at each corner of the Seat and it was attended with four other Balons of the Body adorn'd with their Vmbrella's but empty as the King of Spain when he goes abroad in his Coach and that he would be seen and known has always one which follows him empty which is called de respeto a word and custom come from Italy The Kings Presents were likewise carry'd in Balons of the Body and the same things were observed at the entrance of the King's Envoys Thus the Orientals make no difference between an Ambassador and an Envoy And they understand not Ambassadors nor ordinary Envoys nor Residents because they send no person to reside at a foreign Court but there to dispatch a business and return The Siamese Embassies consists in three persons The Siameses do never send more nor less than three Ambassadors together The first is called Rayja Tout that is to say Royal Messenger the second Oubba Tout and the third Tri Tout terms which I understand not but the two last Ambassadors are obliged in every thing to follow the Advice of the first They are looked upon as Messengers which carry a Letter Every one therefore who is the carrier of a Letter from the King is reputed an Ambassador throughout the East Wherefore after the Ambassador of Persia which Mr. de Chaumont left in the Country of Siam was dead at Tenasserim his Domesticks having elected one amongst them to deliver the King of Persia's Letter to the King of Siam he that was elected was received without any other Character as the real Ambassador would have been and with the same honors which the King of Persia had formerly granted to the Ambassador of Siam He returns them no Answer but a Recepisse But that wherein they treat an Ambassador like a meer Messenger is that the King of Siam in the Audience of Leave gives him a Recepisse of the Letter he has received from him and if this Prince returns an Answer he gives it not to him but he sends his own Ambassadors with him to carry it How the King of Siam is advertised of the Arrival of an Ambassador A foreign Ambassador which arrives at Siam is stopped at the Entrance of the Kingdom until the King of Siam has received intelligence thereof and if he is accompanied with Siamese Ambassadors as we were it belongs to the
The Siameses which embraced the Religion of the Moors had the Priviledge of being exempted from the personal Service But the Barcalon Moor soon experienced the Inconstancy of the Fortunes of Siam he fell into Disgrace and the Credit of those of his Nation fell afterwards into Decay The considerable Offices and Employments were taken away from them and the Siameses which were turned Mahumetans were forc'd to pay in ready Money for the six Months Service from which they had been exempted Nevertheless their Mosques are remaining to them as well as the publick Protection which the King of Siam gives to their Religion as to all foreign Religions There are therefore three or four Thousand Moors at Siam as many Portugueses born in India and as many Chineses and perhaps as many Malays besides what there is of other Nations The Foreign Commerce ceased at Siam has caused the Richest Strangers and especially the Moors to depart thence But the richest Foreigners and especially the Moors are retired elsewhere since the King of Siam has reserved to himself alone almost all the foreign Commerce The King his Father had heretofore done the same thing and perhaps it is the Policy of Siam to do it thus from time to time otherwise it is certain that they have almost always left the Trade free and that it has frequently flourished at Siam Ferdinand Mendez Pinto reports that in his time there were annually above a thousand foreign Ships whereas at present there goes no more than two or three Dutch Barks Why the Foreign Trade ceased at Siam Commerce requires a certain liberty no person can resolve to go to Siam necessarily to sell unto the King what is carry'd thither and to buy of him alone what one would carry thence when this was not the product of the Kingdom For though there were several foreign Ships together at Siam the Trade was not permitted from one Ship to the other nor with the Inhabitants of the Country Natives or Foreigners till that the King under the pretence of a preference due to his Royal dignity had purchased what was best in the Ships and at his own rate to sell it afterwards as he pleased because that when the season for the departure of the Ships presses on the Merchants choose rather to sell to great loss and dearly to buy a new Cargo than to wait at Siam a new season to depart without hopes of making a better Trade A Siamese Song Say Samon eüy leûpacam Son Seüa conêp neüa Tchâon Keun diaou nayey pleng nij co tchaoüa pleng day pleng labam le tchaoüey tchautay pleng nij cochaoüa pleng So nayey peüy Vongle chaóüey Tchiong quouang nang Tchang Tchayleu Tcha deun ey Musical Instruments Statues of Somona Codom A Brasse Statue A Brick statue in Demi relief gildâ—â— A Brasse statue gilded A Platforme of the Hall of Audience of Siam A CONVENT of Talapoins A Talapat leafe or the Umbrelle of the Talapoins In a word 't is neither the natural Riches The Natural Siameses cannot afford a great Trade nor the Manufactures of the Kingdom of Siam that should tempt one to go thither The natural Siameses ruin'd as they are by impositions and services cannot carry on a great Trade though they should have all the liberty imaginable The Trade is manag'd only with the superfluous Money and in the places where the Impositions are very great there is scarcely found Money necessary for life The vast summ levied on the people returns slowly to the people and especially in the remote Provinces and the whole does not return because that a great part thereof remains in the hands of those that tend upon the receipts and expences of the Prince And as to that part which returns to the people it remains not in their hands for their uses it soon goes thence to return to the Princes Coffers so that it must needs be that all the small Trades do cease for want of Money which cannot be but the general Commerce of a State does greatly suffer But this is yet much truer at Siam where the Prince annually accumulates his Revenues instead of expending them Having thus explained what respects the King the Officers and the People of Siam it remains to speak of their Talapoins or Priests CHAP. XVII Of the Talapoins and their Convents THey live in Convents which the Siameses do call Vat The origine of the word Pagod and they make use of the Temples which the Siameses do call Pihan and the Portugueses Pagode from the Persian word Poutgheda which signifies a Temple of Idols but the Portugueses do use the word Pagode to signify equally the Idol and the Temple The Temple and the Convent do take up a very great square piece of ground A Description of the Convents of the Talapoins encompast with an Inclosure of Bambou In the middle of the ground stands the Temple as in the place esteemed the most honourable in their Encampments and at the corners of this ground and along the Bambou Inclosure are ranged the Cells of the Talapoins like the Tents of an Army and sometimes the Rows thereof are double or triple These Cells are little single Houses erected on Piles and that of the Superior is after the same manner but a little larger and higher than the rest The Pyramids stand near and quite round the Temple and the ground which the Temple and the Pyramids take up besides its being higher is inclosed between four Walls but from these Walls to the Cells there likewise remains a great void piece of Ground which is as it were the Court of the Convent Sometimes these Walls are all bare and serve only as an Inclosure to the ground which the Temple and the Pyramids take up Sometimes along these Walls there are covered Galleries of the Figure of those which in our Religious Houses we call the Cloyster and on a counterwall breast high which runs along these Galleries they place in a Train and close together a great number of Idols sometimes gilded Though at Siam there are some Talapoinesses or Women They have Cells for the Talapoinesses who in most things do observe the Rule of the Talapoins yet they have no other Convents than those of the Talapoins themselves The Siameses do think that the advanced Age of all these Women for there are none young is a sufficient caution of their Chastity There are not Talapoinesses in all the Convents but in those where any are their Cells run along one of the sides of the Bambou Inclosure which I have mentioned without being otherwise separated from those of the Talapoins The Neus or Talapoin Children are dispersed one two How the Talapoin Children are lodg'd or three into every Talapoins Cell and they serve the Talapoin with whom they lodge that is to say with whom they have been placed by their Parents So that when a Talapoin has two or three Nens he receives no
Indians have added to these Errors The Indians do now believe like the ancient Chineses some Souls as well good as bad diffused every where to which they have distributed the Divine Omnipotence And there is yet found some remains of this very Opinion amongst the Indians which have embraced Mahumetanism But by a new Error the Pagans of the Indies have thought all these Souls of the same nature and they have made them all to rowl from one body to another The Spirit of the Heaven of the ancient Chineses had some Air of Divinity It was I think immortal and not subject to wax old and to die and to leave its place to a Successor but in the Indian Doctrine of the Metempsychosis the Souls are fixed no where and succeeding one another every where they are not one better than another by their nature they are only designed to higher or lower functions in Nature according to the merit of their work Why the Indians have consecrated no Temple to the Spirits not even to that of Heaven The Antient Chineses have divided the Justice of God The Justice of Heaven was principally busied in punishing the Faults of the Kings of China Thus the Indians have consecrated no Temples to the Spirits not so much as to that of Heaven because they believe them all Souls like all the rest which are still in the course of Transmigration that is to say in Sin and in the Torments of different sorts of life and consequently unworthy of having Altars But if the ancient Chineses have as I may say reduc'd the Providence and Omnipotence of God into piece-meals they have not less divided his Justice They assert that the Spirits like concealed Ministers were principally busied in punishing the hidden faults of men that the Spirit of Heaven punished the faults of the King the Ministring Spirits of Heaven the faults of the King's Ministers and so of other Spirits in regard of other men On this Foundation they said to their King that though he was the adoptive Son of Heaven yet the Heaven would not have any regard to him by any sort of Affliction but by the sole consideration of the good or evil that he should do in the Government of his Kingdom They called the Chinese Empire the Celestial Command because said they a King of China ought to govern his State as Heaven governed Nature and that it was to Heaven that he ought to seek the Science of Governing They acknowledged that not only the Art of Ruling was a Present from Heaven but that Regality it self was given by Heaven and that it was a present difficult to keep because that they supposed that Kings could not maintain themselves on the Throne without the savour of Heaven nor please Heaven but by Vertue How they believe their Kings responsable to Heaven for the manners of their Subjects They carried this Doctrine so far that they pretended that the sole Vertue of Kings might render their Subjects Vertuous and that thereby the Kings were first responsible to Heaven for the wicked manners of their Kingdom The Vertue of Kings that is to say the Art of Ruling according to the Laws of China was in their Opinion a Donative from Heaven which they called Celestial Reason or Reason given by Heaven and like to that of Heaven The Vertue of Subjects according to them the regards of the Citizens as well from one to another as from all towards their Prince according to the Laws of China was the work of good Kings 'T is a small matter said they to punish Crimes it is necessary that a King prevents them by his Vertue They extoll one of their Kings for having reigned Twenty two years the People not perceiving that is to say not feeling the weight of the Royal Authority no more than the force which moves Nature and which they attribute to Heaven They report then that for these Twenty two years there was not one single Process in all China nor one single Execution of Justice a Wonder which they call to govern imperceptably like the Heaven and which alone may cause a doubt of the Fidelity of their History Another of their Kings meeting as they say a Criminal which was lead to Punishment took it upon himself for that under his Reign he committed Crimes worthy of Death And another seeing China afflicted with Sterility for seven years condemned himself if their History may be credited to bear the Crimes of his People as thinking himself only culpable and resolved to devote himself to death and to sacrifice himself to the Spirit of Heaven the Revenger of the Crimes of Kings But their History adds that Heaven satisfied with the Piety of that Prince exempted him from that Sacrifice and restored Fertility to the Lands by a sudden and plentiful Rain As the Heaven therefore executes Justice only upon the King and that it inflicts it only upon the King for what it sees punishable in the People the Ministers of Heaven do execute Justice on the secret Faults which the King's Ministers commit and all the Officers which depend upon them and after the same manner the other Spirits do watch over the Actions of the Men that in the Kingdom of China have a rank equal to that which these Spirits do possess in the invincible Monarchy of Nature whereof the Spirit of Heaven is King Besides this the natural Honor which most men have of the dead The Chineses fear their dead Parents whom they knew very well in their Life-time and the Opinion which several have of having seen them appear to them whether by an effect of this natural Honor which represents them to them or by Dreams so lively that they resemble the Truth do induce the ancient Chineses to believe that the Souls of their Ancestors which they judged to be of very subtile matter pleased themselves in continuing about their Posterity and that they might though after their death chastise the Faults of their Children The Chinese People still continue in these opinions of the temporal Punishments and Rewards which come from the Soul of Heaven and from all the other Souls though moreover for the greatest part they have embraced the Opinion of the Metempsychosis unknown to their Ancestors But by little and little the Men of Letters that is to say The Impiety of the present Chineses which are men of Learning those that have some degrees of Literature and who alone have a Hand in the Government being become altogether impious and yet having altered nothing in the Language of their Predecessors have made of the Soul of Heaven and of all the other Souls I know not what aerial substances uuprovided of Intelligence and for the Judge of our Works they have established a blind Fatality which in their opinion makes that which might exercise an Omnipotent and Illuminated Justice How ancient this Impiety is at China belongs not to me to determin Father de Rhodes in his
eat and that it will be by this pious Charity that he will consummate his Vertue This expectation of a new God to make use of this Term renders them careful and credulous as often as any one is proposed to them as an extraordinary Person especially if he that is proposed to them is entirely stupid because that the entire Stupidity resembles what they represent by the Inactivity and Impassibility of the Nireupan As for example there appeared some years since at Siam a young Boy born dumb and so stupid that he seemed to have nothing humane but the Shape yet the Report spread it self through the whole Kingdom that he was of the first men which inhabited this Country and that he would one day become a God that is to say arrive at the Nireupan The People flocked to him from all parts to adore him and make him Presents till that the King fearing the consequences of this Folly caused it to cease by the Chastisement of some of those that suffered themselves to be seduced I have read some such thing in Tosi's India Orientale Tom. I. pag. 203. He reports that the Bonzees of Cochinchina having taken away from them a stupid Infant show'd him to the People as a God and that after having inrich'd themselves with the Presents which the People made him they published that this pretended God would burn himself and he adds that they indeed burnt him publickly after having stupified his Senses by some Drink and calling the insensible state wherein they had put him Extasie This last History is given as a crafty Trick of the Bonzees but it demonstrates as well as the first the Belief which these People have that there may daily spring up some new God and the Inclination which they have to take extream Stupidity for a beginning of the Nireupan Sommona-Codom being disingaged by the Alms-deeds which I have mentioned from all the Bands of Life devoted himself to Fasting to Prayer and to the other Exercises of the perfect Life But as these Practises are possible only to the Talapoins he embraced the Profession of a Talapoin and when he had heaped up his good works he immediately acquired all the Priviledges thereof He found himself endowed with so great a Strength that in a Duel he vanquished another man of a consummated Vertue whom they call Pra Souane and who doubting of the Perfection whereunto Sommona-Codom was arrived challenged him to try his Strength and was vanquisht This Pra Souane is not the sole God or rather the sole perfect Man which they pretend to have been contemporary with Sommona-Codom They name several others as Pra Ariaseria of whom they report that he was Forty Fadoms high that his Eyes were three and a half broad and two and a half round that is to say less in Circumference than Diameter if there is no fault in the Writing from whence I have taken this Remark The Siameses have a time of Wonders as had the Aegyptians and the Greeks and as the Chineses have For Instance their principal Book which they believe to be the work of Sommona-Codom relates that a certain Elephant had Three and thirty Heads that each of its Heads had seven Teeth every Tooth seven Pools every Pool seven Flowers every Flower seven Leafs every Leaf seven Towers and every Tower seven other things which had each seven others and these likewise others and always by seven for the numbers have always been a great Subject of Superstition Thus in the Alcoran if my Memory deceives me not there is an Angel with a very great number of Heads each of which hath as many Mouths and every Mouth as many Tongues which do praise God as many times every day Besides corporal strength Sommona-Codom had the power of doing all sorts of Miracles For example he could make himself as big and as great as he pleas'd and on the contrary he could render himself so little that he could steal out of sight and stand on the head of another man without being felt either by his weight or perceived by the Eyes of another Then he could annihilate himself and place some other man in his stead that is to say that then he could enjoy the repose of the Nireupan He suddenly and perfectly understood all the things of the World He equally penetrated things past and to come and having given to his body an entire Agility he easily transported himself from one place to another to preach Vertue to all Nations He had two principal Disciples the one on the right Hand and the other on the left they were both plac'd behind him and by each other's side on the Altars but their Statues are less than his He that is plac'd on his right Hand is called Pra Mogla and he that is on his left Hand is called Pra Scaribout Behind these three Statues and on the same Altar they only represent the Officers within the Palace of Sommona-Codom I know not whether they have Names Along the Galleries or Cloysters which are sometimes round the Temples are the Statues of the other Officers without the Palace of Sommona-Codom Of Pra Mogla they report that at the request of the damned he overturned the Earth and took the whole Fire of Hell into the hollow of his Hand but that designing to extinguish it he could not effect it because that this Fire dried up the Rivers instead of extinguishing and that it consumed all that whereon Pra Mogla placed it Pra Mogla therefore went to beseech Pra Pouti Tchaou or Sommona-Codom to extinguish Hell Fire but though Pra Pouti Tchaou could do it he thought it not convenient because he said that men would grow too wicked if he should destroy the Fear of this Punishment But after that Pra Pouti Tchaou was arrived at this high Vertue he ceased not to kill a Mar or a Man for they write Mar and Man though they pronounce always Man and as a Punishment for this great fault his Life exceeded not Eighty years after which he died by disappearing on a sudden like a Spark which is lost in the Air. The Man were a People Enemies to Sommona-Codom whom they called Paya Man and because they suppose that this People was an Enemy to so holy a Man they do represent them as a monstrous People with a very large Visage with Teeth horrible for their Size and with Serpents on their Head instead of Hair One day then as Pra Pouti Tchaou eat Pig 's flesh he had a Chollick fit which killed him An admirable end for a man so abstemious but it was necessary that he died by a Pig because they suppose that the Soul of the Man whom he slew was not then in the Body of a Man but in the Body of a Pig as if a Soul could be esteemed even according to their Opinion the Soul of a Man when it is in the Body of a Pig But all these inventers of Stories are not so attentive
true God either the Name of Soveraign Lord or that of King of Heaven and Earth or some other Name which signifies in the Language of the Country what is most worthy of Veneration as the word Pra in Siamese But at the same time it be necessary to instruct them to annex unto these Names the intire Idea of the Deity an Idea so much the more easie to receive as it only heightens and embellishes the mean Idea's of the false Gods Gott which now signifies God in German was anciently according to Vossius the Name of Mercury who seems to have been every where adored Certainly the words Theos and Deus have not always signified in Greece and Italy the God which we adore What then have the Christians done They have accepted these Names in the stead of the ineffable Name of God and they have explained them after their manner From the Knowledge of an eternal spiritual God and Creator it would be easie to descend to the Faith of Jesus Christ and these People would make no Opposition if first they saw themselves cured of some sensible Ignorance The Spirit of man is such that he almost implicitly receives the Opinions of him who has visibly convinc'd him of his first Errors Thoroughly convince a sick person that the Remedy which he uses is not good and he will immediately take yours But in my opinion it is one of the most important Articles of the conduct of the Missionaries How the Missionaries ought to accommodate themselves to the simple customs of the Orientals in what concerns not Religion to accommodate themselves entirely to the simplicity of the Manners of the Orientals in their Food Furniture Lodging and whatever the Rules of the Talapoins prescribe wherein they have nothing contrary to Christianity The example of Father de Nobilibus the Jesuit is famous Being in Mission to the Kingdom of Madura in the Indies he resolved to live like a Jogue that is to say like a Bramin of the Woods to go with his Feet naked and his Headbare and his Body almost naked in the scorching Sands of this Country and to nourish himself with that excess of frugality which appear'd intollerable and it is reported that by this means he converted near forty thousand persons Now as this exact imitation of the Indian severity is the true way to make some Conversions so the further one should remove therefrom the more one should attract the hatred and contempt of the Indians It is necessary to learn in these Countries to make a shift with whatever they do and not to sustain the necessities or rather the superfluities of these Countries if one would not cause Jealousie and Envy to some Nations the particular persons of which conceal their fortune because they can preserve it only by hiding The less the Missionaries appear settled the more the Mission is established and the better it promotes Religion As the East is not a Country of settlement for private persons it would be an injury to think to accomplish it the Natives of the Country do not themselves enjoy any solid fortune and they would not fail to pick quarrels with those that should appear richer than them to deprive them of their Riches Moreover the Orientals seem to have no prejudice for any Religion and it must be confessed that if the beauty of Christianity has not convinc'd them it is principally by reason of the bad opinion which the Avarice Treachery Invasions and Tyranny of the Portugueses and some Christians in the Indies have implanted and rivetted in them But it is time to conclude this Relation with the Life of Thevetat the Brother of Sommona-Codom and with all the other things that I have promised The End of the First Tome A NEW Historical Relation OF THE KINGDOM OF SIAM BY Monsieur DE LA LOVBERE Envoy Extraordinary from the FRENCH KING to the KING of SIAM in the years 1687 and 1688. Wherein a full and curious Account is given of the Chinese Way of Arithmetick and Mathematick Learning TOME II. Illustrated with SCULPTURES Done out of French by A. P. Gen. R. S.S. LONDON Printed by F. L. for Tho. Horne at the Royal Exchange Francis Saunders at the New Exchange and Tho. Bennet at the Half-Moon in St. Pauls Church-yard MDCXCIII TO THE READER I Have almost no other hand in this Volume than the collecting the Pieces thereof Some are Translations which are not mine in some others I only have held the Pen whilst the substance thereof was dictated unto me If there are any which appear too foreign to a Relation of Siam they are not so to my Voyage the History of which would perhaps have pardon'd me if I had undertaken to do it and much less to the general Knowledge which I have endeavoured to give of all the East thereby to make known the Genius of the Siameses However I crave Pardon for two or three Pieces at most which will not perhaps displease in themselves and which I have given to satisfie the Curiosity of some Persons whom I honor A TABLE OF THE PIECES contained in this VOLUME THE Life of Thevetat translated from the Balie Pag. 145 An Explication of the Patimouc or Text of the Vinac Pag. 157 The Principal Maxims of the Talapoine of Siam translated from the Siamese Pag. 158 An Account of the Charges of Justice translated out of the Siamese Pag. 163 Concerning the Measures Weights and Moneys of Siam Pag. 164 A List of the Moveables Arms and Habits of the Siameses and of the parts of their Houses Pag. 165 The Names of the Days Months and Years of the Siameses Pag. 168 Of the Monsons and Tides of the Gulph of Siam Pag. 170 A Description of the Principal Fruits of Siam Pag. 171 Of the Siamese and Balie Tongues Pag. 173 A Smoaking Instrument made use of by the Moors which are at Siam Pag. 180 The Chess-Play of the Chineses Pag. 181 The Abacus or Counting-Table of the Chineses Pag. 182 Of the Cape of Good-Hope Pag. 183 Rules of the Siamese Astronomy for calculating the Motions of the Sun and Moon translated from the Siamese and since examined and explained by M. Cassini of the Royal Academy of Sciences Pag. 186 Reflections upon the Indian Rules Pag. 199 The Problem of the Magical Squares according to the Indians Pag. 227 The Care of the Manners amongst the Chineses and of the Antiquity of their History Pag. 247 Reflections on the Chinese Chronology by Monsieur Cassini Pag. 252 Concerning the Isle Taprobane by Monsieur Cassini Pag. 259 THE LIFE OF THEVETAT Translated from the Balie AFter the birth of Pouti Sat * This is one of the names of Sommona-Codom Sat in my Opinion signifies Lord in Baly as Tchaou in Siamese and so he is called Pouti Sat and Pouti Tchaou the word Pouti is Baly who by his good works in process of time arrived at the Nireupan his Father King Taousoutout consulted the Soothsayers to know what would
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