TheIndosphere

An encyclopedia of Indian civilization.

BuddhistHinduLate Medieval

Ayutthaya Kingdom

Also known as Krung Si Ayutthaya

Ayutthaya was the Siamese kingdom ruled from the island city of that name on the Chao Phraya from 1351 until its destruction by a Burmese army in 1767, one of the great trading states and Theravada Buddhist kingdoms of mainland Southeast Asia.

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Foundation and growth

By the traditional date, Ayutthaya was founded in 1351 by a ruler known as U Thong, who took the name Ramathibodi. The city stood on an island formed by three rivers, well placed both for rice farming in the lower Chao Phraya basin and for sea trade. Within a century it had become the leading power among the Tai states. Its armies took Angkor in 1431, after which the Khmer court moved south, and Ayutthaya absorbed the older Tai kingdom of Sukhothai in the fifteenth century.

The kings of Ayutthaya drew heavily on Khmer models of kingship. Brahmin ritualists served at court, the king was treated as a sacred figure, and a court language with Khmer and Sanskrit loanwords developed. Borommatrailokanat (r. 1448–1488) is credited with reorganising the administration and the system of ranks, the sakdina, that fixed each person's status in units of land.

Wars with Burma

In 1569 the Burmese king Bayinnaung of the Toungoo dynasty took Ayutthaya, and it was a vassal of Burma for fifteen years. Prince Naresuan declared independence in 1584 and in the following years defeated Burmese invasions. Thai tradition remembers his victory in single combat on elephants over the Burmese crown prince in 1593. He went on to make Ayutthaya a major power again.

The trading capital

In the seventeenth century Ayutthaya was one of the great cosmopolitan cities of Asia, with quarters for Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Dutch, English, Persian and Malay merchants. Royal monopolies controlled much of the foreign trade. King Narai (r. 1656–1688) exchanged embassies with Louis XIV of France and gave great power to a Greek adventurer, Constantine Phaulkon. A palace coup in 1688, as Narai lay dying, ended with Phaulkon's execution and the expulsion of the French garrison, and the kingdom grew wary of European powers.

The city was crowded with temples and palaces of brick and stucco: the Wat Phra Si Sanphet, the royal temple with three great stupas, the Wat Mahathat and the Wat Chaiwatthanaram among them. European visitors around 1700 compared it in size with the great cities of Europe.

The fall

In 1765 the armies of the Konbaung king Hsinbyushin invaded, and after a siege of more than a year they took Ayutthaya in April 1767. The city was burned and plundered, its people carried off or scattered, and the royal line ended. Within months the general Taksin rallied resistance, drove out the Burmese garrisons and set up a new capital at Thonburi. His successor, Rama I, founded Bangkok in 1782 and modelled it consciously on the lost city. The ruins of Ayutthaya were listed by UNESCO in 1991.

Further reading

  • Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
  • Gombrich, Richard F. Theravada Buddhism: A Social History. Routledge, 2006
  • Higham, Charles. The Civilization of Angkor. University of California Press, 2001

See also

  • Khmer Empire — The Khmer Empire was a Southeast Asian state centered on Angkor in present-day Cambodia that flourished from 802 to 1431 CE, building its political and religious order on Indian Hindu and, later, Buddhist models.

This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.