ROMANCE OF THE HAREM.
"MUANG THAI," OR THE KINGDOM OF THE FREE.
Siam is called by its people "Muang Thai" (the kingdom of the free). The appellation which we employ is derived from a Malay word sagûm (the brown race), and is never used by the natives themselves; nor is the country ever so named in the ancient or modern annals of the kingdom.
In the opinion of Pickering, the Siamese are of Malay origin. A majority of intelligent Europeans, however, regard the population as mainly Mongolian. But there is much more probability that they belong to that powerful Indo-European race to which Europe owes its civilization, and whose chief branches are the Hindoos, Persians, Greeks, Latins, Kelts, and the Teutonic and Sclavonic tribes. The original site of this race was in Bactria, and the earliest division of the people could not have been later than three or four thousand years before the Christian era. Comparative philology alone enables us to trace the origin of nations of great antiquity. According to the researches of the late king, who was a very studious and learned man, of twelve thousand eight hundred Siamese words, more than five thousand are found to be Sanskrit, or to have their roots in that language, and the rest in the Indo-European tongues; to which have been superadded a great number of Chinese and Cambodian terms. He says: "The names of temples, cities, and villages in the kingdom of Siam are derived from three sources, namely, Sanskrit, Siamese, and Cambodian. The names which the common people generally use are spoken according to the idiom of the Siamese language, are short and easily pronounced; but the names used in the Court language and in the government documents, which receive the government seals, are almost all of Sanskrit derivation, apt to be long; and even though the Sanskrit names are given at full length, the people are prone to speak them incorrectly. Some of our cities and temples have two and even three names, being the ancient and modern names, as they have been used in the Court language or that of the people."
As the words common to the Siamese and the Sanskrit languages must have been in use by both peoples before their final separation, we have here a clew to the origin and degree of civilization attained by the former before they emigrated from the parent stock.
Besides the true Siamese, a great variety of races inhabit the Siamese territories. The Siamese themselves trace their genealogy up to the first disciples of the Buddha, and commence their records at least five centuries before the Christian era. First, a long succession of dynasties, with varying seats of government, figure in their ancient books, in which narrations of the miracles of the Buddhas, and of the intervention of supernatural beings, are frequently introduced. Then come accounts of matrimonial alliances between the princes of Siam and the Imperial family of China; of embassies to, and wars with, the neighboring countries, interspersed with such relations of prodigies and such marvellous legends as to surpass all possible conception of our less fertile Western imaginations. It is only after the establishment of Ayudia as the capital of Siam, A.D. 1350, that history assumes its rightful functions, and the course of events, with the regular succession of sovereigns, is registered with tolerable accuracy.
The name of Siam was first heard in Europe—that is, in Portugal—in the year 1511, nine years after Alfonso d'Albuquerque, the great Viceroy of the Indies, had landed on the coast of Malabar with his soldiers, and conquered Goa, which he made the seat of the Portugo-Indian government, and the centre of its Asiatic operations. After establishing his power in Goa, D'Albuquerque subdued the whole of the Malabar, the island of Ceylon, the Sunda Isles, the peninsula of Malacca, and the beautiful island of Ormuz, at the entrance to the Persian Gulf.
It was here that D'Albuquerque is said to have received the ambassadors of the Emperor of Persia, sent to collect the tribute formerly paid to him by the sovereigns of the island, and, instead of the customary gold and silver, to have laid before them iron bullets and a sword, with: "This is the coin in which Portugal pays those who demand tribute from her." Whether this incident really occurred or not, it is certain that D'Albuquerque made the name of Portugal so feared and respected in the East, that many of the potentates in that region, and among them the kings of Siam and Pegu, sent embassies to him, and sought his alliance and protection. The profitable relations anticipated from this opening were interrupted, however, by the long and bitter war which shortly broke out between Siam and Birmah, and the intercourse between the Siamese and Portuguese was not renewed for a long time. As early as the fifteenth century the celebrated German traveller, Mandelslohe, visited Ayudia, the capital of Siam, and called it the Venice of the East,—a title equally applicable to the modern capital, Bangkok. The Portuguese explorer, Mendez Pinto, who was in Siam in the sixteenth century, gives a very favorable account of the country, and, in my opinion, deserves more credit for the truth of his statements than was accorded to him by his contemporaries. In 1632 an English vessel is said to have reached Ayudia, and to have found it in ruins, the country having been laid waste by successive incursions of the Birmese.