25 Chapter VIII: From Distant Lands - Introduction

Luang Por and the Western Sangha: Part 1 INTRODUCTION

From the mid-fourteenth century until its sack by the Burmese in 1767, Ayutthaya was the capital of the Thai nation. Established on an island in the Chao Phraya River, it was ideally situated to act as an entrepôt port at a time when land routes were safer than sea, and merchants in the Orient sought to avoid sending their goods through the Straits of Malacca. Within two hundred years, Ayutthaya had become one of the most cosmopolitan cities in Asia. Its population of approximately a million people exceeded that of London. Some five hundred temples, many with pagodas covered in gold leaf, lent the city a magical, heaven-like aura that dazzled visitors from other lands. By the mid-seventeenth century, with communities of traders from France, Holland, Portugal and England housed outside the city wall, the inhabitants of Ayutthaya had become accustomed to Westerners or ‘farangs’. The kings of Ayutthaya often employed foreign mercenaries as bodyguards. To the Thais, these strange white beings seemed to resemble a species of ogre: hairy, ill-smelling, quarrelsome and coarse, lovers of meat and strong spirits, but possessors of admirable technical skills, particularly in the arts of war.

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