Haripuñjaya

Haripuñjaya, also written Hariphunchai, was a Mon kingdom in today's northern Thailand, centred on the city of Lamphun, which itself bore the name Haripuñjaya. It flourished between roughly the eighth and the thirteenth centuries, though the date of its foundation is much disputed, and it ended in 1292 when the Tai ruler Mangrai captured the city and absorbed it into Lan Na. Its art and inscriptions place it within the wider world of the Mon city-states of Dvaravati.

People were living in the Lamphun basin long before the foundation the chronicles describe. Excavated burial grounds there have been dated to between about 500 BCE and the sixth century CE, and an iron-working site at Ban Hong to the later sixth century. The archaeologist Saiklang Jindasu, who reported these finds, notes that the people who left them cannot be firmly identified.

Later chronicles, including the Cāmadevivaṃsa and the Jinakalamali, tell how four hermits founded the city and asked the Mon king of Lavo, today's Lopburi, to send his daughter Camadevi to be its first ruler. She is said to have borne twin sons, one of whom succeeded her at Lamphun while the other ruled nearby Lampang. Local legend adds that she defeated Wilangkha, a king of the Lawa people near present-day Chiang Mai.

Historians treat these accounts with caution, since the chronicles were written centuries later; one is dated to the early fifteenth century. The Jinakalamali places Camadevi's journey north in 662, but many scholars consider the chronicle dates too early. Hiram Woodward suggests that, if she was a real person, her move is more likely to belong to the tenth century, while Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit argue that the archaeology favours the eleventh or twelfth. Sarasawadee Ongsakul divides Haripuñjaya's art into an earlier phase close to Dvaravati and a later one, from about the eleventh century, showing Burmese and Indian influence.

In the twelfth century King Adityaraja is remembered for building works and for conflict with the rulers of Lavo, then under the influence of the Khmer Empire. The chronicles also describe repeated, unsuccessful sieges of Lamphun by peoples from the north. One chronicle tells of an epidemic that drove many of the city's people to Thaton and then Bago in lower Myanmar, where they found the local language was the same as their own; scholars note that the story leaves much unexplained and survives only in late copies. Some writers have also linked the refounding of Sukhothai to a noble from Haripuñjaya.

Haripuñjaya produced the last phase of Old Mon writing in Thailand, from about the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. Seven large steles from Lamphun record donations, building works and an earthquake with the repairs that followed. A Mon inscription found at Vat Don and dated 1219 records that King Sabbadhisiddhi was briefly ordained as a monk, in the presence of his two sons and a large community of monks and novices. The historian Wyatt read the text as a list of the king's meritorious acts and took this as evidence that Buddhism at Lamphun was thriving and closely bound to royal power. Temples such as Wat Phra That Hariphunchai and Wat Chamadevi still preserve Dvaravati-style stupas.

The chronicles of the early thirteenth century tell of religious foundations, not wars. In 1292 Mangrai, the Tai Yuan king who was building the Lan Na kingdom, took Haripuñjaya after a siege. The chronicles say he first sent an agent named Ai Fa to stir up discontent in the city. The last king, Yi Ba, fled south to Lampang. In Woodward's view, Haripuñjaya is the only place showing an unbroken line from late Dvaravati Mon speakers to the Tai kingdom based at Chiang Mai.

Our 1200 map shows Haripuñjaya under the label Harapunchai, drawn as a broad territory reaching beyond northern Thailand into parts of today's Laos and Myanmar, a generous outline for a kingdom whose real extent is uncertain. Sukhothai appears in the region on the 1279 map.