Phrip Phri (), later known as Phetchaburi, was a Xiān polity on the west coast of the Bay of Bangkok in lower central Thailand. In the Dvaravati period the site was a port on the sea route between India and China, and rulers of the Padumasuriyavaṃśa line are recorded there from the late 10th century before the seat was moved elsewhere. It was re-established in the 12th century by a ruler of the same line who came south from the Sukhothai–Nakhon Thai region.
Over roughly a century and a half the polity extended its reach north to Phraek Si Racha and south into Tambralinga, sent embassies to the Yuan dynasty, and passed by inheritance and marriage to Uthong V, under whom it was absorbed into the Ayutthaya Kingdom in 1351. Whether it was politically independent of Angkor in the interval is disputed.
Name
The city appears under several names. Phrip Phri is the Thai form; the Sanskrit Srijayavajrapuri, from Jaya + Vajra + , is the name used in the Preah Khan inscription of Jayavarman VII. Chinese records of the 1290s call the place Pi-ch'a-pu-li.
Its founder is likewise known by several styles: Pprappanom Tteleiseri in the 1684 Instructions Given to the Siamese Envoys Sent to Portugal, Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri () in Du Royaume de Siam, and Mahesvastidrādhirājakṣatriya in the . David K. Wyatt reports a ruler of Phetburi under the style Śrī Maheśvastidṛḍhirājākṣatriya in a year he reads as 1204, who entered trade relations with China and sent troops and colonists north to Chainat and south; he notes that the name is not that of O. W. Wolters's and Cœdès's Mahīdharavarman but is close enough to be of interest. Phetchaburi also lay on the overland route by which monks travelled between the Sukhothai country and Sri Lanka.
History
Early settlements
Caves and rock shelters in and around Phetchaburi have yielded evidence of settlement in the prehistoric era such as Ban Nong Fab in the west of Tha Yang district and Tham Fa Tho in Mueang district, Ratchaburi. Several settlements dating to the Metal Age in the late prehistoric period have been found on the plains and along the coast. Iron Age sites include Ban Khok Phrik, on a large hummock along the coast in Khung Krathin subdistrict, Mueang district, Ratchaburi, whose inhabitants practised burial rites, were linked to regional mineral sites, and traded by sea over long distances. Trade with distant communities from the late Metal Age onwards contributed to the growth of larger settlements on the fertile alluvial plains.
Sites and artefacts of the Dvaravati period, among them Buddha images and Wheels of the Law, are distributed across the area. In Ban Lat district, traces of buildings and stone statues were recovered at Ban Nong Phra, and earthenware, moulds for Buddha statues and glass beads at Noen Pho Yai; further traces were found near Khao Krajiew in Tha Yang district, and the ruins of a large religious building at Thung Setthi, Cha-am district. The Bangkok Post, surveying the province's antiquities, reports that no Dvaravati-style community has been found in the Phetchaburi River basin itself. Karen Mudar's survey of the moated settlements of the central plain nonetheless includes one she records as Petburi, enclosing 161 ha. It is the largest site in her sample that is not a regional centre, and it marks the southern limit of the distribution. She identified the moated sites as Dvaravati from moat shape and surface material rather than from excavation. Walailak Songsiri treats Phetchaburi and Ratchaburi alike as later towns grown out of earlier centres nearby, Ratchaburi out of the moated town of Khu Bua and Phetchaburi out of the coastal site at Khao Chao Lai on the Cha-am shore.
Some of this material was made locally rather than brought in. Stone workshops of the period have been excavated in the province, and the three stone dharmacakra recovered at U Thong, among them the pillar found near monument No. 11, were probably produced at such workshops, though Robert L. Brown has questioned the reconstruction of the style's emergence on which that account rests. Phetchaburi is also among the centres with which the West Asian merchants of the Phanom Surin ship, wrecked in the Tha Chin delta in the late eighth or early ninth century, are thought to have traded.
Baker and Pasuk count some forty moated towns across the Chao Phraya plain between the 6th and 12th centuries, most of them beside rivers. They shared religious practice, art styles and the use of Mon for inscriptions, but on their reading show no sign of political integration beyond, perhaps, local confederations.
Foundation
The chronicle tradition credits Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri with founding the city in the 12th century, but the place is attested earlier. A ruler named Dhalemesvara () is placed at Phetchaburi in the 9th century, contemporary with Phraya Kong of Nakhon Pathom, and the Legend of records that Phraya Kong married a princess of his line. The Ayutthaya Testimonies then name Vijayaraja and his son Srisimha as rulers of Phetchaburi in the late 10th and 11th centuries, Vijayaraja being described as its refounder and Srisimha as having afterwards left it to rule from Phraek Si Racha; both are of the line that traced its descent from Padumasuriyavaṃśa, the same line from which Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri came. What the sources describe is therefore a seat that moved between cities, not a single act of foundation.
The seat from which the founder's other line of descent is traced, Yassouttora Nacoora Louang or Tasoo Nacora Louang () in Du Royaume de Siam, is itself unidentified. Three candidates have been proposed. They are Yaśodharapura, Lavo's Lavapura, and, on phonetic grounds, the village of Tha Sao () near modern Uttaradit, reading Tasoo as Tha Sao and Nacoora Louang as "royal city", an area in which several archaeological sites lie, most notably the ruins at .
The Instructions, the Voyage de Siam of Guy Tachard and Du Royaume de Siam give the following sequence of capitals for the dynasty.
CapitalYearsKingsNotes/Contemporary eventsTchai pappe Mahanacon(Phraek Si Racha)756/57–890s? or 980s Pra Poat honne Sourittep pennaratui sonanne bopitraThe first kingIpoia Sanne Thora Thesma TeperatFall of Rāmaññadesa (Si Thep/Ayojjhapura?) (946) Moved the capital to Yassouttora Nacoora LouangTasoo Nacora Louang(Lavo or Yaśodharapura or Tha Sao)890s? or 980s?–1155Foundation of Yaśodharapura (890s)Collapsing era of Dvaravati (10th–11th centuries)Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri/ Pprappanom TteleiseriThe period of weak rule and feuding began in Yaśodharapura in 1150. Yaśodharapura fell under the Chinese King (1167–1177). Yaśodharapura fell under Champa (1178–1181). Lavo became independent. (1150s) Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri ordered the people to move to Soucouttae/Locontàï (1155). Rivalry between the Tai mueang and Lavo over Sukhothai and Mueang Chaliang (1150s–1230s). Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri moved south with about 54,000 followers and established Phrip Phri (1157 or 1188).Soucouttae/Locontàï(Sukhothai/Nakhon Thai)1155–1169Phrip Phri(Phetchaburi)1188–12051205–1342Phrip Phri – China royal intermarriages established.1342–1351Uthong VTraditional establishment of the Ayutthaya Kingdom (1351) Also King of Suphannabhum (r. 1341–1351)Ayodhya(Ayutthaya)1351–13691369–1767
Date of the refoundation
The sources place the 12th-century re-establishment in two different years, and the events recorded in between belong to neither. The 1684 Instructions state that Phrip Phri was built in 1157/58 by a king who came from Soucouttae (Sukhothai), moving south with some 54,000 followers, whereas Du Royaume de Siam has the same figure, there ruling at Locontàï (Nakhon Thai), ascend the throne in 1188 and found the city then. Between those two dates the chronicle traditions record him and his brother taking a succession of towns down the valley: Uthong I came to the vacant throne of Suphannabhum in 1163, Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri succeeded a kinsman at Jayasimhapuri about 1169, and he regained Phraek Si Racha in 1180. His line had held that seat before, under Srisimha. A territorial dispute with Tambralinga followed in 1196.
The material evidence does not settle the year either. The base of the main stupa at is of large bricks in the Dvaravati art style, the pagoda is in the , and several temples hold large red sandstone Buddha images in the pre-Ayutthayan U Thong Style. On the newspaper's reading the town was therefore founded before the Ayutthaya period, possibly when Buddhism reached it from Ceylon by way of Nakhon Si Thammarat.
A separate dispute over the founder's ancestry turns on how an era name is read. Manit Vallipodom's interpretation of 1973 equated the Tertiary Era of the Legend of Singhanavati with the Chula Sakarat era, which placed the later monarchs of the Singhanavati dynasty, Chaiyasiri among them, in the 10th century. Since the legend has Chaiyasiri move south into the Chao Phraya valley, earlier Thai scholars identified him with Phanom Thale Sri of the Phetchaburi line, and so made him the founder of Phrip Phri. That reading no longer holds. Phiset Chiachanphong argued that the Tertiary Era should instead be read as the Shaka era, which places Chaiyasiri in the 5th century, some seven centuries before the foundation of Phrip Phri.
Expansion and relations with Tambralinga
The Nakhon Si Thammarat chronicle describes the arrival itself. It relates that Phra Phanom Thale Si Mahesvastidrādhirājakṣatriya came with 33,000 men, 500 elephants and 700 horses, followed by some 55,000 more, and established a royal residence at Phetchaburi with a forecourt and quarters for the palace women; that he set the people to making salt and had it presented to his grandparents; and that he opened 300 fields at Bang Taphan on the coast.
The Nakhon Si Thammarat chronicle records that King Mahesvastidrādhirājakṣatriya of Phrip Phri extended his territory north to Phraek Si Racha, in present-day Chai Nat, late in the 12th century, and sent his preceptor to govern it; the area he took in also covers the region proposed for Chen Li Fu. To the south, a territorial dispute with Tambralinga in 1196 was settled by negotiation rather than conquest, and produced a lasting dynastic tie. In the early 14th century princes of Phetchaburi revived Tambralinga after its collapse under the Singhasari invasion and an outbreak of plague.
Angkorian influence
Phrip Phri is named, as Srijayavajrapuri, among several cities of west-central Thailand in the Preah Khan inscription of Jayavarman VII, but the text records no exercise of political authority over them. Architecture in the Bayon style, which belongs to Jayavarman VII's reign, is nonetheless present, notably the shrine at Wat Kamphaeng Laeng. Songsiri qualifies both points. She places the arrival of Angkorian religious forms in the western basin in the second half of the 13th century, after Jayavarman VII's reign. She also reports excavation at the Phetchaburi city wall as having recovered sherds of only three kinds, from the Pa Yang and Ko Noi kilns at Si Satchanalai, from the Bang Pun kilns at Suphan Buri, and from Fujian kilns of the Yuan period, with no Song ware among them.