Katya & The Prince of Siam

Mongkut being conveniently out of the way, his half-brother Prince Chesdah – some say aided by a scheming mother – was nominated by the Accession Council as King. This may well have influenced Mongkut to remain in the priesthood, for although Chesdah was his senior, Mongkut might have thought he had a prior right to the throne, as Chesdah was the son of a minor wife, whereas Mongkut’s mother was royal. Whatever the reasons, the young Prince’s motives for abandoning the world in the prime of youth for half a lifetime’s submission to the disciplines of monastic life, was a decision eventually highly advantageous both for his own development and that of his country.

To begin with, his fellow monks were drawn from all ranks of society and as he travelled with them on foot all over his realm, he had the opportunity, unique for a royal prince of his day, of mingling democratically with people he would never have met otherwise, thus gaining first-hand knowledge of their lives and conditions.

Then, by learning Pali, the language in which Buddhist teaching is recorded, he acquired a rather more profound understanding of its tenets than he would have done had he left the monastery after only a few months. As it was, he was the only member of the Royal Family to have been awarded a first degree Doctorate in Theology.

He also learnt some Latin from the French Bishop Pallegoix with whom, as well as with English and American missionaries, he sometimes engaged in religious disputation, relaxed and friendly exchanges on his part, as he had the true Buddhist’s tolerance of other faiths. But despite the lack of any encouragement on his side, the zealous missionaries still laboured to convert him, undeterred by his known pronouncement on Christianity – ‘What you teach people to do is admirable, but what you teach them to believe is foolish!’

In 1844, when he was forty, he began to study English with some American missionaries, and made such progress that he came to regard it as his second language, speaking and writing it fluently with ‘rather a literary tinge’, as one of his teachers put it. Later he was to insist that his children spoke English too, and sent several of his sons to England for this purpose.

Even more important was the fact that his grasp of the language enabled him to read up-to-date scientific books on many subjects – astronomy was a special favourite – and these introduced him to a whole new world of modern thought. Thus, when the King, his brother, died in 1851 and at long last he was called to the throne at the age of forty-six, he was well prepared for kingship.

The discipline of his years in the priesthood, his great intellectual powers, and his contacts with ordinary people, had made him a man of remarkable balance and perception. He realised that his country, steeped in tradition, deeply religious, superstitious and with a respect for rank amounting to reverence, could only very gradually be guided into step with the modern world.

Soon after his own coronation, Mongkut appointed his full brother, Prince Chutamanni (known as King Pinklao), as Uparaja or second King, who was crowned in a ceremony only slightly less splendid than his own. He also had the good fortune to be blessed with an excellent Kalahom or Prime Minster, Sri Suriyawongse, so that his reign began under good auspices.

His power was absolute and government was by edict, each introduced by a recitation of the royal styles and titles, and commencing: ‘By royal command reverberating like the roar of a lion …’ There was also a palace gong that, if struck by a petitioner any afternoon or evening, ensured that the King would appear in person ‘when not otherwise occupied in affairs of the realm, and provided that it will not be raining at the time’.

 

King Chulalongkorn and Queen Saowabha.

 

King Mongkut in his coronation regalia.

 

Worthy of particular mention is his edict on faith, not only for its fine wording, but because it reflects the wholehearted aversion to bigotry and religious persecution that have always been an admirable feature of Buddhism: ‘No just ruler restricts the freedom of his people in the choice of their religious belief by which each man hopes to find strength and salvation in his last hour, as well as in the future beyond. There are many precepts common to all religions.’