Dervla Murphy - One Foot in Laos

Francis Gamier, the French explorer, wrote during the 1860s, A sense of history is absolutely absent in the Lao, their imagination is fired by fables and extraordinary legends, with no precise date, making it impossible to appreciate their historical value.

Not until the fourteenth century do verifiable characters and events emerge. In or about 1316 was born Fa Ngum, revered as the man who established the Kingdom of Lan Xang, from which the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic is tortuously descended. Fa Ngum was only a little fellow when his father, Phi Fa, disgraced himself. Phi Fa, eldest son and heir apparent to King Phaya Souvanna-Khampong of Muong Swa (now Luang Prabang), enraged the King by seducing a member of the royal household possibly one of the royal wives. His punishment was permanent exile and he was told to take his first-born son with him. At the Khmer court at Angkor King Jayarvarman Paramesvara made the exiles welcome and here Fa Ngum grew up, in due course marrying the Kings daughter. His father-in-law then put him in command of 10,000 men and he led them north, at the age of twenty-two, to assert his right to the throne of Muong Swa. A ten-year campaign secured him a far bigger kingdom, encompassing south-west Yunnan, north-east Laos, Xieng Khouang, most of the Korat plateau west of the Mekong and possibly Champasak to the south. During the siege of Muong Swa, Phi Fa died and in 1353 Fa Ngum deposed his grandfather and proclaimed himself King of Lan Xang. (Land of a Million Elephants wars were fought with elephants so this naming of the new kingdom emphasized his power.) An administrator of genius, Fa Ngum established a civil infrastructure that lasted for more than three centuries. But it seems he eventually became too authoritarian, a quality deprecated by the Lao. At the age of fifty-seven he was deposed by a clique of noblemen and succeeded by his seventeen-year-old son, Oun Hueun Samsenthai. Five years later he died in exile.

King Samsenthai was gentle, peace-loving and deeply religious. During his forty-three-year reign the Kingdom of Lan Xang flourished, many wats (temples/monasteries) were built and Luang Prabang became one of the regions most renowned centres of Buddhist learning. Then began an enduring tradition. The Sangha (the Buddhist monks Establishment) became an ally of the kingdoms secular rulers whose authority was reinforced by the Sanghas approbation and in turn the Sangha gained respect as the spiritual mentors of the rulers. At intervals, Laoss chaotic history threatened this alliance, without ever destroying it. Gamier noted: The influence of the monks is very strong; religious and civil power live side by side peacefully. Neither trespasses on the rights of the other. The neutrality of the monks in all political matters seems absolute.

A turbulent century followed King Samsenthais death. Too often disunity among the nobles, brought about by the lack of any form of primogeniture, left the way open for more powerful neighbours to make trouble. The scene was constantly shifting; areas belonged to the kingdom, then splintered off and formed other alliances or became independent, then were reabsorbed into Lan Xang or replaced by other areas.

In 1563 King Xetthathirat, for reasons economic and strategic, moved his capital from Luang Prabang to Viang Chan (Vientiane), then a small fortified city with two wats but a rich city, its wealth derived from the fertility of the surrounding plains and from taxes paid by traders going upstream. (Until very recently, the Mekong was this regions only highway.)

Under King Surinyavongsa, who won the throne in 1637 and reigned for fifty-seven years, the kingdom enjoyed a Golden Age of peace and prosperity, again becoming renowned both for Buddhist learning and for the secular arts of theatre, music and classical dancing. The monks who came from Burma and Cambodia to study in its well-endowed wats were more numerous than the soldiers of the Emperor of Germany. That was the astonished comment of Gerritt van Wuysthoff, a Dutch East India Company merchant who arrived in the 1640s as, coincidentally, did Giovanni-Maria Leria. This Italian Jesuit would-be missionary stayed for five years and learned the language before accepting that he would never be allowed to proselytize. He reported home: The population is a peaceable one and very little versed in the art of war. Hostility and quarrelling are banished from the land. Never has one of them spoken evil of another. They are of perfect sincerity, without deceit, humble and courteous, of unalterable trustworthiness, affable, accommodating and open to reason. Perhaps he had realized, by the end of his stay, that proselytizing would do more harm than good.