The Etymology of Phetchaburi

The text below was written by King Mongkut (Rama IV, reigned 1851-1868) himself and was first published in the Bangkok Calendar, an annual almanac founded in 1859 until the death of its printer Dan Beach Bradley. It was later republished in the 1885 compendium Siam, The Land of the White Elephant, edited by George S. Bacon. I found it in the book Early Accounts of Phetchaburi, published by the Siam Society in 1987. The photo shows the temple Wat Phra Kaeo, part of the Phra Nakhon Khiri palace complex right next to the town. It was also King Mongkut who built this palace.

Though titled etymology, the text is not about the origin of the name of the city, but in fact King Mongkut complains about the inconsistent and varying spellings of the name in western source.

But as the city P'etch'ără-booree the masses of the people in all parts call it P'ripp'ree or P'et-pree. The name P'etch'ără-booree is Sanskrit, a royal name given to the place the same as T'on-booree, Non-booree, Năk'awn K'u'n k'ăn, Sămŏŏtă-pra-kan, and Ch'ă-chong-sow. Now if Mahá nak'awn be called Bangkok, and the other names respectively called Tălát-k'wan, Paklat, Paknam, and Păătrew, it is proper that P'etch'ără-booree should follow suit, and be called by her vulgar name P'rip-p'ree, or P'et-p'ree.

Now that the company of teachers and print­ers should coin a name purporting to be after the royal style and yet do not take the true Sanskrit, seems not at all proper. In trying to Romanize the name P'etch'ără-booree, they place the mark over the a thus P'etchă-booree, making foreigners read it P'etcha-booree, following the utterances of old dances in the temples, who boast that they know Balăm Bali, and not satisfied with that, they even call the place City P'et, setting fortn both the Bali and the meaning of the word; and thus boast­ing greatly of their knowledge and of being a standard of orthography for the name of that city.

Now what is the necessity of coining another name like this? There is no occasion for it. When the name is thus incorrectly printed, persons truly acquainted with Sanskrit and Bali (for such there are many other places) will say that those who write or print the name in the way, must be pupils of ignorant teachers - blind teachers not fol­lowing the real Sanskrit in full, taking only the utterances of woodsmen, and holding them forth [as the correct way.] In following such sounds they cannot be in accord with the Sanskrit, and they conclude that the name is Siamese. Where­as, in truth, it is not Siamese. The true Siamese name is P'rip-p'ree or P'et-p'ree. It matters not what letters are used to express it - follow your own mind; but let the sound come out clear and accu­rate either P'rip-p'ree or P'et-p'ree, and it will be true Siamese. But the mode of writing and print­ing the name P'etchă-booree with the letter a and mark over it and other marks in two places, resists the eye and the mouth greatly. What­ever be done in this matter let there be uniformi­ty. If it be determined to follow the vulgar mode of calling the name, let that be followed out fully and accurately; but if the royal mode be preferred, let the king be sought unto for the pro­per way of writing it, which shall be in full accord­ance with the Sanskrit. And should this happen not to be like the utterance of the people in the temples the difference cannot be great. And persons unacquainted with Sanskrit will be con­strained to acknowledge that you do really know Sanskrit; and comparing the corrected with the improper mode of Romanizing, will praise you for the improvement which you have made. Such per­sons there are a few, not ignorant and blind lead­ers and dunces like the inmates of the temples and of the jungles and forests, but learned in the San­skrit and residents in Siam.

Budgets of the local governments

A random find by Google - an Excel sheet with the budgets of all the local government entities (municipalities, PAO and TAO) for the fiscal year 2551 (2008). The file comes from the website of the town Tha Kham in Surat Thani, though it actually must be from the Ministry of Interior, it's just that Google first found it on that site.

The budgets of the local government entities consists of a portion of the VAT collected in the respective area, the exact portion depends on the type of the entity - a city gets a higher portion, but also have more tasks to perform with that money.

Some quick look statistics - the region with the highest budget is the Northeast (Isan) with 3110 million Baht, followed by the central (without Bangkok) 2770 million, the North with 1900 million, and the south with 1580 million. But of course the regions have quite different sizes, so this is not the best way to compare them. Within each of the regions, the entities with the highest budgets are not that much suprising:

• Central part: Pattaya (98 million Baht) followed by the city Nonthaburi (47 m) and Pak Kret (26 m)
• Northern part: Chiang Mai city (30 m), Chiang Mai PAO (24 m) and Nakhon Sawan city (21 m)
• South: Hat Yai city (49 m), Yala city (42 m) and Trang city (33 m). A bit surprising that Phuket and Samui aren't in the top three.
• Northeast: Nakhon Ratchasima city (33 m), Udon Thani city (29 m) and Nakhon Ratchasima PAO (27 m)
  

Board game "König von Siam"

Board games are especially popular here in Germany, highlighted by the annual games fair in Essen. So it's no wonder that a German who designed a board game based on the reforms of King Chulalongkorn named "König von Siam" (King of Siam). The author Peer Sylvester is also a co-author of a German board game blog.

As the base story for this game, these reforms lead to a civil war of three factions - the followers of the King, the Laotians and the Malay. These then try to win as many as possible of the eight provinces into which the country was divided for this game. In one province after another a fight between the three factions is done, and in case no faction can win the British add this province to be their colony. After the eight fights, the winning faction is of course the one which controls most provinces. However, as the players don't play one of the factions directly, the winner is the player who did collect most of members of the winning faction during the game.

Am not that much into these board games, but from what I read it sounds like it can be an interesting and enjoying game. But why I am writing about this game is simply the board, the map of Siam in 1874 with the eight provinces. It was this map which I found in the Google image search. Of course these eight provinces are historically wrong, but the game author had to simplify the facts to create a playable game. The author writes in the introduction:

Heute besteht Thailand aus über 40 Provinzen, anno 1874 waren es sogar noch mehr. Folglich mußten ein paar zusammengelegt werden, um auf 8 Provinzen zu kommen. Hierbei habe ich mich ein sowohl von der Historie leiten lassen (Welche Provinzen waren damals wichtig?) als auch von ihrem aktuellen Bekanntheitsgrad.

Today Thailand consists of more than 40 provinces, and in 1874 it were even more. Thus several had to be put together to come down to 8 provinces. To do this I used both history (which province was important back then) as well as its current level of familiarity.

Actually, there are more than 70, but for the number of Mueang of 1876 I haven't find an authoritative list yet.

Judging from the historic importance several of the author's choices are somewhat odd. Luang Prabang (as the Lao kingdom, including Vientiane and Champassak which in 1876 were separate principalities), Lan Na and Kedah are easy choices. Sukhothai, though in 1874 way past its peak importance already, got quite a lot of Isan area attached which would better fitted under the Lao province. The choice of Ayutthaya instead of Bangkok must have been done because Bangkok sounds too modern for a historical game, though Krung Thep was capital for 100 years then already. Kanchanaburi much more well-known today than it was important in the times back then - and actually the capital of this province is located closer to Suphanburi, which was the more important Mueang. More deviating from the historic reality is Surat Thani, which in 1874 did not exist yet - the province center of Chaiya was further north and Ban Don was just a small village which got the name Surat Thani in 1915. Nakhon Si Thammarat (then better known as Ligor in the western maps) would have been the better choice for its historical importance. But I really don't understand why Roi Et was chosen for the province covering southern Isan and the parts of Cambodia ruled by Siam. Khorat (Nakhon Ratchasima) is the much more well-known city in that part, and it also was the most important one in the past, though at first located and named Phimai.

But I am of course nitpicking - the important thing for a board game is not its historical accuracy, it is how much fun it creates for the players. As I haven't bought this game yet it's nothing I can judge.

Municipal decisions from May 30 2008

Meeting number 41 from May 30 2008 with 13 TAO upgraded to subdistrict municipalities.

• Nong Phai^[1] (เทศบาลตำบลหนองไผ่), Mueang Udon Thani district, Udon Thani province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 39 km², 12 villages and 8,362 citizen.
• Nong Phai^[1] (เทศบาลตำบลหนองไผ่), Nong Han district, Udon Thani province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 72 km², 12 villages and 9,152 citizen.
• Khaen (เทศบาลตำบลแคน), Sanom district, Surin province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 35.50 km², 14 villages and 9,061 citizen.
• Khanthrom^[2] (เทศบาลตำบลกันทรอม), Khun Han district, Sisaket province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 138.65 km², 13 villages and 8,622 citizen.
• Thai Charoen (เทศบาลตำบลไทยเจริญ), Thai Charoen district, Yasothon province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 71 km², 13 villages and 8,549 citizen.
• Kham Pom (เทศบาลตำบลขามป้อม), Khemarat district, Ubon Ratchathani province, effective July 17 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 72.45 km², 17 villages and 9,259 citizen.
• Don Arang (เทศบาลตำบลดอนอะราง), Nong Ki district, Buriram province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 74.50 km², 15 villages and 10,348 citizen.
• Mae Puem (เทศบาลตำบลแม่ปืม), Mueang Phayao district, Phayao province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 96 km², 18 villages and 9,336 citizen.
• Pa Tan (เทศบาลตำบลป่าตาล), Khun Tan district, Chiang Rai province. The summary for this one is missing in the file, instead the following one has been summarized twice.
• Pha In Plaeng (เทศบาลตำบลผาอินทร์แปลง), Erawan district, Loei province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 72.25 km², 14 villages and 8,047 citizen.
• Sala Klang (เทศบาลตำบลศาลากลาง), Bang Kruai district, Nonthaburi province, effective July 25 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 14.78 km², 6 villages and 7,992 citizen.
• Pho Ngam (เทศบาลตำบลโพธิ์งาม), Prachantakham district, Prachinburi province, effective July 25 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 323.60 km², 19 villages and 10,492 citizen.
• Mae Lan Na (เทศบาลตำบลแม่ลานนา
  ), Long district, Phrae province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was originally named Huai O (ห้วยอ้อ) and was renamed together with the upgrade. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 109.31 km², 14 villages and 6,808 citizen.

Comments:
^[1]It will be a bit confusing to have two subdistrict municipalities with the same name in one province.
^[2]Normally the combination ทร is read as a "S" sound, however according to the DOPA recommended subdistrict romanizations it should be the literal "thr" here. But this might be an error in that recommendations as well.

Book with list of all muban

I have been looking through the online book list of the Department of Provincial Administration (DOPA), which seem to mostly contain legal texts or handbooks for the officers in the provines. But I also found a two-volume book named ทำเนียบท้องที่ (local directory), which in fact is nothing but a complete list of the central administrative entities down to village level published in 2003. It can be both viewed online (volume 1, volume 2) or downloaded (volume 1, volume 2). However actually the download links are quite broken - the link for volume 2 returns volume 1, but some pages are in strange ordering; the link for volume 1 returns a part of volume 1, so volume 2 is only readable page by page from the first links.

Quite usable would be the map of subdistricts for each province, but sadly either the print or the subsequent scan make it hard to recognize much. More handy are the tables of entities for each of the province - including the area of each district with an accuracy of 0.01 km², and of course the list of the villages. But the problem is that the online book is the scan of a printed book, so I would have to type in all the names again, an impossible task for more than 60,000 villages. That's why I want a digital village list. If they had put online the source of the printed book - a PDF with copy-and-pasteable text - it would be much better. Not only the size of the file would be much smaller - the file is 75 MB - and it would be allow the contents to be reused. So I can only hope they'll make a new edition of this book already 5 years old, or even better than a PDF, they put the actual data online as Excel sheets or simple plain text files. Excel sheets would also help to spot mistakes as they can calculate the sums automatically - copying the data from a few province I have already spotted two mistakes in the tables.

Municipal decisions from May 28 2008

Meeting number 39 from May 28 2008 with 14 TAO upgraded to subdistrict municipalities.

• Laem Thong (เทศบาลตำบลแหลมทอง), Nong Bun Mak district, Nakhon Ratchasima province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 69.22 km², 10 villages and 5,667 citizen.
• Dan Khla (เทศบาลตำบลด่านคล้า), Non Sung district, Nakhon Ratchasima province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 29 km², 14 villages and 8,567 citizen.
• Nong Sang (เทศบาลตำบลหนองสังข์), Kaeng Khro district, Chaiyaphum province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 90.70 km², 16 villages and 9,729 citizen.
• Huai Krot (เทศบาลตำบลห้วยกรด), Sankhaburi district, Chainat province, effective July 25 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 21.44 km², 9 villages and 9,147 citizen.
• Non Po Daeng (เทศบาลตำบลโนนปอแดง), Pha Khao district, Loei province, effective June 1 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 123 km², 17 villages and 10,440 citizen.
• Non Sa-at (เทศบาลตำบลโนนสะอาด), Si Bun Rueang district, Nong Bua Lam Phu province, effective July 10 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 161.06 km², 17 villages and 12,177 citizen.
• Chiang Khruea (เทศบาลตำบลเชียงเครือ), Mueang Sakon Nakhon district, Sakon Nakhon province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 85.77 km², 17 villages and 17,342 citizen.
• Phon Sung (เทศบาลตำบลโพนสูง), Chai Wan district, Udon Thani province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 105 km², 11 villages and 7,097 citizen.
• Chiang Khong (เทศบาลตำบลเชียงของ), Chiang Khong district, Chiang Rai province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was named Wiang (เวียง) and was renamed together with the upgrade. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 120 km², 11 villages and 8,041 citizen.
• Khok Lam (เทศบาลตำบลโคกล่าม), Chaturaphak Phiman district, Roi Et province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 45.88 km², 16 villages and 7,263 citizen.
• Ko Khwang (เทศบาลตำบลเกาะขวาง), Mueang Chanthaburi district, Chanthaburi province, effective July 25 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 22.88 km², 9 villages and 10,326 citizen.
• Takha (เทศบาลตำบลตะค่า), Bang Pla Ma district, Suphanburi province, effective July 25 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 38.50 km², 9 villages and 5,946 citizen.
• Po Phan (เทศบาลตำบลปอภาร), Mueang Roi Et district, Roi Et province, effective July 18 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 32 km², 14 villages and 7,894 citizen.
• Bua Ban (เทศบาลตำบลบัวบาน), Yang Talat district, Kalasin province, effective July 1 2008. The TAO was created in 1996, covers 49.68 km², 23 villages and 13,264 citizen.

Misleading map

The book The Provincial Administration of Siam 1892-1915 by Tej Bunnag contains a map in the preface which shows "Siam in 1915". I mentioned it shortly already when I wrote about the monthon abolished in 1932.

As I considered (and still do) the book very authoritative, I also took this map at face value and thus supposed that the boundaries it shows are correct. The differences between the current boundaries and the ones in the book are only the provinces Amnat Charoen, Sa Kaeo and Nong Bua Lamphu created in 1993, Phayao created in 1977 and Yasothon created in 1972. Also Thonburi and Phra Nakhon are show as separate province, as they were merged in Bangkok metropolis in 1971. In the appendix the book lists the provinces of each monthon at the creation of the monthon, thus including provinces like Takua Pa or Lang Suan. As these weren't present in this map I thus thought they must have been abolished in before 1915.

So it was quite a surprise when I discovered the Royal Gazette announcement on the abolishment of monthon and provinces in 1933, and found it include all those provinces which existed at the establishment of the monthon, but were all lacking in this map. I already posted a complete list of provincial changes till 1910 here. In fact, the map not only lacks these provinces, it also lacks provincial boundary changes by reassignments of districts from one province to another. The most notable - because it's the largest district of all - is Umphang, which in 1915 still belonged to Kamphaeng Phet, but in this map its easy to see belonging to Tak.

So, in fact this map is in fact very misleading, it seems it was much less carefully researched than the other parts of the work. In fact simply shows the provincial layout of 1968 (the year the dissertation was written) with the monthon superimposed, but definitely not "Siam in 1915".