Tai Peoples and Theirs Languages: A Preliminary ... - Khamkoo

never once talked about the Thai migration from the South, for the homeland of the Thai
and the Indonesians in Benedict’s view lies in the south of China at the place where we
found the remnants of the Kadai languages. Thus, we read in Benedict’s famous article of
1942 (reissued as Appendix I of his 1975 treatise on the subject of Austro-Thai), “The
true Indonesian substratum on the Asiatic mainland is represented by four scattered
languages in southern China, northern Tonkin, and Hainan, all of which constitute a
single linguistic stock (Kadai)……and …… It is generally agreed that the Indonesian
migrations have proceeded from the Asiatic mainland…………(Benedict 1975: 438).
Dr. Phansomboon’s idea that two or three thousand years ago, the stocks of
people who were the ancestors of the present-day Thai left Indonesia, or more specifically
Java, and migrated northward needs to be verified archaeologically. Historically this
theory has no evidence for it; historical records as well as legends are mute concerning
such ancestors. Up till now no archaeological report has come to light that lends support
to such a theory. As has been said above, Bayard’s archaeological findings are more
congruent with placing speakers of the Tai languages in the coastal regions of south
China and north Vietnam. (Bayard 1975: 75 cited in Terwiel 1979: 7). In regard to
linguistic findings, this theory also finds no support. No trace of a Tai language has been
found in Indonesia. The Tai language spoken in Malaysia is confined only to the four
northern-most states adjacent to Thailand. And it is testimony to the recent migration
from Thailand that there is almost no variation among the Tai languages in those four
states; all of them resemble the language that is spoken in Takbai, Thailand.
5. The present-place homeland This is the theory that proposes that the Tai peoples
have always lived in present-day Thailand. In fact, this theory is attractive to Thai patriots
who prefer to think that the Thai have never suffered aggression from any other people
and have always held their own on their present territory. But this view is incongruent
with the historical and archaeological findings that propose an earlier settlement of the
Mon people in the central part of Thailand (the Dvaravati Kingdom) and the Khmer
influence in Lopburi and the eastern part of Thailand. Consequently, though this view is
attractive to most Thai, no scholar has ventured it into writing until Dr. Sood Sangvichien
wrote of it in Journal of the Siam Society in 1966. 48 Dr. Sangvichien, a medical doctor and
anatomist, based his report on 37 prehistoric skeletons that he helped the Thai-Danish
prehistoric expedition excavate from the Ban-Kao site in Kanchanaburi province during
1960-62. Dr. Sood compared those 37 neolithic skeletons with skeletons of present-day
Thai people on several aspects, particularly on the artificial deformities of the teeth and
on the alveolar prognatism and concluded in a guarded statement that we need to do more
research in order to arrive at the conclusion that the present territory of Thailand has been
home to ancient peoples who were not much different from the present-day Thai. Outside
scholarly circles, this theory has been gaining momentum at present. There are
suggestions such as (1) that the Dvaravati Kingdom had been a Thai kingdom all along
(2) that a mysterious kingdom had existed on the site of Phimai, Nakorn Rajsema and that
the inhabitants of this kingdom were ancestors of the present-day Thai and (3) that the
skeletons from Ban Chieng, Udorn Thani (see supra page 66) resemble the skeletons of
48 H.G. Quarich Wales, the English art historian, took back the view that he first expressed in
1937 in his later article of 1964.
The Journal of Religion and Culture (Vol.1 No.1 2007) :189-232 211