Anuruddha

Anuruddha (, ) is described in Pali and Thai historiographical traditions as a ruler of the Dvaravati cultural sphere, of the polity of Arimadhanaburi , which modern scholars identify with Nakhon Pathom. He is attested principally in the Jinakalamali and the Northern Chronicle, where he appears as a monarch engaged in political consolidation in what is now central Thailand.

Dating

The Jinakalamali, which also refers to Camadevi of Haripuñjaya, places his reign in the mid to late 7th century. That reconstruction sits awkwardly with another passage of the Northern Chronicle, which has Kalavarnadisharaja succeed Kakabhadra at Nakhon Pathom in 641 and transfer the political centre to Lavo in 648.

Political and religious activities

The Jinakalamali presents Anuruddha as the ruler who brought about the overthrow of Manohanaraj at Ayojjhapura, The campaign followed an earlier episode in which Manohanaraj's father Rajadhiraj had invaded Lampang, part of Haripuñjaya, and carried off black stone Buddha images of Sikhī to Ayojjhapura. , a horizon matching a separate tradition in which Balidhiraja of Sukhothai marched south, overthrew the ruler of the western Menam valley, and installed his younger son Sai Thong Som in his place. and the dispute was partly settled when Indaprasthanagara returned the Pali Canon but kept the other. and the Northern Chronicle identifies the two; the Lopburi inscription K.577, of about the 8th–9th century, names a son of the king of Sambuka but not the king himself, so the two traditions cannot be matched against each other.

Two separate identifications are at issue. Arimadhanaburi is placed either at Nakhon Pathom or at Pagan, depending on whether Anuruddha is read as a 7th-century Dvaravati ruler or as Anawrahta. Indaprasthanagara is placed either in the Menam basin or at Angkor; the Ayutthaya Testimonies and the Yonok Chronicle put it east of Sankhaburi in the Menam basin.

The account of the two junks has been read as evidence on both questions. On the Angkor reading of Indaprasthanagara, a vessel returning from Lanka to Nakhon Pathom would have entered the Gulf of Thailand and then drifted to Angkor, and Anuruddha's subsequent demands would have required sustained communication between Nakhon Pathom and Angkor across separate river systems. If Indaprasthanagara lay in the Phraek Si Racha region instead, both the navigational error and the diplomatic exchange become straightforward, since Nakhon Pathom and Phraek Si Racha share an interconnected waterway network reached from the Gulf by way of the Chao Phraya. On the Pagan reading of Arimadhanaburi the voyage is harder to account for in either case, since a vessel returning from Lanka to Pagan would sail north through the Bay of Bengal and up the Irrawaddy River, a drainage separate from both the Chao Phraya and the Mekong.