Pha Mueang

Pha Mueang or Pho Khun Pha Mueang (; late 12th century – mid 13th century) was the ruler of Mueang Rat and a son of Sri Naw Nam Thum. He was one of the two commanders of the campaign that took Sukhothai, usually dated to about 1238 though the year is disputed, and so had a part in the founding of the Sukhothai Kingdom. He is known almost entirely from the Wat Si Chum Inscription, a stele of 1357 composed by a kinsman. From the ruler at Angkor he had received a Khmer title, a sword of victory and a princess in marriage. After the campaign he took neither the city nor his own title, installing his ally Bang Klang Hao at Sukhothai and passing the title of Sri Indraditya to him.

Two questions dominate the writing about him. Where Mueang Rat lay is disputed, with proposals in the Pasak valley near Lom Sak, in the Nan valley near Uttaradit, and at the old Khorat site in Sung Noen. How the campaign should be read is also disputed. In one reading the defeated Khom Sabat Khlon Lamphong commanded a Khmer garrison and the episode was the liberation of Sukhothai from Khmer rule; others treat it as a contest between two local lords who both held Khmer honours.

Origin Pha Mueang was the son of Sri Naw Nam Thum, whom Baker and Pasuk describe as a warrior chief who raided across the upper Chao Phraya basin early in the 13th century. Both men are named in the Wat Si Chum Inscription, Inscription 2, a stele of 1357 composed by Pha Mueang's grandson, which gives Pha Mueang as ruler of a city-state called Mueang Rat (เจ้าเมืองราด). The inscription presents Mueang Rat as a substantial polity rather than a single town, describing Pha Mueang as lord there with a large elephant force and many dependent towns. Baker and Pasuk likewise suggest that it may have been , in the same area, citing Phiset Jiajanphong.

A third proposal, put forward by Manit Vallibhotama and followed by Chit Phumisak, places it at the old Khorat site in Sung Noen district, Nakhon Ratchasima province, reading Khorat as a contraction of Nakhon Rat. Chit supported it from the career of Pha Mueang's grandson Sri Sattha, who is recorded as fighting Thao Ji Chan in his late teens. Dong I Chan lies about 70 km south-east of the Sung Noen site, which would make the two territories adjacent. (Chit Phumisak offered two readings of in this passage, a rendering of deva in Khmer regnal styles or the Thai idiom , used before the name of a person no longer living.) He inclined to the second, on the strength of the inscription's phrasing "in former times, Phi Fa lord of…". The rank was not peculiar to him. Chinese records of the same decades give kamrateng to the rulers of Chen Li Fu, Phrip Phri and Sukhothai as well, so that it marks a class of ruler rather than a singular appointment.

Chit Phumisak cautioned that the sword carries less evidential weight than it appears to. Jayavarman VII prefixed jaya to a great many things, but a sword of the same name remained in Khmer use long afterwards, chaiyasi was a general expression for glorious victory, appearing in the water-oath formula attached to the law on ordeal of 1355, and the object itself may be older than any king of that name. A khan chaiyasi is listed among the Sukhothai regalia in the inscription of Lithai, and the term recurs in Lao literature. Where Mueang Bang Yang lay is not agreed. It has been placed in the present-day Nakhon Thai district, where Pra Poa Noome Thele Seri had earlier been based, while Griswold and Prasert put it either between Mueang Rat and Si Satchanalai or at Ban Yang, about seven kilometres south of New Sukhothai. Wyatt quotes them calling both of their own placements no more than guesses.