Sang-Thong A Dance-Drama from Thailand. King Rama II
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Jai-ngam, a Thai village teacher, explains that when "The Birth of Prince Sang" was taught twenty years ago, the only purpose was memorization of portions of the text by the school children. Today, the teacher reads the poetry to the children in the thamnawng style, which is quite different from the way "Western poetry is read. The students repeat after him, to get a feeling for the sounds. The teacher then tells the story, explaining names and trying to interest his students in the characters. (Mr. Jaroen confides that he himself likes Sang Thong better than the greater classic Ramakian, because the characters in Sang Thong seem to have more human feelings.) The children read the first part of "The Birth of Prince Sang," which has been put into simple prose. Then they read the few verses of poetry which tell of the son's feeling that it is his responsibility to help his mother in return for her care, and the teacher tries to help them feel the importance of this parent-child relationship.
Mrs. Malulee Pinsuvana, who has danced several parts in Sang Thong in the classical theater, recalls that when she was a small child and had to choose a new notebook for school, she would repeatedly buy one that had scenes from "The Birth of Prince Sang" on the cover. It is now the favorite story of her own small sons.
SANG THONG IN OTHER SOUTHEAST ASIAN COUNTRIES
The Chiang Mai priests wrote the Pamnāsa Jātaka on palm leaves in fifty bundles, according to Prince Damrong, who also noted that copies of the Pannāsa Jātaka still existed in 20th-century Luang Prabang, Laos, and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Quite possibly copies of the Chiang Mai palm-leaf manuscripts were sent to Laos, Cambodia, and Burma, with which Chiang Mai priests had contact.
Laos
At the present time a Pali palm-leaf manuscript of the Sang Thong story, generally similar to "Suvarna-Sankha-Jātaka," exists in a Buddhist temple, Wat Ong Tue, in Vientiane. Other such manuscripts existed in the past, according to Maha Kikeo Oudom of the Library of Fine Arts in Vientiane, but were lost during the Siamese occupation of Laos in the 19th century.
In another story which is very popular in Laos, the hero, Sin Xay, has a brother called Thao Sang who, though born in a shell, has few other similarities to the Thai Prince Sang. As in the Thai version of the Sang Thong story, the queen, mother of Sin Xay and Thao Sang, is sent weeping from the kingdom because of the unnatural birth.
In northeastern Thailand, which has alternately been Laotian and Thai territory, stories about both Sin Xay and Sang Thong have been popular through the years. Between the time of a death and a cremation, when friends of the deceased stay to keep the family company, a villager will often read one of the stories from a palm-leaf manuscript. Professor Visudh Busyakul is presently translating one of these manuscripts, written in old Laotian script, in which the Sang Thong story is quite different in detail from either the "Suvarna-Sankha-Jātaka" or the Rama II Sang Thong. In this Laotian version the king and queen are even pleased with the birth of a son in a shell!
Cambodia
A Cambodian classical dance-drama known as Preas Sang follows the episodes of the Thai version from the point where Rochana chooses Prince Sang, disguised as an ugly Negrito, as her husband, to the point where the king of Samon honors his formerly despised son-in-law after the latter has engaged in combat with Indra.25
This Cambodian version does not, however, contain the birth of Prince Sang, the treachery of his father's jealous minor wife, the prince's descent to the world of the serpents, his nurture by the ogress Phanthurat, or King Yosawimon's search for his son. Thus the Preas Sang episodes performed in Cambodia are the same ones from Sang Thong currently performed by the National Theater of Thailand. In both countries other acts present in the Rama II version of Sang Thong are omitted in current performances. Possibly this similarity of staged episodes results from the influence of Thai dancers who went to Cambodia in the 18th and 19th centuries and revived the art of Cambodian classical dancing. This art had died in Cambodia when the Thais defeated Angkor (1431) and brought the Cambodian palace dancers to the Thai capital. James Brandon writes that "the Royal Cambodian Ballet of today is actually a reimportation of ancient Khmer dance, as modified by some twenty generations of Thai court artists."26 Since Rama II's version had been written by the 19th century, and since certain acts may have been performed more often than others, it is conceivable that those acts preferred in Thailand were taken to Cambodia by Thai dancers.
Burma
In Burma there seems to be little, if any, acquaintance with the Sang Thong story today. Thai scholars believe that manuscripts of the Pannāsa Jātaka sent from Chiang Mai to Burma were burned by a king who felt they were not true birth-stories.27 Although a Pali version of Pannāsa Jātaka was published 111 Rangoon in 1911, the "Suvarna-Sankha-Jātaka" was not part of it.28
Thus the presence of the Sang Thong story in some, although not all, of Southeast Asia reflects cultural differences and similarities in that area of the world.
THAI VIEWS OF LIFE IN THEIR ASIAN CONTEXT
The anthropologist Margaret Mead conceives of "cultural character" as arising out of "a circular system [in] which . . . the method of child rearing, the presence of a particular literary tradition, the nature of the domestic and public architecture, the religious beliefs, the political system, are all conditions within which a given kind of personality develops."29
Sang Thong's long period of development in Thailand, the views expressed in it, and the keen interest felt in its story by many present-day Thais place it in the literary tradition which is an integral part of the "circle" forming Thai cultural character. This drama, moreover, reflects most of the other elements mentioned by Margaret Mead in the passage quoted above.
In "The Birth of Prince Sang," as well as in later episodes of Sang Thong, views are expressed concerning the responsibility of kingship and the respect due to it, the mutually helpful relationship that should exist between a parent and child, the effects of deeds of one's past life upon one's present life, the pragmatic and manipulative use of both natural and supernatural means to achieve desired results, and the importance of status relationships. Most of these values and views of the world are expressed in some detail, as are the depictions of the particular reciprocal relationship the king has with the queen and both have with their people, the particular kinds of spirits that are thought to exist, and the ways a person tries to influence the workings of karma.
Few, if any, of the traditional views of life found in Sang Thong are distinctively Thai in the sense that individual elements cannot be found elsewhere in the world, particularly in Asia; but in their totality they form a distinctively Thai configuration. As the notes to Acts One through Nine will point out, the themes in Sang Thong, as portrayed through the dramatic events and in the attitudes of its human and mythological characters, reveal a common Hindu-Buddhist-Brahman cultural and literary heritage as well as a peculiarly Thai development in which foreign features were adapted and assimilated according to Thai values and understandings. Furthermore, Thais of diverse ranks adapted such foreign features to their own ways of life. Sang Thong in its present literary form, and as translated and summarized in this volume, comes from two divergent streams: the long process of oral transmission existing mainly among the folk, and the more sophisticated written tradition perpetuated by temple scribes and court poets. These streams inevitably continue to diverge in present-day Thailand, and both traditions carry indelible traces of Rama II's ingenious 19th-century fusion of rustic and courtly drama.
Sang Thong
THE GOLDEN PRINCE
OF THE CONCH SHELL
List of Characters
(in order of appearance)
ACT ONE
KING YOSAWIMON, father of Prince Sang
QUEEN CHANTHA, wife of King Yosawimon, mother of Prince Sang
QUEEN CHANTHEWI, minor wife of King Yosawimon
MAID of Queen Chantha
ASTROLOGER, prophet of doom for Yosawimon's kingdom
OLD MAN AND WOMAN, peasants protecting Queen Chanthewi
PRINCE SANG