The flow of ideas between a "great" tradition (perpetuated by temples and courts) and a "little" tradition (perpetuated by the common people) and back again to the "great" tradition is apparent in the history of the oral and written versions of the Sang Thong story.1 So old and widespread in Southeast Asia is this basic story, however, that it is impossible to trace its origin. From amid the currents set in motion by migrations, religious missions, and trade expeditions, and by the conquering forces that have crossed Southeast Asia for centuries, few facts can be established with certainty, though more can be reasonably surmised.
Beginnings: The Golden Shell Birth-Story
The earliest written version of the Sang Thong story in Thailand was a story called "Suvarna-Sankha-Jātak" (Golden Shell Birth-Story) in the Pannāsa Jātaka, a collection of fifty stories of the lives of the Buddha before the incarnation in which he achieved enlightenment.2 Sometime between A.D. 1400 and 1600, according to the Thai historian Prince Damrong, a Buddhist priest or group of priests in Chiang Mai (now northern Thailand) collected and wrote the stories in the Pannāsa Jātaka.3
At that time priests from Chiang Mai commonly went to study in Ceylon, where the Nipāta Jātaka, part of the Pali canon,4 was well known and highly respected. This Nipāta Jātaka, known to the English-speaking world as the Jātaka Tales, contains 547 stories in which, following upon a few words of wisdom, the Buddha explains an occurrence after his enlightenment in terms of something that happened in one of his former incarnations. The Chiang Mai priests, in an effort to strengthen the Buddhist tradition at home, seem to have translated folk tales into Pali and put them in the form of the Nipāta Jātaka.5
Although the Chiang Mai priests might have taken their material from written sources already part of the great tradition, a story of a golden prince, or a prince born hi a golden shell, does not appear in the canonical jātaka collection hi the southern Indian (Pali) tradition6 or in the two most likely collections in the northern (Sanskrit) tradition,7 Thus the story of Sang Thong may have been alive in Thailand as part of the oral tradition before it was written by the Chiang Mai priests as a story from a former life of the Buddha.
Phya Anuman Rajadhon, scholar of Thai culture and literature, feels that at least parts of the folk tale may have come from Tibet by way of the Shans, a Thai-speaking people living between the Chiang Mai and Burmese kingdoms, in what is now northeastern Burma. Dhanit Yupho, former director-general of the Thai Fine Arts Department, has written that an old Shan story (translated into English under the title "The Silver Oyster") may have contained details which contributed to the birth-story version of the Sang Thong legend.8
The possibility that the motif of a beautiful boy emerging from a conch shell came from Tibet (perhaps by way of the Shans) to Thailand seems heightened by the existence in Tibet of a cosmogonic myth including such a motif. This myth is the beginning of the genealogy of a great family of eastern Tibet, the Rlangs. Although the earliest citation we have of this genealogy is that of the fifth Dalai-Lama (A.D. 1617-82) in his Chronicle, the genealogy and the conch motif are most likely much earlier than this reference.9 The genealogy of the Rlangs begins:
From the essence of the five primordial elements a great egg came forth . . . Eighteen eggs came forth from the yolk of that great egg. The egg in the middle of the eighteen eggs, a conch egg, separated from the others. From this couch egg limbs grew, and then the five senses, all perfect, and it became a boy of such extraordinary beauty that he seemed the fulfillment of every wish.10
As early as the 8th or 9th century, Tibetan bards sang of the emergence of a hero from an egg.11
In Bengal, which has long had trade and religious connections with Tibet, Bengali women worshiping Vishnu tell a tale which is a close analogue to the first episode of Sang Thong,12 A son "of surpassing beauty" emerges from the conch shell in which he was born. His mother breaks the shell to prevent his return to it. One more folk tale, from Ceylon, mentions the birth of a prince in a chank (conch) shell.13
Combining of Motifs: Thai Creativity
Although the "child born in a conch shell" motif may thus have existed in the oral tradition of India, Ceylon, or Tibet before it was known in Thailand, the combination of this with other motifs of the episodic story may well have been a result of Thai creativity. After making a detailed study of the Thai translation of "Suvarna-Sankha-Jātaka" and comparing it with mural paintings of the Sang Thong story in a Buddhist temple in Uttaradit, a very old city between Bangkok and Chiang Mai, art historian Victor Kennedy feels that the spirit behind the combined motifs of the original Sang Thong story is the willfulness of a boy, and that Sang Thong, in a version untouched by priestly or princely interpolations, might well have begun in the Thai countryside.14
In the province of Uttaradit, where some people believe the Sang Thong story to be true, they call the ruins of a laterite enclosure the resting place of Prince Sang when disguised as a Negrito, or the polo ground where he entered the lists against Indra. Tung-yang, an old township in Uttaradit, claims to have been the city of Samon. In the province of Nakhon Sawan, close to Uttaradit Province, villagers identify a hill with the one where the ogress Phanthurat caught up with Prince Sang, The place in the stream where he magically called fishes to him is, they say, beside a rock with odd formula-like scratchings.15 People in other parts of Thailand also claim that Prince Sang's exploits occurred in or near a certain township, body of water, or promontory, though more of these claims seem to be made for the areas of Uttaradit and Nakhon Sawan than for other parts of Thailand. Thus, despite the uncertainty of scholars about the origin of the Sang Thong story, many country Thais feel the events of the tale actually happened in their own surroundings.
The Oral Tradition: "Sang Thong" and "Lakhon Nok"
During the centuries between the writing of "Suvarna-Sankha-Jātaka" and the dance-drama version of Rama II, the Sang Thong legend was a lively part of the "little" tradition of the country people. Either preserved directly from an earlier oral tradition, or translated into Thai and changed considerably from the Buddhist context of "Suvarna-Sankha-Jātaka," the Sang Thong legend was part of the type of folk drama later to be known as lakhon nok (nok: "outside") to distinguish it from drama originating in the court, known as lakhon nai (nai: "inside"). My own experience of seeing village people spontaneously begin to act out a story they are telling inclines me to think that the story may sometimes have taken dramatic form as a group of people were being amused by a storyteller.
The 17th-century account of lakhon nok quoted below (my translation) is by Simon de La Loubère, envoy of Louis XIV to the Thai king Phra Narai, who reigned at Ayutthaya A.D. 1657-88:
The presentation which is called "lacone" is a poem combining the epic and the dramatic, which goes on for three days, from eight in the morning to seven at night. These are serious stories in verse, sung by the actors who are always present [on stage] and who sing each in his turn. One of them sings the role of the story teller and the others that of the people speaking in the story; they are all men who sing and no women.16
René Nicholas, a French authority On the development of classical Siamese theater, feels that La Loubère was describing lakhon nok, because only men acted in the country and only women at court until the middle of the 19th century, when King Mongkut gave permission for women to act outside the court.17
Although the performance described by La Loubère was "serious," lakhon nok as described by later Thai and European writers was a form of drama in which actors often appealed to their audience with bawdy humor and satire. Actors sang their parts according to the general details of the story, in addition to providing humor familiar to the local audience. They sang in verses, fitting their words to dance motions which were faster and less graceful than those of court dancers.18
Court Drama: The Revival of "Sang Thong"
The Sang Thong legend moved fully into the "great" tradition again in the reign of Rama II (A.D. 1809-24), when the king and his court poets rewrote it as a dance-drama in verse form.
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