The early years of King Monkut
Prince Maha Mongkut was born on October 18, 1804 in the kingdom of Siam (now called Thailand). His father, Buddha Loetla Nabhalai, became the king of Siam (King Rama II) when Mongkut was five. Mongkut's mother was Queen Sri Suriyendra.
As was traditional, Mongkut's father kept a large harem. Mongkut had 72 brothers and sisters, borne by 38 different mothers, but Mongkut was the crown prince, expected to inherit the throne after his father's death. He was called Chao Fah Mongkut, meaning "The High Prince of the Crown." Until he was nine Mongkut lived in a palace near the Chao Phraya River, where he studied Buddhism, history and literature. He also learned to ride horses and elephants, and was trained in the use of various weapons. When he was just 12 years old, his father put him in charge of the Siamese army.
But Mongkut had a rival for the throne -- his half-brother Jetta or Chesdabodin, the son of one of Rama II's many consorts. Prince Jetta was seventeen years older than Mongkut, more experienced in government, and much more powerful.
When Mongkut was 20, his father died and a council of princes and court officials chose Jetta to be Siam's new king. Fearing for his safety, Mongkut left his wife and two young children and became a Buddhist monk. For 27 years the former crown prince lived a monastic life, but it was hardly a dull life. He travelled barefoot throughout Siam, living on handouts, ate one meal a day, and learning about the way ordinary people lived. He also devoted himself to intellectual studies, learning everything from printing to astronomy. He founded the strict Thammayut monastic sect, which still exists today.
He was an abbot at a quiet riverside temple on the outskirts of Bangkok when royal emissaries found him one steamy April morning in 1851, when they brought the news that his half brother, King Rama III, had passed away.
Mongkut as a king
Mongkut was elected to ascend the throne when King Rama III passed away. At the age of 47 he left the monkhood and became known as King Phrachomklao or Rama IV. One of his first acts as monarch was to name a deputy king. This was his brother Chutamani, another son of Queen Sri Suriyendra. Chutamani, now known as Phra Pinklao, took charge of Siam's national defense.
Mongkut was a true monarch, with total power over his five and a half million subjects. But he was different from previous Siamese kings. For one thing, he was friendly toward the West, inviting European diplomats to his coronation and introducing Western innovations into his kingdom, for the first time in 200 years. The king's learning and discipline were formidable. He studied Latin with a helpful French bishop. He also acquired English from American missionaries, a Promethean task at a time when no Thai-English dictionary existed. He also spoke Siamese, Pali, and Sanskrit. To translate from Thai to English, the king first had to find a comparable word in ancient Sanskrit, then plow his way through the bulky Sanskrit-English dictionary to find a near match. It was not surprising that he sometimes startled visitors with a colorful turn of phrase. He joked once that some Englishmen "have not understanding of their own language when I speak."
Despite his open-mindedness about other cultures, Mongkut made sure that Siam did not become a mere appendage of some Western nation. Reading the English newspapers from Singapore and Hong Kong, the king followed the expansion of empires. Siam was a strong force in Southeast Asia, but European powers hungered on a global scale. His response to all that was like the insight gained from a koan: to escape dominion by any one Western power, he would open his doors to all. He signed trade treaties with England, France, the United States and half a dozen other countries, thereby limiting his vulnerability to each of those countries.
In cementing these relations, the king displayed a sensitivity to each country's situation. A royal letter to President ranklin Pierce included an unusually intimate daguerreotype portrait. It shows Mongkut bareheaded, wearing a simple robe and seated beside Queen Thepserin, mother of the future king Chulalongkorn. No throne or crown appears in the portrait destined for the land without royalty. His letters to Queen Victoria, on the other hand, invoked the bond of noble blood.
In his personal life Mongkut adhered to Siamese tradition, having 82 children by 39 wives. Nine thousand women lived in his harem, kept apart from the world in a separate city that they were seldom allowed to leave. But Mongkut wanted the women of his court to be educated about the world beyond Siam. He arranged for them to receive English lessons from Christian missionaries, but the Siamese women were bored by their preaching. The missionaries tried to teach Christianity, and the women found it uninteresting, when they were already satisfied with Buddhism. Therefore Mongkut's consul in Singapore hired another teacher, Anna Leonowens, with the contract not allowing her to teach religion. She arrived in Bangkok in 1862.
Mongkut was fascinated by the precision of Western scientific measurement. He filled his chambers with clocks, thermometers and barometers, and taught himself astronomy, erecting an observatory on the palace grounds. This led to his greatest scientific triumph and, indirectly, to his death.
The Death of King Mongkut
In August 1868, the palace announced an expedition on the occasion of a solar eclipse. For villagers, eclipses foretold bad luck. They saw the eclipse as attempts by the dragon Rahu to swallow the sun and used clanging bells and fireworks to impel Rahu to disgorge it. Mongkut believed he could disabuse such fears if he could predict the event with mathematical calculations.
Invitations provided guests with the latitude and longitude of a spot on the Siamese coast where the eclipse would last longest. A mission of French astronomers journeyed more than 6,000 miles from Paris to witness the event. They were met by Mongkut's entourage, including members of the royal family, retainers, skeptical court astrologers, horses, oxen and 50 elephants.
On the appointed morning, August 18, 1868, at the exact second indicated by the king's calculations, the sky went totally dark, a remarkable feat of prediction. Mongkut and his prime minister cried "Hurrah! Hurrah!" The exhausted French astronomers acknowledged his accuracy; court astrologers were nonplussed. But skeptics soon claimed justification for their fears and superstitions; in a matter of days, the king and several others in the royal party fell ill with malaria contracted on the marshy, mosquitoes infested shore.
King Mongkut and his 15-year-old son Chulalongkorn contracted malaria. Knowing that he was dying, Mongkut called his advisors to his bedside and urged them to continue working for the best interests of his people. Then he lay upon his right side and recited the sacred name of the lord Buddha to fix his mind firmly in the moment of his death. Like the Buddha himself, he died on his own birthday. He was 64 years old.
Chulalongkorn recovered. Because he was his father's eldest royal son (his mother was Queen Thepserin), he succeeded to the throne as King Rama V.
Mrs. Leonowens was away from Siam when King Mongkut died. She wrote the new king a letter of condolence. He replied politely, but did not invite her back to Siam. Consequently, Leonowens made a new life as a writer. She became well-known and successful.
Mongkut's prime minister ruled as regent until Chulalongkorn turned 20 and took charge of the country. He immediately turned tradition on its ear by announcing that the people of Siam were no longer required to prostrate themselves in the king's presence. He also abolished slavery and gave up his official ownership of all the land in Siam.