Anuruddha

Anuruddha อนุรุทธ
King of Arimadhanaburi
King of Dvaravati's Kamalanka
Reign	c. 665?–688
Predecessor	Pujiayuemo
Successor	Sai Thong Som
Died	Late 7th century Nakhon Pathom

Anuruddha (อนุรุทธ, RTGS: Anurut) is described in Pali and Thai historiographical traditions as a ruler of the Dvaravati cultural sphere, of the polity of Arimadhanaburi (อริมัทนบุรี), 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. Both that text and the Northern Chronicle credit him with instituting the Chula Sakarat era in 638 CE, on which basis some scholars have proposed a reign from 639 to 679 and identified him with Kakabhadra, the era's putative founder. 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, a principal city of the polity known in Chinese sources as Qiān Zhī Fú and associated with Si Thep. 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.

Anuruddha asked Manohanaraj for one of these images, and on being refused mounted a campaign against Ayojjhapura, capturing him and taking two Sikhī images to Arimadhanaburi. The Jinakalamali records that he later returned them to Haripuñjaya in the reign of Camadevi, who gave them to her son Hanayos, ruler of Lampang. Since Hanayos acceded in 688, his activity extended at least to that year, 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.

The Northern Chronicle adds a dispute with Indaprasthanagara over sacred objects, the Pali Canon and the Emerald Buddha, which he had brought from Lanka. Two junks carrying them lost their course and arrived instead at Indaprasthanagara, whose ruler refused to give them up; Anuruddha then brought political pressure to bear, and the dispute was partly settled when Indaprasthanagara returned the Pali Canon but kept the other. He is also portrayed as maintaining religious ties with Lanka through the transmission and patronage of Buddhism.

Historiographical issues

Identification with Anawrahta

Discussion of Anuruddha's identity turns on phonetic similarity and chronological inconsistency. His name resembles that of Anawrahta, the 11th-century ruler of Pagan (r. 1044–1077), and the Northern Chronicle identifies the two; the same text is nonetheless internally inconsistent, since it also credits Anuruddha with founding the Chula Sakarat era in 638. The Jinakalamali associates him directly with Camadevi of Haripuñjaya, conventionally dated to the mid-7th century, roughly four centuries before Anawrahta.

Some researchers have instead identified Anuruddha with Kalavarnadisharaja of Lavo. This too raises chronological difficulty, since the narrative places Anuruddha at Nakhon Pathom after Camadevi's enthronement at Haripuñjaya, while other accounts have Kalavarnadisharaja ruling at Lavo in the same period.

Bearing on the disputed locations

The name of the seat is itself unsettled across source traditions. Where the Jinakalamali calls it Arimadhanaburi, the epigraphic record of the same centuries uses Sambuka, a name several scholars place at Nakhon Pathom; 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.