ABSTRACT
Historiography, or the writing of history in Thailand, is one of the oldest tasks and is confined within limited groups of educated, strictly male members of the Buddhist temples and the palace. There were two types of such writings, namely the tamnan by Buddhist monks and the phongsawadan by the court literati. Tamnan means story, legend or myth. The main theme of tamnan history clearly revolves around religion. It is the Gautama Buddha who is the moving force in it. Its purpose is to describe the history of Buddhism in connection with a Buddhist kingdom or a certain Buddhist locality: certain temples or important monuments (cetiya, stupa, etc.). Kings, kingdoms and to a certain extent the laypeople come into the picture insofar as their actions contribute to promoting Buddhism. Therefore, history in this sense is concerned not only with the past. The past is continuous with the existence of the present and the present is also part of the future. Thus the past, the present and the future are parts of one whole – the history of Buddhism.
