Was the Thai alphabet really derived from the Sinhala alphabet?
According to legend, King Ramkhamhaeng, The youngest son of King Si Inthratit, the first king of Thailand, modified the Sinhala (Sri Lankan) Script to create the Thai alphabet. The first written Thai language is inscribed on a stone known to Thais as the "Ramkhamhaeng stele". However, The Thai alphabet doesn’t look like the Sinhala alphabet. Thai alphabet looks more like the Khmer (Cambodian) alphabet. Thai was once a part of the Khmer empire during King Ramkhamhaeng’s time. Was the Thai alphabet derived from the Khmer or Sinhala alphabet?
Tagged as: khmer empire · king of thailand · quot · sinhala alphabet · sri lankan · thai alphabet · thai language · youngest son
"The Thai alphabet is derived from the Old Khmer script (Thai: ??????????, akchara khamen), which is a southern Brahmic style of writing called Vatteluttu. Vatteluttu was also commonly known as the Pallava script by scholars of Southeast Asian studies such as George Coedes."
"According to tradition it was created in 1283 by King Ramkhamhaeng the Great (Thai: ????????????????????)."
"The Ramkhamhaeng stele"
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"This stone was allegedly discovered in 1833 by King Mongkut (then still a monk) in the Wat Mahathat. It should be noted that the authenticity of the stone – or at least portions of it – has been brought into question. Piriya Krairiksh, an academic at the Thai Khadi Research institute, notes that the stele’s treatment of vowels suggests that its creators had been influenced by European alphabet systems; thus, he concludes that the stele was fabricated by someone during the reign of Rama IV himself, or shortly before. The matter is very controversial, since if the stone is in fact a fabrication, the entire history of the period will have to be re-written."
"Scholars are still divided over the issue about the stele’s authenticity. It remains an anomaly amongst contemporary writings, and in fact no other source refers to King Ramkhamhaeng by name. Some authors claim the inscription was completely a 19th-century fabrication, some claim that the first 17 lines are genuine, some that the inscription was fabricated by King Lithai (a later Sukhothai king), and some scholars still hold to the idea of the inscription’s authenticity. The inscription and its image of a Sukhothai utopia remains central to Thai nationalism, and the suggestion that it may have been faked in the 1800s caused Michael Wright, a British scholar, to be threatened with deportation under Thailand’s lese majeste laws."