Their story
Mongkut, a son of King Rama II, was ordained as a monk in 1824. When his father died that year, his half-brother became king as Rama III, and Mongkut remained in the robes for twenty-seven years.
Studying the Pāli scriptures, and impressed by the strict practice of Mon monks, he concluded that much Thai monastic practice had strayed from the canon. In the 1830s he founded the Dhammayut ('adhering to the Dhamma') movement, which emphasised the discipline, scriptural study and a rational understanding of the teaching. He also learned English and Latin from Western missionaries and studied astronomy.
In 1851 he left the monkhood to become king. He opened Siam to trade with Western powers, reformed government and education, and died in 1868 of malaria contracted on an expedition to observe a solar eclipse he had calculated.
The world they lived in
Britain and France were expanding across Southeast Asia, and Christian missionaries challenged Buddhism as superstitious. Siam was the only country in the region to remain independent.
Their contribution
He created a reformed monastic order and a modern, text-based understanding of Buddhism that presented it as compatible with science and reason.
Their legacy
The Dhammayut became one of Thailand's two monastic orders, and the forest meditation tradition that produced Ajahn Mun, and indirectly Ajahn Chah, grew in part from it. His son Chulalongkorn continued his reforms.
History and tradition
What history can establish
His life is fully documented. The popular Western image of him from The King and I, based on the memoirs of the governess Anna Leonowens, is widely regarded in Thailand as a distortion.
