Fa Ngum

Early life

Phraya Fa Ngum, son of the exiled Phi Fa, grandson of Phraya Khamphong, and great-grandson of the exiled Phraya Lang, was born in 1316. He was raised by the religious scholar Maha Pasaman Chao (Phra Mahasamana). At sixteen, he married a Cambodian princess known variously as Kaeo, Yot Kaeo, or Kaeo Lot Fa.

Fa Ngoum or Fa Ngum was born in Muang Sua, a Lao principality located on the site of present-day Luang Prabang, and founded the Lan Xang Hôm Khao (better known as Lan Xang) kingdom in Laos in 1353. Fa Ngum was a grandson of Souvanna Khamphong, titled Phagna Khampong, ruler of Muang Sua and grandfather of Fa Ngum, banished Fa Ngum and his father, Chao Fa Ngiao, to the Khmer kingdom of Angkor in the 1320s due to his father's indiscretion with one of the grandfather's wives. The Chronicles of Lan Xang name the place of exile as Mueang Inthapat (เมืองอินทปัต) and record that the two were sent there by boat below the Li Phi rapids, lodged in the cell of the elder Maha Pasaman, and that Fa Ngum entered the service of the town's ruler, Phraya Siri Chunthrarat (พระยาศิริจุนทราช). Another source said that Fa Ngum was sent to exile because Fa Ngoum was miraculously born with thirty-three teeth which was an omen of threatening the well-being of his grandfather's kingdom. Fa Ngum subsequently married a Khmer princess, Princess Kèo Kèngkanya, and afterwards returned to Muang Sua with an armed force to bring the towns of Lan Xang under his control. On the chronicle's account Siri Chunthrarat gave Fa Ngum and his father an army in 1352 to march on Lan Xang; they took Mueang Phuan on the way, killed its ruler and installed Thao Thiam Kham Yo in his place, and in 1353 sent an envoy to demand the throne of Lan Xang from Fa Ngum's grandfather, who refused it. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit record that Fa Ngum may have arranged the death of his own father to clear his way to the throne. The force is elsewhere given as ten thousand men. Baker and Pasuk read the foundation story as one of a kind common in the period. A local chief travels to the dominant power of the day, returns with its princess as his wife and then subdues other local chiefs, and they hold that rulers of this era drew legitimacy from association with a dominant polity rather than from separation from it. They set the story beside the Sukhothai events of 1238, which they read the same way. Princess Kèo Kèngkanya later died from plague, while he was campaigning North against the Mongols. In 1353, Fa Ngum founded the kingdom of Lan Xang Hôm Khao—"land of one million elephants and a white parasol." The elephant symbolized military power since most battles were fought using elephants, and the white parasol symbolized royalty, particularly a Buddhist monarch. Fa Ngum further legitimized his rule by enshrining the Prabang Buddha image as the spiritual protector of the kingdom in Viang Chan Viang Kham (present-day Vientiane and Viengkham). He made Xiang Dong Xiang Thong (later renamed Luang Prabang) his capital.

Fa Ngum is credited with introducing Khmer culture and Singhalese Buddhism to the region. His religious tutor, Maha Pasaman, also brought back sacred texts and the Phra Bang.

Political turmoil ensued, and Fa Ngum's son Oun Huan also known as Samsènethai, succeeded the throne in 1368.