Ngoenyang

The political and urban center of Hiran Nakhon Ngoenyang was located at the site of present-day Wiang Phang Kham in Mae Sai District, Chiang Rai Province, Thailand. The settlement was originally founded under the name Hiran and later expanded into a larger fortified city, after which it became known as Ngoenyang. Archaeological evidence indicates that this transformation involved the northward expansion of the original settlement.

Ngoenyang worked as a mandala of the kind common in mainland Southeast Asia, holding a network of allied and subordinate mueang by dynastic tie, military force and ritual authority. Its twenty-fifth ruler, Mangrai, founded Chiang Rai and then the Lan Na Kingdom in the late 13th century, which ended Ngoenyang as a separate polity.

History

Formation

After an earthquake destroyed the Yonok Kingdom in the 6th century, the surviving settlements formed an alliance and moved the principal seat to Wiang Prueksa, where sixteen rulers followed one another. The Tai Yuan of Wiang Prueksa then invited Lao Chakkaraj, a Lawa leader from Doi Tung, to rule them. He rebuilt the city and made it his chief seat in 638 under the name Hiran Nakhon. He also rebuilt Mueang Fang and later founded new cities that became Chiang Rai and Chiang Khong. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit summarise the Sinhanavati legend as one continuous movement over these generations. A Tai chief's son comes from the north, displaces some Lawa and founds Yonok, probably at Chiang Saen; his descendants, harried by people who may have been Mongols, flee south down the Kok River and found Fang, then cross a low watershed into the Ping valley and found Chiang Rai, which they date to 1263, before moving on towards Chiang Mai late in the century.

During the early reign of Lao Chakkaraj, the polity of Ngoenyang comprised 57 cities or settlements, with four additional regional centers besides Hiran–Ngoenyang: Mueang Fang, north of modern Chiang Mai province; Mong Hsat in present-day Shan State, Myanmar; Mueang Hang Rung Rung (เมืองหางรังรุ้ง) in modern Hot district of Chiang Mai province; and Mueang Jawad Noi (เมืองจวาดน้อย/สาดน้อย) in present-day Mueang Chiang Mai district. The northernmost extent of his polity was Mong Yawng, where he appointed one of his sons as ruler, while the eastern boundary adjoined Vieng Phouka, ruled by his uncle, whose daughter later married Lao Kao Kaeo Ma Mueang, youngest son of Lao Chakkaraj.

In 662, the southern part in the Ping River Basin was split off and became the Haripuñjaya Kingdom, ruled by Queen Camadevi of Lavo. On Lao Chakkaraj's death in 759 his three sons ruled separately and did not interfere with one another. This division fragmented the polity into three parts: the eastern part, with its seat at Chiang Khong, ruled by the eldest son Lao Khob (ลาวคอบ); the northern part, centered at Mong Yawng, ruled by the middle son Lao Chang (ลาวช้าง); and the youngest son, Lao Kao Kaeo Ma Mueang, succeeded his father at Hiran–Ngoenyang.

Location of Mueang Ngoenyang

The Chronicle of Chiang Saen identifies Ngoenyang with modern Chiang Saen, and that identification long held the field. Other textual traditions place it elsewhere. The Nan Chronicle places Ngoenyang at Ta Sai (ท่าทราย) in Mae Sai District; The Chiang Mai Chronicle situates it near the Sai River; and the Phayao Chronicle records that during the reign of Lao Khiang, the city of Yang Sai (ยางสาย)—his royal seat—was expanded and it was located at the foothills of Doi Tung in Mae Sai District. Taken together, these accounts suggest that Ngoenyang was most likely located in the vicinity of Doi Tung, while Hiran can be more confidently identified with modern Mae Sai. This conclusion is consistent with archaeological research conducted by Worasit Ophap at Wiang Phang Kham, an ancient city in Mae Sai district. His survey found that the site is enclosed by an earthen embankment that divides the settlement into two sections, indicating a later expansion of the city. The site is located in the Doi Wao–Doi Kha–Doi Pa Lao (ดอยเวา–ดอยคา–ดอยป่าเลา) area, which lies along the same mountain rage as Doi Tung. Wiang Phang Kham should therefore be identified as the same city as the city of Ngoenyang. Nevertheless, this identification remains disputed.

Chinese account of Duo Mo Zhang

In the Xianqing era (顯慶; 656–661 CE) of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, the king of Duo Mo Zhang (多摩長), named Shī luó qú yōng yī shuō (尸羅劬傭伊說), sent a tributary mission to the Chinese court. The Tongdian opens its notice by placing the country jū yú hǎi dǎo (居於海島), on a sea island, and gives its neighbours as Po Feng to the east, Duo Long to the west, Ban Zhi Ba to the south, which it glosses in Chinese as "Five Hills", and He Ling and others to the north. The island wording is the ground on which earlier scholarship placed the polity in the archipelago, and it is what Hoshino's argument below is directed against, although he does not discuss the phrase itself. It traces the royal line to a dragon's son named Gǔ lì (骨利), who is said to have found a great bird's egg and, on opening it, a woman of surpassing beauty whom he took to wife; the reigning king is described as his descendant. Its ruling house is described as having no surnames, and marriage as unregulated by them. The royal residence is a palisaded enclosure with a wooden hall in which the king sits on a lion throne facing east, and the dress and customs are said to resemble those of Lin-yi. The polity is said to maintain a military force of over 20,000 soldiers, though it lacks horses, relying instead on bows, swords, armor, and other weapons. Tableware is of copper, iron, gold and silver, and the diet largely ghee, cheese, sugar and rock sugar. The livestock are rams and water buffalo and the country holds roe deer and deer; the dead are cremated without mourning dress, and the music is said to resemble that of India. The fruits named are jackfruit, zhái hù zhē, mango and pomegranate, and sugarcane is said to be abundant. A traveller leaving the country reached Jiaozhou by way of Xue Lu Du (薛盧都), Si He Lu (思訶盧), Jun Na Lu (君那盧) and Lin-yi.

Tatsuo Hoshino argues from this notice that Duo Mo Zhang, should be located within the fluvial zone of present-day northern Thailand, an area subsequently associated with the Lan Na cultural and political sphere, and takes it to have encompassed the Yom and Nan rivers together with some tributaries of the Mekong across the watershed. His case rests first on He Ling (訶陵), the northern neighbour named in the text, which he distinguishes from the He Ling south of Chenla. The distinction rests on the biography of Wei Gao, the Tang official in Yunnan who defeated Nanzhao in alliance with the Tibetans: after two of his generals took a dozen towns in 793, eight chieftains of the West Mountain tribes came before him to pledge allegiance, and the second of the eight lands, each listed as a guo, is written with the same characters as the He Ling south of Chenla. Hoshino notes that Pelliot had recorded this second He Ling himself. He then reconstructs phonologically the place names on the road from Duo Mo Zhang to Lin-yi, and holds that the three states on that road, which he reads from the New Book of Tang as Jun Na Lu (郡那盧), Du He Lu (都河盧) and Sa Lu (薩盧), lay up-river from the Tang prefectural centre of Changzhou on the middle Mekong. He places Jun Na Lu in the area of Sakon Nakhon, reading its name as na lao, "Lao paddy fields"; Du He Lu near Tha Bo and Wiang Khuk opposite the later sites of Sai Fong and Vientiane, as a river landing named Tha Hua Lü; and Sa Lu either in the Luang Prabang area or on the old trade route linking Phrae to Chiang Khan.

He rejects the older reading that takes the two references to He Ling for one polity and identifies it with the Kalingga kingdom on Java. That reading, he argues, cannot be fitted to the Tongdian geography, and his objection turns on what would then lie to the south. He Ling is given as Duo Mo Zhang's northern neighbour and Duo Mo Zhang as the northern neighbour of Qian Zhi Fu, so if He Ling were Java then Qian Zhi Fu, a state of some size, would fall at the southernmost extremity of the world known to the Chinese, in open sea or as far as Australia, which was neither known at the time nor Indianised. He adds that no river comparable to the Ganges is to be found in the islands of Southeast Asia, and treats the resulting position as one from which no conclusion follows.

The physical description of Duo Mo Zhang, he adds, fits the mountainous north of mainland Southeast Asia better than an island. The text has travel easier north to south than east to west, which suits a country of parallel north–south ranges rather than the east–west grain of Java. On the same ground he moves other polities of the Chinese records, among them Po An (婆岸) and Zhan Bo, into the middle Mekong basin.

Southern influence of Nanzhao

About a century after the conventional founding of Ngoenyang, a similar consolidation was under way to the north in present-day Yunnan, where six regional lordships gradually coalesced as the Six Zhao (六詔). Contemporary and retrospective sources indicate that five of these lordships were constituted, at least in part, by Tai-speaking Lao or Lao-affiliated populations. This confederative arrangement culminated in 738 with the establishment of the mandala-style kingdom of Nanzhao, which subsequently emerged as a dominant regional power in southwestern China and mainland Southeast Asia and maintained its political primacy until its dissolution in 902.

Although no extant historical records explicitly document direct political or diplomatic engagement between Nanzhao and either the Tai Yuan kingdom of Ngoenyang or the Lao muang of Muang Sua, a constellation of indirect indicators suggests that some degree of contact, interaction, or structural influence was likely. By the 9th century, Nanzhao had developed into a territorially expansive polity, extending approximately 600–700 miles from north to south. Its expansionary strategies were not limited to military coercion but also relied upon the systematic cultivation of political alliances, including marriage alliances. In this context, the 9th-century Chinese ethnographic and geographic text Man Shu (蛮书) records that Nanzhao’s sphere of influence expanded southward and southwestward along major river systems, through which political and military power was projected into the territories of numerous groups collectively designated as the Southern Barbarians (南方诸蛮).

Further evidence for Nanzhao’s engagement with Tai-speaking elites is provided by the historical prominence of the Nùng clan, a Tai-speaking aristocratic lineage based primarily in Guangxi, to the east of the Nanzhao heartland. Scholarly reconstructions suggest that the Nung maintained sustained political and military relations with Nanzhao for at least a century prior to the mid-11th century, when their leader Nong Zhigao, who rebelled against the Song dynasty, rose to prominence during the transitional period between Nanzhao and its successor polity, the Dali Kingdom.

Chinese historical sources provide divergent accounts of Nong Zhigao’s ultimate fate. The Zizhi Tongjian records that he was executed by the ruler of Dali and that his severed head was presented to the Song court, whereas the Song Shi acknowledges uncertainty regarding the circumstances of his death. In parallel, a substantial corpus of oral tradition and popular historiography asserts that Nong Zhigao escaped southward into what is now northern Thailand, where he is venerated as an ancestral figure by various Tai-speaking communities, who, among other Tais, identify themselves as descendants or cultural inheritors of his movement.

Phase of expansions

Capital city expansion

Following the collapse of Nanzhao due to the usurpation by Zheng Maisi in 902 CE, the Yunnan region entered a prolonged phase of political fragmentation and instability lasting nearly four decades, until the establishment of the Dali Kingdom in 937 CE. During this period, it is plausible that population movements occurred, including southward migrations into areas corresponding to present-day northern Thailand. This proposed demographic shift may be considered in parallel with accounts preserved in the Phayao Chronicle, which describe the expansion of the capital of Ngoenyang under the leadership of Lao Khiang in the mid-10th century. According to the chronicle, the city underwent significant enlargement, eventually reaching dimensions of approximately 1.5 by 7.0 kilometers.

Southward territorial expansion

By the late 11th century, the Ngoenyang polity, under Prince Khun Chomtham (ขุนจอมธรรม), is said to have extended its influence further southward. This expansion reportedly involved the occupation of previously abandoned territories, culminating in the re-establishment of a new center identified as the Phayao Kingdom. However, despite its emergence as an independent polity, Phayao appears to have maintained close ties with Ngoenyang, particularly through dynastic alliances, until its incorporation into Ngoenyang’s successor state, the Lan Na kingdom, in 1338.

Southern military expansion

Another episode of Tai Yuan political expansion is recorded in the Northern Chronicle. Around the reign of Suvacanaraja of Mueang Chaliang, which commenced in 1052, the ruler of Chiang Saen, Śrīdharmatripiṭaka (ศรีธรรมไตรปิฎก), is described as having mobilized a coalition force drawn from Chiang Rai, Chiang Lue (เชียงลือ), Chiang Ngoen (either Ngoenyang or Xiengngeun), Chiang Tung, Chiang Fang, and Chiang Nan, and advancing southward to attack Mueang Chaliang. In response, Brahmavidhiḥ (พระพรหมวิธี), ruler of Mueang Pichai Chiang Mai (เมืองพิชัยเชียงใหม่), also known as Kampoṭanagara, and a nephew of Suvacanaraja, ordered the evacuation of populations from the regions corresponding to modern Nan, as well as Phrae and Lampang, consolidating them at his principal center before advancing to reinforce his uncle at Mueang Chaliang.

By this time, Mueang Chaliang had already undergone significant fortification and military preparation from the outset of Suvacanarāja’s reign, supplemented by support from his father-in-law, the Chinese monarch. Upon the arrival of the Tai Yuan coalition, protracted hostilities ensued, resulting in substantial casualties on both sides. The conflict was ultimately resolved through a negotiated settlement mediated by a monk, Phra Buddhaghosacharya (พระพุทธโฆษาจารย์). As part of the agreement, Suvacanarāja’s only daughter was given in marriage to Śrīdharmatripiṭaka, thereby establishing a dynastic alliance.

This union produced two sons: Kesariraja, the elder, who later ruled the Lavo Kingdom, and Jatisakara (ชาติสาคร), the younger, who is noted as having succeeded his father at Chiang Saen. Following these events, no extant record explicitly identifies the successor of Suvacanarāja at Mueang Chaliang. However, subsequent genealogical traditions indicate that Kesariraja later married into the ruling line of Mueang Chaliang and fathered a son, Duangkrian Krishnaraja (ดวงเกรียนกฤษณะราช), who in turn married Rajadevi (ราชเทวี), a Xiān princess under Phra Chao Luang. Meanwhile, Śrīdharmatripiṭaka continued to exercise a significant regional role, notably through the reconstruction of Phitsanulok, which had previously served as a principal political center of the Xiān rulers Sudhammaraja, Visnuraja, and Vijayaraja from 937 to the early 11th century, as noted in the Ayutthaya Testimonies. After ceding the throne at Chiang Saen to his younger son, he is said to have relocated to Phitsanulok in 1106, where he established his authority and governed until his death. Subsequent to this period, the regnal lists of Ngoenyang rulers preserved in the Chiang Mai Chronicle and the Chiang Saen Chronicle appear to regain consistency.

Early Tai muang conflicts

Several local historiographical traditions describe a series of conflicts among Tai mueang polities in the middle Mekong basin during the 12th century. According to these accounts, Ngoenyang was subjected to invasions by neighboring powers, notably Mueang Kaew Prakan (เมืองแกวประกัน) and Candrapuri. Mueang Kaew Prakan is commonly identified with Xiangkhouang (Muang Phuan) and is thought to have been associated with the Tai Kao or to have been significantly influenced by the Viet. Candrapuri, meanwhile, is generally identified with the site of modern Vientiane.

The sources further relate that the invading forces were ultimately repelled by the troops of Ngoenyang under the leadership of Chueang. Following the successful defense, Chueang initiated a series of counteroffensives that resulted in the subjugation and annexation of several surrounding mueang. In order to consolidate control over these newly conquered territories, Chueang appointed his sons and close relatives as rulers, thereby extending Ngoenyang’s political influence through dynastic governance. The appointments are recorded as follows: Chueang III was installed as ruler of Muang Phuan; Lao Pao (ลาวพาว) was appointed to govern Candrapuri; Khun Kham Roi (ขุนคำร้อย) was placed in authority over Chiang Rai; Lao Bao (ลาวบาว; also known as Kham Hao คำห้าว) was assigned to rule Muang Sua; Khun Phaeng (ขุนแพง) was installed as ruler of Phayao; and Sam Chum Saeng (สามชุมแสง) became ruler of the Nan Kingdom. Chueang’s eldest son, Lao Ngoen Rueang, succeeded him as ruler of Ngoenyang, while Chueang himself reportedly relocated to govern Chiang Hung in 1180, From this base, Chueang is further said to have launched a military campaign against Chiang Tung, the principal center of the Tai Khün (Khoen) kingdom.

Following the conclusion of Chueang’s reign, the polities under his lineage developed into autonomous mueang, each exercising independent authority while maintaining dynastic and ritual ties to one another. This configuration closely resembles the mandala model of political organization characteristic of mainland Southeast Asia, in which power was diffused through overlapping spheres of influence rather than centralized territorial sovereignty.

The Rise of Mangrai

A pivotal transformation occurred in 1262 when Mangrai ascended the throne as the 25th ruler of Ngoenyang Chiang Lao. Visionary and ambitious, he sought to unify the smaller principalities scattered across the northern region. Upon his enthronement, Mangrai founded the city of Chiang Rai, designating it as his new capital. This act marked the end of the Lao Dynasty of Ngoenyang Chiang Lao and the beginning of the Mangrai dynasty, which later became the foundation of the Lan Na Kingdom.