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Published on September 28, 2007

For when he was a child, he often imagined Prince Naresuan being held hostage in Pegu in the 17th century.

After his completion of a translation of 18th-century royal barge songs by Prince Thammatibes, he was contemplating that some of the works of this Ayudhya prince had been taken to Burma after the fall of Ayudhya in 1767.

The tour took him to Rangoon, Bago, Paga and Mandalay, where he searched for traces of the poet prince and the warrior king. Montri was "kept captive" in a tour group, and psychologically in a timeless vision of the country, where the past manifested itself stronger than the present.

Montri hoped to find some of the writings of Prince Thammatibes in the archives, museums or libraries of Burma. He also wished to visit the places where King Naresuan spent his youth in Pegu. Prince Naresuan had become a hostage of King Bayinnaung, the Conqueror in Ten Directions, so that Ayudhya would not dare to stir up trouble.

Montri went to the great Shwedagon Pagoda, or the Gold Pagoda, as a Buddhist traveller. So did I, more than a decade ago, when I had a chance to visit Rangoon. The city looked like Bangkok two or three decades earlier. Like all visitors, I felt like a captive traveller. Still, I was captivated by Shwedagon's golden radiance, as if it would eclipse all Suvarnabhumi.

Shwedagon was majestically beautiful, reminding me of Phra That Doi Suthep in Chiang Mai. Like all pagodas, the Gold Pagoda is believed to house relics of the Buddha, so that it will remind generations to come about the Buddha and his great teaching.

Unconsciously, most Thais believe that some of the gold in the Shwedagon Pagoda was taken from Ayudhya by the Burmese following the sacking of Ayudhya. There could also be some Mon gold in there, too. But it does not matter. The gold, from wherever, has been moulded, without nationality, to form one of the greatest pagodas in the Buddhist realm.

The present political turmoil in Burma has prompted my recollection of Montri's writing. On Wednesday I rushed home in the evening and immediately went to my study to look for "Captive In Burma". Montri finished this book a month after his visit to Burma. I found it sitting beside the other works of his.

When I pulled the book from the shelf, I felt a dark vision lurking within. Were the works of Prince Thammathibes, and the youth of King Naresuan, being kept captive forever in Burma alone?

Did "Captive In Burma" foreshadow what would transpire today, as the Burmese people are being held captive by their own history?

MC Chatri Chalerm Yukol has produced his film masterpiece, a trilogy on King Naresuan the Great. The first part of the trilogy revolves around Prince Naresuan's life as a hostage in Pegu. He was a child growing into a fearless warrior. King Bayinnaung, who subdued Ayudhya with his mighty army, installed King Mahathamaraja of Pitsanulok, King Naresuan's father, as the King of Ayudhya.

To make sure that Ayudhya would not rise against Pegu, he took Prince Naresuan and his sister Princess Phrasuphan Kalaya with him to his court. But the Thai psyche does not regard this episode in Prince Naresuan's life as a total humiliation. For Naresuan learnt the arts of war and politics in the Pegu court, and then destiny called upon him.

Prince Naresuan would later escape from the captivity and reclaim independence for the Ayudhya Kingdom. Montri wrote in "Captive In Burma":

It seems every great man

must at one time or another

be captive in Burma,

and only a few have left

marks of their transcendent freedom.

It is no coincidence that Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize laureate, has experienced a similar fate. As the leader of a democracy movement which defies the junta, she has been kept under house arrest for two decades.

Suu Kyi has become the ultimate symbol of this captivity, a symbol of historical proportion. Her arrest also symbolises the psyche of the nation, which can't escape from a moving exit.

We have yet to see whether Suu Kyi's captivity is serving as an apprenticeship for a greater destiny that will free Burma. Again, Montri wrote a foreshadowing thought:

Every great man has been captive here in one way or another.

What an apprenticeship!

Montri found Burma a country locked up by its own past, clumsy about its present and uncertain about its future.

I still have not found anything;

I have just seen people strolling about, adjusting their sarongs all the time.

The Thais have let go the bitter memory of the fall of Ayudhya. It is time for the Burmese, even at a heavy cost in lives, to break from this seemingly unending cycle of self-captivity once and for all.

(Visit http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/BurmaWatch/2007/09/26/entry-2, and read the whole book "Captive In Burma").

Thanong Khanthong