[1] The chronicle, dated to c. 1410,[2] is a semi-historical recounting of the founding of the Mon Dvaravati kingdom of Hariphunchai (Haripunjaya) in the mid-sixth century by Queen Cāmadevi and her establishment of a lineage destined to rule Haripunchai for the next 500 years.
In addition to the Camadevivamsa, which is also known in English as The Legend of Queen Cama[3] and The Chamadevivongs,[4] Bodhiramsi also composed, in 1417, the Tamnan Phraphutthasihing,[5] another chronicle which describes the history of the Phra Phuttha Sihing image, from its creation in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to its enshrinement in 1411 at Chiang Mai, the capital of Lanna.
[6] Haripunchai was a kingdom affiliated with Dvaravati, a Theravada Buddhist culture that existed in a loose confederacy of Mon-ruled principalities in the area of present-day Thailand from the sixth to thirteenth centuries.
[7] Known as a center of scholarship and Theravada study at a time when other kingdoms in the area were still practicing a form of Hinduism, Dvaravati played a major role in diffusing Buddhism and Indian culture to the rest of Southeast Asia.
[10] A Thai translation was printed in 1967 by the Fine Arts Department and the Social Research Institute of Chiang Mai University holds a microfilm copy of the original palm leaf manuscript.
A full English translation and commentary, which, in contrast to previous analyses, treats the Camadevivamsa as a religious "mythic-legendary (narrative) in which etiology, cosmology and Buddhist doctrine take precedence over historical facts",[11] was published in 1998 by Donald Swearer.
Early study of the Northern Thai Chronicles by Western scholars was focused on searching for factual and historical details within the texts to compare and contrast with those of other documents and inscriptions.