Kamsuan Samut
It concerns a man who leaves the old Siamese capital of Ayutthaya and travels in a small boat down the Chao Phraya River and out into the Gulf of Thailand.
The poem was once attributed to a court poet named Si Prat in the reign of King Narai (r. 1656–1688), but this is now considered doubtful.
These vary in wording, spelling, and in the number and sequence of the verses, suggesting that the work may have survived in fragments, subsequently reassembled, but all the manuscripts appear to stem from the same original.
[3]Several other editions followed: by Phra Worawetphisit, the long-time dean of Thai literature at Chulalongkorn University, in 1958;[4] by P. n. Pramuanmarg, a pen-name of the historian and litterateur MC Chand Chirayu Rajani, in 1959;[2] by Dhanit Yupho, the former head of the Fine Arts Department, in 1960;[5] by Lalana Siricharoen in 1970;[6] by Sujit Wongthes and a team from the Matichon publishing group in 2006;[7] and by Winai Pongsripian in 2010.
The speaker records fauna seen along the way including deer, buffalo, wild ox, rhinoceros and several species of birds.
He also comments on the watery landscape of lakes and creeks, the low sky, gardens full of flowers and fruit, masses of jasmine, the flatness of the plain, the coastline, and the surface of the sea.
Manas Chitakasem)[10]The poet uses a wide range of techniques and devices to express his love and appreciation of the distant beloved.
In their classical form, nirat are poems based on a journey where sights, events, and place-names along the way trigger an association with a parted lover.
At Khom Phreng (Thai: ขอมเพรง) he recounts the tale of a curious accidental death which gave rise to the village’s name.
At Bang Nai Yi (Thai: บางนายญี่) he describes his boat crew getting drunk The nirat-like passages are not the only devices deployed to display the speaker’s love for the parted lover.
The speaker repeatedly describes the physical distress caused by his parting from the lover, particularly felt by his stomach, intestine, kidney and liver, but also by his breast, eyes, and teeth.
The speaker draws comparisons with other stories about parted lovers including Rama and Sita from the Ramayana tradition, and Sudhanu and Samutthakhot from the Paññāsa Jātaka.
In 1919, Phraya Pariyati Thamthada (Phae Talalakshmana), a provincial intellectual who came under the patronage of the Bangkok court, published an elaborate version of the Si Prat story and the composition of this poem, adding a lot of detail and drama without citing any sources.
[2][1] Manit Wallipodom, head of the archaeology section of the Fine Arts Department, traced the place-names found in the poem, showing that the boat followed two long loops in the Chao Phraya River which were cut off by shortcut canals dug in 1542 and 1635 respectively.
[15] As a result of these findings on the language, route, and lack of historical sources, academic opinion now rejects the Si Prat story.
The editions by Sujit Wongthes in 2006[7] and Winai Pongsripian in 2010[8] both adopt the title Kamsuan Samut and argue that the Si Prat story is a myth.
It emerges as the representative of a new genre in Thai poetry in which the poet clearly seeks to express his personal experience of love separation and longing during an actual journey.
"[17] The poem has been variously described as a "masterpiece",[18] "(an example of) heightened realism and sensuality",[19] and "one of the most widely imitated nirats in the 17th and 18th (centuries)".
