Ram Khamhaeng Inscription

. The stele is in the shape of a four-sided pillar, mostly square and wide on each side, with a rounded pyramidal top. It is made of siltstone; the upper section which bears the inscriptions is polished, while the lower part, which probably fitted into a base, remains rough. It is in total height. The stele was discovered in 1833 by Prince Mongkut, who would later become King in 1851 and was at the time ordained as a monk. ==Deciphering==

Mongkut made initial studies of the inscription, and in 1836 established a commission, headed by monk-Prince Roek (who would later become Supreme Patriarch Pavares Variyalongkorn), to handle its deciphering. In 1855, Mongkut (now king) presented a lithographic copy of the inscription, with annotations giving partial translations and a letter explaining its significance, to the British envoy John Bowring, and another copy was presented to the French envoy Charles de Montigny in 1856. ==Text==

The inscription contains 35 lines of text on its first and second sides, and 27 on the third and fourth. The script used, now known as the Sukhothai script, is an early form of the Thai script (also known as Siamese), which differs vastly from modern Thai and bears some resemblance to ancient Khmer, from which it is considered to have been adapted. Most significantly, the script contains no above- or below-line vowel marks, a feature seen in later Sukhothai inscriptions and modern Thai, as well as earlier Indic scripts. ==Controversy about authenticity==

, depicting Ramkhamhaeng overseeing of the creation of the inscription In July 1987, historian Michael Vickery presented a paper titled "The Ram Khamhaeng Inscription: A Piltdown Skull of Southeast Asian History?" at the International Conference on Thai Studies at the Australian National University, in which he drew together the arguments made by himself and others casting doubt on the authenticity of the inscription. His position was supported, most notably, by art historian Piriya Krairiksh, who published, in Thai in August 1988, further arguments that the stele was a forgery by Mongkut himself. The claims—shocking for the implication that most of Thai history would have to be rewritten—led to intense, often heated, scholarly debate, joined by dozens of academics both making rebuttals as well as giving support. and a compilation of English-language articles published in 1991 by the Siam Society. Although counter-arguments were made to address the claims, and a 1990 analysis using scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy found the Ram Khamhaeng stele to be the same age (700–500 years) as four other Sukhothai inscriptions, several proponents remain convinced of the forgery theory, and the debate has not been definitively settled. Nevertheless, the inscription was successfully submitted to UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme, and was inscribed on its international register in 2003. The intense scrutiny and analysis also led to a much richer body of scholarship on the inscription, and several new theories have been proposed regarding its purpose and the exact circumstances of its creation. However, while historian Barend Jan Terwiel observed that while "the Thai academic world showed a refreshing open-mindedness" in its response to the claims, ==See also==