Imagine the city of Ayutthaya, in the year 1687. It is the capital of Siam, the old name for Thailand. A visitor from France called Simon de la Loubère has come to the royal court as an envoy, a messenger sent by his own king. Back in France he writes a book about Siam, and it comes out in 1691. Among the people who earn a living by entertaining crowds, he says, there are wrestlers and fighters who use their fists and their elbows. 1,100
His note is one of the oldest written records of Thai boxing that we have. 1
Eight weapons
Today that fighting art is called . is the Thai word for boxing. 1 Muay Thai is Thailand's national combat sport, and people call it the . That is because a fighter can strike with eight weapons: two fists, two elbows, two knees and two shins. 1
A Muay Thai fighter is called a . 1 Fighters may also hold each other close, in the , to land a knee or to tip the other person off balance. And before every fight, each fighter performs a slow dance of respect for their teacher, called the . 1,21
A king at the fair
The royal records of Siam tell a story from 1702. King Suriyenthrathibodi went to a fair at a temple dressed as an ordinary man, and he boxed there. 1
In 1788 two boxers from France came to challenge Siamese boxers in front of King Rama I. 1
How old is it?
Some Thai histories say that boxing in Siam is more than a thousand years old, and that warriors fought this way on the battlefield. 1,20 Many historians think that much of that story was written later, in the 1900s, to help Thailand tell its story as a nation. 1,2 So those old stories are told here as stories, and kept apart from the written records.
The most famous of those stories is about a prisoner of war who fought 10 champions, one after another.