The Lao/Tai people believe that their first ruler was King Boulom. The stories of King Boulom are very ancient with many different and contradictory variations but all place the first kingdom at Meuang Thaeng, today known as Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. In some accounts King Boulom was the fifteenth king of his dynasty. One version of the story is as follow;
At the beginning of the world all was in chaos so the ruler of heaven, Phya Thene, sent down his counsellor Khun Boulom to bring order and prosperity to the Tai/Lao people. Khun Boulom descended to Earth on a huge white elephant accompanied by his two wives Nang Ek Keng and Nang Yomakara and a great number of attendants. They crossed the plain of Meuang Thaeng to Na Noi (small rice field) where they found a giant gourd plant. One of the gourds was pierced with a red hot poker and out of the black sooty hole poured a dark skinned people known as Kha or Lao Thueng (High country people), recognised as the first inhabitants of the land. Two further gourds were pierced using a chisel and from these poured lighter skinned people, the Lao people.
Khun Boulom had seven sons by his two wives and he gave to each a kingdom to rule;
Khun Boulom had seven sons by his two wives and he gave to each a kingdom to rule;
- Khun Lo, the eldest son, was to rule over Mueang Swa, which he renamed as Xieng Thong (Later becoming Luang Prabang)
- Chey Choung ruled Meuang Phoueune, later renamed Meuang Khouang
- Ni Fa Lane became the king of Mueang Ho, the Sipsong Panna (12,000 Rice Fields), today Xishuangbanna in China
- Chu Song took Prakan in the Black River valley, formerly the Sipsong Chua Tai are, now in Vietnam
- Saya Phong was given Mueang Niuon which was to become Lan Na (One Million Rice Fields) ruled from Chiang Mai.
- Kham In took over the ancient Khmer town of Luovo, now Lop Buri in central Thailand
- Louk Poun finally took Hamsavati, whose capital was Pegu on the delta of the Salween River
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Searching for the historical King Boulom is fraught with difficulties but many scholars believe that he was in fact the fourth ruler of Nan Zhao, the kingdom centred on Dali, in modern day Yunnan, China. Known in the Chinese records as Pi-luo-ge (皮羅閣) he ruled from 728 - 748 CE. His son Ge-luo-feng (閣羅鳳) (r.748 - 778) would be Khun Lo who is recorded in the Luang Prabang chronicles as the ruler of Mueang Swa.
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Khun Boulom a.k.a Pi-luo-ge, ruler of Nan Zhao (728-748)
唐吉訶德的侍從, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons |