Kamphaeng Phet

History

According to the Ayutthaya Testimonies, in 1156 a monarch of Xiān named Suryaraja moved his royal seat to Vicitraprakāra, identified with present-day Kamphaeng Phet. The town thus became the principal centre of his dominion. His successor and son, Candraraja, later moved the seat of power to Sukhothai, leaving Kamphaeng Phet a frontier stronghold of the kingdom.

Kamphaeng Phet was an ancient outpost town during the Sukhothai period, as evidenced by the city walls and fortifications that remain today. Legend gives two towns on the site before the present one, Chakangrao (ชากังราว) and Nakhon Chum (นครชุม). Chakangrao stood on the east bank of the Ping River and Nakhon Chum on the west. Prince Damrong Rajanubhab assigned the two names the other way. He surmised that the older town, on the west bank at the mouth of Khlong Suan Mak, was first called Chakangrao and took the name Nakhon Chum under the Phra Ruang dynasty. The walled town on the east bank, named Kamphaeng Phet, he held to be later, of the reign of Li Thai. He rested this on the absence of Kamphaeng Phet from any Sukhothai inscription, on Li Thai's inscription at Wat Mahathat calling the place Nakhon Chum, and on Ayutthayan law texts that pair Chakangrao with Kamphaeng Phet. He ranked the newer town as a royal capital or as a town held by a king's son, which he took to explain its palace. Piset Jiachanpong reads the east-bank town as an Ayutthayan foundation placed against Nakhon Chum. On his account it stood on high ground, clear of the flooding that troubled the older town, and could be supplied by river from the lower Chao Phraya. Nakhon Chum's people may on that reading have crossed over to settle there.

Borommarachathirat I of Ayutthaya attacked Chakangrao four times between 1376 and 1388. Tomé Pires, writing early in the 16th century, described the town's governor as a viceroy who within his own territory stood like the king of the land. Chairacha had the governor, Phraya Narai, executed there in 1538, and Bayinnaung took the town in 1563 before moving against Phitsanulok.

A bronze image of Śiva was cast for the town in 1510. Pierre Baptiste reports that the dedicatory inscription on the statue names the donor as Śrī Dharmāśokarāja, a prince of Kamphaeng Phet, and gives the date of casting. Baptiste notes that the attribution of the group of Hindu bronzes to which it belongs has been disputed since 1895, with proposed dates running from the mid-14th to the mid-18th century.

Kamphaeng Phet received municipality status on March 11, 1936. At its establishment it covered 4.5 square kilometers. Later in 1966, it expanded to an area of 14.9 square kilometers.

Demographics

Since 2005, the population of Kamphaeng Phet has been decreasing.