It is a tribute to the excellence
of Buddhist discipline that a prince who spent twenty-six years as a
monk should have emerged as neither a bigot nor an impractical mystic
but as an active, enlightened and progressive monarch. The equality
and simplicity of monastic life disposed him to come into direct touch
with his subjects and to adopt straightforward measures which might
not have occurred to one who had always been surrounded by a wall of
ministers. While still a monk he founded a stricter sect which aimed
at reviving the practice of the Buddha, but at the same time he
studied foreign creeds and took pleasure in conversing with
missionaries. He wrote several historical pamphlets and an English
Grammar, and was so good a mathematician that he could calculate the
occurrence of an eclipse. When he became king he regulated the
international position of Siam by concluding treaties of friendship
and commerce with the principal European powers, thus showing the
broad and liberal spirit in which he regarded politics, though a
better acquaintance with the ways of Europeans might have made him
refuse them extraterritorial privileges. He abolished the custom which
obliged everyone to keep indoors when the king went out and he
publicly received petitions on every Uposatha day. He legislated
against slavery,[211] gambling, drinking spirits and smoking opium and
considerably improved the status of women. He also published edicts
ordering the laity to inform the ecclesiastical authorities if they
noticed any abuses in the monasteries. He caused the annals of Siam to
be edited and issued numerous orders on archaeological and literary
questions, in which, though a good Pali scholar, he deprecated the
affected use of Pali words and enjoined the use of a terse and simple
Siamese style, which he certainly wrote himself. He appears to
have died of scientific zeal for he caught a fatal fever on a trip
which he took to witness a total eclipse of the sun.

He was succeeded by his son Chulalongkorn[212] (1868-1911), a liberal
and enlightened ruler, who had the misfortune to lose much territory
to the French on one side and the English on the other. For religion,
his chief interest is that he published an edition of the Tipitaka.
The volumes are of European style and printed in Siamese type, whereas
Cambojan characters were previously employed for religious works.

2

As I have already observed, there is not much difference between