Kamsuan Samut

Keep this letter under your pillow, beloved.
Don't just read it for fun.
Let it be your companion in bed,
Every night, my love, every night.

— Si Prat[1]

Kamsuan Samut follows the speaker who proclaims his love for the city of Ayuthhaya and its people; however, he has been exiled to Southern Thailand and thus has to leave his lover behind.[2] He begins to describe his journey from Ayuthhaya "southward, along the Chao Phraya River to just beyond the mouth of the river passing along some Islands along the Cholburi coast plus a few other places which it has not yet been possible to identify."[2] At each pitstop, he expresses feelings of "love-longing",[2] while occasionally detailing the people and wildlife of the area and their history, or reminiscing fond memories with his beloved.[1][3]

The poem is in the style of a nirat (a poetic form resembling "a series of travel notes to one's beloved, interspersed with comments about her")[4] addressed to the speaker's lover as evidenced by the use of first and second person pronouns seen most prevalently in the final stanza.[1] The poem is made up of 131 stanzas, and contains two forms of verse – kap and khlong – that indicate a middle rhyme scheme.[5]

Referred to as Kamsuan Samut ("Ocean's Lament")[3] in the contemporaneous poetry textbook Chindamani,[6] the poem is otherwise known as Kamsuan Siprat, variously translated as "The Mourning of Si Prat"[4][7] or "The Wailing of Si Prat".[6] The poem is traditionally attributed to legendary Thai poet Si Prat, who was active in the 17th century under King Narai; Si Prat allegedly wrote Kamsuan Samut en route to Nakhon Si Thammarat Province in around 1680, his place of exile after it was found out that he had an affair with one of Narai's consorts.[3]

The date of composition of the poem is still disputed by scholars of Thai literature. For instance, M.R. Sumonachat Sawatdikhun holds that the poem was written during the 15th century, whereas Chantit Krasaesin argues that Kamsuan Samut was written during the reign of Phetracha (1688–1703); others have accepted that it is indeed a 17th-century work.[8] A majority of the manuscripts of Ayutthaya-era poetry including Kamsuan Samut were destroyed by Burmese invaders in 1767.[9] The poem has been variously described as a "masterpiece",[7] "(an example of) heightened realism and sensuality",[3] as well as "one of the most widely imitated nirats in the 17th and 18th (centuries)".[4]

• Baker, Chris; Phongpaichit, Pasuk (2017). A History of Ayutthaya. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107190764.
• Dudley, Donald R.; Lang, David M. (1969). The Penguin Companion to Literature: Classical and Byzantine. Penguin.
• Eliot, Joshua (1993). Thailand, Indochina & Burma Handbook. 2. Trade & Travel Publications. ISBN 9780844299815.
• Ghosh, Lipi (2017). India-Thailand Cultural Interactions: Glimpses from the Past to Present. Springer. ISBN 9789811038549.
• Chitakasem, Manas (1972). The emergence and development of the Nirat genre in Thai poetry (PDF). 60. Journal of the Siam Society.
• Preminger, Alex; Warnke, Frank J.; Hardison Jr., O. B. (2015). Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400872930.

• Winai Pongsripian, ed. (2010). กำสรวลสมุทร: สุดยอดกำสรวลศิลป์ [Ocean lament: the ultimate of the lament genre] (in Thai). Bangkok: Thailand Research Fund. ISBN 9789742255275.