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Laos
Index
It was as a result of these family conflicts that the
Kingdom
of Lan Xang--the name still carries associations of
cultural
kinship among the Lao--was established. The younger
brother, Fa
Ngum, married one of the king's daughters and in 1349 set
out from
Angkor at the head of a 10,000-member Khmer army. His
conquest of
the territories to the north of Angkor over the next six
years
reopened Mongol communications with that place, which had
been cut
off. Fa Ngum organized the conquered principalities into
provinces
(muang--see Glossary),
and reclaimed Muang Sua from
his
father and elder brother. Fa Ngum was crowned king of Lan
Xang at
Vientiane, the site of one of his victories, in June 1354.
Lan Xang
extended from the border of China to Sambor below the
Mekong rapids
at Khong Island and from the Vietnamese border to the
western
escarpment of the Khorat Plateau.
The first few years of Fa Ngum's rule from his capital
Muang
Sua were uneventful. The next six years (1362-68),
however, were
troubled by religious conflict between Fa Ngum's lamaistic
Buddhism
and the region's traditional Theravada Buddhism. He
severely
repressed popular agitation that had anti-Mongol overtones
and had
many pagodas torn down. In 1368 Fa Ngum's Khmer wife died.
He
subsequently married the ruler of Ayuthia's daughter, who
seems to
have had a pacifying influence. For example, she was
instrumental
in welcoming a religious and artistic mission that brought
with it
a statue of the Buddha, the phrabang, which became
the
palladium of the kingdom. Popular resentment continued to
build,
however, and in 1373 Fa Ngum withdrew to Muang Nan. His
son, Oun
Huan, who had been in exile in southern Yunnan, returned
to assume
the regency of the empire his father had created. Oun Huan
ascended
to the throne in 1393 when his father died, ending Mongol
overlordship of the middle Mekong Valley.
The kingdom, made up of Lao, Thai, and hill tribes,
lasted in
its approximate borders for another 300 years and briefly
reached
an even greater extent in the northwest. Fa Ngum's
descendants
remained on the throne at Muang Sua, renamed
Louangphrabang, for
almost 600 years after his death, maintaining the
independence of
Lan Xang to the end of the seventeenth century through a
complex
network of vassal relations with lesser princes. At the
same time,
these rulers fought off invasions from Vietnam (1478-79),
Siam
(1536), and Burma (1571-1621).
Data as of July 1994
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