Pak Lat Chronicles

The Pak Lat Chronicles, as they are known in English, are a compilation of Mon history texts gathered from palm-leaf manuscripts by the Siamese Mon Monk Phra Candakanto around 1912-13.

This compilation of manuscript texts was published in two volumes as paper bound books. The printing took place at the Mon-language printing press of Pak Lat monastery on the outskirts of Bangkok. This famous Mon printing press published many other Buddhism-related titles in the early 20th century. The content of the compilation is diverse, including texts by different authors, chronicling the history of widely disparate historical eras from the Pagan Kingdom to King Bayinnaung's era of conquest. It also includes a version of the history of the Mon king Razadarit.

To avoid confusion, it is important to note that scholarship on these texts often refers to the texts (or parts of them) using different names. Nidana Arambhakatha (genealogy of kings) and Rājāvaṁsa Kathā (history of the royal lineage) are two common names employed.

The Pak Lat chronicle texts are among the most difficult of all historical sources for Mon and Burmese historians to obtain. This is the likely reason why the composition and genealogy of the manuscripts in the compilation has yet to be studied and assessed in any scholarly depth.

The original published Pak Lat volumes can be found in the archives of the Siam Society in Bangkok and manuscript fragments of various sections can be found at Thailand's National archives. Mon scholar Harry Leonard Shorto translated parts of the published volumes that have circulated in private until now. A plan to publish an edited version of these translations was apparently never realized.

The chronicles have been used extensively in the historical narratives of historians such as G.E. Harvey, Nai Pan Hla and Victor Lieberman. Pan Hla used the Pak Lat chronicle texts when he wrote his published Mon version of Razadarit Ayedawbon.

According to Aung-Thwin, it is also first Mon-language chronicle to mention King Anawrahta's conquest of Thaton, a topic that according to his research all previous Mon language chronicles never once mentioned. He speculates that the British historians' narratives and interpretations were incorporated into the leitmotif of this supposedly ancient text before they were published around 1910.