The Thammasat University Libraries have acquired a new book by a renowned historian with profound connections to TU.  Ajarn Charnvit Kasetsiri is a graduate of TU who later taught in the History Department and has also served as Deputy Director of TU’s Thai Khadi Institute; Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts; Vice-President, and Rector of the University. Still highly active despite nominally being classified as retired, Ajarn Charnvit is Secretary of the Social Sciences and Humanity Textbook Foundation, Thailand, and has been a visiting professor in Kyoto, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Hawaii, and Singapore, among other places. With his well-known sense of humor, on his Facebook page Ajarn Charnvit refers to the volume as my new old book. Forewords and Afterwords is a collection of essays and articles arranged in chronological order, from 1967 to the present. Few historians can claim such wide-ranging intellectual interests over a half-century, on topics from the rise of Ayudhya to a bibliography of Southeast Asian studies in Thailand, as well as a guide to the Thai-Cambodian conflict and its solutions. With his close ties to literature, it is not surprising that Ajarn Charnvit apparently chose the title of his book to echo one by Wystan Hugh Auden, a 20^th century British poet who entitled his own essay collection published in 1973, Forewords and Afterwords.

As always with Ajarn Charnvit’s writings, there is a keen sense of literary values as well as a popular touch that led him to translate such books as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Jonathan Livingston Seagull into Thai language. The section of Forewords and Afterwords devoted to the years 1967 to 1977 includes a translation of song lyrics by the American singer-songwriter Neil Diamond inspired by Jonathan Livingston Seagull, including Be:
Lost
On a painted sky
Where the clouds are hung
For the poet’s eye
You may find him
If you may find him
There
On a distant shore
By the wings of dreams
Through an open door
You may know him
If you may…
Be
As a page that aches for a word
Which speaks on a theme that is timeless
While the Sun God will make for your day
Sing
As a song in search of a voice that is silent
And the one God will make for your way

In his translation of the aspirational fable first published in 1970 about a seagull learning about life, flying, and self-betterment, Ajarn Charnvit captured an essential element of the concept of education. In doing so, he created something that may be even more meaningful in the Kingdom today than in some English-speaking countries, where the message of Jonathan Livingston Seagull may have faded. Last year the Bangkok Post reported that the singer-songwriter and playwright Sukumphan Thititananphan (Beatle) lists Ajarn Charnvit’s translation of Jonathan Livingston Seagull among his favorite books to broaden his ideas and develop his thoughts:

Reading helps me understand other people more. “I believe in the power of storytelling. It inspires people.

Beatle was drawn to the story of Jonathan, a young seagull who is rejected by his circle of friends because he has different goals, but he is not discouraged and learns to fly instead. Beatle added:

I was a child who didn’t dare to do anything different, but the book told me to believe in myself and not be afraid.

Among inspirational quotes from Jonathan Livingston Seagull are the following:

• For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.
• Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight — how to get from shore to food and back again.
• We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill.
• Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his thoughts, he lived a long fine life indeed.
• The gull sees farthest who flies highest.
• Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding.
• “The only true law is that which leads to freedom,” Jonathan said. “There is no other.”

By encouraging diversity, independence, and looking at more than just surface appearances, Jonathan Livingston Seagull contains lessons still relevant to students today. In Ajarn Charnvit’s scholarship, dating back to the early years of his academic career, there is always a careful watchfulness and awareness that historical evidence may be deceptive. In a preface from 1974 for his study, The Rise of Ayudhya: a History of Siam in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, the author notes:

The lack of contemporary historical materials and the deep obscurity that surrounds the known events have so far discouraged students of Thai history from attempting any serious exploration of this part of Siam’s past… I am very conscious of the limitations of this study of early Ayudhya. The scarcity of available historical materials concerning the foundation of the kingdom and the career of its first ruler- Uthong – necessarily gives a speculative character to my analysis. It may also be premature, in that it is likely that more materials exist, both in Thai and foreign languages, which are simply waiting to be discovered by historians.

This is more than just the conventional modest disclaimer at the beginning of most scholarly works, in which researchers take responsibility for potential mistakes. There is an overriding awareness by the writer that things may not be as they seem. This healthy scepticism about historical sources results in more carefully weighed conclusions. The combined characteristics of a boldly independent seagull and sceptical observer may also be seen in a book co-authored by Ajarn Charnvit in 1992, Bibliography: Southeast Asian Studies in Thailand. In its introduction, included in Forewords and Afterwords, Ajarn Charnvit goes against the general tide in the scholarly world at the time of overlooking the field of Southeast Asian studies:

It is rather curious that Thai academic institutions have not yet paid enough attention to Southeast Asia as a study area, despite the fact that Thailand belongs to the area, and that after three decades of American plus Japanese influence there is no serious attempt to pursue such study.

Unlike most other seagulls on campus, a few researchers tried to soar into the heights of ASEAN studies. Typically, Ajarn Charnvit introduced his argument with a flavorful saying in Thai language, Salt is within reach but one eats alkali (klai klua kin dang). However accessible ASEAN studies were to researchers in the early 1990s, many still favoured more distant alternatives. Annotated Bibliography on the Mekong, a work co-edited with Chris Baker, published in 2008, begins with strong prose rhythms apparently influenced by the novelistic style of Charles Dickens:

The mighty Mekong is vast, abundant, mysterious, alluring, and fragile. It provides food and water. It carries sediment, goods, and people. It is dammed, bridged, and blasted. It is fought for, argued over, analysed, conceptualized, and romanticized. It is swum, fished, drunk, bathed in, cultivated, and cropped. It divides and joins. It floods the imagination of novelists, explorers, photographers, engineers, anthropologists, strategists, historians, politicians, development workers, artists, capitalists, refugees, experts from international organizations, and workers in NGOs.

As readers can see throughout Forewords and Afterwords, a careful attention to literary values can make history more vivid and immediate. With an ever-lively wit, Ajarn Charnvit also included in his collection some caricatures of himself. Let the final words be those of Ajarn Charnvit’s late friend and colleague Ajarn Benedict R. O’G. Anderson (1936-2015), who wrote in a preface to his Exploration and Irony in Studies of Siam over Forty Years, published in 2014:

Over the last two decades [Ajarn Charnvit] has created by far the best “Southeast Asian Studies” program for undergraduates in Southeast Asia, which to this day is hugely popular. By these means he had built a big following among the young generation, encouraging them to learn the languages and histories of neighboring countries; through him, I got to have good ties with what he likes to call “the children.” Without him, I would never have written seriously about Siam over forty years.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)