Sikaraj

Sikaraj (, ) is a legendary Dvaravati monarch of Nakhon Chai Si, identified with present-day Nakhon Pathom. He appears in the Ta Pakhao Rot version of the Legend of Phra Pathommachedi () as the father of Phraya Kong, to whom he is said to have left the throne.

Legend

Phraya Kong, Sikaraj's son, appears in his own right in the various recensions of the Legend of , the oldest surviving version of which is preserved in Phra Wichianpreecha's recension of the . According to that account Phraya Kong married a princess under King Dhalemesvara () of Phetchaburi.

The narrative in which Sikaraj's descendants figure has parallels outside the region. It resembles the Greek story of Oedipus, and also the traditions concerning Kamsa and Bana in the Sanskrit Puranas and the Mahabharata, though in the Sanskrit sources Kamsa and Bana are not connected to one another.

Chronology

No ruler is recorded at Nakhon Pathom between Sai Thong Som, whose reign begins in 688 and whose end is not given, and Sikaraj himself. Hiram Woodward's proposal that Si Thep, which he places within the polity known to the Tang court as Wen Dan, may have exercised some control over Nakhon Pathom in the first half of the 8th century falls within this interval, as does the reign the chronicle traditions assign to Padumasūriyavaṁśa of Indaprasthanagara, 757 to about 800. Neither account names a ruler at Nakhon Pathom itself.

Borihan Thepthani placed the transition from Sikaraj's reign to that of Phraya Kong in 807. He reached the date by working back from the chronology preserved in the original Yonok Chronicle compiled by , which gives dates for Sikaraj's grandson Phraya Pan, a reign at Nakhon Pathom beginning in 867, a first enthronement at Haripuñjaya in 899 lasting two months and fifteen days, and a second reign there from 913 until his death in 916.