Ishii Yoneo Collection: Nai Mot’s Edition of the Three Seals Law of Siam

Junko Koizumi (Modern Thai History and Historiography)

In one section of the Ishii Yoneo Collection housed in the library of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, we find shelves of books on legal subjects. These holdings reflect one of the major strands of Professor Yoneo Ishii’s wide-ranging scholarship, namely his research on traditional Siamese (Thai) laws, especially the Three Seals Law (Kotmai Tra Sam Duang กฎหมายตราสามดวง), and related subjects.

Beginning with the study of the law of slavery and the traditional corvée system in Siam, Ishii’s series of works on the Three Seals Law advanced foundational research on this legal corpus to a considerable degree, and his research further extended to traditional laws beyond Siam from a comparative historical perspective. Alongside this, Ishii, in collaboration with linguists and computer scientists, also undertook the compilation and publication of The Computer Concordance to the Law of the Three Seals (Ishii, Shibayama, and Aroonrut 1990, 2008) and developed an online database of the concordance, a remarkable research tool made available to scholars worldwide. Among a number of rare books on Siamese law in the Ishii Yoneo collection, one volume that merits attention here is Nai Mot’s Edition of the Three Seals Law. Originally titled Nangsu Ruang Kotmai (หนังสือเรื่องกดหมาย), meaning “A Book on Law,” the volume bears a Japanese title, Nai Mot Bon San-in Hoten (“Nai Mot’s edition of the Three Seals Law”), on its spine. Like one of the copies of Bradley’s edition of the Three Seals Law in the Ishii Collection (mentioned below), it is likely a bound printout made in Kyoto from a microfilm obtained from the National Library of Thailand, attesting to Ishii’s passion and sustained efforts in collecting valuable historical materials (See Fig.1).^[1]

Nai Mot’s edition of the Three Seals Law in the Ishii Yoneo Collection

Published in the year 1211 of the Lesser Era (1849/50 CE) by a Siamese intellectual named Mot (โหมด), Nai Mot’s edition represents the first printed edition of the Three Seals Law (Nai นาย is a Thai prefix for men meaning “Mr.,” therefore, Nai Mot means “Mr. Mot”).

Professor Ishii described the publication of Nai Mot’s edition and the subsequent events as follows:

The first effort to publish and disseminate the Three Seals Law dates back to the distant past of the reign of King Rama III. Nai Mot Amatayakun (later Phraya Krasap), one of the new generation of intellectuals of the time and deeply interested in introducing Western printing technology to Thailand, obtained a set of manuscripts of the law and attempted to print and publish them in two volumes. However, upon learning of this endeavor, King Rama III ordered the immediate confiscation of all copies of the first volume that had already been released and had them all burned. It is entirely unknown how many copies of Nai Mot’s work escaped this “book burning” disaster. However, one surviving copy is preserved today at the National Library of Thailand (The National Library, Tha Wa Sukri) in Bangkok (Ishii 1969: 169).^[2]

An anonymous handwritten text on the first page of Nai Mot’s edition in the Ishii Yoneo Collection (hereafter IY Nai Mot’s edition) describes the episode of “book burning” ordered by King Rama III (see Fig. 2). Though unclear due to printing from microfilm, it seems to have been written on a piece of paper affixed to the cover or the inner cover. While Ishii (1969) did not cite IY Nai Mot’s edition as a reference, this account likely served as a source for his description above.^[3] Incidentally, the text states Mot’s name as “Mot Amatayakun,” suggesting that this account was written after the surname “Amatayakun” was conferred upon Mot’s descendants on June 23, 1913, one day after family names were officially introduced in Siam and more than six decades after the incident.

On turning the page, one encounters the title page, bearing the aforementioned title (Nangsu Ruang Kotmai ) and the following: “In the year 1211 [1849/1850 CE], the year of Cock, the first year of the ten-year cycle, printed legal manuscripts written on 55 volumes of samut (traditional folding books) in two volumes, and this first volume contains altogether 17 items.” Below this, a table of contents lists the 17 items, from Phrathammasat to Uthong, and the page numbers where they can be found in the volume (see Fig. 3). The figure of “55 volumes” matches the record in the Chinese Repository (1850: 551) mentioned by Ishii (1986: 144–145), which “refers to ‘the Siamese Code in fifty-five Volumes written on the black book’” and explains that “‘a Siamese nobleman’ financed the printing cost of the said code at the Mission Press in Bangkok.”

While only the first volume of Nai Mot’s edition was published, D.B. Bradley, an American Protestant missionary, published the entire corpus as a set of two volumes (hereafter Bradley’s edition) in 1862 (Vol.1) and 1863 (Vol.2) with the title Nangsu Ruang Kotmai Muang Thai หนังสือเรื่องกฏหมายเมืองไทย (A Book of Thai Laws) (Ishii 1969: 169–170). The title on the spine of the original volume reads simply Kotmai กฏหมาย, meaning “the law”. The two-volume Bradley edition was reprinted up to the 10th printing (1896). The Ishii Yoneo Collection holds copies of Bradley’s edition from different publication years (see Fig.1).

The IY Nai Mot edition in a Comparative Perspective

Recent groundbreaking research by Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit (Baker and Phongpaichit 2025), two renowned scholars on the Three Seals Law, has identified another copy of Nai Mot’s edition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (hereafter BnF Nai Mot’s edition).^[4] This allows us to situate IY Nai Mot’s edition in a comparative perspective.

A quick comparison of the title pages reveals that the contents of BnF Nai Mot’s edition and IY Nai Mot’s edition are not identical. While IY Nai-Mot’s edition claims that it “printed the manuscripts written on 55 volumes of samut into two volumes, with the first volume containing 17 items,” BnF Nai Mot’s edition states “printed legal manuscripts written on 21 volumes of samut in 1 volume, but the present volume contains altogether 16 items” (see Fig. 4). The greater number of entries in IY Nai Mot’s edition is due to the inclusion of two additional items: “Phrathammasat” and “Inthaphat.”^[5]

Despite these differences, similarities are also evident. The two editions share the same title and publication year, and are seemingly identical in Thai spelling, as well as in overall layout. The opening line of the “Ban Phanaek” section differs slightly; however, apart from two additional entries—Phrathammasat and Inthaphat—inserted immediately after “Ban Phanaek” in IY Nai Mot’s edition, the text, layout, and pagination from Phrathammanun onward (p. 27 in the IY edition; p. 3 in the BnF edition) through to the end of Uthon is identical in the two editions.^[6]

Meanwhile, the contents of IY Nai Mot’s edition are identical to those of Volume 1 of Bradley’s edition, which also claims that the law manuscripts altogether in 55 volumes of samut were printed in two volumes, with the first volume containing 17 items.^[7] However, as Ishii also pointed out, Bradley’s edition differs in title, publication year, typesetting, and pagination (Ishii 1986: 151). Differences in Thai spelling for some words are also observed^[8] (See Fig. 5).

In light of such similarities and differences, how should IY Nai Mot’s edition be categorized?  Should it be regarded as a copy of Nai Mot’s edition, or rather a variant of Bradley’s edition?^[9] Because IY Nai Mot’s edition was printed from microfilm, it is impossible to determine its original size or paper quality, making further examination difficult. In either case, certain puzzling points would remain. If the original of IY Nai Mot’s edition held at the National Library of Thailand is identified, would some questions be resolved?^[10]

As our journey of exploration continues, the Ishii Yoneo Collection will remain a significant repository for the study of Thai legal history and beyond.

This article is also available in Japanese. >>
「石井米雄コレクション『ナーイ・モート本 三印法典』
（小泉順子）