The subject of this communication is a letter in Thai (Siamese), dated the equivalent of 1777, to Francis Light who occupied the island of Penang as agent of the East India Company in 1786 and became its first Superintendent. Light had been a trader on the coast since about 1771 where he was particularly concerned with Kedah and with the island of Thalang (Salang)usually known to Europeans as Junk Ceylon. His sphere of activity extended westward to the ports of the Coromandel coast and to Bengal and eastward as for as Bangkok. At the date in question thecapital of Siam was at Thonburi on the west bank of the Chao Phya river before its transfer to its present site on the east bank in 1782. The whole area had long been konwn as Bankok or Bankok to foreign traders

In a recent article in BSOAS the writer called attention to the existence of a very detailed passage on mahōrasop entertainments in a Thai manuscript of part of the tale of Suthon and Manōrā in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. That passage is incomplete because it occurs at the end of one of the folding books in which the version was written down. The Royal Asiatic Society library possesses only the first book, but the writer has since found that the National Library of Thailand, Bangkok, has a set of six books containing a complete version of the tale and therefore a continuation of the mahōrasop passage found in the Royal Asiatic Society manuscript.

A Small voice from Laos made itself heard in 1945 amid the clamour of the nations of South-east Asia, striving to free themselves from colonial rule. The first essential moves towards unity and independence were made in Vientiane after the capitulation of Japan and during the temporary stalemate that followed, as Chinese troops occupied Laos down to the 16th parallel and French forces began to re-enter the southern provinces. The Protectorate Treaty of August 1941 was denounced (29 August), a proclamation of independence was made (1 September), and the northern and southern parts of Laos were declared to be united (15 September).1 During October a Provisional Government began to prepare a Constitution and provide for a National Assembly. Taking its first halting steps in the field of foreign affairs, this Provisional Government appealed to the Allied Governments to recognize the independence of Laos.

Colonel Low mentioned the schemes of Francis Light and James Scott for a British occupation of Thalang or Salang (Junk Ceylon) in Logan's Journal in 1849, and, sincethen, some attention has been paid to the official sources in English on this subject. Gerini comments on ‘the silence of the local annals about such land-grabbing schemes on the part of the British’.

The long struggle of the Thai against the Khmers, culminating in the attacks on and conquest of Angkor early in the fifteenth century A.D., brought the two peoples into intimate association. Thai literature was clearly a beneficiary of this close culture contact, and Cambodian influence upon it, dating back to this early period, is undoubted. Nevertheless, little detailed study of such influence has so far been attempted, partly because of a lack of suitable manuscript material, especially on the Cambodian side, and partly because serious comparative work of an historical nature on the two languages has hardly begun.