ABSTRACT
The epic poem Prince Samuttakote was composed beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century, during the reign of King Narai. This was a period often regarded as the Golden Age of Thai Literature. The tale is a distinctive localization of a particular Buddhist literary tradition, with its origins in the Jataka tales, the numerous stories about the previous lives of the Buddha. These tales are a core element of the popularization of Buddhism across mainland Southeast Asia, where few people would have read, or even seen, the canonical Buddhist scriptures, but many would have heard, read, or seen illustrations from the Jataka tales. The tale of Prince Samuttakote belongs to a mainland Southeast Asian variant of the Jataka tradition, for it is not derived from the canon of Jataka tales, but rather is part of a collection of apocryphal Jataka tales found only in Thailand, Burma, Laos, and Cambodia.
