Research & Article

This article sets the life of an important religious leader from Mae Sruay, Chiang Rai, Kuba Wajiraphanya (c. 1853–1928) in the context of the history of the latter years of the Chiang Mai kingdom. It links personal biography with the famous image of Phra Thongthip, brought from Luang Prabang to Mae Sruay in the sixteenth century, and with the efforts of Princess Dara Rasmii and Kuba Srivichai to revitalise Müang culture in the early twentieth century. It also reflects on some of the means by which local memory is perpetuated, and how biography and local history are combined and memorialised in present-day popular religious practice and secular knowledge.