40
west of Sŭkhothăi. Chawt has not been identified. ท่ here and in 14 we must understand to have been pronounced ท่อ as explained under 1 above. It is clearly the equivalent of ที่, and like it is an enclitic form, with specialized function, of the substantive ที่ 'place'.
5. The phrases หัวซ้าย หัวขวา are not now used in Siamese to designate direction, but are readily understood as meaning 'to the left', 'to the right'. The precise positions may not be very clear in this case, but there is nothing either in text or in context to support the 'rive gauche' and 'rive droit' of S. and P.
6. Uncertainty as to the sentence structure has made possible what I cannot but regard as an misunderstanding of the entire situation here described. Who was it that fled? All previous translators, looking only at the nearest phrase, พ่อ กู, have assumed that it was 'my father' who fled. But in the first place, the filial piety which the writer so earnestly claims just below, ll. 11—16, should have forbidden the parade of such cowardice on the part of his father, especially as there is not the slightest necessity for mentioning it here, even were it the fact. In the second place, the very next line seems plainly to imply that his father was not only there, but was actually pushing on to the encounter;—else how could the son "urge his elephant in ahead of his father"; that is, usurp his father's place in the impending duel? In the third place, the very number and variety of the words used to express the idea of fleeing, make it difficult to understand their application to a single subject like 'my father'. Far more naturally would such an inclusive and generalized predicate apply to the flight of a mass of men or of an army. Furthermore, the syntax does not by any means necessitate such a construction. พ่อ กู might without violence be regarded as standing in genitive construction with the phrase just preceding which I have comprehensively rendered 'people' (of which see further below), and then the whole phrase 'my father's people' would become subject of the verb-phrase of fleeing. There is no difficulty involved in leaving เข้า thus at the end of the preceding predicate—เกลื่อน เข้า='charged home'.
