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Ayuthia

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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a city of Siam, now known to the Siamese as Krung Kao or "the Old Capital," situated in 100° 32' E., 14° 21' N. Pop. about io,000. The river Me Nam, broken up into a network of creeks, here surrounds a large island upon which stand the ruins of the famous city which was for more than four centuries the capital of Siam. The bulk of the inhabitants live in the floating houses characteristic of lower Siam, using as thoroughfares the creeks to the edges of which the houses are moored. The ruins of the old city are of great archaeological interest, as are the relics, of which a large collection is housed in the local museum. Outside the town is an ancient masonry enclosure for the capture of elephants, which is still periodically used. Ayuthia is on the northern main line of the state railways, 42 m. from Bangkok. Great quantities of paddi are annually sent by river and rail to Bangkok, in return for which cloth and other goods are imported to supply the wants of the agriculturist peasantry. There is no other trade. Ayuthia is the chief town of one of the richest agricultural provincial divisions of Siam and is the headquarters of a high commissioner. The government offices occupy spacious buildings, once a royal summer retreat; the government is that of an ordinary provincial division (Monton). Historically Ayuthia is the most interesting spot in Siam. Among the innumerable ruins may be seen those of palaces, pagodas, churches and fortifications, the departed glories of which are recorded in the writings of the early European travellers who first brought Siam within the knowledge of the West, and laid the foundations of the present foreign intercourse and trade. The town was twice destroyed by the Burmese, once in 1555 and again in 1767, and from the date of the second destruction it ceased to be the capital of the country.

AZAiS, Pierre Hyacinthe (1766-1845), French philosopher, was born at Soreze and died at Paris. He spent his early years as a teacher and a village organist. At the outbreak of the Revolution he viewed it with favour, but was soon disgusted at the violence of its methods. A critical pamphlet drew upon him the hatred of the revolutionists, and it was not until 1806 that he was able to settle in Paris. In 1809 he published his great work, Des Compensations dans les destinees humaines (5th ed. 1846), which pleased Napoleon so much that he made its author professor at St Cyr. In 1811 he became inspector of the public library at Avignon, and from 1812 to 1815 he held the same position at Nancy. The Restoration government at first suspected him as a Bonapartist, but at length granted him a pension. From that time he occupied himself in lecturing and the publication of philosophical works. In the Compensations he sought to prove that, on the whole, happiness and misery are equally balanced, and therefore that men should accept the government which is given them rather than risk the horrors of revolution. "Le principe de 1'inegalite naturelle et essentielle dans les destinees humaines conduit inevitablement au fanatisme revolutionnaire ou au fanatisme religieux." The principles of compensation and equilibrium are found also in the physical universe, the product of matter and force, whose cause is God. Force, naturally expansive and operating on the homogeneous atoms which constitute elemental matter, is subject to the law of equilibrium, or equivalence of action and reaction. The development of phenomena under this law may be divided into three stages - the physical, the physiological, the intellectual and moral. The immaterial in man is the expansive force inherent in him. Moral and political phenomena are the result of the opposing forces of progress and preservation, and their perfection lies in the fulfilment of the law of equilibrium or universal harmony. This may be achieved in seven thousand years, when man will vanish from the world. In an additional five thousand, a similar equilibrium will obtain in the physical sphere, which will then itself pass away. In addition to his philosophical work, AzaIs studied music under his father, Pierre Hyacinthe AzaIs (1743-1796), professor of music at Soreze and Toulouse, and composer of sacred music in the style of Gossec. He wrote for the Revue musicale a series of articles entitled Acoustique fondamentale (1831), containing an ingenious, but now exploded, theory of the vibration of the air. His other works are: Systeme universel (8 vols., 1812); Du Sort de l'homme (3 vols., 1820); Cours de philosophie (8 vols., 1824), reproduced as Explication universelle (3 vols., 1826-1828); Jeunesse, maturite, religion, philosophie (1837), De la phrenologie, du magnetisme, et de la folie (1843).