Talk:Thai people
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Discussion
Sources
On names and identity the page draws on Keyes (1967) and Keyes (2009), Luekajornchai (2024), Easum (2015), Sattayanurak (2010), Thepboriruk (2019) and Chaloemtiarana (2018). On language and distribution it draws on Pittayaporn (2025), Huebner (2019), Srisontisuk and others (2005), Glottolog and Alexander and McCargo (2014); on religion on Keyes (2009), Huebner (2019) and Yavaprabhas (2022). Keyes (2009), Huebner, Srisontisuk, Yavaprabhas and Luekajornchai are cited from the copies on ThaiJO. Luekajornchai (2024) and Boontham and others (2022) are in Thai and are paraphrased from the Thai text. Alexander and McCargo is cited from the accepted manuscript deposited at White Rose Research Online, whose page numbers differ from the journal's, so it is cited without page numbers. Yavaprabhas (2022) is printed two pages to a sheet in the copy cited, so her pages are cited in pairs.
Several statements reach the page through a later writer: the wording of the first Cultural Mandate through Thepboriruk, who quotes the translation in Thak and others (1978); the 2020 figure for Buddhists through Yavaprabhas, who cites the National Statistical Office; Gilquin's estimate of the Muslim population through Keyes; the regional language figures through Srisontisuk and others, who draw on Suwilai Premsrirat (2001); the classifications of Brown and Chamberlain through Pittayaporn; and the 2021 count of formulae through Yongram and others, who cite a compilation of the Department of Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine. The page does not cite these underlying works directly. The article attributes each where the claim is one writer's.
Where the sources disagree
- Counts of cannabis formulae. Chokevivat (2019) counts 90 formulae containing cannabis among about 23,000 announced national formulae. Yongram and others (2025), from the department's compilation of August 2021, count 162 among 45,134. The two counts come from different years and different bodies of text, and both are given.
- The name of the Narai text. Chokevivat calls it คัมภีร์พระโอสถพระนารายณ์; Yongram and others call it the Kamphi That Phra Narai; Boontham and others give คัมภีร์ธาตุพระนารายณ์ in Thai and "Royal Scripture of King Narai's Traditional Medicine" in English. A Chulalongkorn doctoral thesis (2019) gives both Thai names for one palm-leaf text. The article uses Khamphi That Phra Narai and "the pharmacopoeia of King Narai".
- The status of Buddhism. Keyes (2009) writes that Buddhism is officially recognised as the religion of the country but is not formally the state religion. Yavaprabhas (2022) reads the 2008 national curriculum as treating Buddhism alone as the national religion. Both are given.
- The share of Buddhists. The census of 2000 gives 94.6 per cent, which Keyes considers an understatement of the non-Buddhists; figures of the National Statistical Office published in 2020 give 93.5 per cent; Gilquin estimates Muslims at 7.5 to 8 per cent. All three are given with their sources.
- The end of medical use. Martin (1975) reports that from December 1971 the use of cannabis in popular medicine was regulated and allowed only with other plants. Yongram and others date the end of medical use to the Narcotics Act of 1979. Both are given, with their dates.
- Two senses of "Thai". Keyes (1967) uses Thai only for the Central Thai; most of the sources on religion, medicine and cannabis use it for the people of Thailand as a whole. The article keeps the two apart where a source makes the difference clear.
- The meaning of the word. Chaloemtiarana reports that Luang Wichit Wathakan insisted that Thai means "free". No linguistic source on the etymology was read, and the article gives the claim as his.
Cannabis
No source joins the Thai as a people, as distinct from Thailand as a country or its national system of traditional medicine, to cannabis. Martin (1975) and Fort (1965) write of Thailand. Chokevivat (2019), Yongram and others (2025) and Boontham and others (2022) write of the national corpus of Thai traditional medicine, and "Thai people" in Yongram means the people of Thailand. The article keeps these statements at the scale of the country or the medical corpus.
A doctoral thesis in criminology at Chulalongkorn University (Arkaraphon Aieorattanawadee, 2019) states that cannabis was used as a spice in boat-noodle soup, that it was roasted and added to curries, and that the hand wraps of Thai boxing were made of cannabis fibre. It gives no source for these statements and says itself that no recipes using cannabis were systematically recorded. They are not used. The one dish named in the sources is Martin's kaeng phet with ground flowers. The same thesis quotes a line from the Ramakien of Rama I in which soldiers sit round smoking ganja; the text itself was not seen, and the line is not used.
A seed seller, The Real Seed Company, writes on its listing for its Central Lao seed line that ganja culture in both Laos and Thailand is most closely associated with the ethnic Lao. The statement carries no source; it is given, attributed, on the page for the Lao.
Other reports
- Huebner's quotation of Hoefer (1977) on four regional dialects of Thai. Huebner quotes it as an example of the official narrative he criticises.
- Thepboriruk (2019) on Mandate 10 and the dress of women in 1941. Outside the scope of the page beyond the naming of the country.
- Sattayanurak (2010) on royal nationalism after the 1950s. Concerns national ideology rather than the Thai as a people.
- Sommano and others (2022), on the cannabis industry in Thailand. Nothing on the Thai as a people.
Open content questions
- The sources give no count of the Central Thai with a stated year and method; the census of 2010 records nationality.
- Whether the Central Thai, as distinct from Thailand at large, have a cannabis tradition of their own is not settled by any source.