page_title: Lan Xang
section_title: The Golden Age of Lan Xang
hierarchical_section_title: Lan Xang / Historical overview / The Golden Age of Lan Xang
caption_attribution_description: English: Seated Buddha touching the earth, bronze, 17th century Lan Xang period, Laos
context_page_description: The Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang Hom Khao existed as a unified kingdom from 1353 to 1707.
  For three and a half centuries, Lan Xang was one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia. The meaning of the kingdom's name alludes to the power of the kingship and formidable war machine of the early kingdom. The kingdom is the precursor for the country of Laos and the basis for its national historic and cultural identity.
context_section_description: Under the reign of King Sourigna Vongsa (1637–1694) Lan Xang experienced a fifty seven-year period of peace and restoration. During the period the Lan Xang sangha was at the apex of power, drawing monks and nuns for religious study from throughout Southeast Asia. Literature, art, music, court dance experienced a revival. King Sourigna Vongsa revised many of the laws of Lan Xang and established judicial courts. He also concluded a series of treaties which established both trade agreements and boundaries between the surrounding kingdoms.
  In 1641, Gerritt van Wuysthoff with the Dutch East India Company made formal trade contacts with Lan Xang. Van Wuysthoff left detailed European accounts of trade goods, and established Company relations with Lan Xang via Longvek and the Mekong.
  In 1642, Father Giovanni Maria Leria, a Jesuit, was the first Catholic missionary to arrive in Lan Xang. After five years, he had very little success with conversions in the heavily Buddhist country and returned to Macao, via Vietnam in 1647. He left an eyewitness description of the royal palace in Vientiane during the height of power in Lan Xang.
   The royal palace, of which the structure and symmetry are admirable, can be seen from afar. Truly it is of prodigious size, so large one would take it for a city, both with respect to its situation and the infinite number of people who live there. The apartments of the king are adorned with a magnificent portal and include a number of beautiful rooms along with a great salon, all made from incorruptible timber (teak) and adorned outside and inside with excellent bas-reliefs, so delicately gilded that they seem to be plated with gold rather than covered with gold leaf. From the king's apartments, on entering the very spacious courtyards, one sees first a great series of houses, all of brick and covered with tiles, where usually live the secondary wives of the king; and beyond them a line of more houses, built in the same symmetrical form for the officials of the court. I could write a whole volume if I tried to describe exactly all the other parts of the palace, its riches, apartments, gardens, and all the other similar things.
  — Fr. Giovanni Maria Leria, (1663) 
  The palace and the entire city of Vientiane were completely destroyed by the Thai during the Lao-Siamese War of 1827–28.
caption: Seated Buddha figure from Lan Xang, 17th century
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