Hello, your response was very interesting. I am very curious where you get the info from Nai Khanom Tom and the Burmese epic? Do you know where to find this Burmese version of the tale? I have looked online, but I was not able to find it. Any info would be greatly appreciated.
The information that I gathered is that the tale of Nai Khanom Tom was composed in a poetry by Prince Prichit Prichakorn. I have shared the story here.
Source: Nai Khanom Tale discussed in Thesis
"During the reign of King Rama V [r.1868-1910], Prince Phichit prichakon, the King's half-brother, wrote a poem to reinterpret a life of a boxer who came from the city of Ayutthaya. Following a chronicle of Burma, in 1774, after the fall of Ayutthaya, Burmese troops captured and took war prisoners, including members of the royal familyand commoners, to Burma. Nai Khanom Tom, a war prisoner and a boxer taken from Ayutthaya, participated in boxing matches against Burmese boxers in a religious ceremony in Rangoon.162In Prince Phichitprichakon’s poem, he reinterpreted that Nai Khanom Tom represented “Siam” as “the nation-state of the Siamese” to fight against the Burmese. The social unit of Ayutthaya Kingdom was not united as a “we-group” identification of a nation-state.The Ayutthaya Kingdom frequently encounteredcentrifugal tendencies. During that period, the Burmese were understood to be the enemy of Buddhism rather than the Siamese nation.This poem could be seen as the elite’s attempt to nourish the idea that violence had to be 3done only in the name of the state. Besides, violence would be used at the inter-state level. Following the Prince's poem, he stated:...There was a Siamese, whose name was Khanom Tom, Volunteered to fight and the Burmese recognised [him as] the master of boxing. [He] kicked, hit, [and] punched with loud bangs.[He] threw a hook. A bunch of the Burmese lost.The Burmese dared not fight back.More than ten [Burmese] were knocked out before the second round.The Burmese King groped his chest and said: No matter how crucially the nation of Siam fell into trouble, The [Siamese] people, though being unarmed, can survive any danger...Through a reconstruction of a boxing story, the government propagated the idea of self-pacification within the nation-state while legitimising the use of violence at the inter-state level."