Sakdina

Sakdina () was a system of social hierarchy in use from the Ayutthaya to early Rattanakosin periods of Thai history. It assigned a numerical rank to each person depending on their status, and served to determine their precedence in society, and especially among the nobility. The numbers represented the number of "rai" of land a person was entitled to own—"sakdina" literally translates as "field prestige"—although there is no evidence that it was employed literally. The Three Seals Law, for example, specifies a "sakdina" of 100,000 for the "Maha Uparat", 10,000 for the Chao Phraya Chakri, 600 for learned Buddhist monks, 20 for commoners and 5 for slaves.
The term is also used to refer to the feudal-like social system of the period, where common freemen or phrai () were subject to conscription or corvée labour in service of the kingdom for half of the months of the year, under the control of an overseer or munnai ().