Ku Daeng, Ban Kut Yang

What the official record says

Where Ku Daeng is

When was it founded — and what actually establishes that?

Thai temple histories mix two different kinds of statement, and this guide keeps them apart. What a register, a gazette entry, an inscription or a dated royal act shows is one thing. What the chronicles and the temple itself hold is another, and it is worth telling as what it is.

The department's dating puts this monument roughly a century and a half before the reign of Jayavarman VII, which matters: it means Ku Daeng is almost certainly NOT one of the hospital chapels that Prang Ku belongs to, despite the shared name element. Nothing read for this page states what it was instead.

The history of Ku Daeng

Ku Daeng stands at Tambon Talat Raeng in Ban Khwao district, west of the provincial town, and the reason the Fine Arts Department has written about it at all is geographic. The department's Regional Office 10 frames the site inside an argument about the Chi: the river rises at Chi Phut and Chi Dan in Nong Bua Daeng district of this province, runs through nine provinces of the north-east and joins the Mun in Ubon Ratchathani, more than 760 kilometers in all, which makes it the longest river in Thailand. Archaeology along it has found traces of human activity from the prehistoric period onward, and the office treats the whole river as a cultural corridor from source to mouth.

Ku Daeng is one of the pieces of evidence for the upper end of that corridor. The office states directly that the monument is important evidence for the emergence and the presence of ancient Khmer culture at the headwaters of the Chi, in the area of Ban Khwao district, in the late 16th to the early 17th Buddhist centuries. That is a specific and useful claim, and it is also a limiting one: it places the monument roughly a century and a half earlier than the reign of Jayavarman VII, which is the reign that produced Prang Ku on the other side of the provincial town. Two monuments in one province whose names both begin with the same word are not the same kind of building, and the dates are the reason.

What the monument actually consists of is the part this guide cannot yet report properly. The department's published study carries its substance in images rather than in text, and the readable portion gives the dating, the district, the river context and the name of the archaeologist who compiled it — Wannaphong Palakawong na Ayudhya, of the archaeology group at Regional Office 10 — without describing the plan, the materials or the condition. The register adds that it is classified as a religious building, that it carries a determined land boundary, and that its registration instrument is of 18 November B.E. 2525. The department's own name for it in the register is กู่แดง with กู่บ้านกุดยาง given as the current form, which is how a monument named after a color comes to be known by the name of the village beside it.

One thing is worth saying plainly about the protection date. The 1936 announcement that first placed Chaiyaphum monuments under national protection was read at source for this guide, and it names thirty-two of them, including Prang Ku, both Phu Phra sites, Phra That Nong Sam Muen and That Kut Chok. Ku Daeng is not among them. Its protection begins in 1982, forty-six years later, which for a Khmer-culture sanctuary in a province whose Khmer sites were catalogued early is a gap that somebody at some point had to close.

What you actually see

The monument itself, which the Fine Arts Department's register classifies as a religious building of ancient Khmer culture and which its Regional Office 10 dates to the late 16th to early 17th Buddhist centuries.

Its setting at the headwaters of the Chi, which is the department's own reason for studying it: the longest river in Thailand begins in this province and this is one of the Khmer-culture sites along its first stretch.

The village name the monument has taken on: the department's register gives it as กู่แดง with กู่บ้านกุดยาง as the current form, so signs and local directions may use either.

What is NOT here: this is not a hospital chapel of the Prang Ku kind. The department's dating puts it well before the reign that produced those, so a visitor arriving expecting the Prang Ku plan should not expect to find it.

Visiting: hours, admission, dress and photography

This is a working place of worship for millions of people rather than an attraction, and it is treated as one at the gate. Where a figure below is blank, no source we are prepared to cite states it.

What we could not establish

Every temple reference repeats claims nobody has checked. These are the ones we went looking for and could not stand up, listed so you know exactly where this page stops.

• The plan and the materials. The Fine Arts Department's study carries its detail in images rather than text, and no state source read for this page describes the layout, the fabric or the surviving elevation.
• What the sanctuary was for, and to whom. The dating rules out the hospital-chapel network; nothing consulted says what it replaces that with, or whether the original dedication was Hindu or Buddhist.
• The condition. The register records four photographs and no condition statement, and no inspection report for this monument was found.
• Why the monument was not in the 1936 list, when the department catalogued thirty-two other Chaiyaphum sites that year, including every other monument on this page but one.
• The opening hours, the access route and whether the site is fenced. No official source read here publishes any of them.

Ku Daeng: common questions

Where to go from here

Before you go, read the guide to Buddhism and temple etiquette in Thailand — dress, footwear, where photography is not welcome and how to behave around monks. The rest of Chaiyaphum’s temples are covered here too.

Every temple here sits in a place worth reading about on its own terms. The nationwide temple guide covers the other provinces to the same documentary standard as this page, and says on each one what the record establishes and what it does not.

If you are thinking about more than a visit: work out which Thai visa route fits your situation, and see what is available to rent and buy in residences across Thailand.