The temple Phaya Kuena made out of his flower garden, holding the largest complete Lanna bronze Buddha and the white ku where the rulers of Chiang Mai were gathered into one cemetery.
วัดสวนดอก · Wat Suan Dok
| Official name | วัดสวนดอก — Wat Suan Dok |
|---|---|
| Where | Suthep, Mueang Chiang Mai, Chiang Mai |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument The Fine Arts Department's register service returns the status for site 0003609 as โบราณสถานขึ้นทะเบียนและกำหนดเขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน — registered, with the monument land boundary determined — and a boundary polygon exists in the department's gazette-boundary layer. Something worth noticing in the department's regional office list of the fifteen Chiang Mai monuments registered in B.E. 2478: this temple appears on it twice, once as วัดสวนดอก and once as วิหารเก้าตื้อ (วัดสวนดอก), the Wihan Kao Tue being registered as a monument in its own right. No gazette volume and page naming this temple was opened. |
| Coordinates | 18.788654, 98.968040 Fine Arts Department national monument register, site 0003609 |
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.
No source consulted gives a year for the founding of this temple — not the Fine Arts Department, not the Tourism Authority, not the ONEP register. That is unusual among the six and it is the honest state of the record. What is dated here is later: an image cast between B.E. 2047 and 2052, a royal cemetery begun about B.E. 2451, and a memorial to Khruba Sriwichai built in B.E. 2490.
Wat Suan Dok began as a garden. The chronicle account, which the Tourism Authority is careful to label as such, is that Phaya Kuena gave his own pleasure park — an orchard of phayom trees — to be the site of a monastery, and named it Wat Buppharam, the temple of the flowers. The Fine Arts Department's regional office ties the foundation to the same moment as Wat Phra That Doi Suthep: Kuena had invited Phra Sumana Thera north from Sukhothai to bring the Sinhalese ordination lineage, and both temples were built to house relics the monk brought with him. Neither the department nor anyone else gives a year, which is a gap worth stating plainly rather than filling.
The temple's largest object is dated to the day. Phra Chao Kao Tue — nine tue, a name that refers to its weight — was commissioned by Phra Mueang Kaeo, and the Chiang Mai National Museum, working from the Jinakalamalipakaranam, gives the start of casting as a Thursday in B.E. 2047 and the installation of the finished image at Wat Buppharam as a Wednesday in B.E. 2052. It measures 2.90 metres across the lap and 3.87 metres high, and the museum calls it the largest complete Lanna bronze Buddha there is. Its style is diagnostic in a way art historians like: a Chiang Saen Singh Song face with Sukhothai influence, but a broad sanghati flap that shows Ayutthaya coming into Lanna workshops — and the museum notes that the style and the documentary date agree, which is not always the case.
The second thing the temple is known for is a cemetery, and it is modern. Until the early twentieth century the remains of the rulers of Chiang Mai were scattered across the Khuang Meru, the cremation ground on the west bank of the Ping. The National Archives record that on her return to Chiang Mai around B.E. 2451, Princess Consort Dara Rasmi resolved to gather the ashes of the Chao Luang and of the Chao Chet Ton family into one place, and chose the broad grounds of Wat Suan Dok. Eleven were moved first — Kawila, Thammalangka, Khamfan, Phutthawong, Mahotraprathet, Kawilorot, Inthawichayanon and four royal women — and the list is inscribed in front of Inthawichayanon's ku. Two surveys in B.E. 2527 counted the ku that had accumulated since: one recorded 105, the other 113, in the same year.
The temple therefore does something few religious sites manage: it holds the two ends of the region's history in one compound. At one end, a fourteenth-century relic foundation attached to the arrival of a monastic lineage that reorganised northern Buddhism. At the other, a white cemetery built by a princess who had spent years in the Bangkok court and came home to give her family's dead a single address. Khruba Sriwichai's ashes were placed here too, in a ku built in B.E. 2490. Since B.E. 2539, when Chiang Mai marked seven hundred years, descendants and the public have gathered here on 17 April each year for the Dam Hua ceremony at the ku of the rulers.
The ku of the northern royals: a walled enclosure of white plastered memorials of varying size and date, the largest belonging to the rulers whose remains Dara Rasmi gathered here from about B.E. 2451. An inscription in front of Phra Chao Inthawichayanon's ku lists the first eleven transferred. Two surveys in B.E. 2527 put the total at 105 and 113 respectively.
Phra Chao Kao Tue: a bronze maravijaya image seated on a plain flat-fronted base, 2.90 m across the lap and 3.87 m high, with an oval face, small hair curls, a tall flame ushnisha and a broad sanghati flap reaching the navel. The Chiang Mai National Museum records it as the largest complete Lanna bronze Buddha and dates its casting to B.E. 2047–2052.
Phra Chao Kha Khing, a gilt bronze image in the meditation attitude, stands in the Wihan Luang, and the great white relic chedi and its satellites fill the eastern part of the compound. The Tourism Authority describes the principal chedi as Lankavamsa form crossed with Lanna, holding relics that Phra Sumana Thera brought from Sukhothai.
The ku of Khruba Sriwichai, built in B.E. 2490 to hold the ashes of the northern monk who rebuilt half the temples in Lanna and drove the road up Doi Suthep, sits in the same grounds. Every 17 April the Dam Hua ceremony is held at the ku of the rulers of Chiang Mai.
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.
| Hours | Not established from an official source. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Not established from an official source. |
| Dress | Not established from an official source. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | 139 Suthep Road, about a kilometre west of Suan Dok Gate and outside the moat. The Tourism Authority gives a temple telephone number of 0 5380 8563. |
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.
Because one person decided they should be in one place. The National Archives in Chiang Mai record that Princess Consort Dara Rasmi, returning to Chiang Mai around B.E. 2451, resolved to gather the remains of the rulers and of the Chao Chet Ton family — then scattered across the old cremation ground by the river — into a single enclosure, and chose the wide grounds of this temple. Eleven were moved first, and their names are inscribed in front of Phra Chao Inthawichayanon's ku. Surveys in B.E. 2527 counted 105 memorials by one reckoning and 113 by another.
A bronze Buddha in the earth-touching attitude, 2.90 metres across the lap and 3.87 metres high, which the Chiang Mai National Museum records as the largest complete Lanna bronze image in existence. The name refers to its weight — nine tue. The museum, drawing on the Jinakalamalipakaranam, dates the start of its casting to B.E. 2047 and its installation here to B.E. 2052, both to the day, at the order of Phra Mueang Kaeo. Its style mixes a Chiang Saen face with Sukhothai proportions and an Ayutthaya-influenced robe.
Older than any source will date. Every state body that describes it agrees on the reign — Phaya Kuena, sixth of the Mangrai line, in the second half of the fourteenth century — and on the circumstance, that it was built to house relics brought north by Phra Sumana Thera at the same moment as Wat Phra That Doi Suthep. None of them gives a year, and this page does not supply one. The oldest dated thing in the compound is an image cast between B.E. 2047 and 2052.
The same relic. The chronicle account, carried by the Fine Arts Department's regional office and by the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's entry on the mountain temple, is that Phra Sumana Thera brought relics north from Sukhothai at Phaya Kuena's invitation, that one was enshrined in the chedi here, and that a second was placed on the back of a royal elephant which climbed Doi Suthep and knelt at the summit. The two temples are treated in the sources as a single act of foundation, which is why neither is dated independently of the other.
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 Chiang Mai’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.
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Every fact on this page is drawn from the sources above. Where they disagree, this page says so rather than choosing silently. Registrations, fees, hours and access change; confirm anything you are relying on with the authority concerned. BAANLYY LLC is a Nevada company and a listing portal, does not represent any temple, and offers no legal or religious advice.