A single carved Dvaravati sema stone standing in front of the vihara of Wat Nuea in central Kalasin, registered as a national monument in its own right in 1936.
ใบเสมาหน้าวิหารวัดเหนือ · Bai Sema na Wihan Wat Nuea
| Official name | ใบเสมาหน้าวิหารวัดเหนือ — Bai Sema na Wihan Wat Nuea |
|---|---|
| Where | Kalasin, Mueang Kalasin, Kalasin |
| 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 Royal Gazette vol. 53, p. 1532, 27 September B.E. 2479 — under the heading จังหวัดมหาสารคาม, the province Kalasin then belonged to, with the address given as Amphoe Lup, Tambon Nuea Registered. The department's register names Fine Arts Office 9 Ubon Ratchathani together with Wat Nuea itself as joint custodians — one of the few entries in this province where the monastery is recorded as a co-custodian rather than merely the landowner. |
| Coordinates | 16.437584, 103.502190 Fine Arts Department register, monument id 0003332, GPS-sourced point |
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.
Two different ages are in play and the page keeps them apart. The monastery is a late-eighteenth-century foundation per the register; the sema stones around it are Dvaravati, which the register dates to the twelfth to sixteenth Buddhist centuries, and they were already ancient when they arrived here.
This is the smallest registered monument in the province and one of the most instructive. The protected thing is not the monastery. It is a stone: one sandstone sema slab, 73 centimetres wide, 102 centimetres above the ground and 22 centimetres thick, standing in front of the vihara at Wat Nuea in the middle of Kalasin town. The Fine Arts Department registered it in the Royal Gazette on 27 September B.E. 2479, and at that date the entry sits under the heading for Maha Sarakham province with the address Amphoe Lup, Tambon Nuea, because Kalasin was not a province in 1936 and the district that is now Mueang Kalasin was then called Lup.
The monastery around it is much younger than the stone. The register states it was built in B.E. 2336 by Phraya Chai Sunthon — Som Phra Mit, the founding ruler of Kalasin — as a place for the Phra Khru Lak Kham to spend the rains retreat. Phra Khru Lak Kham is an Isan monastic title the register glosses for the reader: a senior elder of rank comparable to a provincial ecclesiastical governor today. So the stones are Dvaravati and the compound they stand in is late Ayutthaya at the earliest. They were brought here from Fa Daet Sung Yang and planted around the sim, which is how a great many of that town's sema stones ended up distributed across the province.
What the carving shows is the reason this particular slab was singled out. Two devatas fly above a prasat. Trees stand to the side of the building. At the bottom of the composition are a king, his queen and their son. The department reads it as a Jataka scene without naming which one. On the reverse, down the middle, two straight vertical lines are incised and nothing else. The register's judgement is that the stone's significance is exactly this: it shows Dvaravati art and architecture — a building, figures, a narrative — through a single carved face, in a period from which almost no architecture in the region survives above its foundations.
The register also sets out what sema stones were for, and it is broader than the usual explanation. They appear specifically in Dvaravati Isan between roughly the twelfth and sixteenth Buddhist centuries, in lotus-petal form and also as four-sided and eight-sided posts. They marked out sacred ground by being planted in a ring around a religious building. But they were also made as merit dedicated to the dead, or as an offering to the Buddha and then planted somewhere already sacred, and sometimes they stood in place of a stupa, a chedi or an image entirely. Some were set singly and some in groups, some plain and some carved with stupas, water pots, scenes from the life of the Buddha, or Jataka tales.
The registered stone itself: sandstone, 73 centimetres wide, 102 centimetres above ground, 22 centimetres thick, standing in front of the vihara.
Its carved face — two devatas flying above a prasat, trees to the side, and a king, queen and prince along the bottom edge, read by the department as a Jataka scene.
Its reverse, which carries two incised vertical lines down the middle and nothing more.
The other sema stones planted around the sim, brought in from Fa Daet Sung Yang, in both plain and carved form, rectangular with tapering tops like a lotus petal.
A working urban monastery around all of it, which the register names as joint custodian of the monument with Fine Arts Office 9 in Ubon Ratchathani.
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 | An active monastery in the middle of the provincial capital. Cover shoulders and knees; shoes off inside the buildings. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Central Kalasin town, in Tambon Kalasin, Mueang Kalasin district. Walkable from the municipal centre. |
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.
One carved sandstone sema stone standing in front of the vihara, not the monastery as a whole. The register entry is for the stone.
Kalasin had been abolished as a province and absorbed into Maha Sarakham. It was re-established with effect from 1 October B.E. 2490 by the Act Establishing Changwat Kalasin.
The register says they were found at Mueang Fa Daet Sung Yang and planted around the ordination hall here, so they are Dvaravati stones in a much later compound.
Two devatas flying above a palace building, trees beside it, and a king, queen and son at the bottom — described by the department as a Jataka scene without naming which.
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 Kalasin’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.
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.