Three buildings stacked on one footprint over five centuries, inside the Dvaravati moated town of Nakhon Champa Si, the last of them read as a travellers' rest house.
สำนักนางขาว (ศาลานางขาว) · Samnak Nang Khao
| Official name | สำนักนางขาว (ศาลานางขาว) — Samnak Nang Khao |
|---|---|
| Where | Ku Santarat, Na Dun, Maha Sarakham |
| 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. 52, p. 3695, 8 March B.E. 2478 for the listing; land boundary of about 4 rai 2 ngan 43 square wa at vol. 121, special part 53 ง, p. 9, 10 May B.E. 2547 Registered with a determined land boundary under section 7 of the Ancient Monuments Act B.E. 2504. Both instruments were read at source, and the B.E. 2547 one is the clearest statement of this district's administrative history anywhere in the file: it records the monument as being in Tambon Ku Santarat, formerly Tambon Na Dun, Amphoe Na Dun, formerly Amphoe Wapi Pathum. It was signed on 12 February B.E. 2547 by the Director-General, Arak Sanghitkul. The official name is Samnak Nang Khao; the 1936 instrument itself notes that the townspeople call it Sala Nang Khao. |
| Coordinates | 15.711895, 103.270157 Fine Arts Department national monument register, monument id 0002954, recorded as a GPS reading, and consistent with the UTM grid reference 48P 314635E 1737825N printed in the department's B.E. 2565 survey report. Checked against the address both sources state, Ban Ku Non Mueang, Moo 2, Amphoe Na Dun. |
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.
Three phases across roughly five centuries means there is no single founding date to give, and neither state source offers one. The inscription dates a moment in the site's use, around the second phase, not its beginning.
Sala Nang Khao is close enough to Ku Santarat to walk between them and the two are easily taken for one site. They are not the same age, and the department's own survey report makes that unusually clear, because it reads the monument as three buildings rather than one. It also places it where the register does not: inside the ancient town of Nakhon Champa Si, a Dvaravati settlement with an earthwork and a moat around it. That changes the frame. This is not an isolated shrine in a field; it is a religious building inside a walled town that was already old when the Khmer arrived.
Phase one is an ordination hall of laterite, rectangular, about seven metres wide — the length cannot be taken, the survey says, because too much of the laterite line is gone — entered from the east, with four large laterite sema set around it. Dvaravati, about the thirteenth to fourteenth Buddhist century. Phase two is another ordination hall, about six metres wide, also entered from the east, raised by filling over phase one completely and laying fresh laterite on top, with two large sema near the earlier positions. Those phase-two sema are carved with a stupa form rising as a parallelogram to the finial, and the hall and its sema were enclosed by a wall whose traces survive north, south and west. Late Dvaravati, contemporary with Khmer culture, about the sixteenth to seventeenth Buddhist century.
Phase three is the one standing today, and it is the most interesting reading in this batch. Only the base survives: a redented square ten point three metres a side, with a long porch chamber projecting west, five metres wide and eleven long, the interior floor paved in laterite and brick. It sits over the phase-two hall, with earth filled and compacted to raise the ground forty centimetres, some of the phase-two laterite reused as foundation and larger blocks laid up two courses above. The survey's judgement is that the plan is the form of a dharmasala — a travellers' rest house. To its east is a pavilion, also laterite, two courses of base left, on a cruciform plan fifteen metres a side with post-holes traced at intervals, so a timber superstructure over an open hall. Khmer, Bayon style, about the eighteenth Buddhist century, which makes phase three contemporary with Ku Santarat down the road.
Where it all came from matters. The B.E. 2514 clearance by Fine Arts Unit 7 in Khon Kaen turned up a single small sandstone inscription, twenty-one centimetres tall, in ancient Khom script and Khmer. The register reports that it names Phra Bat Kamraten An Sri Jayavarmandeva — possibly Jayavarman VI, whose reign it gives as B.E. 1623 to 1650 — recording that the king ordered three officials titled Rajapativarman to inscribe a gold plate to be kept in the kamraten jagat, the deity's shrine, which the register reads as this building. Then the France-Thailand joint project excavated nearby in B.E. 2532, and in B.E. 2544 the Office of Archaeology and National Museums 7 cleared, excavated, restored and landscaped the site. One thing the register does not reconcile with itself: in one sentence it says five laterite altars were found in that campaign and in the fuller account four, naming where each of the four stood. The disagreement is printed rather than chosen between.
The phase-three base: a redented square ten point three metres a side, with a porch chamber five metres by eleven projecting west and a floor paved in laterite and brick — read by the Fine Arts Department as the plan of a dharmasala, a travellers' rest house.
A pavilion to the east, laterite, two courses of base surviving, on a cruciform plan fifteen metres a side, with post-holes that indicate a timber-roofed open hall.
Large laterite sema stones from the two earlier phases, the later ones carved with a stupa form rising as a parallelogram to the finial.
Traces of the phase-two enclosure wall on the north, south and west sides.
Square laterite altars set around the monument — at the north, the south, and the north-west and south-west corners, per the register's detailed account.
The earthwork and moat of Nakhon Champa Si around the whole thing, which is the Dvaravati town this monument stands inside.
Ku Santarat about six hundred metres to the south, contemporary with this site's third phase, which is the comparison that makes both legible.
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 open archaeological site rather than a working monastery, but it is venerated locally and the Fine Arts Department landscaped it as a monument. Dress respectfully. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | At Ban Ku Non Mueang, Moo 2, Tambon Ku Santarat, Amphoe Na Dun — the same village as Ku Santarat, about six hundred metres away, so the two are one visit. |
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.
No. They are two separately registered monuments about six hundred metres apart in the same village. Only the last of this site's three building phases is contemporary with the hospital chapel; the first is some five centuries older.
The register reports that it names Phra Bat Kamraten An Sri Jayavarmandeva, read as possibly Jayavarman VI, and records him ordering three officials titled Rajapativarman to inscribe a gold plate for keeping in the deity's shrine.
Because the site stayed in use for roughly five centuries. The Fine Arts Department's survey report dates the first ordination hall to Dvaravati culture, the second to late Dvaravati alongside Khmer culture, and the third to the Bayon-style Khmer period, each built over the one before.
A rest house for travellers. The survey report presumes from the plan of the third phase — a redented square with a long western porch and a laterite and brick floor — that this is what the last building was.
They mark the ordination boundary of the two earlier halls. Four large laterite ones belong to phase one, two to phase two, and the phase-two examples are carved with a stupa form rising as a parallelogram to the finial.
It is an open rural monument with no published hours or fee, cleared and landscaped by the Fine Arts Department in B.E. 2544. This page states no times because no official source publishes any.
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 Maha Sarakham’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.