The busiest devotional temple in Nakhon Pathom, a third-class royal monastery on the Tha Chin river at Sam Phran, built around an image brought from Ayutthaya whose arrival the temple itself tells as oral tradition rather than as record.
วัดไร่ขิง · Wat Rai Khing
| Official name | วัดไร่ขิง — Wat Rai Khing |
|---|---|
| Where | Rai Khing, Sam Phran, Nakhon Pathom |
| Royal temple class | Third class royal temple, Saman (ชั้นตรี ชนิดสามัญ) Two state sources give the same rank and the same date. The Sangha Region 14 information centre's register carries ประเภทวัด: พระอารามหลวง ชั้นตรี สามัญ and states in its history that the temple was raised from a commoner monastery to พระอารามหลวง ชั้นตรี ชนิดสามัญ on ๑๐ กรกฎาคม พ.ศ. ๒๕๓๓; the Tha Talat subdistrict administrative organisation next door gives the same rank and the same date of 10 July B.E. 2533. A Royal Gazette announcement of that elevation appears in search indexes but the gazette site refused every request in this run, so the date is carried on the two administrative sources rather than on the announcement itself. |
| Monastic order | Maha Nikaya (มหานิกาย), per the Sangha Region 14 temple register |
| Ancient monument | Not established. |
Rai Khing, Sam Phran, Nakhon Pathom
The exact location has not been confirmed yet.
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.
Four state sources give four different accounts of when the temple began and this guide chooses none of them. The Nakhon Pathom Provincial Administrative Organisation and the Tha Talat subdistrict both print B.E. 2334 flatly, with no document cited. The Tourism Authority of Thailand prints สันนิษฐาน — supposition — for B.E. 2394 and attributes the work to Somdet Phra Phutthachan Phuk in the reign of King Mongkut. The Sangha Region 14 register gives no year at all, says only that the temple belongs to the early Rattanakosin period, and prints an age in years that reconciles with neither figure. And the register's own วันตั้งวัด and วันรับวิสุงคามสีมา fields both read ปี 500, the system's placeholder for a missing value. Sixty years separate the two dated claims and no source consulted resolves them.
Wat Rai Khing sits on the bank of the Tha Chin — the Nakhon Chai Si river — at Sam Phran, thirty kilometres west of Bangkok, and it is the temple in this province that most Thai people actually go to. Not for its architecture and not for its antiquity, but for the image in its ordination hall, which is among the most venerated in the central plain. The name is unromantic and local: the ground here was farmed by Chinese settlers who grew ginger, the village took the name of the ginger fields, and the monastery took the name of the village.
The register's account of the image is administrative and short. Somdet Phra Phutthachan Phuk brought it from Wat Sala Pun Worawihan in Ayutthaya once the ordination hall had been built, in the reign of King Mongkut, and it has stood there since. It is in the attitude of subduing Mara, with a lap four sok and a little over two nio wide and a height of four sok and something over sixteen nio, raised on a five-tiered base and facing north across the river. The Sangha register reads its style as three periods at once: a Chiang Saen body, the tapering fingers of Sukhothai, and a square face with a hairline band and small tight curls in the manner of U Thong. The tourism authority, looking at the same image, calls it bronze and reads the face as Rattanakosin instead. The Tha Talat subdistrict calls it Chiang Saen and attributes the workmanship to Lanna and Lan Chang hands. Three state sources, three readings; this page prints all three rather than picking the one that sounds most authoritative.
What people come for is the other account, and the temple presents it honestly as an account. Under a heading that reads legend, and using the word for oral tradition, the Sangha register tells how the image was brought down from the old capital and raised from the water at the landing in front of the temple on the fifteenth waxing day of the fifth month, at Songkran, with a great crowd gathered; how the burning sun went out, black cloud came over, thunder sounded and rain fell as the image reached the pavilion; and how the people there made a wish that the image would cool their suffering as the rain cooled the ground. Wider still is the tradition of the five brothers, in which five images float down five rivers to five temples across the central plain and the delta, this one arriving by the Tha Chin. It is one of the best-known cycles in Thai popular Buddhism and it is not a chronology.
The temple's other name is a piece of documented history that most visitors never hear. Around B.E. 2446 the Supreme Patriarch Krom Phraya Vajirananavarorasa came through Sam Phran on visitation, stopped here, and gave the monastery a new name — Wat Mongkhon Chindaram — writing the old name in brackets after it. The brackets wore away with use; the official name stayed Wat Rai Khing; and the two names have coexisted ever since. The tourism authority's record confirms the renaming independently of the temple's own telling.
Wat Rai Khing became a royal monastery late and by a datable act: 10 July B.E. 2533, third class, ordinary kind. It holds 450 rai, of which the monastery proper is 150, and it runs foundations, a meditation centre for the provincial Sangha and a provincial dhamma-study establishment. In the middle of the fifth lunar month it holds the gold-leaf festival that is the largest religious gathering in the province, and on any ordinary weekend the river frontage in front of the ordination hall — a sanctuary stretch where thousands of catfish are fed and not caught — is as busy as the hall itself.
Luang Pho Wat Rai Khing in the ordination hall: an image in the attitude of subduing Mara with a lap of four sok and rather more than two nio and a height of four sok and rather more than sixteen nio, on a five-tiered base, facing north towards the river.
The ordination hall itself, which the tourism authority describes as an early Rattanakosin hall of the thong rong form, brick and plaster walls, a gable carved with the phutdan flower pattern, chofa, bai raka and hang hong finials and a roof of alternating glazed tile.
The four-porched pavilions in front of and behind the ordination hall, whose four gables carry stucco panels running from the Buddha's birth to the parinibbana and the division of the relics.
The mondop west of the ordination hall, built in a former pond and holding a replica of the Buddha's footprint — built in B.E. 2510 by Phra Khru Nawakan Sophon and his followers, with a low enclosing wall on all four sides and four gate-shrines, each flanked by a pair of stucco yaksha, and reglazed and repainted in B.E. 2563.
Phra Borommathat Chedi Phra Ubali Mahamongkhon, and the Inthanat earthen houses — three houses built of local earth on the model of Princess Sirindhorn's royal initiative, standing in front of the main building with water around them.
The river frontage: a sanctuary stretch of the Tha Chin in front of the hall where thousands of large catfish are fed and not taken, and the landing at which the tradition places the image being raised from the water.
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 | The Nakhon Pathom Provincial Administrative Organisation gives daily 08.00–16.00. The Tourism Authority of Thailand's page for this temple, read through a rendering browser, publishes no hours at all, so this is the only official figure available and it is one source rather than two. |
|---|---|
| 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 | 51 Mu 2, Tambon Rai Khing, Sam Phran, Nakhon Pathom 73210, on the north bank of the Tha Chin river about 32 kilometres west of Bangkok. The Tha Talat subdistrict administrative organisation names three approaches: the junction in front of Pho Kaeo police station, the junction in front of Sampran Riverside, and the Phutthamonthon Sai 5 junction. The temple's telephone number is 0 3432 3616 and the tourism authority lists parking and restrooms on site. |
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.
Nobody official agrees. The Nakhon Pathom Provincial Administrative Organisation and the Tha Talat subdistrict both state B.E. 2334 with no document behind it; the Tourism Authority of Thailand states B.E. 2394 and marks it as supposition; the Sangha Region 14 register gives no year and says only early Rattanakosin. Sixty years lie between the two figures. The register's own date fields read ปี 500, which is its placeholder for missing data. This guide prints all of it and chooses none of it.
There are two answers and they sit on opposite sides of the record line. The Sangha Region 14 register's administrative account says Somdet Phra Phutthachan Phuk brought it from Wat Sala Pun Worawihan in Ayutthaya once the ordination hall was built, in the reign of King Mongkut. The temple's own tradition, which the same page marks as oral tradition and heads as legend, says it came down the river and was raised from the water at the landing on the Songkran full moon, with the sun failing and rain falling as it was carried up.
It is a tradition rather than a history, and one of the most widely told in the central plain and the delta: five images are held to have floated down five rivers and come to rest at five temples. Wat Rai Khing has the first, carried by the Tha Chin. The others in the cycle are Luang Pho To at Wat Bang Phli Yai Nai, Luang Pho Thong at Wat Khao Takhrao in Phetchaburi, Luang Pho Sothon at Wat Sothon Wararam Worawihan in Chachoengsao, and Luang Pho Wat Ban Laem at Samut Songkhram.
Because the Supreme Patriarch renamed it. The Sangha Region 14 register records that around B.E. 2446 Somdet Phra Maha Samana Chao Krom Phraya Vajirananavarorasa, visiting the monasteries of Sam Phran district, stopped here and gave the temple the name Wat Mongkhon Chindaram, writing the old name in brackets after it. The bracketed form fell out of use and official records kept the older name, so both names are correct and the temple is formally Wat Rai Khing.
The Nakhon Pathom Provincial Administrative Organisation gives daily opening from 08.00 to 16.00, and that is the only official figure this guide could find — the tourism authority's own page for the temple publishes no hours. No official source consulted states an admission charge, which is not the same as confirming free entry. The gold-leaf festival in the middle of the fifth lunar month is the busiest week of the year here by a long way.
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 Nakhon Pathom’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.