A Brahmanical sanctuary of the Shaivite tradition on an old sand ridge in Tha Sala, later a Buddhist temple, whose lines of standing stone posts, broken lingas and carved door frames are older than the city of Nakhon Si Thammarat.
วัดโมคลาน · Wat Moklan
| Official name | วัดโมคลาน — Wat Moklan |
|---|---|
| Where | Moklan, Tha Sala, Nakhon Si Thammarat |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Carried in the national monument register; gazette announcement unread The register was read directly and the gazette was not. The Fine Arts Department's monument information service returns this site under id 0005080 as วัดโมคลาน(วัดโมคคลาน) with the status line โบราณสถานขึ้นทะเบียนและกำหนดเขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน — registered, with land boundary determined — and the department's GIS layer carries it at register status 5. Prince of Songkla University's Southern Information database states that the Fine Arts Department registered the site in B.E. 2518. No announcement for it was found on the Royal Gazette's site in this run, so no volume, part or date is printed and the status is set to registration-unconfirmed rather than registered: the department's register plainly carries it, but the instrument behind the register has not been opened. |
| Coordinates | 8.580653, 99.930706 Fine Arts Department FADGIS monument layer, WGS84, monument id 0005080 |
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 Buddhist temple is the late layer here, not the first one. What the ground holds is a Shaivite sanctuary — yoni-dronas, broken lingas, a stone image platform, carved door frames — over which a Buddhist wat was built, abandoned, rebuilt and abandoned again. No foundation date is established for either the sanctuary or the wat.
Moklan is on a sand ridge in Amphoe Tha Sala, about 10 km from the district town, and it is the oldest thing in this run by a wide margin. What survives is not a temple in the usual sense: it is rows of stone posts set at even intervals to mark out consecrated ground, carved door frames and threshold slabs and column bases scattered through rubber smallholdings and house plots, a mound about 20 metres across that was a chedi, another mound that was a sanctuary, three silted ponds, and the broken pieces of yoni-dronas and Shiva lingas.
It began as a Brahmanical sanctuary of the Shaivite tradition. That is not an inference from the setting; it is what the objects are. The pieces recovered include the yoni base and fragments of the linga that stood in it, and Prince of Songkla University's account of the site records the platforms as those of a Shiva shrine. The Buddhist temple that stands there now is the newest layer of a site that changed religion twice — Brahmanical, then Mahayana and Theravada Buddhist — and whose surrounding village is today about seventy per cent Thai Muslim.
The stones have been read two ways and both are worth knowing. In B.E. 2511 Professor H. H. E. Loofs, of the Thai–British Archaeological Expedition, surveyed the mound and put the stone alignment in the megalithic culture — the Iron Age tradition of setting large undressed stones, which in Southeast Asia runs from about 2,500 years ago. The carved architectural fragments point somewhere else and later: the right-angled beam motif on the door frames, filled with floral and incised ornament, resembles the doubled door frames and pediment beams of Khmer art of the Angkor Wat period, which would put the building they came from around the 17th to 18th Buddhist centuries. A site can be both, and the honest reading is that the ridge was used for a very long time.
Some of what happened to the site afterwards is the reason so little survives, and Prince of Songkla University's account is unusually blunt about it. When the wat fell empty — and it fell empty repeatedly, most recently around B.E. 2483 — a later population with no connection to the older community reused the material. Door frames were reset upright as boundary markers, threshold stones ended up at the foot of house stairs as bootscrapers, lingas were broken up, and building fragments went into new foundations and into a kuti raised on the north of the mound in B.E. 2488, whose posts can still be traced. That is not vandalism in the usual sense; it is what happens when the thread of memory in a place is cut.
One object from Moklan is now the most-visited thing in the province. The Phra Phuai — a bronze Buddha in the attitude of granting protection, late Ayutthaya in style — is recorded as having been taken from Wat Moklan to Wat Phra Mahathat in the reign of Rama III by the monk known as Than Khru Pan, who led the restoration of the great chedi. It stands today in the Wihan Pho Langka in front of the Wihan Khian, inside what is now a World Heritage property, and visitors who ask it for a child are asking an image that came off this ridge.
The community's own account of its age is a verse, and it says something the archaeology cannot: that Moklan was here before Mueang Nakhon. Whether or not that is chronologically true, it is what a settlement says when it remembers being a centre and then not being one.
Lines of stone posts — หลักหิน — set at even intervals in several straight alignments, marking the boundary of the consecrated ground. This is the feature that Loofs classified as megalithic-culture work in B.E. 2511.
Carved stone door frames, threshold slabs and column bases with visible post holes, scattered across the site and reused in later structures. The frame ornament — a right-angled beam with floral and incised filling — is the piece that carries the comparison with Khmer work of the Angkor Wat period.
The broken yoni-dronas and Shiva lingas: the physical evidence that this was a Shaivite sanctuary before it was a Buddhist temple. Several pieces were moved out of the mound and laid at the foot of trees on its north side.
The chedi mound east of the first line of posts, roughly 20 metres across and now shaped like a termite hill, dug into repeatedly by treasure hunters.
The two kamphaeng kaeo enclosures. The northern one encloses the Buddhavasa with a brick-paved court and stepped gateways north and south; the southern one, the Sanghavasa, now has the Moklan Prachasan school buildings and playing field inside it, together with the brick foundations of two rectangular buildings of 6.20 × 8.50 m and 9.50 × 11.50 m.
Three ancient ponds east of the mound, cut along the sand ridge — the smallest about 50 m from the mound, the largest about 50 to 60 metres across and about 100 m out.
The kuti of B.E. 2488 north of the mound, built out of the sanctuary's own stones. Its posts still show, and it is the clearest thing on the site about what happened here in the twentieth century.
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 | There is an active wat on the site: shoulders and knees covered, shoes off in the halls. |
| Photography | No restriction stated by any official source read in this run. |
| Getting there | In Amphoe Tha Sala, about 10 km from the district town. Prince of Songkla University's directions are to take Highway 401 to Na Thap, turn and continue about 6 km on Route 4022. There is no public transport to the 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.
It is one now, and it did not start as one. The monument is a Brahmanical sanctuary of the Shaivite tradition — the recovered objects include yoni-dronas and broken Shiva lingas — over which a Buddhist wat was later built. Calling it simply an old Buddhist temple gets its history backwards.
That is not settled. The Shaivite sanctuary is placed at roughly the 12th to 14th Buddhist centuries; a B.E. 2511 survey classified the stone alignment as megalithic-culture work, which is an Iron Age tradition; and the carved door frames have been compared to Khmer work of the Angkor Wat period, around the 17th to 18th Buddhist centuries. Those readings are centuries apart and this guide prints all of them rather than choosing.
A bronze Buddha in the attitude of granting protection, in late Ayutthaya style, recorded as having been brought from Wat Moklan to Wat Phra Mahathat in the reign of Rama III by the monk who led the restoration of the great chedi. It stands today in the Wihan Pho Langka at Wat Phra Mahathat, and is one of the images visitors there petition for children.
Because the site emptied and refilled with a population that had no memory of it. Prince of Songkla University's account records door frames reset as boundary posts, threshold stones used at the foot of house stairs, lingas broken up, and building stone reused in a kuti raised on the mound in B.E. 2488 and in ordinary houses. A school and a playing field now stand inside the southern enclosure.
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 Si Thammarat’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.