Wat Pipphaliwan

What the official record says

Where Wat Pipphaliwan is

When was it founded — and what actually establishes that?

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 register gives the Thai name in two spellings within a single entry, Pipphaliwan and Piyaphonlawan, and records Wat Tapang as the local usage without a date or any statement of which came first. The gable inscription dates the hall by the animal year as well as the era, a year of the snake, first of the decade, B.E. 2472, which is the monastery own wording and is reproduced here rather than reduced to a number.

The history of Wat Pipphaliwan

This is where the border question stops being a story about one famous temple and becomes an administrative fact. The register entry for Wat Pipphaliwan says it directly: in the past the land this monastery stands on lay inside the territory of Kelantan. So when Phrakhru Opas Buddhakhun — the same monk the register credits with starting Wat Chonthara Singhe — and the heads of the other monasteries in the district wanted the royal grant of an ordination boundary, they could not simply apply to Bangkok. They had to petition through the Raja of Kelantan, Tuan Sani Pak Daeng, and the grant came from King Chulalongkorn on 11 August R.S. 117, which is B.E. 2441. Every Buddhist monastery in this district traces its standing to that one day.

The ordination hall faces west, which is unusual, and is a rectangle 8.40 by 13.80 meters. The walls are brick rendered with slaked lime and polished with pounded lime, under fired clay tiles, with finial, bargeboards and swan tails all in plaster rather than wood. The west gable carries molded stucco set with glass showing Indra on Erawan, and under the elephant feet is cut the line the building dates itself by: a year of the snake, first of the decade, B.E. 2472. The east gable is a dancing deity in the same technique, and garudas with scrollwork run under both gable frames.

Inside stand three stucco Buddhas in the subduing-Mara posture, lacquered and gilded. Behind them is a painted glass-house arch among trees and an assembly of deities, in distemper bound with glue. The side walls carry the peoples of the four continents. The wooden ceiling has the moon in a chariot drawn by horses, with flowers and butterflies, and Mekhala and Ramasun — the goddess of lightning and the demon who throws the axe at her.

Thirty meters west is the abbot house, and it is large: about 17.6 meters by 24.5 overall, raised on posts, with a big front porch and a smaller porch in front of that, facing east under a hip roof of clay tiles. The walls are weatherboarded horizontally. On the front porch the window shutters come in pairs with raised panels painted red and yellow, one pair to each bay, and between the sill and the middle of the shutters the wall is broken by vertical runs of pale yellow fretwork in a rice-bud pattern. Round the sides and back the boarding is plain and the windows become openings with four turned bars. The ventilation panels above the beam course are fretted with eight-pointed stars on the front porch and left as plain spaced boards towards the rear.

There are two open pavilions as well, both small: one south of the ordination hall at 3.80 by 4.00 meters, one north-east at 2.15 by 2.80, both on low posts on concrete footings with plank floors laid with gaps. The register records the second one as badly damaged in its roof and upper frame, and records the monument as a whole as in poor condition. The art-and-architecture description comes not from a survey but from a restoration report filed by a contractor in B.E. 2561, which the register cites by name — five years before the registration was published.

What you actually see

The west-facing ordination hall, 8.40 by 13.80 meters, in brick rendered with slaked lime, with finial, bargeboards and swan tails all in plaster rather than wood.

The west gable: Indra on Erawan in stucco set with glass, with the hall own date cut under the elephant feet as a year of the snake, first of the decade, B.E. 2472.

Three gilded stucco Buddhas in the subduing-Mara posture, with an assembly of deities and a glass-house arch painted behind them and the peoples of the four continents along the side walls.

The ceiling painting of the moon in a horse-drawn chariot with Mekhala and Ramasun among flowers and butterflies.

The abbot house thirty meters west, about 17.6 by 24.5 meters, with red and yellow panelled shutters, rice-bud fretwork between the sills, and eight-pointed stars cut in the ventilation panels of the front porch.

Visiting: hours, admission, dress and photography

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.

What we could not establish

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.

• How the monastery name should be spelled. The register writes Pipphaliwan and Piyaphonlawan within one entry, and the gazette announcement uses the first.
• Why the registration took eighteen months to publish when the announcement signed the same day for Wat Kasem Prathip took under four.
• When the monastery itself began. The register gives the ordination boundary grant of B.E. 2441 and no earlier date.
• When the name Wat Tapang came into use, and whether it preceded or followed the Pali name.
• Whether the restoration described in the B.E. 2561 contractor report was carried out. The register still records the monument as in poor condition.
• The royal grade and the monastic order, neither of which any official register consulted states.

Wat Pipphaliwan: common questions

Where to go from here

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 Narathiwat’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.