The Mon monastery at the head of Ko Kret that King Chulalongkorn rebuilt and renamed for his royal grandmother, with three marble inscriptions that record what he did, year by year, in the words of the people who did it.
วัดปรมัยยิกาวาสวรวิหาร · Wat Poramaiyikawat Worawihan
| Official name | วัดปรมัยยิกาวาสวรวิหาร — Wat Poramaiyikawat Worawihan |
|---|---|
| Where | Ko Kret, Pak Kret, Nonthaburi |
| Royal temple class | Second class royal temple, Worawihan (พระอารามหลวงชั้นโท วรวิหาร) The Nonthaburi provincial office of the National Office of Buddhism carries the grade in its own class-and-type field as พระอารามหลวงชั้นโท ชนิดวรวิหาร, and the Ko Kret subdistrict administration and DASTA print the same words independently. One Fine Arts Department museum record misnames the monastery ราชวรวิหาร; that is a data error in a single record. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument ประกาศกรมศิลปากร กำหนดจำนวนโบราณสถานสำหรับชาติ ราชกิจจานุเบกษา เล่ม ๕๒ หน้า ๓๖๗๙ ลงวันที่ ๘ มีนาคม ๒๔๗๘ — รายการจังหวัดนนทบุรีอยู่ที่หน้า ๓๖๘๘ This announcement was read from the scan, which the Fine Arts Department serves from its own file store because the Royal Gazette website is unreachable. Under the heading ๑๖. จังหวัดนนทบุรี the entry reads, in full, ๒. วัดปรมัยยิกาวาส อำเภอนนทบุรี ตำบลเกาะเกร็ด — the district name is the 1935 administrative geography, not today's. Cite page 3679 for the announcement and 3688 for this entry; both numbers circulate and both are correct. The instrument registers the monastery as a whole and names no component separately, so the leaning chedi has no registration of its own. |
| Coordinates | 13.912216, 100.489710 Fine Arts Department, national monument register no. 0000226, point geometry from the department's own GIS (WGS84); ONEP, DASTA and the provincial government all place it within sixty metres |
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 abandonment is given as B.E. 2307 by the provincial government and DASTA and as B.E. 2308 by a university source; nothing reconciles them. The earliest dated act anyone can point to is the royal kathin of B.E. 2417, and everything before it is community memory.
Ko Kret is an accident of engineering. In the early eighteenth century a canal was cut across the neck of a river bend to shorten the run upstream, the river took the cut as its main channel, and the old loop became the water around an island. The monastery at the island's northern point was called Wat Pak Ao, the monastery at the river mouth, and the Mon who settled Ko Kret knew it by a Mon name that three state bodies transcribe three different ways. What it was before that, nobody can say: the provincial government puts the foundation after the canal cut and calls it a presumption, and no register or inscription carries a date.
The documented history begins with a royal visit. In B.E. 2417 Rama V brought the kathin here — the third stop of that progress — to a Mon monastery in the district of Nonthaburi with nine monks in residence and a Mon ecclesiastical head presiding. The inscriptions set up ten years later record what he saw and what he decided: the ordination hall, the vihara and the monks' quarters were ruinous, and he ordered them rebuilt in repayment to the royal grandmother who had raised him and who had once asked that he build her a monastery one day. Work began in the sixth month of that year under Phraya Akkhanisaraphai, and the new monks' quarters — eight buildings — took about seven months. In B.E. 2418 the king and the princess dedicated them to the sangha and he gave the monastery the name it carries now: the monastery of the royal grandmother.
The work went on for another decade and the stones count it. The principal image and its two kneeling disciples were remodelled and then gilded by the king and the princess; the ordination hall was pulled down and rebuilt longer and wider with a verandah on all four sides, a patterned tile floor, stone paving and an iron fence with iron gates; a Mon-manner chedi was raised behind it and relics enshrined; the cloister round the reclining Buddha was pushed out three wa on each side; and a Mon-script Tripitaka of four hundred and sixteen volumes was written and housed in a hundred and eighty teak chests. In B.E. 2427 the relics and the scriptures came upriver from the royal landing in a procession of barges, the boundary stones were relaid on a wider circuit, and the whole outlay was entered on the stone: one thousand and ninety-four chang, eleven tamlueng, three baht and two salueng.
The chedi that people photograph is not that one. At the very tip of the island stands a white Mon-manner stupa, octagonal and redented, with a five-tiered Mon finial and a red cloth tied at the top, and it leans. The Ko Kret subdistrict administration says it was built upright and that the bank washed away beneath it, tipping it about B.E. 2434. That is the only dated explanation any state body publishes, and there is no Fine Arts Department conservation record behind it.
The leaning chedi at the island's northern point — white, octagonal and redented, with a five-tiered Mon finial a wa high and a red cloth tied at its top, which the Ko Kret subdistrict administration describes as a Raman cultural sign. The same source attributes the lean to bank erosion and dates it to about B.E. 2434.
The ordination hall as rebuilt in the 1870s, and the measurements the inscription gives for it: extended to nine wa three sok long and five wa one sok wide in seven bays, with a verandah one wa deep on all four sides and four boundary pavilions two wa square at the corners.
Three marble inscriptions of B.E. 2427 — one a four-faced grey marble pillar of 160 lines standing in front of the ordination hall, two slabs of thirteen khlong si suphap stanzas each, one of them on the hall's front wall. The Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre publishes all three readings.
The Mon-manner chedi behind the ordination hall, which the inscription measures at five wa three sok one khuep across the base on all four sides and six wa two sok high, and in which Rama V enshrined relics in B.E. 2427.
The reclining Buddha in its own vihara, ringed by a cloister. No state source publishes its measurements; three say only that it is the third largest in Pak Kret district. The marble standing Buddha in front of the vihara is a different image and should not be confused with it.
Phra Nonthamunin, the provincial Buddha image of Nonthaburi, seated in the adamantine posture in the south porch of the reclining Buddha's vihara.
The murals in the ordination hall, attributed to Mom Chao Prawit Chumsai — a pupil of the painter known as Khrua In Khong — with the defeat of Mara and the earth goddess on the front drum wall, the Chulamani chedi in Tavatimsa on the rear, the thirteen ascetic practices between the windows, and the occasions of the monastic rules above them.
The monastery museum, whose Mon manuscript collection occupies about a quarter of its upper floor.
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 | Daily 08:00–17:00, per DASTA, which is the only official source found for the monastery's own hours. |
|---|---|
| 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 | Ko Kret is an island and is reached only by cross-river ferry from the Pak Kret bank. The monastery has its own landing. No official source that could be opened states the ferry's hours or fares, so none is given here. |
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.
Rama V's royal grandmother. The inscriptions of B.E. 2427 record that he rebuilt the monastery in repayment to the royal grandmother who had raised him and who had asked that he one day build her one, and that he gave it the name in B.E. 2418. The Thai name means, in the provincial government's gloss, the monastery of the royal grandmother.
The Ko Kret subdistrict administration says it was built upright and that the river bank washed away beneath it, settling and tipping it about B.E. 2434. That is the only dated explanation any state body publishes, and there is no conservation or engineering report behind it, so treat the date as one source's account rather than a settled finding.
By cross-river ferry from the Pak Kret bank; Ko Kret is an island and there is no bridge. The monastery has its own landing. No official source that could be opened gives the ferry's hours or fares.
No, and this is a common confusion. The marble image is a separate standing Buddha in front of the vihara. The reclining Buddha is a different image, and no state source publishes its material or its measurements — three say only that it is the third largest in Pak Kret district.
The monastery museum holds them, and its Mon manuscript collection takes up about a quarter of the upper floor. It opens 13:00 to 16:00 on weekdays and from 09:00 at weekends and on public holidays, and it does not charge. Two state bodies give different weekend closing times, 15:00 and 16:30.
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 Nonthaburi’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.