Wat Bang Luang

What the official record says

Where Wat Bang Luang 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 Provincial Office of Buddhism publishes a shorter version of the same account which opens by dating the foundation to B.E. 2230 and then, two sentences later, gives B.E. 2246 from the abbot's record. The two figures are sixteen years apart inside one state page, and neither is a document. The Ministry of Culture's longer text also prints the canal-digging year as B.E. 1251, which is a slip for the B.E. 2151 it gives elsewhere on the same page.

The history of Wat Bang Luang

Wat Bang Luang stands where Khlong Bang Luang meets the Chao Phraya, about three kilometres along the inner Pathum Thani road from the old provincial hall. It is a Mon monastery and says so at the river: a hongsa pole, the Mon emblem, stands at the front of the compound facing the water, which is how a monastery announced itself to anyone coming upstream. The account the monastery's own former abbot set down in 1908, and which the Ministry of Culture now publishes in full, describes the site before any of that — reed and grass, leopard and deer, a canal three or four wa wide thick with small crocodiles, and hunters passing through.

The same record gives the foundation to King Suriyenthrathibodi in B.E. 2246 and says he named the monastery Wat Sing. It also explains the present name, and the explanation is a good one: when Khlong Lat Tret Yai was cut in the reign of King Ekathotsarot, a Chiang Saen bronze was turned up, and villagers hid it in the monastery rather than surrender it — bang luang, hidden from the crown, worn over time into Bang Luang. That image is still here. It is Luang Pho Phet, a solid-cast bronze in the diamond-seated subduing-Mara attitude, twenty-five inches across the lap and thirty-nine high, and the record notes the oddity that its left hand can be moved. It is brought out for gilding once a year, on the fourth day of the waning moon of the eleventh month, at the festival the district knows as bang luang wai phra.

The Mon connection is not folklore but administration. The royal chronicle in the recension of Krom Phra Paramanuchit Chinorot, quoted in the same record, states that under King Rama I three Mon elders learned in the Vinaya were raised to rank, and that one of them — Phra Traisaranathat — was ordered by royal command to reside at Wat Bang Luang as head of the Raman order for the Nonthaburi and Sam Khok districts. A Mon monastery with jurisdiction over the Mon sangha of two districts is a different institution from a village temple, and it explains why this is where the province's principal image was made.

That casting is the best-dated event on this page. The record gives it step by step: Phra Sasanasophon (On), then Phra Thammatrailokachan of Wat Phichaiyat and ecclesiastical head of the Bangkok circle, observing that his jurisdiction had no principal image for its towns, worked with Phra Raman Muni (Sut) of this monastery and Phraya Phithak Thuai Han, governor of Pathum Thani, to raise the money. Modelling began in January R.S. 118 and was done at Wat Poramaiyikawat on Ko Kret; the gold was poured on 19 February R.S. 119 in a temporary hall at Wat Bang Luang; the outlay was a little over 513 baht. Four identical images were made for four towns, and King Chulalongkorn bestowed the name Phra Pathum Thammarat on the one for this province and directed that it be enshrined in the vihara here.

What you actually see

The hongsa pole at the river gate, the Mon emblem that identifies the monastery as a Mon foundation to anyone arriving by water.

The old Thai-manner ordination hall, which the monastery's own account describes as built without pillars and in old materials, with sandstone boundary stones.

The wall painting inside it: the life of the Buddha and the ten birth tales, which the account dates by style from late Ayutthaya through early Rattanakosin, and which includes scenes of Mon riverside life in this province.

Luang Pho Yai, the principal image of the ordination hall in the subduing-Mara attitude, which the monastery calls the oldest and largest principal image in Pathum Thani.

Luang Pho Phet, the solid-cast Chiang Saen bronze found in the canal cutting, twenty-five inches across the lap, with the movable left hand.

Phra Pathum Thammarat, the principal Buddha image of the province, cast here in 1900 and named by King Chulalongkorn, in the vihara.

The Mutao chedi and the Shwedagon chedi, both listed as registered monuments in the monastery's own account.

The arched bridge on the canal in front of the monastery, built high enough for roofed sampans to pass beneath it, which local elders date to the Fifth Reign alongside the vihara.

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.

• The founding year. Two state pages carry B.E. 2230 and B.E. 2246 within a few sentences of each other, and both rest on the same 1908 abbot's record rather than on an instrument.
• Which elements the registration actually covers. The monastery's account names four — two chedi, the ordination hall and its painting — but the departmental instrument was not opened, so the scope is the monastery's claim rather than the department's wording.
• The date of the arched bridge, which rests on what the account calls the recollection of elderly residents and no document at all.
• The royal grade and the sect. Neither the Provincial Office of Buddhism page nor any other state source read here states either, so both are null rather than assumed.
• Whether Wat Bang Luang Nok, the ruined companion monastery the 1908 record describes, has any surviving fabric or any register entry of its own.

Wat Bang Luang: 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 Pathum Thani’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.