Wat Mutchalinthawapi Wihan

What the official record says

Where Wat Mutchalinthawapi Wihan 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.

Three years and two names are in dispute between two arms of the state. The Office of Buddhism dates the monastery to B.E. 2338 and the governor's appointment to B.E. 2388; the Fine Arts Department register puts the appointment at B.E. 2377 and makes B.E. 2338 the year of the Burmese attack that led to Pattani being divided into seven towns. The department also calls the chedi's builder พระครูวิบูลย์สมณวัตร (หลวงพ่อทวด เทวมโม) while the Office of Buddhism calls him พระครูพิบูลย์สมณวัตร (พระอาจารย์นวล เทวธมฺโม). Nothing here reconciles them.

The history of Wat Mutchalinthawapi Wihan

Ten kilometers west of Pattani town, on the road to Khok Pho, Nong Chik was one of the seven towns the Siamese court split the old Patani polity into. Wat Mutchalinthawapi Wihan is the monastery that came with that administrative decision. The Fine Arts Department's register tells it as a governor's project: Nai Kliang, son of the ruler of Yaring, was appointed to Nong Chik, was later titled Phraya Wichian Phakdi Si Songkhram, brought Thai households with him, cleared land at Ban Tha Ka beside the river, and built a monastery there. The Pattani office of the National Office of Buddhism tells the same events as an omen story — a white sand mound, a large chamao tree, a tiger lying with its head to the east, and the tiger afterwards gone. Both are state accounts, and they are told here as what they are: one a survey record, one a tradition the state has written down.

They also differ by eleven years and more. The Office of Buddhism gives the monastery's building as B.E. 2338 and the appointment as B.E. 2388; the department gives the appointment as B.E. 2377 and treats B.E. 2338 as the year of the war that broke Pattani into seven. No instrument has been found that settles it, so the page carries both. Readers who want a single founding year will not get one here, and that is the correct outcome rather than a gap.

What is dated, precisely and from two directions, is the royal visit. On 30 July B.E. 2433, King Chulalongkorn came through on his tour of the Malay Peninsula, stayed at what was then Wat Tuyong, and talked with the abbot. He gave eighty chang from his own purse to the governor of Nong Chik, Phraya Mutchalinthara Saraphithan (That Na Songkhla), to build a new ordination hall in place of the old one, changed the monastery's name from Wat Tuyong to Wat Mutchalinthawapi Wihan, and left a royal portrait. The royal cypher จปร. is still on the gable of the Thai-form sala, which is the most direct physical trace of that day anywhere in the province. Eighty-six years later, on 27 September B.E. 2519, King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit made a private visit and spoke with the abbot then, Phra Ratchaphutthirangsi — Luang Pho Dam.

The monastery was raised to royal rank with effect from 20 November B.E. 2521, and here the record runs out in a way worth stating plainly. Three state sources were read for this page and all three call it พระอารามหลวง, a royal monastery; none of them gives a class. The Sangha Supreme Council's own resolution appointing an assistant abbot names it royal and stops. Popular sources give a third class of the ordinary type, and this guide does not print a grade on a popular source, so the grade field here is empty and the question is listed below. That is also why Pattani's royal-monastery count is worth getting right: the Office of Buddhism's provincial list of important temples has exactly three entries, and two of them are royal — this one and Wat Tani Norasamoson in the provincial town.

What you actually see

The chedi: brick and stucco, bell-shaped on a khieng base inside its own wall, the base 8 meters square and the whole thing 15 meters from base to tip. The Fine Arts Department survey puts its building at around B.E. 2432 and its last restoration in B.E. 2551.

The Thai-form masonry sala with the royal cypher จปร. worked into its gable — the visible residue of King Chulalongkorn's visit of 30 July B.E. 2433 and of the money he left to rebuild the ordination hall.

The principal Buddha image, in the Maravijaya posture and described by the Office of Buddhism as Chiang Saen work of the Singh I type, with a lap width given as one meter and four inches.

The mondop, or wihan yot, built in B.E. 2507 as a four-porched hall modeled on the prasat at the Bang Pa-In palace in Ayutthaya — a long way from home for a building type, and deliberately so.

The four-porched sala housing Phra Phuttha Aphai Mongkhon Samakkhi, an image the Office of Buddhism records as given by the present King to the people of Pattani.

The abbot's kuti, originally a single-story Thai-form house in hardwood, which the Office of Buddhism's 2021 page put at roughly 110 years old, and the Phra Ratchaphutthirangsi museum beside it, which holds the life-size wax figure of Luang Pho Dam along with clocks, silver, shadow-puppet figures and amulets.

The memorial to Chao Pho Suea, the tiger lord, put up for the animal in the founding story.

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 class of the royal monastery. Three state sources — the Fine Arts Department register, the Pattani Provincial Office of Buddhism and a Sangha Supreme Council resolution — all say royal monastery and none says which class. The grade is left null here rather than taken from a popular source.
• The founding year, and the year the governor was appointed. B.E. 2338, B.E. 2377 and B.E. 2388 are all in print from state bodies, and no instrument was found.
• The abbot who raised the chedi. The department calls him พระครูวิบูลย์สมณวัตร (หลวงพ่อทวด เทวมโม); the Office of Buddhism calls him พระครูพิบูลย์สมณวัตร (พระอาจารย์นวล เทวธมฺโม). He is a nineteenth-century abbot of this monastery and not the Luang Pu Thuat of Wat Chang Hai, and the two should never be filed as one person.
• The sect. None of the three state sources read here states Maha Nikaya or Dhammayuttika for this monastery.
• Whether the royal portrait King Chulalongkorn gave the monastery is still held there, and where. The Office of Buddhism records the gift and not its present whereabouts.

Wat Mutchalinthawapi Wihan: 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 Pattani’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.