A small monastery on the Pa Sak holding Phra Phuttha Maha Thammaracha, the image the province carries into the river once a year, with a prang and a chedi behind the ordination hall and a boundary fixed in 2001.
วัดไตรภูมิ · Wat Traiphum
| Official name | วัดไตรภูมิ — Wat Traiphum |
|---|---|
| Where | Nai Mueang (ในเมือง), Mueang Phetchabun (เมืองเพชรบูรณ์), Phetchabun |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument Royal Gazette vol. 57, p. 807, 18 June B.E. 2483 — ประกาศกรมศิลปากร กำหนดจำนวนโบราณวัตถุสถานสำหรับชาติ, จังหวัดเพ็ชรบูรณ์ section, item 5: วัดไตรภูมิ อำเภอเมืองเพชรบูรณ์ ตำบลในเมือง. Boundary fixed by Royal Gazette vol. 118, special part 29 ง, 26 March B.E. 2544 — ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง กำหนดเขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน, at about 5 ไร่ 10 ตารางวา. Both instruments were read from the department's own scans. The 2001 boundary order is the more useful document of the two, because it says in its own words what the 1940 list did not do: it recites that the department had registered the monastery in B.E. 2483 แต่มิได้กำหนดเขตที่ดิน — but without determining a land boundary — and then fixes one under section 7 of the Ancient Monuments Act B.E. 2504. It was signed by Director-General Group Captain Awut Ngoenchuklin on 15 September B.E. 2543 and published six months later. The volume and part digits of the 1940 citation recited inside it did not resolve cleanly in two optical passes and are therefore taken from the structured register rather than from the scan. |
| Coordinates | 16.422707, 101.161405 Fine Arts Department national ancient monument register, monument 0004673 วัดไตรภูมิ, ตำบลในเมือง อำเภอเมืองเพชรบูรณ์ จังหวัดเพชรบูรณ์ |
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.
No document establishes when the monastery was built or when the image arrived. The record and the tradition here are answering two different questions, and the page keeps them that way.
Wat Trai Phum is not a large place and does not look like the most important temple in Phetchabun. It sits on the bank of the Pa Sak in the old town, and behind its ordination hall stand one prang and one chedi, both old, the prang recorded by the Fine Arts Department as damaged and overgrown. What makes it matter is a bronze image 13 inches across the lap: Phra Phuttha Maha Thammaracha, a crowned Buddha seated in meditation, which the department reads as Lopburi work and which has no base of its own.
The register tells the story of how it got here as a story. Villagers are said to have found the image in the river in front of the monastery and brought it in to be enshrined. Then, at the Sat Thai festival, it disappeared. Monks and villagers searched the compound and did not find it, and it turned up in the deep pool in the river where it had first been seen, bathing itself. Out of that grew the province's defining annual rite, the อุ้มพระดำน้ำ, held on the fifteenth waning day of the tenth lunar month: after the morning meal is offered to the monks, the governor of Phetchabun with officials and townspeople carry the image down to Wang Makham Faep, the pool where it was found, and take it into the water. The register records the contingency too — in a year when the water is too low to reach that pool, the rite is held instead at the landing of Wat Bot Chana Man.
That is a rare thing in this guide: a foundation legend that is not an origin claim for a building but the charter for a living practice, performed by the head of the provincial administration, still, every year. It does not date anything. It explains why a small riverside monastery is the one the province turns out for.
The documentary record is short and clean. Wat Trai Phum is item 5 of the Phetchabun section of the second national list, published in the Royal Gazette in June 1940 — the same instrument that lists Wat Phra Kaeo three lines above it. For sixty years it had no land boundary, and the department said so itself when it finally fixed one: the 2001 announcement recites the earlier registration and the words แต่มิได้กำหนดเขตที่ดิน, but no land boundary was determined, before setting the monument's area at about 5 rai 10 square wa under section 7 of the Ancient Monuments Act. The order was signed in September 2000 and published the following March.
Phra Phuttha Maha Thammaracha: a bronze crowned Buddha seated in meditation, 13 inches across the lap and 18 inches high, with no base — the image the province carries into the Pa Sak once a year.
One prang standing behind the ordination hall, which the Fine Arts Department's register records as damaged and overgrown with vegetation.
One old chedi beside it, the second of the two structures the register lists as this monastery's monument fabric.
The river frontage itself. Wang Makham Faep, the deep pool where the image is said to have been found and where the annual rite is performed, is in the Pa Sak here.
The compound as a whole is small — the register calls it a small monastery — and the monument boundary fixed in 2001 covers about 5 rai 10 square wa.
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 | A working monastery with a much-venerated principal image. Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off before entering the hall where the image is kept. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | On the bank of the Pa Sak in ตำบลในเมือง, in the old town of Phetchabun and a few hundred metres from Wat Mahathat. The two, with Wat Phra Kaeo, can be seen on one walk. |
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 rite of carrying the Buddha into the water. Every year on the fifteenth waning day of the tenth lunar month, the governor of Phetchabun and townspeople carry Phra Phuttha Maha Thammaracha from this monastery down to the pool in the Pa Sak where tradition says it was found, and bathe it there.
Small. The Fine Arts Department's register gives it as bronze, 13 inches across the lap and 18 inches high, a crowned Buddha in the meditation attitude in the Lopburi manner, with no base of its own.
Yes. It is item 5 of the Phetchabun section of the 1940 national list, and the Fine Arts Department fixed its land boundary at about 5 rai 10 square wa by an announcement published in the Royal Gazette in March B.E. 2544.
Nothing read for this page establishes that, and the register does not guess. The dated acts on the record are the 1940 registration and the 2001 boundary order, both of them modern.
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 Phetchabun’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.