The laterite prang eight kilometres down the Nan from the city, where Borommatrailokkanat took the robe in B.E. 2007 with more than two thousand of his household — and where the Fine Arts Department has been arguing for ninety years about whether the tower is Khmer, Sukhothai or early Ayutthaya.
วัดจุฬามณี · Wat Chulamani
| Official name | วัดจุฬามณี — Wat Chulamani |
|---|---|
| Where | Tha Thong, Mueang Phitsanulok, Phitsanulok |
| 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 Read directly from the Fine Arts Department's register in this run: monument id 0004614, status line โบราณสถานขึ้นทะเบียนและกำหนดเขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน, and register status 5 on the department's GIS monument layer — registered, with the monument's land boundary determined. A boundary announcement for this temple exists in the Royal Gazette for B.E. 2548 and its index entry was seen in this run, but the document itself was not opened, so no volume, part or date is printed. A later run should open it; the address it would confirm is Tambon Tha Thong, Mueang Phitsanulok. |
| Coordinates | 16.788857, 100.217725 Fine Arts Department, FADGIS monument layer, monument id 0004614, read in WGS84 in this run |
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.
Two things follow from that and both belong on the page. First, there is no established year for the temple's foundation and this guide prints none. Second, the year everyone quotes — B.E. 2007 — is the year a king was ordained here, which is a different fact from the year the temple began, and the two get merged constantly in popular writing. The village that grew up round the temple is still called Ban Wat Chulamani.
Wat Chulamani stands on the east bank of the Nan in Tambon Tha Thong, about eight kilometres downstream of Phitsanulok town, in a village that takes its name from the temple. What survives is a prang of laterite on a base 11 by 18 metres, with a three-bayed porch on the front, standing on three superimposed platforms each with yi-sip redented corners and each carrying moulded stucco. The lower band and the lotus moulding above it run a procession of hamsa — a detail that the National Office of Buddhism's own description compares directly with the prang at Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat in Lopburi.
The event that makes the temple famous is precisely dated and precisely limited. In B.E. 2007 Somdet Phra Borommatrailokkanat — who governed from Phitsanulok rather than Ayutthaya for a quarter of a century — built the wihan here and entered the monkhood at this temple for eight months and fifteen days. The National Office of Buddhism records that 2,348 people of his household were ordained with him. That is a royal act of state as much as a religious one, and it is the clearest single piece of evidence for how much weight Phitsanulok carried in the fifteenth century.
The prang's own age is genuinely unsettled and the Fine Arts Department publishes the argument rather than resolving it. Henri Parmentier in 1937 placed it in early Ayutthaya, the early twenty-first Buddhist century, in Borommatrailokkanat's own reign, and grouped it with the towers he called imitations of Khmer art — Wat Mahathat and Wat Ratchaburana at Ayutthaya, Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat at Lopburi, the Chaliang prang at Si Satchanalai — as against the genuinely Khmer sanctuaries at Phimai and Phanom Rung. Sa-nguan Rodbun and N. na Paknam read the stucco the same way. Wit Phinkhan-ngoen pointed at the hamsa walking in file round the base and compared them with the file of monks moulded round the chedi at Wat Mahathat in Sukhothai, and concluded the ornament is Sukhothai influence on Ayutthaya hands. The department's own conservation division went further in B.E. 2533 and proposed that the tower began as a Brahmanical shrine while the Khmer ruled the central plain, and was restored during Lithai's rebuilding of the city — pointing at the bronze three-headed naga in Sukhothai style that the excavation of B.E. 2497–2498 pulled out of the ground.
The second monument in the compound is later and much better dated. King Narai built a mondop over a replica of the Buddha's footprint, and the inscription in front of it records that in B.E. 2221 he ordered a cloth laid over the footprint and its outline cut into stone, given for people to venerate. A seventeenth-century royal act with its own inscription is a rarer thing on a Thai temple page than a fifteenth-century chronicle entry, and it is worth more.
One warning before anyone plans a visit from a search result. The Tourism Authority of Thailand's page titled วัดจุฬามณี is a different temple in a different province — the Amphawa temple in Samut Songkhram, with its marble ubosot and the preserved body of Luang Pho Nueang — and its opening hours have nothing to do with this place. Chulamani is the name of the chedi on the Tavatimsa heaven and it is attached to temples all over Thailand. This is the same trap as Wat Mahathat, and it is why every temple name in this guide is qualified with its province.
The prang: laterite, on a base 11 metres by 18, with a trimukha porch on the front and three superimposed platforms, each redented at the corners in the yi-sip manner, each carrying moulded stucco. The National Office of Buddhism's description is the source for these dimensions.
The hamsa band. The lower fascia and the lotus moulding above it carry a file of geese in stucco. It is the detail the Fine Arts Department's specialists keep returning to, because the same idea — a procession moulded in file round a base — appears round the chedi of Wat Mahathat in Sukhothai as a file of monks.
The mondop of the Buddha's footprint near the prang, built at King Narai's order, with the stone inscription in front of it recording the making of the footprint replica in B.E. 2221.
The line of the kamphaeng kaeo, the low enclosing wall that ran round the prang when the compound was complete, and which the National Office of Buddhism notes as no longer intact.
An active village monastery around all of it. This is not a fenced archaeological park: the monuments stand inside a working temple in Ban Wat Chulamani, and visitors are in someone's monastery rather than at a site.
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 | Not established from an official source. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Tambon Tha Thong, Mueang Phitsanulok, on the east bank of the Nan about eight kilometres downstream of the town, in the village of Ban Wat Chulamani. The Fine Arts Department's GIS places the monument at the coordinates printed below. |
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.
Yes, and it is one of the better-documented events on any page in this guide. The National Office of Buddhism's Phitsanulok provincial office records that Somdet Phra Borommatrailokkanat built the wihan here and was ordained at this temple in B.E. 2007, remaining in the monkhood for eight months and fifteen days, with 2,348 people of his household ordaining with him. He governed the kingdom from Phitsanulok rather than Ayutthaya, which is the context that makes a royal ordination here rather than in the capital make sense.
That is exactly what nobody has settled. The Fine Arts Department publishes four positions: Parmentier in 1937 put it in early Ayutthaya, the early twenty-first Buddhist century; Sa-nguan Rodbun and N. na Paknam read the stucco as early Ayutthaya mixed with Sukhothai; Wit Phinkhan-ngoen read it as Sukhothai influence on Ayutthaya craftsmen; and the department's own conservation division proposed in B.E. 2533 that the tower began as a Brahmanical shrine of the Khmer period and was restored under Maha Thammaracha Lithai about B.E. 1900. This guide prints the argument rather than picking a winner.
It records a royal act of B.E. 2221. King Narai ordered a cloth laid over the Buddha's footprint and its outline carved into a stone slab, given as an object of veneration, and had a mondop built to house it. The National Office of Buddhism's provincial office summarises the inscription in those terms. It is the most precisely dated thing in the compound.
No, and the confusion is easy to fall into. Chulamani is the name of the chedi on the Tavatimsa heaven and several temples in Thailand carry it. The Tourism Authority of Thailand's attraction page under that name is the Samut Songkhram temple at Amphawa, with a marble ubosot and the preserved body of Luang Pho Nueang, about five hundred kilometres away. The Fine Arts Department's register alone lists five monuments called Wat Chulamani, in Ayutthaya, Phitsanulok, Samut Songkhram and Pattani.
No official source consulted publishes opening hours for this temple, so this guide prints none rather than borrowing a time from somewhere else. It is an active village monastery in Tambon Tha Thong on the east bank of the Nan, and the ordinary courtesies of a working temple apply — covered shoulders and knees, and shoes off inside the halls.
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 Phitsanulok’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.