The Khao Ngu caves

What the official record says

Where Thuea Khao Ngu 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 department's regional office gives the group as Dvaravati, in use continuously down to the late Ayutthaya period. The per-cave lines further down the same page then attach the label Ayutthaya to the sixteenth and seventeenth Buddhist centuries, which is some hundreds of years before Ayutthaya existed and contradicts that opening paragraph. This page follows the opening paragraph and flags the rest.

The history of Thuea Khao Ngu

Six kilometers northwest of Ratchaburi town a limestone ridge rises out of flat ground, and cut into the walls of four of its caves is some of the earliest Buddhist art anywhere in Thailand. The Fine Arts Department says so in those words. The four are Tham Ruesi, Tham Fa Tho, Tham Chin and Tham Cham, and the department's register adds the detail that makes sense of them: these were not shrines for a town congregation but places monks withdrew to, far enough from the settlement at Khu Bua — fourteen kilometers away — to be genuinely quiet.

Tham Ruesi carries the piece everybody comes for. On the cave wall is a seated Buddha with both legs hanging down, the right hand preaching, the left resting on the lap, and between the ankles a short inscription in Pallava script and the Sanskrit language. The department reads it as ปุญกรมชระ ศรีสมาธิคุปต(ะ) and renders that as a statement that Sri Samadhigupta is made pure by the merit he has performed. It also notes that the figure is close in form to the pendant-legged Buddhas in the Ajanta caves in India, which is a long way to carry a comparison, and it makes it anyway. On the west wall of the same cave is a standing Buddha in the gesture of reassurance, with traces of red still around the head.

The other three are each different. Tham Fa Tho is a long gallery with a large reclining Buddha cut into the south wall, head towards the entrance, a halo behind it, and above that a stucco assembly of devas and trees dressed with cloth and ornament; on the north wall stand four disciples, some with hands joined, some with the weight thrown into the hip in the tribhanga pose. Tham Chin has two seated Buddhas on its wall, the inner one preaching, the outer surviving only to the waist, and the department says both were later thickened over with stucco in the Ayutthaya period. Tham Cham, higher up, has light wells along its length and is the brightest of the four; its north wall carries the twin miracle at Savatthi among mango trees, its west wall the Buddha entering parinirvana.

Protection came in two stages, forty years apart, and the second instrument is unusually explicit about why. The 1935 national list covered Tham Ruesi alone. In B.E. 2517 the department announced that it was now right to add the rest of the ridge, and registered Tham Fa Tho, the Buddha footprint on the summit, Tham Chin and Tham Cham together, under a single boundary of 17 rai 25 square wa. The department's own conversion of that figure — about 27,300 square meters — checks out exactly. One line in the register is worth carrying in on the way: this ridge was quarried for stone.

What you actually see

The pendant-legged seated Buddha on the wall of Tham Ruesi, with the Pallava inscription in Sanskrit cut between its ankles — the reason this was the one monument on the ridge protected from 1935.

The standing Buddha in the gesture of reassurance on the west wall of the same cave, with red pigment still visible around the head, and a number of red sandstone Ayutthaya-period images inside.

The large reclining Buddha cut into the south wall of Tham Fa Tho, head towards the cave mouth, with a stucco deva assembly and ornamented trees above it and four standing disciples opposite.

Two seated Buddhas in Tham Chin, the inner one preaching and the outer broken off at the waist, both later overlaid with stucco according to the department.

The twin miracle at Savatthi in stucco on the north wall of Tham Cham, with the Buddha seated in meditation and preaching among mango trees — a subject the department notes is typical of Dvaravati work and is drawn from the Pali commentarial account.

At the mouth of Tham Fa Tho, the sockets of a tiled roof structure and a line of brick-and-mortar walling, which the department attributes to the Ayutthaya period: the caves were enclosed and roofed at some stage, and that work is part of the monument too.

A vihara on the summit of the ridge housing a Buddha footprint, which the register lists and the 1974 instrument registers under its own name.

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.

• What the Tham Ruesi inscription actually says. The regional office reads it as a merit formula naming Sri Samadhigupta; another Fine Arts Department publication renders the same inscription as saying that a hermit named Samadhigupta had the image made. Those are different claims about the same handful of letters, and the department publishes both.
• The century ranges on the department's own per-cave lines, which label the sixteenth and seventeenth Buddhist centuries as Ayutthaya and contradict the opening paragraph of the same page.
• Opening hours and whether anything is charged. No state source consulted publishes either, and the ridge sits across more than one local authority.
• What the quarrying took. The register says the ridge was worked for stone and does not say which caves or carvings were affected, or when it stopped.

Thuea Khao Ngu: 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 Ratchaburi’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.