A hospital chapel on the standard Khmer arogayasala plan, four hundred metres from Ku Kasing and a religion apart from it.
กู่โพนระฆัง · Ku Phon Rakhang
| Official name | กู่โพนระฆัง — Ku Phon Rakhang |
|---|---|
| Where | Ku Kasing, Kaset Wisai, Roi Et |
| 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. 99, part 172, p. 26, 18 November B.E. 2525 (1982), about 2 rai 3 ngan 17 square wa Quoted in Thai digits by the Fine Arts Department's own article on the monument: ราชกิจจานุเบกษา เล่ม ๙๙ ตอนที่ ๑๗๒ หน้า ๒๖ วันที่ ๑๘ พฤศจิกายน ๒๕๒๕. The same day and instrument covers monuments elsewhere in the province, including the boundary of Prang Ku at Ban Yang Ku, so this looks like one Roi Et-wide boundary announcement rather than a single-site order. |
Ku Kasing, Kaset Wisai, Roi Et
The exact location has not been confirmed yet.
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.
There is no founding date and no dedication inscription from this site. Everything dating it is typological: the plan, the Bayon-period forms, and the match to the arogayasala type that the Ta Prohm inscription describes.
Four hundred metres north-east of Ku Kasing, across the fields, stands a much smaller monument of a completely different kind. Ku Phon Rakhang faces east like its neighbour, but where Ku Kasing is a three-tower Hindu sanctuary, this is a single building on a laterite base of five plain tiers with stairs on all four sides, joined by a mandapa to a cruciform gopura, with one bannalai in the south-east corner, a laterite enclosure wall on all four sides, and a stone-lined pond outside the north-east corner. That list of parts is not a description of a shrine. It is a template.
The Fine Arts Department says as much. Its reading is that this is an arogayasala — the chapel of a hospital — one of the network the inscription at Ta Prohm attributes to Jayavarman VII, and the argument rests on the plan rather than on anything found here. The buildings of that network repeat: a sanctuary and a library inside a wall, a gopura on the east, a pond outside the north-east corner. Individual sites vary a little in the size of the buildings and in the treatment of their windows, and the department notes those variations rather than smoothing them away. No inscription from this site names a hospital, a founder or a year.
The site has been worked on three times in this century by the department's own account: excavated and cleared in B.E. 2545, its pond restored in B.E. 2547, and the monument itself restored in B.E. 2555. The department's article does not list what the excavation recovered, which is the main documentary gap on this page, because in other arogayasala the finds are the thing that turns a plan into a history.
The pairing is what makes Ku Phon Rakhang worth the extra four hundred metres. Two monuments in the same fields, perhaps two Buddhist centuries apart, one raised for Shiva and one built for a Mahayana Buddhist king's hospital network — and a third, Ku Phon Wit, five hundred metres north of Ku Kasing, registered separately again. Almost nothing in the province states this as plainly as the walk between them does.
The central sanctuary on a laterite base of five plain tiers, with a stair on each of the four sides — the department describes it as ฐานเขียง ๕ ชั้น, five stepped courses without mouldings.
The mandapa running east from the sanctuary to a gopura laid out on a cruciform plan, which is the standard entrance arrangement of this building type.
A single bannalai in the south-east corner of the enclosure, rather than the pair that Ku Kasing has.
The laterite enclosure wall on all four sides, and the stone-lined pond outside the north-east corner — the pond is part of the type, not a later addition, and its position is one of the things that identifies the plan.
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 | In the fields of Ban Ku Kasing, Tambon Ku Kasing, Kaset Wisai district, about 400 metres north-east of Ku Kasing by the Fine Arts Department's own measurement. |
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 chapel of a hospital. The inscription at Ta Prohm in Cambodia describes a network of hospital foundations established under Jayavarman VII, and the surviving stone buildings from them repeat one plan: a sanctuary and a library inside a wall, an entrance gopura on the east, and a pond outside the north-east corner. The wards themselves were timber and have gone.
No, and the difference is the point of visiting both. Ku Kasing is a three-tower Hindu sanctuary of Baphuon-period style; Ku Phon Rakhang is a single Bayon-period building on the hospital-chapel plan, which the Fine Arts Department places roughly two Buddhist centuries later and in a Mahayana Buddhist context.
Because no source that names this monument publishes a coordinate for it. Deriving one from the name would risk pinning the wrong building, and estimating one from the stated distance to Ku Kasing would be arithmetic rather than a record, so the page prints the district and subdistrict instead.
18 November B.E. 2525 (1982), at Royal Gazette vol. 99, part 172, p. 26, covering about 2 rai 3 ngan 17 square wa. The Fine Arts Department quotes that citation in Thai digits on its own page for the monument.
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 Roi Et’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.