Three brick towers on one laterite platform inside a working temple, ringed by a gallery 49 by 67 metres, and the only monument in Sisaket whose own inscription carries a date — B.E. 1585, in Old Khmer.
ปราสาทสระกำแพงใหญ่ · Prasat Sa Kamphaeng Yai
| Official name | ปราสาทสระกำแพงใหญ่ — Prasat Sa Kamphaeng Yai |
|---|---|
| Where | Sa Kamphaeng Yai, Uthumphon Phisai, Sisaket |
| 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 ราชกิจจานุเบกษา เล่มที่ ๕๒ ตอนที่ ๗๕, ๘ มีนาคม ๒๔๗๘ (registration), and เล่มที่ ๙๙ ตอนที่ ๑๕๕, ๒๑ ตุลาคม ๒๕๒๕ (determination of the monument land boundary) Both citations are as published by the ONEP cultural-environment register. Neither gazette instrument was opened by this run: ratchakitcha.soc.go.th could not be reached, and the Fine Arts Department register that would settle the register id returned HTTP 403 throughout. There is a conflict worth naming, and it is the same one the Buriram run met. ONEP gives the 2478 registration as ตอนที่ ๗๕ of 8 March. The index line of the Royal Gazette's own 2525 boundary document for this monument refers back to the earlier registration as เล่ม ๕๒ ตอนที่ ๒๕, 4 March 2478. The PDF could not be opened, so the discrepancy is recorded rather than resolved, and the register's figure is the one printed above. |
| Coordinates | 15.101657, 104.127877 ONEP cultural-environment register, site 5489, which states the same record's address as Wat Sa Kamphaeng Yai, Moo 1, Tambon Sa Kamphaeng Yai, Uthumphon Phisai — checked against that district and subdistrict before printing and consistent with them |
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 inscription of B.E. 1585 dates an ACT at the sanctuary — a purchase and a dedication — and not the building of it. This page deliberately prints no founding year. A sanctuary that was already receiving endowments in that year was standing before it, and by how long no source read here establishes.
Prasat Sa Kamphaeng Yai stands inside the compound of Wat Sa Kamphaeng Yai on Pradit Pracharat Road, Moo 1, Tambon Sa Kamphaeng Yai, in Uthumphon Phisai district about two dozen kilometres west of Sisaket town on the Highway 226 and railway corridor. The ONEP cultural-environment register records it as the largest and most complete of the province's Khmer sanctuaries, and it is the one a visitor with a single day should see.
The plan is the part worth arriving for. Three brick towers stand in a row on a north-south axis on one shared laterite base, facing east. Around them runs a rectangular corbelled gallery, which the Ministry of Tourism and Sports directory gives as 49 metres wide and 67 metres long — the enclosure that gives the place its Thai name. What makes the compound unlike a historical park is that the gallery and the towers sit in the middle of a living monastery, with modern viharn buildings a few paces away and monks resident. In Sisaket that is the norm rather than the exception, and this is the clearest example of it.
The monument was Hindu when it was built. The ONEP register describes it as a Hindu foundation later altered and restored into a Buddhist one, and the alteration is dated on style to roughly the 18th Buddhist century — the period across the region when Khmer sanctuaries of this kind were being taken into Mahayana Buddhist use. The page says which and when because the sequence is the point; a guide that files the whole complex as a Buddhist temple and stops there loses four centuries of it.
The dated evidence is an inscription. The Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre catalogues the Wat Sa Kamphaeng Yai inscription, recovered at the sanctuary and held there, in the Khmer language and Old Khmer script, dated B.E. 1585. It records a joint purchase of land offered to a deity named Srivrddhesvara together with goods bought for the same offering. That name — ศรีพฤทเธศวร in Thai — is still an alternative name for the monument nearly a thousand years later, which is an unusually direct line between a stone and a place-name.
Excavation in the compound recovered objects now central to the site's reputation, among them a large bronze whose eyes, brows and moustache were drilled to take inlays of gemstone and precious metal — a technique the anthropology centre notes as evidence of wider workshop influence. This page does not print an inventory count, because no state source read for it publishes one.
Three brick towers in a north-south row on a single laterite platform, facing east — the largest in the middle.
The corbelled rectangular gallery enclosing them, given by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports directory as 49 by 67 metres.
Carved sandstone lintels and door frames on the towers, and the laterite fabric of the enclosure.
The working monastery around it all: modern viharn buildings, a resident community, and the sanctuary as the compound's oldest structure rather than a fenced ruin.
The reservoir that gives the place its name, beside the enclosure.
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 Sa Kamphaeng Yai, Uthumphon Phisai district, roughly 24 km west of Sisaket town on Highway 226. Uthumphon Phisai has its own station on the Northeastern Line, which makes this the most reachable of the province's Khmer monuments without a car. |
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.
Both, in sequence, and the sequence is on the record. The ONEP cultural-environment register describes it as built as a Hindu religious foundation and later altered and restored into a Buddhist one, dating the alteration on style to around the 18th Buddhist century. Today it stands inside a working Thai Buddhist monastery. Calling it simply a Buddhist temple would lose the first and longer half of its life.
Older than B.E. 1585, and this page will not be more precise than that. The Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre catalogues an inscription found at the sanctuary, in Old Khmer script, dated B.E. 1585, recording a purchase of land offered to the deity Srivrddhesvara. That dates a gift made at a sanctuary that was already standing, not the building of it. Separately, the ONEP register dates the complex on style to around the 16th Buddhist century. There is no documented founding year and no state source read for this page supplies one.
Sa Kamphaeng Yai reads literally as the great walled pond, after the reservoir and the enclosing gallery. Si Phrutthesuan — ศรีพฤทเธศวร — is the Thai form of Srivrddhesvara, the name of the deity to whom the B.E. 1585 inscription records an offering being made at this sanctuary. The second name is the older one and comes from the stone.
This page does not know, and says so rather than guessing. The Tourism Authority of Thailand's page for the monument renders its content in the browser and returned nothing to the run that wrote this; the Ministry of Tourism and Sports directory entry displayed a placeholder where its hours and fee fields belong. It is a working monastery rather than a ticketed historical park, which usually means daylight access, but that is an expectation and not a published time. Ask at the temple office or the Tourism Authority of Thailand.
No. They are two separate monuments about thirteen kilometres apart, both in Uthumphon Phisai district, and the names invite exactly this confusion. Sa Kamphaeng Yai is the larger three-tower complex at Tambon Sa Kamphaeng Yai. Sa Kamphaeng Noi is a smaller laterite sanctuary at Tambon Khayung, beside Highway 226 towards Sisaket town, which state sources describe as having been adapted into an arogayasala — a hospital chapel. Both have their own page 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 Sisaket’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.