A bell chedi inside the walls of Si Satchanalai standing on a terrace ringed by thirty-nine stucco elephants, larger than life and standing on all four legs rather than half-emerging from the wall as they do elsewhere.
วัดช้างล้อม · Wat Chang Lom
| Official name | วัดช้างล้อม — Wat Chang Lom |
|---|---|
| Where | Si Satchanalai, Si Satchanalai, Sukhothai |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Not recorded in any register we could read. |
| Ancient monument | Carried in the national monument register; gazette announcement unread The Fine Arts Department states that it has defined a monument zone of about 28,217 rai for Si Satchanalai Historical Park and counts Wat Chang Lom first among the twenty-eight monuments surveyed inside the city wall. That establishes the monument as being inside a departmental zone. It is not the same thing as a gazette registration for this individual monument, and no such announcement was found: the department's Si Satchanalai site does not publish the per-monument register records that its Sukhothai counterpart does, and the Royal Gazette site refused every request. The status here is therefore unconfirmed rather than assumed, which is the honest reading of what was actually read. |
| World Heritage | Historic Town of Sukhothai and Associated Historic Towns (574) |
Si Satchanalai, Si Satchanalai, Sukhothai
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.
So the honest position is narrower than what is usually printed. The form is well documented and its ancestry is traced by the department to a specific Sinhalese monument. The building date is not established by anything read here, and this page therefore gives none. A later run with access to the department's Si Satchanalai register records or to the Royal Gazette should be able to close this gap, and closing it would be worth doing.
Si Satchanalai was the second city of the Sukhothai kingdom and, in the Fine Arts Department's description, its spiritual counterweight: a walled town on the flat ground at the foot of Khao Phanom Phloeng and Khao Yai with the Yom river along its eastern side, which the department records as having been governed by the men who would become or had been kings of Sukhothai. Wat Chang Lom stands inside those walls, on the plain below the southern face of Khao Phanom Phloeng, and the department's own survey names it first among the twenty-eight monuments inside the wall.
The chedi is a bell on a square terrace within a square enclosure wall, and around the base of the terrace stand thirty-nine stucco elephants with their backs to the chedi, plus elephants at each of the four corners. The Tourism Authority's Thai listing is precise about why these are the ones people remember: at other elephant chedis the animals emerge from the wall at the shoulder, as though wading out of it, whereas here they stand full-bodied on all four legs and are modelled larger than a real elephant, each with a stucco lotus bud in front of it.
The form is not a local invention and the Fine Arts Department says where it comes from. Elephants at the base of a stupa appear first at the Ruwanwelisaya in Sri Lanka in the fourth Buddhist century, built by Dutthagamani Abhaya after he won an elephant duel against the Tamil king Elara, and the department treats that monument as the source of the Thai form. It sets out two readings of what the elephants mean: a memorial of victory in war, following the Sinhalese precedent, or a statement that the chedi is the centre of the world — the Chulamani stupa on the summit of Mount Meru, with the elephants of the directions holding up the ground below it. The department does not choose between them, and neither does this page.
Above the elephants the monument keeps going. A stair on the front leads up to the circumambulation terrace; above the terrace are niches with seated Buddhas in the earth-witness attitude, each with a bodhi tree modelled on the wall behind it; and above the bell, on the shaft that carries the finial, run seventeen low-relief stucco disciples in walking posture. A vihara stands in front of the principal chedi, with two smaller viharas and two subsidiary chedis besides. Sunset from the terrace is the reason most people come, and the department's own itinerary material recommends it, but the seventeen walking disciples are the thing worth a second look.
Thirty-nine stucco elephants standing with their backs against the base of the chedi terrace, plus one at each of the four corners — full-bodied, on all four legs, and modelled larger than a living elephant, each with a stucco lotus bud in front of it.
The bell chedi itself on its square circumambulation terrace, inside a square enclosure wall, with a stair up the front.
The niches above the terrace, each holding a seated Buddha in the earth-witness attitude with a bodhi tree modelled on the wall behind the image.
Seventeen low-relief stucco disciples in walking posture on the shaft above the bell — easy to miss from the ground and the best sculpture on the monument.
The vihara in front of the principal chedi, and beyond it two smaller viharas and two subsidiary chedis.
The setting: the flat ground inside the walls at the southern foot of Khao Phanom Phloeng, with the Yom river to the east.
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 | The Fine Arts Department's page for Si Satchanalai Historical Park gives 08.00 to 17.00 daily for the park as a whole. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Thai nationals: 10 baht. Foreign visitors: 30 baht. |
| Dress | Not established from an official source. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Inside the walls of the old city, in the historical park at Tambon Si Satchanalai, about eleven kilometres from Si Satchanalai district town on the Sawankhalok road. The park office answers on 0 5595 0714. |
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.
Because they are complete animals rather than fronts. At most elephant-based chedis in Thailand the animals appear to emerge from the wall at the shoulder, as though half-buried in it. The Tourism Authority's Thai listing for this monument is specific that the ones at Wat Chang Lom stand full-bodied on all four legs, are modelled larger than a living elephant, and each have a stucco lotus bud in front of them. There are thirty-nine of them around the terrace base, with additional elephants at the four corners.
No, and the two are easy to confuse. There is a Wat Chang Lom outside the eastern wall of Sukhothai city, north of the Mae Lamphan canal, with thirty-two stucco elephants at the base of its chedi, an ordination hall built with a water boundary, and its own inscription about a courtier named Pho Nom Sai Dam who dedicated land there. It is number forty-three on the Fine Arts Department's Sukhothai register list. The famous one, with thirty-nine elephants, is this one, inside the walls of Si Satchanalai, an hour to the north.
The Fine Arts Department gives two readings and does not choose. In the first, the elephants are a memorial of victory in war and specifically of an elephant duel, following the Ruwanwelisaya stupa in Sri Lanka which King Dutthagamani Abhaya built after defeating the Tamil king Elara that way in the fourth Buddhist century, and which the department treats as the model for the whole Thai form. In the second, the chedi represents the Chulamani stupa on the summit of Mount Meru at the centre of the universe, with the elephants of the directions supporting the ground beneath it.
No state source read during this research gives a date. The figure you will usually see in English is a foundation by Ramkhamhaeng in the 1280s after a relic was found on the site, but that appears in encyclopaedias and travel writing rather than in any Fine Arts Department page consulted here, and this guide does not treat repetition across those as evidence. What the department does document is the ancestry of the form and its two possible meanings. The building date is open, and saying so is more useful than picking a year.
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 Sukhothai’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.