A royal monastery on a bend of the Yom river outside the Si Satchanalai wall, where a laterite prang the tourism authority dates to the Ayutthaya period stands above an entrance arch carrying four modelled faces in a Khmer manner three centuries older.
วัดพระศรีรัตนมหาธาตุเชลียง · Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat
| Official name | วัดพระศรีรัตนมหาธาตุเชลียง — Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat |
|---|---|
| Where | Si Satchanalai, Si Satchanalai, Sukhothai |
| Royal temple class | First class royal temple, Ratchaworawihan (ชั้นเอก ราชวรวิหาร) The National Office of Buddhism's Sukhothai provincial office, which in B.E. 2567 announced meetings to prepare a celebration of sixty-six years of the temple's standing as พระอารามหลวงชั้นเอก ชนิดราชวรวิหาร, naming the temple and placing it at Tambon Si Satchanalai, Amphoe Si Satchanalai, Sukhothai |
| 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 names Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat first among the twenty-four monuments it has surveyed outside the Si Satchanalai city wall to the south, and cites the site as the place where evidence of Lopburi-period culture appears — but it publishes no per-monument register record for it of the kind its Sukhothai park site publishes, and no gazette announcement for this monument was read. The Royal Gazette site refused every request. The status is unconfirmed rather than assumed. This is a working royal monastery as well as a monument, which is a different administrative situation from the ruins in the park, and a later run should check the ecclesiastical and monument registers separately. |
| 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.
Nothing consulted gives a founding year. The site is old — the department uses it as its evidence for Chaliang in the Lopburi period — but the great prang a visitor photographs is not that old, and the gateway faces beneath it are dated only by style, to a fifty-year band. Anyone who tells you this temple was founded in a particular year is going well beyond the record.
Chaliang was there before Si Satchanalai. The Fine Arts Department uses this temple as its evidence for the point: culture contemporary with Lopburi, around the eighteenth Buddhist century, appears here, and in that period the town on this stretch of the Yom was called Chaliang. Si Satchanalai was built about 1.5 kilometres to the north afterwards, and its walls run over the older earthen rampart that began at this temple and followed the river past Khao Phanom Phloeng. So the monument outside the wall is not an outlying satellite of the walled city — it is the older place, and the city moved away from it.
The temple is entered through its most eloquent object. The enclosure is a rectangle sixty metres by ninety, walled with large stones and round columns set close together, and above the gateway arch is a small stucco-decorated prasat with four faces modelled on it. The Fine Arts Department dates those faces by style to the first half of the nineteenth Buddhist century and compares them to four-faced Khmer sculpture of the Bayon period under Jayavarman VII, and then does something better than assert: it sets out two hypotheses about who they are, Avalokiteshvara in the all-facing aspect or the Four Guardian Kings, and gives its reason for preferring the second — the arch is at the entrance, and guarding entrances is what those four do.
Above and behind that gateway stands the prang the temple is locally named for, built of laterite and finished in plaster, its architecture classed by the tourism authority as Ayutthaya-period work. A stair on the front of the reliquary storey climbs into a vaulted porch, and traces of wall painting survive inside, largely effaced. The vihara in front holds a large seated Buddha in the earth-witness attitude, and to its right a stucco walking Buddha which the Fine Arts Department treats as a set piece of Sukhothai sculpture: high relief, left foot advanced, right heel barely lifted, one hand raised, with the oval face, arched brows, long tapering eyes and slightly waved mouth of the idealised type, and no articulation of muscle or joint anywhere on the body. The department places it in the late nineteenth Buddhist century.
Behind the prang, outside the inner enclosure, the site keeps producing different centuries. The Phra That Mutao is a chedi in a Mon manner, and an excavation in B.E. 2535 found gilt-copper sheet still on its finial. Behind that again is a mondop the tourism authority believes was originally built for images in the four postures and later altered, now holding a standing Buddha, its roof once covered in fired clay tiles. To its left is the Vihara Phra Song Phi Nong, the vihara of the two brothers, laterite, with two stucco Buddhas in the earth-witness attitude on one platform — and excavation showed its base was built over an earlier brick building, with the base of a Buddha footprint beside it. The ordination hall in front of the vihara has been rebuilt entirely by the temple over the original.
The entrance arch and the small stucco prasat above it, carrying four modelled faces that the Fine Arts Department dates by style to the first half of the nineteenth Buddhist century and compares to Bayon-period Khmer work.
The enclosure itself: a rectangle sixty metres by ninety, walled in large stone slabs and round columns set close together.
The principal prang, laterite finished in plaster, with a stair on the front of the reliquary storey climbing into a vaulted porch, and effaced traces of wall painting inside.
The stucco walking Buddha to the right of the great seated image in the vihara — high relief, left foot forward, right heel barely raised, one hand lifted, which the Fine Arts Department places in the late nineteenth Buddhist century.
Phra That Mutao behind the prang, a chedi in a Mon manner, whose finial was found still carrying gilt-copper sheet when the site was excavated in B.E. 2535.
The Vihara Phra Song Phi Nong, with two stucco earth-witness Buddhas on a single platform, built over the base of an earlier brick building, and the base of a Buddha footprint beside it.
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 | This is an active royal monastery with a resident community, not a ruin in a park. Cover shoulders and knees, and remove shoes where the signs at the vihara and the ordination hall ask you to. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | Outside the old Si Satchanalai wall, about three kilometres to the south-east on the Tourism Authority's reckoning, on a bend of the Yom river. Parking on site. Locally it is Wat Phra Prang, and asking for it by that name works better than the full one. |
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 the site is much older than the prang. The Fine Arts Department uses this temple as its evidence that a settlement with culture contemporary with Lopburi existed here around the eighteenth Buddhist century, when the town was called Chaliang; Si Satchanalai was built about 1.5 kilometres north of it afterwards. The four faces over the gateway are dated by the department on style to the first half of the nineteenth Buddhist century and compared to Bayon-period Khmer sculpture. The prang above them is later work, which the Tourism Authority classes as Ayutthaya-period. You are looking at three centuries stacked vertically.
The Fine Arts Department gives two possibilities and prefers one. The first reading makes them Avalokiteshvara in the aspect called Samantamukha, the bodhisattva whose face turns to every direction, which the department supports from the Lotus Sutra's account of him watching over beings in every realm. The second makes them the Four Guardian Kings who protect the world in the four directions, and the department judges this more likely because the arch stands at the entrance gate. The Tourism Authority's listing for the same monument states the first reading flatly, so you will find both in print.
Both, and that shapes how you should behave here. It is a first-class royal monastery of the Ratchaworawihan sub-rank according to the National Office of Buddhism's Sukhothai provincial office, with a resident community and an abbot, and the ordination hall in front of the vihara has been rebuilt entirely by the temple over the original foundations. It is also a major archaeological site outside the walls of Si Satchanalai. Dress as you would for any working temple, cover shoulders and knees, and take your shoes off where you are asked to.
No. Phra Si Rattana Mahathat and Mahathat both mean the temple of the great relic, and every old capital in the region had one, so the name attaches to entirely separate monuments in Sukhothai, Si Satchanalai, Ayutthaya, Phitsanulok, Lopburi and Nakhon Si Thammarat. This one is on the Yom river outside the Si Satchanalai wall and is known locally simply as Wat Phra Prang, the temple of the prang, which is the name to use if you are asking directions.
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.