A round Lankan bell chedi and a vihara standing on an island in Traphang Trakuan, the largest pond inside the walls — documented down to the metre by the Fine Arts Department, and named in no inscription anybody has found.
วัดสระศรี · Wat Sa Si
| Official name | วัดสระศรี — Wat Sa Si |
|---|---|
| Where | Mueang Kao, Mueang Sukhothai, Sukhothai |
| 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. 52, part 75, 8 March B.E. 2478 Wat Sa Si is number four on the Fine Arts Department's list of registered monuments in the park. Its site record cites the same gazette volume and part as the rest of the batch — เล่มที่ ๕๒ ตอนที่ ๗๕ — but prints the date as 8 March B.E. 2498 rather than 2478, while every neighbouring record in the same document gives 2478 for that same volume and part. The date above follows the volume and the neighbouring records; the discrepancy is stated here rather than quietly corrected, because it is the department's page that carries it. The Gazette itself was not read. |
| World Heritage | Historic Town of Sukhothai and Associated Historic Towns (574) |
| Coordinates | 17.020000, 99.705000 Fine Arts Department site record: 17°1'12" N, 99°42'18" E |
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.
This is the clearest case in the province of a monument that is thoroughly documented as fabric and entirely undocumented as history. Nobody knows who built it, for whom, or when. The department's own record says the name is absent from the inscriptions, which is as close to a statement of ignorance as a state register gets.
Traphang Trakuan is the biggest body of water inside the walls of Sukhothai, and the Fine Arts Department puts its area at something over seventy rai. In the middle of it is an island, and on the island is Wat Sa Si. The department's site record lists what stands there: a large round bell chedi, complete to its finial, on a square raised terrace 17.2 metres each way with a cloister running round the base; a vihara platform sixteen metres by thirty-one in front of it to the east, with a stucco Buddha still on its pedestal; a small chedi to the south in a form the department calls Srivijaya mixed with Sinhalese, with image niches on all four faces; and five smaller chedi bases scattered about.
The bell chedi is the point of the place architecturally. The department reads that round Lankan form as physical evidence of Sukhothai's reception of Buddhism from Sri Lanka, which is why the same shape is sometimes simply called a Lankan chedi. Set against the lotus-bud chedi at Wat Mahathat a few hundred metres away, the two forms make the argument visible: one imported and one invented.
East of the main island, on a second and much smaller islet reached by a wooden bridge, is the ordination hall — ten metres square, with boundary stones set round it. The department explains the arrangement in doctrinal terms rather than picturesque ones. Water is used to mark the limit of the consecrated ground within which the community can perform its formal acts; the practice is called nathi sima, a river boundary, and the water is a statement about purity of the boundary rather than a landscaping decision. The same arrangement appears at Wat Traphang Ngoen on the other side of Wat Mahathat.
The temple nearly did not survive the twentieth century intact. Until B.E. 2521 the Charot Withithong road ran straight through the middle of the site, which the department describes as destroying the value of the monument and endangering it. The road was dug out and rerouted along the edge of the pond instead, and the department's site record notes the same thing in its own dry way: formerly a highway split the pond, now removed. What a visitor now reads as a serene island was a traffic island within living memory.
The round bell chedi, complete to the finial, on a square pradakshina terrace 17.2 metres each way with a cloister round its base — the Sinhalese form, set a few hundred metres from the lotus-bud form at Wat Mahathat that Sukhothai invented.
The vihara platform east of it, sixteen metres by thirty-one, with a stucco Buddha still on the pedestal.
The small four-faced chedi south of the principal one, intact, with an image niche on each side, in the form the Fine Arts Department describes as Srivijaya mixed with Sinhalese.
The ordination hall on its own islet to the east, ten metres square with boundary stones set round it, reached by a wooden bridge — a water boundary, nathi sima, not an ornamental pond.
Traphang Trakuan itself, over seventy rai of water, and the line along its edge where the trunk road used to run until the Fine Arts Department had it dug out in B.E. 2521.
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 | Inside the walled central zone, which the Fine Arts Department's service page opens 06.30 to 19.30 Monday to Friday and Sunday, and 06.30 to 21.00 on Saturday when the monuments are lit. |
|---|---|
| Admission | Thai nationals: 20 baht. Foreign visitors: 100 baht. |
| Dress | Not established from an official source. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | About 350 metres from Wat Mahathat inside the walls, on the island in Traphang Trakuan; the road now runs along the edge of the pond rather than through the site. |
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.
Nobody knows, and the Fine Arts Department says so. Its site record for the monument states under the history heading that the name Wat Sa Si does not appear in documentary evidence or in the stone inscriptions. The department dates the group to the Sukhothai period from its architecture and records its own excavation and restoration work in B.E. 2496 to 2498, 2508 and 2525, but there is no founder, no patron and no year in the record. Any source that gives you one is going beyond the register.
Because water can serve as the boundary of the consecrated ground. Formal acts of the monastic community have to be performed inside a properly marked limit, and the Fine Arts Department explains this arrangement as nathi sima, a river boundary, where the water expresses the purity of the enclosed ground. It is a doctrinal device rather than a scenic one, and the same arrangement was used at Wat Traphang Ngoen on the other side of Wat Mahathat. The ten-metre hall here also has boundary stones set round it.
Form and ancestry. Wat Sa Si has a round bell chedi, which the Fine Arts Department reads as evidence of Sukhothai's reception of Buddhism from Sri Lanka and which is sometimes simply called a Lankan chedi. Wat Mahathat has the lotus-bud or rice-offering form, which the department describes as the architecture that expresses Sukhothai art specifically and appears essentially nowhere else. Standing between the two, a few hundred metres apart, is the easiest way to see what Sukhothai borrowed and what it made.
Yes, until B.E. 2521. The Fine Arts Department's park guide says the Charot Withithong road ran through the middle of the site, describes it as destroying the monument's value and endangering it, and records that the department dug the road out and built a new one along the edge of the pond instead. The site record notes the same removal. The island calm the place is now famous for is about fifty years old as a piece of landscape, even though the monuments on it are not.
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.