A brick box thirty-two metres square with a slot for a door, filled almost entirely by a seated Buddha whose lap is 11.3 metres wide — and a passage inside its wall whose ceiling carries more than fifty engraved jataka scenes with captions in Sukhothai script.
วัดศรีชุม · Wat Si Chum
| Official name | วัดศรีชุม — Wat Si Chum |
|---|---|
| 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 The Fine Arts Department's site record names the same 8 March B.E. 2478 announcement and adds the dates of its own work: excavation and restoration begun on 27 November B.E. 2496 and a further restoration of the mondop in B.E. 2510. The department's list of registered monuments in the park carries Wat Si Chum at number nineteen. As everywhere in this batch, the Gazette itself was not read. |
| World Heritage | Historic Town of Sukhothai and Associated Historic Towns (574) |
| Coordinates | 17.025600, 99.695800 Fine Arts Department site record: 17°1'32" N, 99°41'45" 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.
Nothing read in this research gives a year for the building of the mondop or the making of the image. The record fixes a text found in the wall, a mention in an inscription of B.E. 1835, and two modern restorations. The founding is not established and this page does not supply a date for it.
Wat Si Chum stands just outside the north-west corner of the city wall, about five hundred metres from it, on a rectangle of ground a hundred metres by a hundred and fifty ringed by a moat six metres wide. The Fine Arts Department's site record lists nine subsidiary chedis, two viharas, a small mondop, an ordination hall outside the moat to the south-west, a hermit's pavilion and three ponds. Almost nobody notices any of it, because of the mondop.
The mondop is a brick cube thirty-two metres on a side and fifteen metres high with walls three metres thick, and the doorway is cut as a tall narrow slot. Inside, filling the interior wall to wall, is a seated Buddha in the attitude of calling the earth to witness, with a lap the department measures at 11.3 metres. The narrow opening means the image is met in pieces — a knee, then the hand, then the face high up in the light. The department identifies it with the Phra Achana named in inscription 1 and glosses the word from achala, unshaken. It also says plainly that what stands there now was rebuilt on the old brick core in about B.E. 2496 to 2499, so the surface a visitor touches is twentieth-century work over a Sukhothai armature.
The left-hand wall conceals a stair. A passage runs inside the thickness of the masonry and climbs to roof level, and on the slate ceiling of that passage are engraved line drawings — more than fifty of them by the department's count — telling the previous lives of the Buddha, each captioned in the Sukhothai script of the period. Some of the drawing, the department notes, resembles Sinhalese work. It is one of the very few places in Thailand where fourteenth-century draughtsmanship survives at all, and it is hidden inside a wall.
The same passage produced the second most important text in early Thai history. Inscription 2, known as the Wat Si Chum inscription, was found in the wall channel and tells the story of how one group of Thai founded the Sukhothai line; the department dates it to about B.E. 1884 to 1910 and quotes it elsewhere for the rebuilding of the great relic monument at Wat Mahathat. The chronicle name for the place, Ruesi Chum, and the story that Naresuan assembled an army here in B.E. 2128, come from a much later Ayutthaya text, and the department reports that as the source of the belief that the image talks.
The mondop: thirty-two metres square, fifteen metres high, walls three metres thick, with the entrance cut as a tall vertical slot rather than an opening you can take in at once.
Phra Achana inside it, seated in the earth-witness attitude with a lap 11.3 metres across, restored on the original brick core in about B.E. 2496 to 2499 — so the modelled surface is modern and the structure beneath it is not.
The passage inside the left-hand wall, which climbs to roof level, and the engraved jataka scenes on its slate ceiling — more than fifty by the Fine Arts Department's count, each with a caption in Sukhothai script, some drawn in a manner the department compares to Sinhalese work.
The vihara platform in front of the mondop, six rooms and 12.5 metres by 22, whose brick walls are pierced with cross-shaped openings.
The moat, six metres wide, enclosing the whole hundred-by-hundred-and-fifty-metre rectangle, with the ordination hall and the hermit's pavilion deliberately left outside 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 | The Fine Arts Department's own service page gives Wat Si Chum and Wat Phra Phai Luang their own hours, 07.30 to 17.30 daily, separate from the walled central zone. |
|---|---|
| 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 | Outside the north-west corner of the city wall, about five hundred metres from the corner and roughly two kilometres from the central zone — far enough that most visitors ride or drive. The park office answers on 055 697527. |
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 mondop that holds it was built as a closed brick box with walls three metres thick and a doorway cut as a tall narrow slot. The image fills the interior — its lap alone is 11.3 metres across according to the Fine Arts Department — so from outside you see a vertical strip of it, and from within you are too close to take it in. Whether that framing was intended as an effect or is simply what happens when you put a very large image in a small building is not something any source consulted states.
The story has a traceable origin and the Fine Arts Department names it. A late-Ayutthaya royal chronicle calls this place Ruesi Chum and records that Naresuan assembled his army here in B.E. 2128 before moving on Sawankhalok; the department identifies that passage as the root of the later legend that the image speaks. The usual modern explanation involves the passage inside the wall, which reaches a point above and behind the image, but no official source consulted asserts that anybody ever used it that way.
It is the stone text known to Thai epigraphy as inscription 2, found in the wall passage of this mondop, and it is one of the primary sources for how the Sukhothai line began. The Fine Arts Department dates it to roughly B.E. 1884 to 1910 and quotes it on other pages for its account of the rebuilding of the great relic monument at Wat Mahathat. It is a different document from inscription 1, the Ramkhamhaeng inscription, which was found at the palace mound beside Wat Mahathat.
The visible surface is modern. The Fine Arts Department states that the image was restored from its surviving brick core in about B.E. 2496 to 2499, which is the mid-1950s, so the modelling a visitor sees is twentieth-century work over the original armature. The department does not say how much of the earlier surface survived beneath it. This matters if you are told the image is seven hundred years old: the structure may well be, the face is 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.