A village temple in the rice fields of Chi Thuan built around Luang Pho Phra Phuttha Wiset, a naga-sheltered Buddha that the Tourism Authority calls Dvaravati and the Fine Arts Department calls Khmer. Its protected ground was drawn in 1997 as two separate parcels totalling two ngan and seventy square wa.
วัดทุ่งศรีวิไล · Wat Thung Si Wilai
| Official name | วัดทุ่งศรีวิไล — Wat Thung Si Wilai |
|---|---|
| Where | Chi Thuan, Khueang Nai, Ubon Ratchathani |
| Royal temple class | Not established from an official register. |
| Monastic order | Maha Nikaya |
| Ancient monument | Registered national ancient monument Royal Gazette vol. 114, special part 80 ง, p. 3, item 2, 12 September B.E. 2540 ประกาศกรมศิลปากร เรื่อง ขึ้นทะเบียนโบราณสถานและกำหนดเขตที่ดินโบราณสถาน, made under section 7 of the Act B.E. 2504, covering Ubon Ratchathani, Roi Et, Chumphon, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Surat Thani, and read by eye from the scan in this run. Item 2 is โบราณสถานวัดทุ่งศรีวิไล ตำบลชีทวน อำเภอเขื่องใน and it draws the boundary in two pieces rather than one: พื้นที่ ก. ประมาณ ๑ งาน ๒๕.๙๗ ตารางวา and พื้นที่ ข. ประมาณ ๑ งาน ๔๔.๕๐ ตารางวา, with a stated total of ๒ งาน ๗๐.๔๗ ตารางวา. The register carries both parcels separately at exactly those figures, and codes the row at status 5. Item 1 of the same instrument is ศาลาธรรมาสน์สิงห์ วัดศรีนวลสว่างอารมณ์ in the same subdistrict at ๒ ไร่ ๔๕.๒๕ ตารางวา; item 3 is the sim of วัดบ้านตำแย at Tambon Rai Noi and item 4 is วัดแก่งตอย at Tambon Tha Mueang, both also in Ubon Ratchathani. |
| Coordinates | 15.293213, 104.663744 Fine Arts Department register, monument 0001941 |
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 department's own record contains a date it does not reconcile: it gives the temple's establishment as B.E. 2340 in one line, and in the next says the wandering monk who prompted the villagers to build it stayed here in B.E. 2330 — ten years earlier. It also says plainly that no record of the temple's construction survives. That absence, and the department's willingness to state it, is why the founding year sits under record rather than being asserted.
Wat Thung Si Wilai stands at Ban Chi Thuan in Amphoe Khueang Nai, with rice fields on all four sides, and the temple exists because of an object rather than a founder. The Fine Arts Department's register says so directly: the place was a dense forest that local people called Non Nok Khian, Luang Pho Phra Phuttha Wiset was enshrined there, and no record of the temple's construction survives.
The image is a Buddha seated under the hood of a naga, and it is the point of the whole site. Two state bodies describe it and they do not agree. The Tourism Authority of Thailand calls it a laterite image carved in Dvaravati art, with a lap 55 centimetres wide and a height of 90. The Fine Arts Department's register calls the image in the wihan a naga-sheltered Buddha of red sandstone in Lopburi art — Khmer, in other words — while its own list of the temple's sacred objects describes two laterite naga-sheltered Buddhas of Khmer-period art, named Phra Phuttha Wiset and Phra Chaiyasit. Dvaravati and Khmer are different cultures several centuries apart, and laterite and sandstone are different stones. This page does not choose between them.
What both sources agree on is the company the image keeps. Luang Pho Phra Phuttha Chaiyasit stands to its right and Luang Pho Phra Ruang Rotchanarit — a standing Buddha — to its left, and Phra Phuttha Wiset is the one villagers of Chi Thuan come to.
The tradition about how it arrived is worth telling as tradition, which is how the department sets it down. The Khmer are said to have carried this image and several others north to offer at the building of Phra That Phanom; reaching Thung Si Wilai they heard that the stupa was already finished; and they buried the images in the mound where the temple now stands. That is a story about why a Khmer object sits in a Lao-speaking village a long way from anywhere Khmer, and it is not a date.
The visible antiquity is thinner than the devotion. The department records two brick ruins: one in front of the wihan that looks like a bell tower, and one behind it that is a ruined chedi with a sema stone planted in it. The Tourism Authority describes what is more striking — sema stones set in successive rings around the ordination hall and the old wihan, tier after tier, out as far as the temple wall — together with a large pond. Sema in multiple concentric rings are an Isan pattern and they are the strongest sign here that the ground was consecrated long before the buildings on it.
The single finest object at the temple is not a Buddha. It is the ธรรมาสน์, the preaching throne, which the Tourism Authority describes at length: Isan folk work under Lan Xang influence, its base and stair damaged; the body panelled in the fa sai bua manner and painted in gold on lacquer, with door and window openings; the top built up from an ew khan pak phan and duk ngu base into a squared lotus form in reducing tiers, each tier edged with krachang, and — unusually — the four ridges left unindented; the topmost element shaped something like a khan mak beng, the folded-banana-leaf offering vessel. Beside it stands the That Phra Anya Than Dan, holding the relics of Anya Than Dan, a former abbot the Authority describes as strict in the discipline and learned in the Mulakaccayana grammar.
The state drew the boundary here in an unusual way and the reason is visible on the ground. The instrument of 12 September B.E. 2540 does not fix one area but two — parcel ก. of 1 ngan 25.97 square wa and parcel ข. of 1 ngan 44.50, totalling 2 ngan 70.47 — because what is protected is two separate pieces of old ground inside a working temple, not the temple itself. The concrete ordination hall of B.E. 2518 and the preaching hall are not in it.
The temple's year turns on one day. On the fifteenth waxing day of the fifth month, in April, the villagers of Chi Thuan hold the annual gilding festival for Luang Pho Phra Phuttha Wiset over three days and three nights — the fourteenth and fifteenth waxing and the first waning. It is the same fifth-month full moon that the inscription at Wat Maha Wanaram in the city commands for Phra Chao Yai Inthaplaeng. BAANLYY does not represent this temple and nothing here is legal or religious advice.
Luang Pho Phra Phuttha Wiset in the wihan — a Buddha seated under a naga hood, 55 centimetres across the lap and 90 high on the Tourism Authority's figures, of laterite or red sandstone depending on which state source you read.
Luang Pho Phra Phuttha Chaiyasit to its right and the standing Luang Pho Phra Ruang Rotchanarit to its left.
Sema stones in successive rings around the ordination hall and the old wihan, tier after tier out to the temple wall — the clearest sign that the ground is older than the buildings.
Two brick ruins: one in front of the wihan that resembles a bell tower, one behind it that is a ruined chedi with a sema stone planted in it.
The preaching throne — Isan folk work with Lan Xang influence, panelled in the fa sai bua manner and painted in gold on lacquer, its top built in reducing squared-lotus tiers with the four ridges left unindented and a finial shaped like a khan mak beng. Its base and stair are damaged.
That Phra Anya Than Dan, the stupa holding the relics of the former abbot Anya Than Dan.
The three-storey timber scripture library, the 7.13 by 15.25 metre wihan, and the large pond — and beyond them, rice fields on every side.
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 | A working village temple and a devotional one. Shoulders and knees covered, shoes off before the wihan, and the fifth-month gilding festival in April is the one time of year the place is crowded. |
| Photography | No source we found states a rule, so we print none. |
| Getting there | No. 109, Ban Chi Thuan, Mu 1, Tambon Chi Thuan, Amphoe Khueang Nai, Ubon Ratchathani 34150, per the Fine Arts Department register and the Tourism Authority's address block. The Authority gives a telephone number of +66 4523 2089. |
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.
Two state bodies give incompatible answers and this page carries both. The Tourism Authority of Thailand calls it a laterite image in Dvaravati art. The Fine Arts Department's register calls the naga-sheltered Buddha in the wihan a red sandstone image in Lopburi — that is, Khmer — art, while its own list of the temple's sacred objects calls the same kind of image laterite and Khmer-period. Dvaravati and Khmer are different cultures several centuries apart. Nothing read for this page settles which is right, and no inscription dates the image.
The account the Fine Arts Department records is a tradition, not a document, and this page tells it as one. The Khmer are said to have been carrying this image and several others north to offer at the building of Phra That Phanom; when they reached Thung Si Wilai they heard the stupa was already finished, and buried the images in the mound. Villagers later found the naga-sheltered Buddha there and raised it up to venerate.
Two pieces of ground rather than the temple. The instrument of 12 September B.E. 2540 — Royal Gazette vol. 114, special part 80 ง, page 3, item 2, read from the scan for this page — registers โบราณสถานวัดทุ่งศรีวิไล and fixes two parcels: ก. of about 1 ngan 25.97 square wa and ข. of about 1 ngan 44.50, totalling 2 ngan 70.47 square wa. The register carries both parcels at exactly those figures. The concrete ordination hall of B.E. 2518 is not part of the monument.
On the full moon of the fifth month, in April. The Tourism Authority records that the villagers of Chi Thuan hold the annual gilding festival for Luang Pho Phra Phuttha Wiset over three days and three nights — the fourteenth and fifteenth waxing days and the first waning day of the fifth month. It falls on the same full moon that the inscription at Wat Maha Wanaram in the city names for Phra Chao Yai Inthaplaeng.
The Tourism Authority describes them as set in successive rings around both the ordination hall and the old wihan, tier after tier out as far as the temple wall, and the Fine Arts Department records one planted in the ruined chedi behind the wihan as well. Multiple concentric rings of sema are an Isan pattern, and they are the clearest indication on the site that this ground was consecrated long before any of the buildings standing on it now.
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 Ubon Ratchathani’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.