If you want to understand the complex and multi-layered history of Thailand, one of the most illuminating cities is Lopburi. Throughout the early history of Thailand, the small city was often a crossroads of culture, and its numerous monuments show a variety of influences ‒ Dvaravati, Khmer and Thai being the most important. Wat Nakhon Kosa is neither the largest nor the most impressive of Lopburi’s monuments, indeed it is rather unprepossessing. But it is one at which the multiple layers of Lopburi’s history are most dramatically juxtaposed. Here, in close proximity, we find a Dvaravati chedi (11th century or earlier), a small Khmer-era prang with some stucco decoration and a 16th century Ayutthaya-era vihaan. Three civilizations rub shoulders in a single complex, showing how cultural influences cross-fertilized in the ancient city of Lopburi.
The Dvaravati-era is largely a ruin, though the base is well-preserved in this corner
The oldest of the monuments at Wat Nakhon Kosa is an especially rare treasure: a Mon-Dvaravati chedi which may well date from the first millennium AD. There are very few extant monuments from the whole Dvaravati culture, so for this reason alone, the chedi is valuable heritage. For the most part, it looks like a rather shapeless block of red bricks, but in one corner (pictured) the chedi is still comparatively intact, and we can see the brickwork of the base clearly. It slants inward and then outward, giving it a simple but elegant appearance. It supports a narrow ledge which runs around the edge of the monument. This was where devotees had once circumambulated around the central hump of the chedi, thereby earning Buddhist merit. It gives us a rare hint of the religious life of the denizens of Dvaravati-era Lopburi.
Stucco ornamentation on the walls of the Khmer-era prang
Of the three monuments on the small site, easily the best-preserved is the Khmer-era prang. It is a small, red-brick tower which was once coated in pale, white stucco. The traces of remaining stucco reveal some delicate decorative work. It is markedly different from the stucco work we would find in Cambodia itself, showing the absorption of local influences. The Dvaravati civilization had specialized in stucco decoration and it seems that Khmer prangs in the city had absorbed this aspect of Mon-Dvaravati culture. This process is clearest in the niches which house standing Buddha figures, a common feature in Mon monuments, especially in the city of Lamphun. There is a clearly Mon influence in the Buddha niches on the prang.
The standing Buddha niche
The third monument on the site is a vihaan from the late 16th century. By this time the city of Lopburi had been absorbed by Ayutthaya, becoming a satellite city of the great Thai kingdom. However, it is interesting that the Dvaravati chedi and the Khmer prang were now re-purposed as part of a Thai wat. Thai religious culture proved to be very syncretic, especially when meeting other Hindu-Buddhist cultures. During the Ayutthaya kingdom, we would often see Mon-style chedis and Khmer-style prangs incorporated into Thai temple complexes. Part of the richness of Ayutthaya-era architecture was due to its judicious absorption of the built heritage of earlier South-East Asian civilizations. Lopburi was one of the crossroads of culture where this process was particularly pronounced.
It is often said that little remains of Thailand’s Dvaravati period, especially in the form of monuments of archaeological sites. Guidebooks to Thailand give very little to no attention to the historical remains of the Dvaravati civilization, giving the false impression that there is nothing to see. However, the more I have researched Dvaravati, the more inaccurate this impression has come to seem. There are quite a number of interesting sites in Central Thailand where you can see traces of Dvaravati. One of these are Mueang Khok Mai Den (also known as Meuang Bon) in the modern province of Nakhon Sawan.
In the early period of Thailand’s history, its highways were its rivers, and the rivers of Thailand clearly played a crucial role in the spread of civilization in this part of the world. Tellingly, almost all early settlements were located on or near major rivers. The city of Nakhon…
Even though Phu Phra Bat Historical Park ranks as one of the greatest historical sites of both the Dvaravati civilization and the entire Isaan region, it is a site which attracts few foreign visitors. The reason for this is fairly simple to discern: the site occupies a remote location in the forests of the Phu Phan Mountains. It requires a fair bit of determination to get here, but if you make the effort, you will find a strange and alluring cultural landscape which combines ancient rock art, Buddhist shrines and bizarrely weathered sandstone rock-forms. If a traveller only had time to see one Dvaravati-era historical site on their holiday, I would recommend either this one or Si Thep in Phetchabun Province.
If you have your own car, finding your way here is an easy day trip from either Udon Thani or Nong Khai. However, even not having our own transport, we managed to visit Phu Phra Bat Historical Park an a long but not overly rushed day trip. Songtheaws run hourly throughout the day from Udon Thani to Ban Phue (บ้านผือ), the closest town to the historical park. They leave from Rangsina Market, which is about six kilometres from the centre of Udon Thani. Ban Phue is pronounced something like baan per (say per with your clenched together and it should work). The trip will take around an hour but the rural countryside you pass through makes for a pleasant enough trip. When you arrive in Ban Phue, a town with a few markets and an obligatory branch of 7-11, you are now within about 10 kilometres of the historical park. I walked up and down the main street of Ban Phue asking every tuk-tuk driver if they wanted to take me out to the park, but a few of them turned me down. The fourth driver I asked finally agreed to go to Phu Phra Bat, quoting me a price of ฿400 including two hours’ waiting time.
The park is located in a sizable forest reserve, which you enter a few kilometres before reaching the tourist centre. It is not the lush, wet rainforest associated with popular parks such as Khao Yai, however; the forest here is classified as dry evergreen forest and it has a sparser, scrubbier feel. It certainly makes a peaceful, beautiful surrounding for the cultural relics of the area. It would be worth coming to the site just to hike through the forest here alone.
At the main trail-head there is a small car park, which is completely surrounded by forest. The ranger station is here. The sight of foreign tourists is still rare enough that the rangers seemed surprised and pleased to see us. One of them seemed to view it as an opportunity to practice his English by asking about Australia and telling us a little about the history of the site. He also gave us a map of the site: it contained 21 different cultural objects which could be seen on a long loop. He said that the full loop would take us about two hours to walk, including a diversion up the cliff-tops to see the views from the top of the hill. We paid our ฿100 (foreigner price) each and set off on the walking tour.
Phu Phra Baht Historical Park could best be described as a cultural landscape: a natural landscape which contains many marks and vestiges of traditional land use. However, at Phu Phra Baht this is not related to the economic use of the landscape. This area seems mostly to have been used for ceremonial or religious purposes. These connections happened both in Thailand’s prehistoric past, when earlier peoples used the rock shelters of the hill as a site for paintings, and in the Dvaravati era when Mon peoples transformed rock formations into religious monuments demarcated by carved stone boundary stones. In both cases the attraction is a combination of the striking features of the natural environment and human creative endeavours at the site. Exploring these cultural relics in such a beautiful setting is what makes Phu Phra Baht special.
Everywhere along the main loop you will encounter strangely weathered rock formations. These are most often large rocks which are balanced on small ‘stems’. Despite their unearthly shapes, they are natural forms, created when a glacier carved its way through the hill a couple of millions of years ago. These rock formations which provided the inspiration for cultural activity at the hill during two distinct periods of history: first, during the prehistoric era, when the natural rock shelters beneath the formations provided an ideal place for primitive artworks; and secondly during the Mon period, when the rock temples were transformed into Buddhist temples by the addition of boundary stones. This combination of cultural relics at Phra Phra Baht is utterly unique in South-East Asia.
We set off on our walk, heading towards an area of the site known for its caves; not far along the walking trail are the two best rock art sites at Phu Phra Baht. They are both thought to date back between two and three thousand years ago. One is called Tham Wua (the Cattle Cave) and the other is known as Tham Khon (the People Cave), both of which are named after the rock paintings within. We visited Tham Wua first. It consists of a row of cattle-like creatures which are rendered in a reddish-brown ocher. Perhaps they represent the banteng, a form of wild cattle which still exists in the remote forests of South-East Asia. The next stop was Tham Khon, which is probably the most impressive of the rock art sites at Phu Phra Baht. It consisted of a row of stylized figures in reddish-brown hues. They have a strange stance, almost as if they are performing a dance, which may suggest some kind of spiritual aspect to the painting. However, my interpretation could easily be off the mark.
The humanoid figures in Tham Khon at Phu Phra Baht Historical Park
In this part of the site, the forest is very close to the relics, closing around the rock forms on all sides. The sound of insect life and bird-life is always audible, and at one point there even came a loud whoop, which sounded very like a gibbon calling in the forest canopy. I later checked later to see if there were any primates in the forest park and was unable to find any mention of them: perhaps it was just an unusual bird call, after all. Nonetheless, the closeness of the natural world at Phu Phra Baht makes it unique among Thailand’s ten great historical parks. We looked around the caves and the rock formations, the only people in the vicinity. From there, we began the climb up towards the cliff-tops, the walking trail occasionally passing by rock forms of greyish-pink rock.
A strangely weathered rock formation along the side of the walking-trail
At the top of the ascent is a flat area of stone with the best views at the whole site. These cliff-tops are known in Thai as Phra Sadej, and they are for the more scenically inclined, a bigger attraction than the historical relics. From here you have views down in a small valley outside the edge of the forest reserve, some of which is under cultivation. Yet there is no settlement in view and the area is lushly green and very peaceful. It reminded me very much of Phu Por, the Buddhist mountain in Kalasin province, which also combines hilltop views and Buddhist history, but there was no doubting the superiority of the views at Phu Phra Baht.
The views from the cliff-top of Phra Sadej
From Phra Sadej, the trail curves down to the largest cluster of historical sites, which was presumably any area of great ritual significance in the Mon era. It is so rich in Buddhist antiquities that to try and describe them all would be tiresome for even the most patient blog reader. So I will just give an overview of what struck me as the most eye-catching and remarkable parts of its Buddhist heritage. And the first thing that comes to mind is Bo Nang Usa, a roughly square-shaped ‘well’, which is carved straight down into the sandstone of the hill, reaching a depth of several metres. It must have been a truly painstaking feat to carve this ‘well’ out of solid rock, and it exemplified better than anything else I saw at Phu Phra Bat the patience and dedication of Buddhist monks who used the hill as a retreat. Happily, Bo Nang Usa has lasted to the present day, still serving as a receptacle for rain water in an area which no supply of fresh water.
In the tourist literature about the site, it is sometimes stated that Phu Phra Baht is an enigma. While it may seem mysterious and unexplained to the casual visitor, the original function of the site is well-established. It served as a Buddhist ritual centre for forest monks during the Mon-Dvaravati period. The Buddhist religious elements of the site are readily apparent. The most noteworthy of these are collections of bai sema (beautifully shaped stone boundary markers), which are typically placed in a circle of eight. This was the number often used to mark the boundary of an ubosot, one of the main buildings in a Buddhist temple complex. The twist at Phu Phra Baht is that the stones enclose some of the fantastic rock formations, creating a kind of stupa out of the natural rock-forms. One of the most famous groups in this category is known as Kou Nang Usa. Seven beautifully tapered boundary markers surround a jagged sandstone formation, creating one of the most memorable silhouettes at the site. It is only somewhat fancifully referred to as the Thai Stonehenge in the literature. Another very famous Buddhist relic is the monument known as Hor Nong Usa. This column of stone has a small cell beneath its mushroom dome, which is partially walled in with bricks. Perhaps it was originally a monk’s cell. However, it is now associated with a mythical princess who was said to have lived inside this tower. This myth is a later Thai invention which has been used to explain the unusual collection of Mon relics on the site. It is featured prominently in Thai tours of the site, but there seems to be no historical basis for any of it. The site was associated with forest monks, not Thai princesses.
A mushroom rock at Phu Phra Baht, surrounded by boundary markers
Apart from circles of stones, there are some other interesting vestiges in this area. At Tham Chaang you can see some more paintings from the prehistoric era, these ones of prehistoric elephants. They are quite faint but still worth checking out for a glimpse of the prehistoric fauna of the area. Another very memorable attraction is Tham Phra, where you can see the best preserved Buddha image at the site. Set a little nook between two rock faces, it has a typical elaborate head-dress and long, elongated lobes. It is suggested in some of the sources that this was a Khmer addition to the landscape. Either way, it is perhaps the most obvious reminder of all of the religious significance of the remains. Finally, it is worth mentioning Wat Louk Khoei, which is perhaps the most modern addition to the site. Here a rock shelter has been walled in with pale stone in comparatively recent times, creating a sort of rock temple with a roof of natural rock. An ancient, lichen-blotched boundary marker stands watch outside. Inside a collection of Buddha images, some with a historic look, remain the object of veneration to the present day.
Overall, Phu Phra Baht is a hybrid of man-made and natural structures which is utterly unique. It is its unusual mixture of landforms and relics which makes it one of Isaan’s most compelling attractions. You see that for thousands of years the landscape also had ritual and spiritual significance for the inhabitants of the area, and they incorporated it into their religious architecture. A visit to the Phu Phan Mountains is not particularly easy but travellers there are rewarded with one of Thailand’s most unusual and distinctive historic sites. Hopefully, UNESCO will eventually award it World Heritage status.
From Pak Chong, we got on the Nakhon Ratchasima bus, which we had learned passed right through Sung Noen: the town which was home to both Wat Dharmacakra Semaram and Muang Sema Historical Park. After leaving Pak Chong, the bus made good time, and after about forty minutes the conductor signaled for us to get down by the side of the road. It was at this point that our illusions of a trouble-free trip to Muang Sema ran into difficulties. It seemed that the highway passed along the edge of Sung Noen but didn’t head right into the centre of town.
As it turned out, there was a songthaew waiting at the turn-off but this was one of the times when my attempts to communicate in Thai failed completely. The songthaew driver couldn’t recognize my pronunciation of either of the places we wanted to go to, so we were stranded. Instead of renting something there, we decided to hop onto the next kind of public transport that was heading towards town and try and rent something there. After about twenty minutes another songthaew came along that took us the final couple of kilometres into town.
It turned out that Sung Noen was a sleepy country town of two-storey, timber-fronted shops, with few signs of modernization besides the obligatory branch of 7-11. We looked around the street near the railway station but couldn’t find any public transportation for rental. There was a public bus waiting in the street but apparently it just did the run into Nakhon Ratchasima a few times a day. By this point our frustration was mounting and we really didn’t know what else to do. We confronted the possibility that we just have to wait around until the bus to Nakhon Ratchasima left. But fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Cameron eventually found the name of the sights we wanted to see in Thai and a songthaew pulled up just down the road from the bus. It turned out that it was the same vehicle and driver we had met on the main road, but this time he understood where we wanted to go, or at least claimed to. He said he would take us there and back for three hundred baht. It was probably an exorbitant price but we had no other options.
But then the driver took us to a small wat on the outskirts of town, which was clearly not Wat Dharmacakra Semaram. There was simply nowhere that a colossal Reclining Buddha could have been housed. However, there was some sort of community meeting or function happening in one of the halls at the temple, so there were a lot of people around. Fortunately one of the guests could understand my Thai pronunciation and he gave our driver directions to the right place. We set off again and this time there was no more confusion; we pulled up at the historic wat some five minutes later.
It was in most respects a very modest temple which you would not have glanced twice at if you passed it along the road. However, it was home to one extraordinary antiquity, which was now preserved in a custom-built hall. The hall was an open-sided structure consisting of a metal roof on brick pillars. It was really just a protective shelter for the 11-metre long, sandstone Reclining Buddha which was the temple’s main claim to fame. We signed into the visitor’s book, made a 20 baht donation and then went into the hall to get a closer look at the monument.
A view from the front of the Reclining Buddha
It was a seventh century Dvaravati Buddha seated in mahaparinirvana, or the ‘sleeping’ posture. The English name of the Reclining Buddha gives a somewhat misleading impression, as the posture is actually a representation of the Buddha’s death scene- literally, the Buddha entering Heaven. The facial features of the figure are somewhat degraded, making it impossible to get a clear sense of his expression; the nose in particular is very damaged. The tight curls of his hair are quite obvious however and these have a typically Mon appearance. In addition, there were traces of gold leaf evident on the face of the statue; however, they were probably not recent. A smaller model of the Buddha had been made in front of the historic statue for devotees to apply gold leaf to. This was presumably so the locals could continue making offerings to the Buddha without damaging the original statue.
The 11 metre-long Buddha’s colossal feet, with traces of gold leaf
It was difficult to get a clear view of the entire statue because of the rather cramped building it has located within. However, he had particularly massive feet which reminded us of the very famous Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho in Bangkok. By going around to the rear of the statue, you get a sense of how the statue consists of many interlocking blocks of sandstone. It would once have had a stucco coating- the Mon were masters of using stucco to face monuments- but the stucco has now mostly peeled off. Nonetheless, sections of it still remain on the head and the arm on which it rests. Originally, the entire statue would have been housed in a timber building which was twenty-six metres long; archaeological work at the site had revealed faint traces of this original structure.
As we looked at the statue, which discussed its extraordinary age: some thirteen or fourteen centuries old. If this date is even close to correct, it is by far the oldest Reclining Buddha statue in the country. As such, it bears testimony to the earliest penetration of Buddhism into Thailand, especially Isaan. It is presumed that Buddhism must have entered Isaan (Northeastern Thailand) via this part of the country, as there is a relatively narrow passageway between the mountains wilds of the Khao Yai area and Cambodia to the South. It is worth noting that there are many carvings of the Buddha in the mahaparinirvana posture from rock shelters in Isaan.
The Buddha’s head and the upturned fingers of the supporting hand
It is possible that this image the precursor or ancestor of the later images from across the Isaan region. It has been speculated that the Sung Noen area was actually the site of the capital of the early Buddhist polity of Sri Canasa. Perhaps Buddhism spread first to Sri Canasa from the Chao Phraya River basin and the art and religion of Sri Canasa was later to influence that of the entire Isaan plateau. Whatever the full story, the Reclining Buddha of Wat Semaram Dharmacakra proved a rare and unique example of the monumental arts of the Dvaravati period.
Apart from the hall of the Reclining Buddha, there is a building known as the Temple Museum. This one-room museum is worth a quick look for visitors to the site. There are a number of Dvaravati antiquities on display, most of them in a highly fragmentary condition. There is a very large lotus pedestal which may once have supported a Buddha statue, but it is only the base which now survives. Behind it on the wall is a pastel-colored painting of a seated Buddha, which may serve as a representation of what the whole statue may have looked like.
There is also what appears to be a headless and armless standing Buddha, as well as various other stone fragments, few of which are very prepossessing. Easily the most interesting exhibit is a magnificent and complete dharmacakra which dates back to the 8th or 9th centuries. With a diameter of 1.41 metres, it closely resembles ‘wheels of the law’ from other Dvaravati sites such as Nakhon Pathom and U Thong. The artefact represents the first sermon of the Buddha at Sarnath, where he set the wheels of a new religion in motion, preaching about the eightfold path to Enlightenment.
The dharmacaka of Sung Noen is now encased in a plastic box to protect it from over-zealous devotees, who would doubtless love to stick gold leaf to its exterior. In front of this protected dharmacakra is another one (perhaps a replica?) which Thai visitors are free to hang floral votives off and make incense offerings to. There is a ceramic pot before this dharmacakra in which incense sticks were burning. It gave the whole place the atmosphere of a smoky village shrine. For me, the most interesting detail of the dharmacakra was perhaps the small lion’s head at the bottom, a common feature on Dvaravati ‘wheels of the law’. You can see a similar motif on the famous example from the Guimet Museum in Paris. Having seen this little museum-cum-shrine, we went in search of our songthaew driver, ready to move on to Muang Sema Historical Park.
During the Dvaravati period (from the 8th to the 11th centuries) Muang Fa Daet Sung Yang emerged as one of the leading artistic centres of Isaan (Northeastern Thailand). Set in Kamalasai District of the modern province of Kalasin, the moated city produced a very large number of carved boundary markers (bai sema in Thai), which served to delineate the sacred area of an ubosot in a Buddhist monastery. While these boundary markers have been found from many different parts of Isaan and Laos, Muang Fa Daet Sung Yang has yielded them in the greatest quantities. The Muang Fa Daet Sung Yang boundary markers are also notable for the artistic skill with which they were composed, suggesting that the city was home to a stonemason’s workshop where high-quality bai sema were commissioned.
We can surmise, without indisputable proof, that this workshop enjoyed royal patronage, as most of the boundary markers were found in the immediate vicinity of the city itself, with numerous examples being located inside the moats. Also, many of them display royal personages or occasionally even palace grounds, which is a further hint of royal associations. A large number of these bai sema have now been relocated to the Khon Kaen National Museum in the city of Khon Kaen. This post will be dedicated to two damaged, lesser-known bai sema from the museum, which, despite their fragmentary condition, remain impressive examples of Dvaravati art.
Sema 13 from Muang Fa Daet Sung Yang
The first of these two boundary markers (bai sema) is the one which the historian Stephen Murphy has classified as S13. This bai sema is located on the ground floor of the Khon Kaen National Museum. The top of it is broken off and the section which he do have is cracked across the middle. Nonetheless, it presents an enigmatic scene which has proven impossible to identify. At the bottom of the fragment are four seated figures, the ones on the right being rather more distinct. Above the crack are two larger, seated figures, one of which has a Mon style conical head-dress and the other has a rounded halo. At the centre of the scene is an altar with three triangular objects on top. Perhaps they represent some kind of votive offerings. Based on stylistic features, it has been suggested that they date to the early period of Muang Fa Daet Sung Yang, from the eighth or ninth centuries.
S16 features a Buddha with a flaming nimbus
The second bai sema, otherwise known as S16, is also thought to date from this earlier period of Dvaravati art history. Unlike S13, it is located in a small courtyard garden to the rear of the ground floor. It is one of a small subset of Muang Fa Daet boundary markers which depict a standing Buddha with a flaming nimbus around his head. This pointy nimbus suggests a supernatural aura, which would have been an important feature for monks trying to win new converts to the Buddhist faith. Though S16 is cracked, with the bottom section missing, the main features of the scene are clear. The standing Buddha has curled Mon hair, full lips, closed eyes which suggest a blissful spirituality and a richly draped robe. There is a much shorter figure standing beside him, looking up in an attitude of reverence. Despite its damaged condition, this is a very graceful carving, indicating that Muang Fa Daet Sung Yang was an artistic centre as far back as the 8th or 9th centuries.
One of the lesser-sung treasures from the Khon Kaen National Museum is the carved stone known as the Kulavaka Jataka Boundary Marker. Like many of Thailand’s most remarkable bai sema (boundary markers), it came from Muang Fa Daet Sung Yang, an archaeological site in Kamalasai district of Kalasin province. The boundary marker is broken and incomplete, with only the top section remaining. However, despite its fragmentary state, it offers crisp and vivid stone carving. Whereas the carving on many of Isaan’s bai sema is now very time-worn, the scenes on the Kulavaka Jataka Boundary Marker are still distinct.
The Kulavaka Jataka boundary marker
The boundary marker depicts a jataka scene, a scene from one of the lives of the Buddha. The scene on this stone has been identified as Jataka story #31, otherwise known as the Kulavaka Jataka. This story tells of several reincarnations of the life of a woman called Highborn. Its pedagogic value was to instruct the faithful in the notion of Buddhist merit, informing people that those who lacked good works in their current incarnation could expect to be reincarnated in a lower station- perhaps even as an animal- in the next life. In one of her incarnations, the ironically named Highborn was one of four women in a household. The other three, known as Goodness, Thoughtful, Joy, all performed acts of merit, but Highborn ignored their example. As a result, in her next life she was reborn as a wild bird.
A close-up of Sakka and Highborn
The Kulavaka Jataka at the Khon Kaen National Museum shows the considerable compositional skills of the stone carvers of Muang Fa Daet Sung Yang. In the centre of the slab is a figure which Murphy identifies as Sakka (another name for the god Indra). Presumably he was seated atop his vehicle, the multi-headed elephant Airavata. This section of the scene is lost but there is a tusked elephant to the left of the god, which helps to support this identification. Sakka has a conical head-dress, broad lips and heavy, metal ear-rings, all of which are common features of Mon art. There is a halo around the head of Sakka and a tree behind him, which strongly suggests the iconography of Mon-Dvaravati banyan trees. To the left of Indra are three women, who Murphy suggests are Goodness, Thoughful and Joy, now the handmaidens of the god. They have elaborate head-dresses and heavy jewelry. One of the woman has a bird in her hand, which represents Highborn in her lowly new incarnation. A particularly compelling example of Dvaravati jataka art, it is worthy of close attention even its incomplete state.
The richest source of bai sema (boundary markers) in Northeast Thailand was the so-called ‘City of Steles’, the archaeological site of Muang Fa Daet Sung Yang. From a total of twelve hundred bai sema which have come down to us from antiquity, one-hundred and seventy two of them are thought to come from this one site. The Muang Fa Daet bai sema are not only the most numerous but also the most artistically accomplished, demonstrating narrative art from the Jatakas (stories of the life of the Buddha) in vivid, sensuous sandstone carvings. There are fifty-five known bai sema from Muang Fa Daet which are carved with jataka scenes; many of these have been gathered at the Khon Kaen National Museum, which is arguably the premier museum of Isaan (Northeastern Thailand).
One of the most intriguing is a rare example of a Dvaravati-era Naga-Buddha- the finest of only three known examples of this image appearing on an ancient bai sema. This artefact is known by the very unromantic name of No.504/2517 from Muang Fa Daet, but I would prefer to call it the Naga-Buddha Boundary Marker, which is both more descriptive and evocative. Despite being a rare and valuable artefact- it is one of only eight known Dvaravati Naga-Buddha images surviving in any medium- it is not very prominently displayed. To find this bai sema you need to go out through the back door of the first floor into a little courtyard garden. You will find this boundary marker there along the porch, without any special lighting or signage.
The Naga-Buddha boundary marker
In spite of its unexalted position at the museum, it has gained a degree of fame in academic circles, with the historian Stephen Murphy discussing in its study of the boundary markers of Isaan and Laos, attributing an eighth or ninth century date to it. The French archaeologist Jean-Pierre Gaston-Aubert has also written about it in recent years, making the startling suggestion that the famous Naga-Buddhas of Angkor were actually inspired by a Dvaravati prototype, of which this bai sema remains one of the leading examples.
The Mucalinda episode relates to a story in which the Buddha was meditating to attain enlightenment when a terrible storm began to blow, continuing for seven days. During the deluge, a serpent (naga) emerged from the tree and wrapped himself around the body of the Buddha with its coils, also forming a seven-headed hood over his head in order to shelter him from the rain. In Buddhist iconography, the Buddha has usually been shown seated on the coils of the naga, which is the position known as paryaṅkāsana. Gaston-Aubert insists that the particular depiction on this bai sema demonstrates Southern India characteristics, because he makes the gesture of teaching known as vitarkamudrā and has crossed ankles. The naga hood has five heads, which is also indicative of Southern Indian art. There are two kneeling figures in front of the Buddha, one of them a royal figure listening to the First Sermon of the Buddha. He wears a high, conical head-dress, which is a common feature of Dvaravati (Mon) art. The facial features of the Buddha also display Mon characteristics, with a broad nose and full lips. In this way a degree of synthesis is evident between Southern Indian prototypes and the Mon-Dvaravati artistic tradition.
The Buddha on the coils of the naga
Considering the fact that only eight known instances of Naga-Buddha sculptures have been found in the whole Dvaravati relam, it does not appear to have been an especially potent or popular image. However, the Naga-Buddha was eventually to become of enormous religious importance in Angkorian Cambodia, where it was eventually to become the main deity of the kingdom. Gaston-Aubert argues that the Dvaravati Naga-Buddha may have been transmitted from Isaan to Angkor, probably via the temple complex of Phimai in Nakhon Ratchasima. If he is correct, the neglected bai sema at the Khon Kaen National Museum may have been much more culturally significant than its current humble position suggests.
The upper Northeast is far away from the Dvaravati heartland of the river valleys of Central Thailand. Therefore, it is not surprising entirely surprising then that this area has some different artistic traditions from the central zone of Dvaravati. One of the artistic treasure troves of this zone was the small moated and ramparted mound of Kantarawichai in the modern Thai province of Mara Sarakham. The egg-shaped settlement, also known as Kantharavisai, was about five hundred metres across. Here in 1972 the Thai Fine Arts Department unearthed the foundations of an early Thai ubosoth (ordination hall), which attested to the existence of a Buddhist monastic community at the site. Some fragmentary sema (boundary stones) which were found at the site helped to identify the original identity of the structure. The ordination hall measured 37 by 10 metres, indicating it must have been a very large temple by the standards of Dvaravati sites. However, it is not the ubosot which has attracted most attention here; after all, literally remains of it but brick and laterite foundations. The main object of interest were the ritual deposits found at the northeast corner of the former hall.
The find which excited archaeologists was a small terracotta bowl which contained silver repoussé plaques, most measuring 5 by 10 cm. Repoussé was a technique whereby the image of figures was chiselled into metal. These plaques, believed to date to the eighth or ninth centuries, depicted Buddha images, divine or royal figures, stupas, and dharmacakras (the Buddhist wheel of the law). The stupa types depicted are similar to those of central Thai Dvaravati sites such as Nakhon Pathom, and indicate similar examples were also present in the northeast.
A silver plaque from Isaan
Interestingly, there were numerous fragments of stucco decoration found at the site as well. During the Dvaravati culture, stupas were often encased in a layer of stucco decoration. It is not too great a leap to suspect that the stupas depicted on these plaques would have resembled those once found at Kantarawichai. The Buddhas are very similar to those on the famous sema stones at Muang Fa Daet, an important Mon settlement just twenty kilometres away in Kalasin province. For example, one of the plaques depicts an image of the Buddha descending from the Tavatisma heaven, and a very similar design is found on one of the semas at Muang Fa Daet. Both sites seem to have belonged to the same regional variant of Mon-Dvaravati culture. However, for the visitor today, there is almost nothing left to see at Kantarawichai. You are better off heading to the museums in Bangkok or Khon Kaen, where examples of some of the silver plaques are still housed.
Until the middle of the twentieth century, the main mode of transport through Thailand was boats, with regular services running along the Chao Phraya and its tributaries. But by 1950 the growth of the Thai railways had led to a sharp drop-off in the number of boat services, and cities, such as Nakhon Sawan, whose lifeblood had been river-borne trade, went into a long period of decline. A country that had for centuries used its rivers as highways now travelled overwhelmingly on land. By the start of the twenty-first century, car ownership was becoming increasingly widespread in Thailand, which meant that it was the turn of the railways to become outmoded. The speed with which rail was being rendered obsolete was brought sharply home to us on our trip out to Ratchaburi and Nakhon Pathom, key provinces in the history of Dvaravati.
When we had first visited Nakhon Pathom in 2000, we had travelled out there from Thonburi Railway Station, which was situated on the opposite side of the Chao Phraya from the Royal Palace. The service we too out there was an economy-class, all-stations train which was heading out to the “Bridge on the River Kwai” town of Kanchanaburi but it was clearly not in a hurry to reach its destination. It crawled along in the intense heat and humidity, stopping at every spot where more than a few houses were clustered together. It might only have been fourteen years ago, but it already seemed like an experience from another era. The train had been full of working-class women going to and from market, and some of them had even brought fresh produce along. There were noisy groups of schoolchildren, and the occasional Buddhist monks and nuns travelling alone. The train stopped a long time at the stations and sidings as people got on and off with their bags of rice and boxes of vegetables.
By 2014, Thonburi Railways Station had been out of service for over a decade. The original station building can still be seen there, just back from the Chao Phraya River, but it is just an abandoned relic of the earlier time. If you want to travel to Nakhon Pathom by rail, you still can, but you have to leave from Hualamphong on the other side of the river, and there are no longer any “economy” services either. The only train available was a modern, long-distance one going all the way to the Malaysian border. According to our research, just after Nakhon Pathom it veered off the old line to Kanchanaburi, passing through the little-visited town of Ratchaburi on the way to the Isthmus of Kra and Thailand’s Deep South.
We turned up at Hualamphong a bit after nine o’clock and found that the next train to Ratchaburi wasn’t until one o’clock that afternoon. I asked Cameron if he minded waiting, and he calmly assured me that we had nothing else planned and nowhere else to be. As he saw it, we might as well be flexible and pass the time until the train came. Agreeing with this plan, I bought tickets for the one o’clock service, and then we set off for a wander through Bangkok’s nearby Chinatown. Our first stop was a grimy food-stall serving chicken and rice in an alleyway and then we wandered between a couple of historic temples that we had seen years before. The time-filling got off to a pleasant enough start. But then Cameron was struck by that most typically Bangkok of ailments, “street food belly”, prompting an urgent search for a bathroom. He hurried into the lobby of the nearest hotel and Donal and I took a table in the hotel coffee-shop.
As we drank our cups of ‘milk coffee’ and waited an interminably long time for Cameron to emerge from the bathroom, I scanned the coffee-shop and hotel lobby, thinking about all the other places like this I’d seen in our travels. It was from an earlier generation of business hotel, aimed at traders and salesmen from the Chinese community. Featuring tanks of carp, branches of plastic cherry-blossom and other dated decorations, it had probably hadn’t changed much in thirty years, and it seemed to attract very few guests these days. Bored by his long wait in the empty coffee-shop, Donal did his usual routine of annoying the waitresses by demanding extra napkins, toothpicks and anything else he could think of, until I eventually told him to leave them alone. Eventually Cameron emerged and pronounced himself unfit for further wandering. So we stayed in the coffee-shop ordering drinks and snacks for the best part of two hours, and then finally went over to Hua Lamphong for our train.
As it turned out, the train was late leaving Bangkok, and I complained that it was going to take us the whole day to get to Ratchaburi, a town a mere eighty kilometres away. Cameron reminded me again that this was our week off, and I should just take it easy- wise advice I was obviously struggling to take. But by the time we were moving out of Bangkok, I started to feel the romance of the journey. It seemed like we were on “the slow train to Ku Bua”, which was appropriate for an obscure, backwoods destination.
We reached Nakhon Pathom just before four, and then there was another delay before we turned onto the line heading south. From this point, we gathered speed, moving quickly through lush, green countryside dominated by clumps of bamboo and emerald rice-paddies. There were few large villages along the route, making it surprisingly bucolic and attractive. The late afternoon sun was sinking in the West, in which direction lay the Myanmar border, and in that hour the whole scene was softened by a lovely golden hue. The unexpectedly beautiful scenery made me feel that our day of waiting had not been entirely with compensation.
Just before we reached Ratchaburi train station, we crossed the Mae Khlong River, the most important in that part of Thailand. Having risen in the hills along the border with Myanmar, it then crossed the lowlands of Ratchaburi province on its way towards the Gulf of Thailand, just as it had done since the time of Ku Bua. The Mae Khlong River, I considered, had been one of the main waterways of Mon civilization, and we were now in a little-known but important corner of Dvaravati.
But before there was time for the contemplation of history, there were practicalities to deal with. We got off at the station and went in search of a hotel, expecting there to be a cluster of them around the train station; after all, the town was a provincial capital. But the provincial capital appellation didn’t mean as much in Thailand as it did it most countries, because the nation had a super-abundance of provinces. China, with its 1.4 billion people, has only seen fit to create twenty-seven provinces, but Thailand with a mere sixty-five million now has ninety. For the corruption-prone nation, this has meant a vast proliferation of government offices, all with their hands out, and Bangkok has long had a problem effectively supervising officials in the provinces. For the traveler, it means that provincial capital status does not guarantee much in the way of services and amenities. And so it proved in Ratchaburi; we wandered all around the centre of town and found only a single hotel in any price-range. Clearly few visitors, local or domestic, ever spent the night in town. The only lodgings we found were a compound of brick villas on a large, bare block of land down a side-street. Still, they were big enough to sleep three people comfortably, and the asking price was only six-hundred baht.
With our bags stowed in the room, we set off to explore the parts of Ratchaburi we hadn’t seen in searching for a hotel. This mostly involved the parts along the Mae Khlong River, which also promised to be the most attractive part of town. But before we got there we stopped at a street-stall for lunch. Cameron and I ordered a plate of pork mince on rice while Donal looked around for chicken or seafood. Though he drank beer, womanized, never observed the Ramadan fast for more than a day or two each year, and was very rarely seen in the vicinity of a mosque, Donal was very insistent on never eating pork. I’d come to suspect that he was fastidious in this one respect of religious observance in order to allay his guilt about his failure in all the others.
From there we walked on, passing an old yellow clock tower and coming at last to the Mae Khlong riverfront, which was, as expected, easily the most attractive part of town. Unexpectedly, it also proved to be the town’s diminutive ‘Chinatown’, with a large number of ethnic Chinese doing business in the street along the river. Perhaps, we discussed, Chinese traders had originally established their shops here in the days of river-borne transport, trading in goods that had been brought downriver from the hinterland, selling some of them in town and passing others on to traders in the nearby Gulf of Thailand. Whatever the story, they had picked a lovely spot to set up shop.
The Ratchaburi clock tower, a minor landmark in town
In the distance were low-lying hills, revealed in that hour in the soft light of sunset. I’d read that there was still a fair amount of forest remaining in the hilly interior of Ratchaburi province. It was there, along the border with Myanmar, that the waters of the Mae Khlong River rose. By the time it had reached Ratchaburi, only a short distance inland from the sea, it was a broad, brown waterway that would have been easily navigable by smaller vessels. The town was located at a bend in the river, with a pontoon and a couple of small jetties along the banks of that side, and a glitzy wat occupying extensive grounds on the far bank. Against this attractive backdrop of water, hills and sky, young lovers courted, boys flew kites and people did the last of the day’s shopping in a small street market. Ratchaburi was not one of the country’s most compelling destinations by any measure, but it did have a little charm.
The next day we set out for Ku Bua, which different websites had reported as being either six, eight or twelve kilometres outside town. In looking for a hotel the day before, we’d passed a road sign to the ruins. According to this source, Ku Bua was a mere six kilometres away. It was to this sign that we headed the next morning because, I reasoned, it was at least pointing us in the right direction. We had no idea about local transport, but it seemed a fair bet that any vehicle heading out to Ku Bua would be passing by that way. When we got to the sign, there were a few locals waiting too, and one of them assured us that this was a good place to wait for a bus to Ku Bua.
After about fifteen minutes a local bus came past. We climbed aboard and the bus headed out along its route, carrying a small contingent of passengers. The town straggled for a while and then we seemed to be in a more ‘village’ environment of wooden houses, green fields and grazing goats. It wasn’t long before the bus driver came to a stop and gestured for us to get out. The three of us got off and the bus continued towards its unknown destination.
In front of us was a modern Thai wat of the Bangkok school, which was also known as Wat Ku Bua. Perhaps, I guessed, the name Ku Bua had been taken from the modern Thai village, and it had nothing to do with the ancient Mon settlement on the site. Trying to get my bearings, I asked a couple of local ladies where the ruins were, and they helpfully gestured to go straight past the wat and then veer around to the left, With nothing else to go on, we accepted their advice, hoping for the best. We had soon past the wat and there was no sign of the museum or any ancient monuments, so we continued on down a sort of country lane, with dense shrub growing along the roadside. Then after about five minutes, we came to a small monument which we hadn’t been mentioned on any of the websites we’d visited.
Set in a small clearing on a piece of boggy, low-lying land, it was a rectangular, brickstupa about five metres long. The clearing was surrounded by thick undergrowth and the whole place had a neglected, overgrown look. It had clearly been excavated at some point, as there was now a ditch around the monument. We walked around it and saw that there was no longer any trace of terracotta; only the underlying brickwork had survived. If any traces of the stucco exterior had lasted, I concluded that they had been moved to the Ku Bua museum.
There was a small sign at the site which indicated that this was indeed a Mon-Dvaravati stupa and that it was now a protected monument of the Kingdom of Thailand. In addition, it explained that the Mae Khlong River had changed its course over the centuries; during the Dvaravati era, it had flowed right by Ku Bua, but it had now shifted several kilometres to the north. In light of this information, I considered maps I’d seen of the former coastline of the region. It has often been suggested that due to river sedimentation, Thailand’s coast around the head of the Gulf of Thailand has advanced many kilometres forward over the centuries. Perhaps, I considered, this site had once been set near the coast, the Mon establishing a settlement at the mouth of the Mae Khlong River to facilitate trade with the outside world.
From this obscure little stupa we continued onwards in search of the main monument and the museum, and we came upon it about five minutes later. There was a large car-park and a visitor’s centre here, as well as a modern Thai wat and monastery. While the site was almost unknown to Western tourists, some awareness of Ku Bua clearly existed among locals. Consulting Cameron, we decided to see the monument first and come back to the visitor’s centre at the end. As it turned out, Wat Khlong, the most important monument in the province, was only a short distance ahead through the trees.
The front section of Wat Khlong at Ku Bua
Ku Bua was once a moated Mon settlement about two kilometres across. In this it resembled the other major settlements of Dvaravati. But though traces of the moat and ramparts still existed, there was only one major surviving structure from the site and that was Wat Khlong, a surprisingly massive chunk of masonry. Yet despite its massive size, it is not, perhaps, the most photogenic of monuments and it is easy to understand why this great slab of brickwork has not seized the imagination of tourists.
Wat Khlong is not completely without ornamentation. Along the southern side there are a series of pillars running from top to bottom, and these are part of the original stucco casing. These are the only remaining hint of how the monument would have been decorated; elsewhere the stucco has crumbled away, and it is only possible to appreciate its bulk. The stupa was some twenty-five metres long and fifteen metres high, forming a great rectangular platform. It is possible that a superstructure of some sort, probably some kind of tower, would have stood on top of this platform, but no hint of it remained now. Only the lowermost tier had survived. At the front a staircase rose up to the top of this level, but you were not permitted to go climbing on it these days. In its original conception, I imagined, Wat Khlong must have been a Buddhist temple-mountain, attesting to the Mon’s early embrace of the Indian religion.
The final stop on our visit to the site was a trip to the visitor’s centre. It had been modelled, somewhat clumsily, on Wat Khlong, we now saw, with colonettes running down the sides. Inside were the typical dioramas of Thai village life, and a collection of local material culture such as baskets, fish-traps and textiles. But the main interest was its impressive collection of terracotta art from the Dvaravati era. It appeared that terracotta art had been plentiful at the site, and there were panels and statuary showing Buddhas, animals and even figures that were thought to be foreign traders to the region. This was a reminder that the stupas we had seen would not originally have consisted of ‘naked’ brickwork. They would once have been encased in terracotta art friezes, making them much more appealing aesthetically.
Content with our visit to the obscure site, feeling I had ventured deeper than ever before into Dvaravati than ever before, it was now time to contemplate the next phase of the journey. But before moving on we decided to have something to eat. The options were limited in that out-of-the-way place, but there was a woman across the road selling noodle soup for twenty baht a bowl. We took a risk on it, and found that it made for a perfectly fine breakfast. With something on our stomachs, we flagged down a bus and quickly found ourselves in town. With train services now infrequent, we decided that the best option for making the short jump back to Nakhon Pathom was just to take the bus. These left every half an hour or so, so it didn’t take long to find one and get on our way.
After leaving behind Si Thep, I told the samlor driver I wanted to go to Wat Khao Klang Nok, a name which he immediately recognized, somewhat to my surprise. I hopped on the back and we set off, driving out of Si Thep Historical Park and down a series of back roads. In truth, I didn’t have much faith that he knew where he was going, but I was to be proved wrong. A few minutes later we were approaching a monument which was set in a rather dry-looking landscape of grasses, shrubs and only occasional trees. Off to one side were a couple of ramshackle-looking street stalls built of wooden poles, canvas and galvanized iron. The whole had a dusty, forsaken look; overall, it seemed a very inauspicious setting for the largest Dvaravati monument still in existence.
It was a hot day, so I went over the stall-keeper and her sidekicks to buy a bottle of water. As so often happens in out of the way places, the people were very friendly and warm. We agreed on a price for the bottle of water and they laughed and had a lot of fun with it all. They asked me a few questions but I had no idea what they were saying and looked to my samlor driver for assistance; he had been lingering in the background the whole time. He gave a long answer using vigorous arm movements, the thrust of which was probably that he had been hired to take me around the historical relics in the area. They seemed to consider this very pleasing and there was more smiling and nodding. Eventually I thanked them and took my leave, oddly cheered by the friendly dispositions of the drinks sellers at Wat Khao Klang Nok .
The monument was a very considerable chunk of masonry, especially considering how slight the architectural record is for Dvaravati generally. This temple was on a square base of 64 x 64 metres, reaching a height of 20 metres. In the photos I had seen before going there, it was a mass of pitted laterite with only a scant brick coating on some parts, but a restoration of the monument was now well underway and in some portions the laterite core was now encased in reddish bricks again. But the restorers had not been over-zealous. It still had a somewhat decayed look, with laterite showing through the brickwork in many sections and the top of the monument having a great knob of weathered masonry protruding above the rest of the structure. Presumably, this had been intended as a kind of temple-mountain, and it would once have had a flat terrace on top. Part of the main staircase had now been restored and it was particularly broad and grand, projecting out from the main body of the temple with tall sections of wall on either side. This dignified staircase would once have led right to the top of the monument, which would have commanded a good view over the scrubby plains thereabouts.
The monolithic remains of Wat Khao Klang Nok
You were not allowed to clamber up on the ancient stupa these days, so I decided to circumambulate the monument instead, getting a look at it from all sides. Unlike at its sister stupa at Si Thep, there was no terracotta art, which struck me as curious. Why had the Mon not applied terracotta decoration to this monument when they had not only done so at the other stupa at Si Thep but everywhere else throughout their culture zone too? Did it have something to do with the encroachment of Land Chenla, the neighbouring Khmer state, whose Hindu artistic influence is very evident in the sculpture from Si Thep? Had the Khmer not only influenced Mon art at Si Thep but Mon architecture as well? It certainly seemed possible. Instead of relying on terracotta for its decorative impact, this stupa used beautiful, understated motifs in its brickwork. What exactly these motifs represented was not clear, but to me the resembled some kind of stylized temple or shrine.
A detail from the walls of the stupa
By the time I had done a complete lap, I was certain that the most impressive vantage point was the initial one. The broad staircase had a majestic look, emphasizing the great weight and dignity of the ancient monument. Yet incredibly, the stupa had only been dug out of the earth less than a decade ago; as late as the earliest twentieth-century, it was still an unexcavated mound that was merely presumed to contain a temple. Archaeologists had been right, of course, and now a massive 8th or 9th century ruin was slowly being restored to something approaching its original grandeur. It was easily the largest surviving Dvaravati monument in existence, and its size and grandeur hinted not only at the prosperity of ancient Si Thep but the cultural richness of the entire Mon-Dvaravati realm. It was now one of the best surviving windows on this enigmatic kingdom.
southeastasiankingdoms 