Wat Chaiwatthanaram

About

Set on the western bank of the Chao Phraya River just outside the old island city of Ayutthaya, Wat Chaiwatthanaram rises in weathered laterite and brick, a complex of soaring prangs that retain the silhouette of a Khmer-inspired cosmological diagram.

The wat was founded in 1630 by King Prasat Thong as the inaugural religious work of his reign. Its name carries the sense of 'Temple of long reign and glorious era', and tradition holds that the king built it both to gain Buddhist merit and to honour the memory of his mother, whose residence once stood nearby.

The complex centres on a 35-metre prang surrounded by four smaller spires, raised upon a rectangular platform with concealed entrances reached by steep interior stairs. Eight chedi-shaped chapels, known in Thai as Meru Thit and Meru Rai, encircle the central group, joined by a cross-shaped cloister (Phra Rabieng) that once housed roughly 120 seated Buddha images lacquered in black and gold.

The layout itself is a meditation on the Buddhist cosmos described in the fourteenth-century Traiphum Phra Ruang: the principal Prang Prathan represents Mount Meru at the axis of the world, the four smaller prangs are the four continents floating in the cosmic ocean, and the surrounding gallery marks the iron mountains at the edge of existence.

History

King Prasat Thong founded the wat in 1630 as the first religious work of his reign, raising it in Khmer style on land where, tradition holds, his mother once lived, though Prince Damrong later suggested the king built it instead to mark a victory over Longvek. For more than a century it served Ayutthaya's kings as a setting for royal Buddhist rites and as a cremation ground for princes and princesses, among them Chaofa Thammathibet. When Ayutthaya fell to Burmese forces in 1767 the Temple was abandoned, its brick carried away and its Buddha images beheaded by treasure hunters over two centuries of neglect. The Fine Arts Department began conservation in 1987 and opened the site to visitors in 1992, and after the 2011 floods submerged the compound under two metres of water, a further restoration renewed the prangs and cloister that stand today.

Significance

The Temple's plan is a meditation in brick and stucco on the Buddhist cosmos described in the Traiphum Phra Ruang: the central prang rises as Mount Meru at the axis of the world, four lesser prangs mark the surrounding continents, and the enclosing cloister traces the iron mountains at the edge of existence. Once lined by some one hundred and twenty seated Buddha images lacquered in black and gold, the wat remains one of the clearest surviving expressions of how Ayutthaya's kings used sacred architecture to declare both merit and cosmic order.

Architecture

Khmer-style prang architecture of the Ayutthaya kingdom, built as a royal cosmological monument