Wat Chulamani

About

Wat Chulamani lies in Wat Chulamani Village within Tha Thong Subdistrict of Mueang Phitsanulok, gathered close to the eastern bank of the Nan River in central-northern Thailand. It is recognised as the oldest standing Temple in the province, with foundations laid in the Sukhothai era.

The Temple is closely associated with King Borommatrailokkanat, who in the fifteenth century moved his capital to Phitsanulok and is said to have entered the monkhood at this very wat. Local tradition holds that the Temple's name honours the heavenly stupa known as Cūḷāmaṇi Cetiya, the celestial reliquary into which, according to Buddhist cosmology, the Bodhisatta's hair was received after his renunciation, and some accounts further link the king's ordination and hair-cutting ceremony to the precinct.

The wat is most celebrated today for the elaborate Khmer-style pagoda that anchors the grounds, a survival from the late Sukhothai period whose carved stucco and stepped tower mark it as among the finest of its kind in the region.

History

Wat Chulamani was raised in the Sukhothai era on ground that already marked the site of old Phitsanulok, and its Khmer-style prang, carved with figures of deities and mythical creatures beneath a lotus-shaped crown, survives as one of the most northerly monuments of Khmer architecture in the country. In the fifteenth century King Borommatrailokkanat moved his own capital to Phitsanulok and, tradition holds, entered the monkhood at this very wat, with more than two thousand of his royal servants ordaining alongside him. Local tradition further holds that the Temple's name honours Culamani Cetiya, the heavenly stupa said to enshrine the hair the Bodhisatta cut away at his renunciation, and some accounts connect that same story to the king's own ordination here.

Significance

The ancient prang now stands beside a later ubosot built in the same compound, so a visitor walking the grounds passes directly from the Sukhothai kingdom's brickwork into the living devotional life of a working Temple. Nearby the compound also holds a mondop built to shelter a footprint of the Buddha commissioned by King Narai, and a row of six bell-shaped chedis. For a city that has otherwise lost most of its old Temples, Wat Chulamani remains Phitsanulok's clearest surviving link to its founding centuries.

Architecture

Sukhothai-era Khmer-style prang, one of the northernmost surviving examples in Thailand, alongside later Temple buildings