Halliday, Robert (1864-1933 CE), a late member of The Siam Society with a particular interest in the Mon community, wrote about the Mon settlement south of Ayutthaya.
“I was in Ayuthia not long ago and whilst standing by a stall I heard one little boy say to another, a su, " let us be going." This is the form in question, and on reflection I wondered if by any chance they had heard me use the phrase but there is a new Mon village a little way below Ayuthia, and they may have come from it. Another Burmese form one hears in the same village is the Burmese ama (elder sister), when women are speaking to elder women, their elder sisters.”
As the monastery decayed over time, a nobleman called Phraya Phruethatthibodi, in the reign of King Chulalongkorn (1868-1910 CE), restored the temple, and it received the name Wat Kai Tia Phruetharam Rat Bamrung, with a hint to its sponsor. [2]
Based on the temple registration system of the National Office of Buddhism, the temple received its boundary stones (Wisungkhamsima) on 8 November 1971 CE.
The premises of this temple, next to a structure that houses a large quantity of ceramic pottery, terracotta kitchenware, and various forged knives and blades, harbours a few old and huge Siamese anchors. Some, unfortunately, start to decay.
De La Loubère wrote the following in his "A New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam" about the anchors the Siamese use for their ships:
"They have iron mines which they know how to melt, and some have inform’d me that they have but little thereof besides they are bad forge-men. For their Gallies they have only wooden anchors, and to the end that these anchors may sink to the bottom, they fasten stones unto them." [3]
On the monastic grounds, stands an old cremation tower (Meru), nearly identical to the one at Wat Klang Pak Kran. Before, the deceased were burned in open fires, which did not create high enough temperatures and made movements of the body possible. Today with the closed cremation chambers, this is not the case anymore.
Wat Kai Tia is in geographical coordinates: 14° 18' 40.19" N, 100° 33' 54.12" E.
Footnotes:
(1) The suffix "tharam" is used in Sanskrit for a comparative and superlative form (great - greater, string - stronger). Reference: A Sanskrit grammar including both the classical language, and the older dialects, of Veda and Brahmana - William Dwight Whitney (1979) - Leipzig, Breitkopf and Härtel - page 159 #473.
(2) The Bangkok River was in the Ayutthayan era, the stretch of water of the Lopburi River from Bang Kraja at the southern point of Ayutthaya till its confluence with the Chao Phraya River at Bang Sai. The Bangkok River became a stretch of the Chao Phraya River in the 19th century after the latter was diverted from Ban Kum to Ayutthaya in 1857 CE. The stretch of water from Ban Kum until Bang Sai is called today the Bang Ban Canal and joins the Noi River at Nam Tao. The latter flows south until Bang Sai, where it joins the present Chao Phraya River. Not many people realise the Chao Phraya River was not running on the west side of the city island in the Ayutthaya period. At that time, it was the Lopburi River that flowed around Ayutthaya. Today's Chao Phraya River ran through the Bang Ban Canal to Si Kuk and from there to Bang Sai (historical site: Chedi Wat Sanam Chai), where the Lopburi River joined the Chao Phraya River. At the time, the Chao Phraya River was situated about ten kilometres west of the centre of Ayutthaya. The city was linked to the ancient Chao Phraya River in the northwest of Ayutthaya via the Khlong Maha Phram and in the southwest via the Khlong Nam Ya. Steve Van Beeck (1994), in 'The Chao Phya: River in Transition" (Oxford University Press - New York.), writes that "It was not until 1857 that an alternative path was created [for the Chao Phraya River]. A 5-kilometre channel was dug from the entrance of Wat Chulamani to Ban Mai. The river responded by following this new course and abandoning the old one, in effect making a secondary river of the stretch that ran from Ban Mai, and into the Chao Phya Noi. Half as wide as the river above and below it, the 1857 Ban Mai shunt funnels the Chao Phya down to Ayutthaya."
References:
[1] Halliday, R. (1913) Immigration of Mons into Siam. Journal of the Siam Society. Volume. 10.3.
[2] matichon.co.th/region/news_569987 downloaded 5 March 2024.
[3] Loubère, Simon (de la) (1693). A new Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam (2 Tomes). London. Edited by John Villiers. Bangkok: White Lotus, 1986.
