AYUTTHAYA HISTORICAL RESEARCH



WAT PHRAYA PHAN





Wat Phraya Phan is a brick mound ruin situated off the city island in the southern area of Ayutthaya in Samphao Lom Sub-district (1). The monastery stood on the east bank of a today defunct, north-south running canal leading north to the old Lopburi River (present Chao Phraya River) along Wat Phraya Kong. The temple was also connected by a waterway running east to Khlong Thet (2). The temple stood west of the old Portuguese enclave.


The site is located on an upraised hill and surrounded by water, indicating it had a moat which was likely fed by both canals.


On a visit in 2013 CE, I found only scattered bricks, pottery shards, broken boundary stones and remnants of Buddha images. There were no significant structures visible above ground level. The Department of Religious Affairs agreed (in fact, auctioned off), allowing merchants to dig up bricks from abandoned temples and load them onto boats to sell. It was said that the old bricks of Ayutthaya were stronger than freshly fired bricks and were in high demand for the many new constructions as Bangkok expanded. For this reason, most of the old temple sites in Ayutthaya have no bricks left.


The history and establishment of this monastery is unknown.





(View of the site of Wat Phraya Phan)



The legend


The monastery is named after one of the main actors in the legend of the building of Phra Pathom Chedi in Nakhon Pathom. The story occurs in the Dvaravati period, 7th-11th century CE when Nakhon Pathom was still a coastal city in the Gulf of Thailand. The history of Phra Pathom Chedi is differently narrated and recorded. It goes mainly as follows: Phraya Kong was the ruler of an area around the present Nakhon Chai Sri (3). The ruler of Rat Buri was a tributary to Nakhon Chai Sri. Phraya Kong's queen became pregnant, and the royal soothsayer predicted that if the child were a son, he would kill his father and take the throne. Like Moses, the newborn was placed in a tray in the river and left abandoned.


A woman called Yai Hom (grandmother Hom), raising ducks along the river, found the baby and called him Phan. Phan grew up as an intelligent man, became a favourite of the ruler of Rat Buri and finally was adopted as his son.


Phan, seeing the yearly tributes of gold and silver presented to the ruler of Nakhon Chai Sri, offered to wage war against the latter to set Rat Buri free. The ruler of Rat Buri consented, and Phan, with a large army, attacked Nakhon Chai Sri. Phan besieged the city, killed his father, Phraya Kong and tried to take the queen for his wife. The queen recognised her son at a scar on his forehead, and Phan finally discovered the truth. Enraged, he killed Hom, the woman he was raised by, for not telling him the fact.


Becoming suddenly conscious of his wrong actions, Phraya Phan ordered the construction of two stupas in an act of expiating his sins: one stupa in memory of his father, the Phra Pathom Chedi (the First Stupa) and the Phra Prathon Chedi for Yai Hom.


Why this temple south of Ayutthaya received the name Phraya Kong and why we have adjacent a temple called Phraya Phan is shrouded in mystery. Was there any relationship with Nakhon Pathom? [1]





(View of a remnant of a boundary stone or Bai Sema)



The monastery has been shown on all Fine Arts Department maps since 1974 CE.


The site is in geographical coordinates: 14° 20' 0.97" N, 100° 34' 14.58" E.


Footnotes:


(1) Sub-district called after the village Ban Samphao Lom near the Chao Phraya River. The village is on the Monthon Krung Kao map (1916 CE). John Bowring (1857, London, John W. Parker and Son, West Strand), in his book ‘The Kingdom and People of Siam’, wrote: "Between the modern and the ancient capital, Bangkok and Ayuthia, is a village called the “Sunken Ship,” the houses being erected round a mast which towers above the surface at low water."

(2) Khlong Thet (เทศ) is a defunct canal situated south of Ayutthaya between Khu Cham and the Lopburi River (present Chao Phraya River). The canal ran parallel and close to the main river, immediately west of the two Portuguese churches (San Pedro and San Paolo) and extending a long way southwards. Its name means 'foreign' origin, usually meaning from India or Arabia.

(3) Based on the Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya, King Chakkraphat (reign 1548-1569 CE) established Nakhon Chai Sri by joining some parts of Rat Buri and Suphan Buri (Cushman, 2006, p. 41)


References:


[1] Thompson, Peter Anthony (1910). Siam, an account of the country and the people. J. B. Millet, The Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass., USA. pp. 291-2.



Selected PICTURES



Pictures taken April 2013 CE



MAPS



Map 1 - Detail of Pic BN 114 (058) - 24 January 1944. Williams-Hunt Aerial Photo Collection.
Map 2 - Detail of a 1974 CE Fine Arts Department map. Courtesy Dr Surat Lertlum, Chulachomklao Royal Military Academy.
Map 3 - Detail of a 1993 CE Fine Arts Department map. Courtesy Khun Supot Prommanot, Director of the 3rd Regional Office of Fine Arts.



Map 4 - Detail of a 2007 CE Fine Arts Department GIS map. Courtesy of the Fine Arts Department 3rd Region.
Map 5 - Google Earth.



When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
(Alexis de Tocqueville)





HISTORY OF AYUTTHAYA



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