Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
nearby Wat Phai Ngoen Chotanaram take the bronze image and Wat Samcheen take the
plaster image. Thus did Wat Phai Ngoen Chotanaram, buried obscurely in the back lanes
of Bang Kolaem district, narrowly miss out on world fame. The two temples took delivery
of the images in 1935, a local newspaper recording that a large truck was used to move
the plaster image along Charoen Krung Road to Wat Samcheen, and that telephone lines
and the electric lines for the trams had to be held up with large poles to allow the image
to pass beneath without becoming entangled.
Wat Samcheen installed its plaster image in a corrugated iron lean-to by the side of a
dilapidated
chedi
on the east side of its ordination hall. The temple was located in a low-ly-
ing area next to the canal, and the grounds were prone to flooding, and no one paid much
attention to the image. The temple was renovated in 1939, when a new ordination hall was
built and the temple name changed to Wat Traimit, but the image stayed where it was for
another fifteen years, until a new
wiharn
was built to house it. On 25
th
May 1955, a lifting
crew placed ropes around the image and, using a pulley and manpower, began to heave.
The crew worked from early morning until late afternoon, manoeuvring the heavy figure,
but then a rope gave way and the image thudded hard against the ground, chipping the
plaster and revealing the glistening of gold beneath.
The course of events that led to the Gold Buddha arriving at Wat Traimit and be-
coming one of the country's great visitor attractions, and one of the world's most revered
Buddha images, have been established with reasonable certainty. During the Sukhothai
era, the city-state's most revered king, Ramkhamhaeng the Great, had made a series of
inscriptions on an upright stone slab that set out details of his kingdom. The Ramkham-
haeng Stele, which is now in the National Museum, describes in lines 23-27 how, at Wat
Mahathat, in the middle of the city, was a gold Buddha image. There is no other inform-
ation, but as there are no other gold Buddha images it would appear to be the one that is
now in Wat Traimit. That would date the figure to around the year 1280, at least. The form
of the image is classic central-era Sukhothai, a time when the Siamese identity was first
blossoming. The head of the image is almost egg-shaped, the nose is long and tapering, the
eyebrows curved, the hair tightly curled, the lips smiling, and detailing to the body, robe
and base all place it during the period of Ramkhamhaeng. The Sukhothai kingdom lasted
exactly 200 years, and it is not known when the image was encased in plaster. When Suk-
hothai was absorbed into Ayutthaya the image was moved and installed in the new city.
Centuries later, the attacking Burmese ignored the plaster Buddha image and it was left
in the Ayutthaya ruins for several years until Rama
I
, in 1801, decided to move many of
the images down to Bangkok. The most significant images were housed in Wat Pho, while
