Wat Pho

WatBuddhist monastic complex that brings together, within a single enclosure, several religious buildings, monks’ quarters and ancillary buildings; the word does not refer to a single building. Pho occupies a vast enclosure on Rattanakosin Island, the historic heart of Bangkok, immediately south of the Grand Palace. It is bounded by four roads: Thai Wang Road to the north, Sanam Chai Road to the east, Setthakan Road to the south and Maharat Road to the west. Following its enlargement in the 19th century, the complex covers some nine hectares, making Wat Pho one of the great monastic enclosures of the old city.¹¹

Like every wat – that is, any Buddhist monastic complex combining places of worship with living quarters for monks – Wat Pho is divided into two distinct areas. A high white wall running along Chetuphon Road separates the sacred zone, known as the PhutthawatThe sacred area of a Thai wat, devoted to worship and containing the main religious buildings, distinct from the monks’ residential area., devoted to worship and to the great religious buildings, from the zone where the monks live, the SanghawatThe area of a Thai wat where the monks live, separate from the space devoted to worship.. This division still shapes a visit today: the public moves through the area of worship, while the monastic community keeps its own quarter, set apart.¹¹

The temple’s rank derives from its royal history. Wat Pho is a royal monasteryIn Thailand, a Buddhist monastery founded, restored or placed under the patronage of the king or the royal family, and holding a particular rank. of the first rank and heads the list of six temples placed in the highest grade of first-class royal temples. It was the most important temple of the reign of King Rama I (1737–1809), first sovereign of the Chakri dynasty, who made Bangkok his capital and the monastery his own temple. This closeness to the Crown, both spatial and symbolic, sheds light on most of the choices that have shaped the site.¹¹

The temple’s names preserve the traces of its successive states. ‘Wat Pho’ is the shortened form of its former name, Wat Photaram, meaning ‘temple of the Bodhi TreeSacred fig tree under which, according to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha attained Enlightenment; it is venerated as a symbol of that event.’, the tree beneath which, according to Buddhist tradition, the Buddha attained Enlightenment. The present official name, given in the 19th century, opens with ‘Chetuphon’, which refers to the Jetavana, a monastery closely associated with the life of the Buddha in Buddhist texts. For many visitors, finally, Wat Pho remains simply the ‘Temple of the Reclining BuddhaDepiction of the Buddha lying on his right side, his head supported by his hand or a cushion, most often evoking his passing into parinirvana.’, after the most celebrated work it houses.¹¹

The history of the site begins before the founding of Bangkok. A temple named Wat Photharam was established at a time when Ayutthaya, further north, was the capital of the Siamese kingdom, during the reign of King Phetracha (1632–1703). Its foundation dates from between the late 17th and the early 18th century, within the years of that sovereign’s reign. When the Rattanakosin periodPeriod of Thai history that began with the founding of Bangkok as the capital by King Rama I at the end of the eighteenth century. It takes its name from Rattanakosin Island, the heart of the royal city. opened, after the destruction of Ayutthaya by Burmese armies in 1767 and the establishment of the court on the site of Bangkok, the temple was probably half in ruins.⁵

Renewal came from the new regime. Once settled in the Grand Palace, Rama I took note of two old temples lying on either side of his residence: Wat Salak, now Wat Mahathat, to the north, and Wat Photharam to the south. In 1788 he entrusted the restoration of the latter to the nobles of the Department of the Ten CraftsRoyal Siamese department grouping court artisans specialised in traditional arts and crafts, responsible for major construction and decoration works.. This first campaign lasted a little over seven years. A great celebration was held in 1801, and the king then gave the temple a new name, Wat Phra Chetuphon Vimolmangklavas. The old Ayutthaya sanctuary became the principal temple of the dynasty’s founder.⁵

During these years Rama I had Buddha images – that is, in Thai usage, statues – brought together at Wat Pho, taken from abandoned temples in Ayutthaya, Sukhothai and other ancient sites. The temple thus received works from the kingdom’s former capitals, which the wars had left without a community to tend them. Among these additions are reported to have been the remains of an immense Buddha imageIn Thai Buddhism, a devotional representation of the Buddha, most often a statue, venerated as an object of worship. from Wat Phra Si Sanphet, the royal templeIn Thailand, a Buddhist temple founded, restored or patronised by the king or the royal family, and graded according to an official hierarchy of ranks and categories. of Ayutthaya, destroyed by the Burmese in 1767, which are said to have been incorporated into one of Wat Pho’s buildings.¹¹

The bond between the temple and the person of the king is seen above all in the ubosotConsecrated ordination hall of a wat: the ritually central building, marked out by sacred boundary stones, where monastic ordinations take place., the ordinationCeremony by which a layperson is admitted as a novice or as a monk into the Buddhist community. hall where the principal rites of the monastic community take place. Its principal image, the Phra Buddha Deva Patimakorn, rests on a pedestal beneath which part of the ashes of Rama I were placed. Wat Pho is therefore not merely a temple restored by the sovereign: it keeps a part of his mortal remains and links his memory to the worship of the Buddha. According to tradition, the finest craftsmen of the Royal Palace and elsewhere, specialists in the arts and monks are said to have taken part in this restoration, as they later did in that of his successor.⁵

The Wat Pho that one walks through today is, for the most part, the work of another reign. In 1832 King Rama III (1788–1851), third sovereign of the Chakri dynasty, who reigned from 1824 to 1851, launched a campaign of renovation and enlargement on an altogether different scale from the previous one. The works lasted more than sixteen years. Most of the present buildings date from this campaign, so that the visitor discovers above all a mid-19th-century monastery, built on the foundations of an older temple.⁵

Rama III did not content himself with repairs: he reshaped the enclosure. He enlarged or created the south viharaAssembly and devotional hall of a wat, used for ceremonies, teaching and the veneration of Buddha images; unlike the ubosot, it does not host monastic ordinations. and the west vihara – a vihara being the hall where the faithful come to venerate Buddha images – the Missakawan Park, the Phra MondopSmall sacred building or pavilion, often square in plan, which may house a sacred image, a Buddha footprint, relics, scriptures, ashes or another sacred object. and a teaching hall. The Phra Mondop, a pavilion intended to house sacred texts, serves as a library; its walls bear drawings of constellations taken from astrological texts. Elsewhere in the temple, paintings illustrate folk tales. These choices herald the ambition that distinguishes Rama III’s reign at Wat Pho: to make the monastery a place where the decoration itself teaches.¹¹

Wat Pho’s best-known work belongs to this campaign. The Reclining Buddha, made around 1832 under Rama III, occupies the west vihara, a chapel built for it. It measures about 46 metres in length and 15 metres in height, and its surface is entirely covered in gilded lacquerA coating combining a layer of lacquer with gold leaf, used to cover and protect statues, objects and architectural elements.. Its dimensions are such that the building seems barely able to contain it: the visitor discovers it piece by piece, walking alongside the statue from one end of the hall to the other. The eyes and the soles of the feet are said to be inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Through its size and fame, this image eventually gave the temple its most common name.¹¹

The following reigns altered the complex little. King Mongkut, or Rama IV (1804–1868), fourth sovereign of the dynasty, gave the temple the name Wat Phra Chetuphon Vimolmangklararm, from which the present official form derives. He also had a fourth great chediA bell-shaped reliquary monument, the Thai version of the Indian stupa. – a slender reliquaryA container intended to hold and protect one or more relics. monument – raised alongside those already standing, and made a few minor alterations.¹¹

In the 20th century a restoration was carried out ahead of Bangkok’s bicentenary, celebrated in 1982. No major works have taken place since, only limited repairs. Maintenance, however, never stops: it is often funded by the faithful, whose donations sustain the monastery just as much as the royal legacy does. Wat Pho thus remains a working temple, supported by its community, rather than a monument frozen in the state its founders gave it.¹¹

Rama III wished to make Wat Pho ‘a university for the public’. He had ancient and contemporary texts gathered, then had them engraved on stone tablets set into the walls and pillars of the temple. This programme, carried out between 1831 and 1841 with Thai scholars, was accompanied by a decisive gesture: the king opened the temple to all. Wat Pho thus became a place where anyone could come to read and learn, which is why it is often described as Thailand’s ‘first university’.¹

These inscriptions now form a body of 1,431 texts in the Thai language and script, a figure established by a digital inventory that replaced the earlier count of 1,360 pieces. They are fixed to the walls and columns of the covered galleries surrounding the temple and are most often accompanied by drawings, paintings or sculptures that illuminate their content. The visitor therefore encounters them not in an archive room but along the way, built into the very architecture of the monastery.⁸

Their content extends far beyond the religious sphere. They fall into eight fields: history, medicine, health, customs, literature, proverbs, lexicography and Buddhism. There are also texts on local administration and on how to examine elephants, horses, cats or cattle, as well as writings on astrology and poetry. The whole brings together Thai and Asian knowledge drawn from more than five centuries of commercial, political and cultural exchange. By having them engraved in a royal temple open to all, Rama III placed this secular knowledge under the protection of the religious site.¹

The value of these texts has been recognised by UNESCO’s Memory of the WorldUNESCO programme devoted to the preservation of and access to documentary heritage; it maintains international and regional registers of documents deemed of major significance. Programme, devoted to documentary heritage. In 2008 most of the inscriptions were entered on the Asia-Pacific regional register; on 27 May 2011, at the meeting of the International Advisory Committee held in Manchester, the ‘Epigraphic Archives of Wat Pho’ joined the international register. This inscription was followed by the introduction of a conservation management plan and the production of educational materials, carrying into the present day the educational mission intended by Rama III.⁸

The stones nonetheless remain exposed. In 2008 some inscriptions had been damaged by humidity, rain and contact with visitors; the temple was undertaking their restoration with the help of the Fine Arts Department of Thailand, a task made difficult by their dispersal across the whole site. The ensemble remains in good condition, but more than a million foreign visitors pass through it every year.³

Among the knowledge engraved under Rama III, medicine holds a special place, and it is medicine that today accounts for much of the temple’s renown. By the mid-19th century Wat Pho was already a centre for the teaching of medicine; texts and illustrations devoted to massage feature among the monastery’s inscriptions and decoration. This tradition has continued in modern form with a private school of Thai medicine, founded in the late 1950s and still active within the temple precinct. The place of worship thus remains a place of learning, in the most concrete sense of the term.¹¹

This continuity gained international recognition in 2019, when UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee, meeting in Bogotá, inscribed nuad thaiTraditional Thai massage, which aims to restore the body’s balance by working on the sen using the hands, elbows, knees, feet and hot herbal compresses., traditional Thai massage, on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural HeritagePractices, knowledge, expressions and skills passed down from generation to generation and recognised by communities as part of their cultural heritage. of Humanity. Nuad thai seeks to restore the body’s balance by acting on the senIn traditional Thai medicine, energy lines held to run through the body, on which traditional massage acts., lines of energy running through it, using the hands, elbows, knees and feet, as well as hot herbal compresses. The nomination had been put forward by the Department of Cultural Promotion of the Ministry of Culture, with the participation of the Department of Thai Traditional and Alternative Medicine.⁹

The choice of venue for the official announcement is telling: it was at Wat Pho, a centre for learning massage, that the inscription was made public, in the presence, among others, of the director of its school, Preeda Tangtrongchitr. The temple that Rama III intended as a school open to all is thus associated with two UNESCO recognitions, one for the texts engraved in its galleries, the other for a practice that is still taught there.²