Wat Phra Kaew in Chiang Rai – the 'birthplace' of the emerald Buddha

Wat Phra Kaew at Ching Rai (love4aya / Shutterstock.com)

Chiang Rai, one of the oldest cities of the former principality of Lanna, has quite a few temple and monastery complexes. The most important temple from a historical point of view is undoubtedly Wat Phra Kaew at the intersection of Sang Kaew Road and Trairat Road.

No one knows exactly how old this temple is, but most historians assume that it was probably built shortly after the foundation of the city in 1262 on the edge of an old bamboo forest. In any case, the oldest traces of construction point to the first half of the fourteenth century. Initially this temple was known as Wat Pha Yah or Pha Phai but that would not last long. In the year 1434, during a heavy spring storm, lightning struck the great chedi of this temple with devastating force. To the astonishment of the hastily rushed monks, a miraculous because undamaged deep green Buddha statue was found among the rubble. This small, 66 cm high but very beautiful statue was soon given the name of Phra Kaew Morakot or Emerald Green Buddha because of its special color, but in reality it was carved from green jade or jasper. It was not long before it became the object of special veneration and pilgrims from far and wide to Chiang Rai descended on the temple, now renamed Wat Phra Kaew.

It was this popularity that perhaps made the Lanna king Sam Fang Kaen decide to transfer the statue to the capital Chiang Mai in 1436. However, Dot was sooner said than done. The white elephant that was selected to bring the shrine with the statue to the capital is said to have refused three times. Each time he stepped in the direction of Lampang. The monarch concluded that this indicated divine intervention and moved the statue to Lampang where the Wat Phra Kaew Don Tao was built specifically to house it. The emerald Buddha remained there for 32 years and then, by order of King Tilokaraj, was transferred with due ceremony to the capital Chiang Mai, where it was placed in one of the niches of Chedi Luang. The emerald Buddha remained there until 1552. In that year, Setthathirat, the crown prince of the Laotian empire Lan Xang, who was also on the throne of Lanna at that time, took it to Luang Prabang. In the following years Lan Xang was threatened by Burmese invasions and in 1564 the now king Setthathirat transferred the Buddha to his new capital Vientiane, where he was given shelter in Haw Phra Kaew for the next 214 years.

Emerald Buddha statue at Wat Phra Kaew (Wanchana Phuangwan / Shutterstock.com)

In 1779, the Siamese warlord Chao Phraya Chakri captured Vientiane and took the statue to the then Siamese capital Thinburi where he placed it in a shrine at Wat Arun. After Chao Phraya Chakri had his former brother-in-arms, the Siamese ruler Taksin, killed in 1782, he seized power and sat on the Siamese throne as Ramai. He moved the capital to Bangkok, on the other side of the Chao Phraya and had Wat Phra Kaew built on the palace grounds, where the Emerald Buddha resides from the ceremonial transfer on March 22, 1784 until today.

As the most revered Buddha statue in the country, the Emerald Buddha is surrounded by numerous myths and legends. There are therefore numerous versions about the origin of the image. The most important ones can be found in the Jinakalamali, an early fifteenth-century Pali text relating the political and religious history of Chiang Mai and written in the roughly coeval Amarakatabuddharupanidana of Chronicle of the Emerald Buddha. These colorful stories barely indicate how this precious gem ended up in Chiang Rai. According to tradition, the statue was made in the year 43 BC and with the active help of the god Vishnu and the demigod Indra by the Buddhist enlightened sage Nagasena in the city of Pataliputra, present-day Patna in India. The statue is said to have been the object of veneration for three hundred years before it was moved to Sri Lanka as the region around Pataliputra was torn apart by a bloody civil war. According to tradition, the statue was sent from there, together with Buddhist scriptures, to the Burmese king Anuruth in the year 457 because he wanted to support the spread of Buddhism in his realm. However, the ship with the image and scrolls got off course due to a severe storm and stranded in what is now Cambodia, after which the precious cargo eventually ended up in Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat

There is a great deal of uncertainty about what exactly happened after that. According to one version, the Siamese invaded the plague-weakened Khmer empire in 1432 and took the statue to Ayutthaya. Then it would have been taken to Kamphaeng Phet and eventually – for reasons that are unclear – hidden in the chedi in Chiang Rai. This story has little credibility on historical grounds because barely two years would have elapsed between the removal in Angkor and the miraculous reappearance in Chiang Rai. It is rather likely that the Siamese or, more correctly, the rulers of Lanna had it in their possession much earlier, because the Khmer civilization had been in serious decline since the late thirteenth century, early fourteenth century. Be that as it may: On one thing we can agree, the exact origin of the Emerald Buddha will forever remain hidden in the mists of time.

Phra Jao Lan Thong (KobchaiMa / Shutterstock.com)

We would almost forget it with all the stories about the emerald green Buddha, but there is much more to discover in Wat Phra Kaew. This monastery houses one of the most beautiful and largest ancient bronze Buddha statues in the country. Built in 1890 in the Chiangsan style, ubosot stands in all its glory Phra Jao Lan Thong, a more than seven hundred years old statue that originally stood in Wat Phra Chao Lan Thong but was later transferred to Wat Ngam Muang and finally, in 1961 in Wat Phra Kaew too. The Lanna-style Phra Yok Tower, on the other hand, houses the effigy of Phra Yok Chiang Rai. Hong Luang Saeng Kaew was inaugurated on the grounds of the temple in 1995 and is certainly worth a visit. This two-storey building is a kind of mini-museum where, in addition to archaeological artifacts excavated on site, one can find mainly cultural-historical objects related to Buddhism.