Wat Kamphaeng Laeng: a Khmer shrine in southern Thailand
Having only visited Phetchaburi or Phetburi as it is often called, I must admit that I was charmed by this city which is one of the oldest in Thailand.
It was once a royal residence, as evidenced by the somewhat bizarre summer palace Phra Nakhon Khiri that King Mongkut (Rama IV) had built on a hill around 1850 from an architectural point of view: an amalgam of European, Chinese and Japanese influences. In the city itself, especially along the banks of the Phet, you can still find a number of beautiful old teak houses and the more than four hundred years old Wat Yai Suwannaram with the remarkable library building in the large pond is also definitely worth a visit. This also applies in full to Wat Mahatat, a temple complex dating from the fourteenth century, which is home to a number of beautiful prangs or Khmer-style towers reminiscent of Wat Arun in Bangkok.
Another major attraction in the city is Wat Kampahaeng Laeng. This is one of the few Khmer temples that can be found outside of northeastern Thailand. After all, Phetchaburi most likely originated about a thousand years ago from an outpost of the Khmer Empire on the western coast of the Gulf of Thailand. Hardly anything is known about the origins of Wat Kamphaeng Laeng. Archaeologists assume that this temple complex was built either at the end of the eleventh or at the beginning of the twelfth century AD, which makes it the oldest surviving building in the wider area. It is certain that it was originally a Hindu temple that may have been dedicated to the goddess U-Ma. After all, in 1956 restoration work was carried out by the Thai Fine Artsdepartment found a statue of her at this location.
It is also an established fact that this temple was used by Buddhists from the fourteenth century. According to the same archaeologists, it is very likely that this temple was built by the master builders who also designed Prasat Sikharaphum in Baan Rangae in Surin. Archaeological excavations in 1987 found several fourteenth and fifteenth-century Buddha statues on the temple grounds. These finds included a virtually intact Lokhesvara and a very beautiful one Nak Prok, with the Buddha on the coiled serpent Mukalinda that shields it from sun and rain.
The name of this temple is loosely translated 'the temple with the sandstone walls' and it certainly did not steal this name because, like most Khmer buildings of that period, it was built entirely of laterite, the typical reddish-brown sandstone. Like most Khmer shrines, it faces east and was surrounded by a larger-than-man-sized wall that stretches in every direction. gopura, a passage on a cruciform ground plan, had. Beyond five prangs or towers and a small shrine, most likely added in the fifteenth century, little remains of the original temple. The other monastic buildings date from the XNUMXs. The five flask-shaped prangs in Bayon style were built according to a classical Khmer pattern with one large central tower and four smaller ones at the corners of the square plan, which were spaced XNUMX meters apart from each other. All the towers were covered with stucco, of which only a few fragments with floral motifs have survived the merciless ravages of time. The central tower was originally dedicated to Shiva. The top of this one prang, which has partially collapsed, once contained five floors, just like the four smaller ones.
Wat Kampahaeng Laeng is not the most evocative Khmer ruin, but it is interesting as proof of how far the sphere of influence of the mysterious and therefore intriguing Angkor stretched. And a visit to Petchaburi is never wasted time…