Wat Phra That Hariphunchai

About

Wat Phra That Hariphunchai stands at the centre of Lamphun in northern Thailand, its principal chedi rising in burnished gold over the rooftops of the old town. The temple's roots stretch back to the eleventh century, while the central stupa descends from a still earlier structure raised in the ninth.

The king of Hariphunchai is said to have built a stupa here in 897 CE to enshrine a hair of the Buddha — the kernel that became the present central chedi. The wider precinct, founded by King Athitayarat, dates from 1044. King Tilokaraja of Lanna undertook a major rebuilding in 1443, while the unusual pyramid-shaped Chedi Suwanna was raised in 1418. In the 1930s, the venerated monk Khru Ba Sriwichai led a further restoration.

The 1443 restoration embellished the bell-shaped chedi with repoussé Buddha images upon bronze sheets fixed to the anda — work of the Lanna Early Classic period. The pyramid-shaped Chedi Suwanna in the northwest corner, forty-six metres high in the Dvaravati style of the Haripunchai period, follows the model of similar stupas at the nearby Wat Chama Thewi. Its image appears on the reverse of the Thai one-satang coin.

The wat's wihan holds a fifteenth-century Lanna Buddha. A nineteenth-century library is approached by a naga-guarded staircase. Close by stands a great bronze gong cast in 1860, said to be the largest in the world. At the southwestern corner, a stone marked with four footprints honours a legend of the Buddha's own visit to the area.

History

The earliest stupa on this site was raised in 897 CE, said to enshrine a hair of the Buddha. The wider sanctuary was founded by Hariphunchai king Athitayarat in 1044. The first major rebuilding came in 1443 under King Tilokaraja of Lanna, who enlarged the central stupa; the pyramid-shaped Chedi Suwanna had been raised earlier, in 1418.

Further renovations followed in the 1930s under the celebrated northern monk Khru Ba Sriwichai, and the wat has remained a central place of northern Thai devotion ever since. A poem of around 720 lines in Northern Thai, Nirat Hariphunchai, recounts a pilgrim's journey from Chiang Mai to worship at this temple, possibly in 1517 or 1518.