The name
The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, in the seventh century, mentioned a country called Duoluobodi between Sri Kshetra in Burma and Ishanapura in Cambodia, and the Tang histories record embassies from it. In the 1960s silver coins were found at Nakhon Pathom and other sites inscribed in Sanskrit with the words "merit of the lord of Dvaravati", confirming the name. Whether Dvaravati was a single kingdom or a cultural sphere shared by a number of towns is debated. Many historians now use the name for the culture rather than a state.
The towns
The Dvaravati settlements were moated towns, often oval or irregular in plan, on the rivers and the old coastline of the Chao Phraya plain, which then extended further inland than today. Nakhon Pathom, the largest, covered several square kilometres; its modern great stupa, the Phra Pathom Chedi, encases an older monument. U Thong, Khu Bua and Si Thep were other major centres. Si Thep, on the edge of the Khorat plateau, has a double moated town and monuments of both Dvaravati and later Khmer periods, and was inscribed by UNESCO in 2023 with associated Dvaravati sites. Their economy combined rice farming with trade with India, China and the Malay peninsula; Roman and Indian objects have been found at U Thong.
Religion and art
Dvaravati was predominantly Buddhist, and its inscriptions in Pali are among the earliest evidence of Theravada Buddhism in mainland Southeast Asia, though Mahayana and Hindu images have also been found. The most distinctive monuments are stone wheels of the law, dharmachakras, set on pillars, symbolising the Buddha's first sermon, often with crouching deer at their base. Dvaravati Buddha images, standing or seated in the European manner with both hands in the gesture of teaching, show influence from the Gupta and post-Gupta art of India, especially of Sarnath and the western Deccan caves, developed into a local style. Stucco and terracotta figures decorated the bases of stupas.
The inscriptions are in Old Mon, the language of the Mon people who later lived in lower Burma, as well as Pali and Sanskrit. Dvaravati is therefore regarded as an early Mon culture.
Decline and legacy
From the late tenth and eleventh centuries the Khmer kings of Angkor extended their rule over much of central Thailand, and Lopburi became a Khmer provincial centre. In the north, the kingdom of Haripunjaya at Lamphun, founded according to legend by Queen Chamadevi from Lopburi, continued Mon Buddhist culture until the Tai conquest in the late thirteenth century. The Theravada tradition of the Dvaravati towns formed part of the background from which the Buddhism of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya developed.
Further reading
- Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
- Gombrich, Richard F. Theravada Buddhism: A Social History. Routledge, 2006
- Higham, Charles. The Civilization of Angkor. University of California Press, 2001
See also
- Buddhism — Buddhism is a religious and philosophical tradition founded in northern India in the 5th century BCE by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, centred on the Four Noble Truths and a path to liberation from suffering.
- Khmer Empire — The Khmer Empire was a Southeast Asian state centered on Angkor in present-day Cambodia that flourished from 802 to 1431 CE, building its political and religious order on Indian Hindu and, later, Buddhist models.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.