The Emerald Buddha
The Emerald Buddha is a small seated image carved from a single block of green stone, usually described as jade or jasper. Its legendary history traces it to India and Sri Lanka. Its recorded history begins in 1434, when, according to chronicles, lightning struck a stupa at Chiang Rai in northern Thailand and revealed an image covered in stucco, which flaked away to show green stone. It was kept at Lampang and then at Chiang Mai, capital of Lan Na. In the sixteenth century King Setthathirath, who ruled both Lan Na and Lan Xang, took it to Luang Prabang and then to Vientiane. In 1779 a Siamese army under General Chakri, who later became King Rama I, took Vientiane and brought the image to Thonburi.
The temple
When Rama I founded Bangkok in 1782 as his new capital on the east bank of the Chao Phraya, he built the Grand Palace and, within its walls, a royal temple for the Emerald Buddha. Unlike other Thai temples, Wat Phra Kaew has no resident monks; it is the king's private chapel. The ordination hall, the ubosot, holds the image high on a gilded throne. The temple compound is crowded with buildings: the golden Phra Si Rattana Chedi in a Sri Lankan form, the Phra Mondop library holding the scriptures, a model of Angkor Wat, and the Royal Pantheon with statues of the Chakri kings, guarded by giant demon figures, yaksha, from the Ramakien.
Three times a year, at the start of the hot season, the rainy season and the cool season, the king or a representative changes the image's golden costume, a ceremony that ties the monarchy to the image's protection of the kingdom.
The Ramakien murals
The walls of the cloister that surrounds the compound are painted with the Ramakien, the Thai version of the Ramayana, in 178 panels. Rama I commissioned a new version of the epic in Thai verse in 1797, and the murals follow it, with battles, palaces, demons and monkey warriors painted in brilliant colours with gold. The murals have been repainted several times, most extensively for the Bangkok bicentenary in 1982.
Significance
The Emerald Buddha is regarded as the palladium of the Thai kingdom, and the temple is the most sacred Buddhist site in Thailand. The image's removal from Vientiane remains a sensitive matter in Laos.
Further reading
- Gombrich, Richard F. Theravada Buddhism: A Social History. Routledge, 2006
- Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism. Cambridge University Press, 2013
- Goldman, Robert P. The Ramayana of Valmiki. Princeton University Press, 1984
See also
- Ramakien — The Ramakien is the Thai national version of the Rāmāyaṇa, whose fullest text was composed under Rama I in 1797, and the source of Thailand's khon masked dance-drama and much of its royal iconography.
- The Rāmāyaṇa in painting — The Rāmāyaṇa has been illustrated continuously in Indian painting, most magnificently in the seventeenth-century Mewar series of Sāhibdīn and in the Pahari sets of the eighteenth century.
- Lan Xang — Lan Xang, "a million elephants", was the Lao kingdom founded by Fa Ngum in 1353 on the middle Mekong, ruled from Luang Prabang and later Vientiane, which divided into three rival kingdoms in the early eighteenth century.
- Ayutthaya Kingdom — Ayutthaya was the Siamese kingdom ruled from the island city of that name on the Chao Phraya from 1351 until its destruction by a Burmese army in 1767, one of the great trading states and Theravada Buddhist kingdoms of mainland Southeast Asia.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.