7 The Stupa of Phra Maha That, Nakhon Si Thammarat

33| The Footprint of the Lord Buddha, Saraburi

The mondop housing the Footprint of the Lord Buddha, one of the most sacred places of Thailand, is the architectural style of Ayutthaya art. It is established on the top of a hill in Saraburi.

According to a Saraburi folk tale, a hunter named Phran Boon followed a deer that he had shot to the ridge of a low hill. There, he saw the wounded deer drinking water from a small pond. Astonishingly, the wounds on the creature’s body suddenly disappeared. When the deer fled, the hunter came to look at the pond and saw that the pond was in fact the footprint of the Buddha. Being reported and investigating the site himself, Phra Chao Song Tham found the ancient Buddha footprint of which its appearance in Siam was foretold by Ceylonese monks in a Ceylonese scripture.

Muang Boran rebuilt Mondop of Footprint in accordance with two distinctive accounts from Thai literature: Nirat Phra Bat written by Sunthorn Phu, the eminent poet of the Rattanakosin era; and Punnowat Kham Chan by Phra Maha Nak of Wat Tha Sai. Both stories had been written before the reconstruction of the mondop took place in the 19th century A.D. The interior was rebuilt from an earlier Thai document by Khun Khlon. The footprint housed in the mondop at Muang Boran was a gift from an Indian president.