This thesis strives to uncover the central narrative latent in the forms, symbols, and architectural order of Wat Phra Chetuphon, a major royal temple in Bangkok, and to consider its revelatory significance in relation to the broader question of Thai sacred building. Conventionally Wat Pho's architecture is assumed to follow a fully formed Siamese tradition.1 Though conceived within a newly challenging historical context, and with a novel pedagogic programme, the architecture's symbolic value has been, therefore, treated as largely self evident. Yet surprisingly neither the traditions of Thai sacred architecture nor their specific expression at Wat Pho have been clearly articulated. After outlining the conceptual context the thesis undertakes a detailed examination of the temple's different parts and their arrangement. This descriptive strategy proposes Wat Pho's architecture as the primary document available for study, with its specific forms and experience orienting the supporting textual research. Existing scholarship, canonic Theravada Buddhist texts, Brahmanic mythology and the specificities of Siamese history and culture are brought into the discussion as directed by the architecture's particularities. Those forms such as the bai sema and the chofa, which identify the temple's indigenous character and symbolic potential without, however, having universally accepted meanings, are of particular significance to the argument. Equally the complexities of Wat Pho's plan and its experience are considered in relation to their narrative potential. This descriptive foundation establishes the facts of the architecture and its associations in order to ground the identification of a range of possible narratives. These are reviewed in relation to the symbolic assumptions regarding the Thai temple and Wat Pho that exist. From this foundation a new essential narrative structure is proposed. Like most of the sacred architecture throughout the region Wat Pho expresses aspects of a Buddhist cosmology. Yet in contrast to a spatial analogue (or map) of the universe centred on Mount Meru prevalent elsewhere, it is argued here that Wat Pho's architecture, and the Thai temple in general, articulates a cosmological understanding through a form of represented event; a mimetic recreation of the Buddha's descent from Tavatimsa heaven where he had gone to preach to his mother and the assembled gods. In conclusion Wat Pho's cosmological vision is placed within its own artistic and historical contexts, exemplary of Thai sacred architecture at the culminating moment of its traditional expression and impending transformation. Wat Phra Chetuphon is popularly known as Wat Pho, referencing its earlier name, Wat Photaram, which predated its transformation under the Chakri (Bangkok) dynasty.
