Si Mahosot, Thailand

The ancient town of Si Mahosot, also known as Dong Si Maha Phot, has been read as the centre of the Hindu half of a religious division of the Chao Phraya valley, proposed by Srisakra Vallibhotama. Nicolas Revire rejects that division and cites textual, epigraphic and material evidence for Buddhists in the region in the seventh and eighth centuries. Imported goods are recorded from the town. Sherds of Tang ceramics and of Persian Gulf turquoise-glazed earthenware have been reported, and a fragment of a Tang coin was recovered at monument 86, of a coinage introduced between 621 and 665 and current until 907. Patcharaporn Ngernkerd and colleagues make the town one of four central towns in a survey of fifteen moated sites of eastern Thailand, measuring 1.06 km² within its moat, and the point of highest density of ancient remains in the region. Three temples, monuments 22, 25 and 86, stand inside the moat, while the Buddhist monuments at Phu Khao Thong, Wat Si Mahapho and Ban Sra Makeau lie outside it. They place the town on a former shoreline of the Gulf of Thailand, occupied since at least the sixth century. Oval clay bars with incised decoration of a type recorded here have also been found in two burials at Wat Chom Chuen in Chaliang, on the upper Yom, dated to the sixth or seventh century.