Stucco relief found at Khu Bua archaeological site. 650–700 CE, Dvaravati culture. Three female musicians on right are playing (from centre) a 5-stringed lute, cymbals, a tube zither or bar zither with gourd resonator.The laterite stairs leading up to the temple base of the Wat Khlong Suwankhiri[th]
Khu Bua (Thai: คูบัว, pronounced[kʰūːbūa̯]) is an archaeological site located in the Khu Bua subdistrict, 12km southeast of the city of Ratchaburi, Thailand. It dates from the 6th century and belongs to the Dvaravati culture, of which it was one of the major centres.:299–300,302,307–309 The moated town is among the largest of the central plain, and appears to have prospered into the 11th century.
The remains are predominantly Buddhist, both Theravada and Mahayana, although Brahmanical material has also been found, and the stucco and terracotta sculpture, wheels of the law, and imported glass beads recovered from the site are mostly held in national museums. Sculpture from Khu Bua has been used to argue where the Viṣṇu of Pong Tuek[de] was carved, and the possibility that Si Thep held some control over it in the 8th century has been raised as a question. The town has been placed on inland routes to the tin and lead of the western hills, and the later town of Ratchaburi has been treated as growing out of it.
Site and excavation
The site is enclosed by oval ramparts and moats.:3 Dvaravati moats have been characterised as circular or irregular, while regular rectangular moats have been used to mark sites founded in the Angkorian period.:4 Forty-four archaeological sites have been found within and outside the rampart, with the foundations of Wat Khlong Suwankhiri[th] being the largest and best preserved. In a survey of the moated settlements of the central plain the enclosure measures 160 ha, which makes it the largest site in the Nakhon Pathom region after Nakhon Pathom itself.:24 Some forty moated towns of this kind have been counted across the plain between the 6th and 12th centuries. They shared religious practice, art styles, and the use of Mon for inscriptions, but showed no sign of political integration beyond, perhaps, local confederations.:24 At Khok Phrik (โคกพริก), on the Maenam Om canal, a large stoneware jar was found at a place described as continuous with the moated town.:9
Excavations were carried out in 1957, 1960 and 1961. The finds, ceramic figurines, wheels of the law, and stone tablets, are now in the national museums at Ratchaburi and Bangkok, as well as in the small museum next to Wat Khlong. The architectural and artistic features are those of the Indian Gupta Dynasty, which promoted Buddhism in the region after it was first introduced during the reign of Ashoka.
Two sets of glass beads from the city have been analysed. An earlier sample of 186 beads from ten Dvaravati sites of the central plain included, from Khu Bua, beads of a Middle Eastern plant-ash soda-lime composition and one soda-alumina bead whose source was left open, recorded as "Pakistan?".:2535–2536 A later assemblage of twenty-five ornaments, twenty-two of them glass, came from the Khok Phithak mound inside the walled city in a horizon of about the 6th to 8th centuries CE. Most of the glass analysed is a mineral soda-alumina assigned to South Asian production, and particularly to Sri Lanka and southeastern India. It was drawn rather than wound, in the manner of the Indo-Pacific industry.:3–4,8–9,11–14,16,18,20–21 Pieces of plant-ash soda-lime glass, of recycled iron-smelting slag, and of lapidary-worked chalcedony or agate stand beside it, read as further routes of supply.:10,15,17–21 Nothing at the site indicates that glass was made there; with the town's inland position in the Mae Klong basin, the ornaments have been read as reaching a place of consumption and possibly of redistribution through coastal and riverine routes.:21
Art and religion
More than sixty ancient sites have been recorded in the area, most of them places of Buddhist worship, both Theravada and Mahayana. The objects excavated in the Khu Bua city area include sculpture in stucco and clay used to decorate buildings, such as Buddha images, Bodhisattvas, celestial figures, and figures of rank. Tools and fittings were recovered with them, and Khu Bua appears to have prospered through the Dvaravati period, between roughly the 6th and the 11th centuries CE. Most of the finds are held at the national museum in Ratchaburi.
A stucco relief of female musicians, of about the 7th or 8th century, was excavated at Stūpa no. 10 and is now in the national museum in Bangkok.:36 Further stucco from the site has been read as warriors and guards. One group shows two men standing together, each clasping a sword whose hilt ends in a ring. Two others show a prisoner questioned before a figure taken for an official by his dress, and a guard kicking a prisoner, the second of them from Chedi no. 10, reported in the national museum in Bangkok.:1515–1516 Stucco and terracotta figures from the site have also been identified as foreign merchants, on their features and on their tall hats and boots, together with figures from U Thong and Nakhon Pathom.:2535 The essays in Defining Dvāravatī place the figures identified as West Asian merchants at site 40.:55–56,58
Sculpture from Khu Bua has since acquired a wider significance for the art history of the period. Numerous Khu Bua pieces have been found to share a facial morphology with the Viṣṇu of Pong Tuek[de], including continuous arching eyebrows, long broad noses with a pronounced ridge, and similarly shaped eyes and lips. The resemblance has been taken as evidence that the Pong Tuek image was carved in or near western Thailand rather than imported.:34 Khu Bua is also counted among the Dvaravati and Dvaravati-related centres that have yielded Brahmanical as well as Buddhist material, alongside U Thong, Nakhon Pathom, Si Thep, Si Mahosot, and Chaiya.:24
The western Dvaravati centres have been placed at the inland end of routes running from the coast and the Tenasserim range by the Mae Klong and the Phachi. They led to the tin of Suan Phueng, Thung Kha, and Chom Bueng in Ratchaburi province, and to the lead worked between the Khwae Noi and the Khwae Yai. Lawa highlanders collected aromatic wood, horn, hide, beeswax, and stream minerals for the middlemen.:12–13
The great rectangular platform of Wat Khlong has been compared with the Khao Khlang Nai monument at Si Thep, which is similar in character. Both have been suggested to have been originally chedi-wihan, with stupas at the western end and halls for worship at the eastern.:93 The comparison has also raised the possibility that Si Thep exercised some control over Khu Bua in the 8th century, offered as a question and not as a conclusion.:93 Finger-marked bricks have been reported from Chedi Wat Khlong, recorded as Site No. 18. The grooves were cut before firing and have been read as helping a wet clay mortar adhere.:188
Afterwards
The later town of Ratchaburi has been treated as having grown out of Khu Bua, in the same way that Phetchaburi is derived from the coastal site at Khao Chao Lai on the Cha-am shore.:9 Chinese ceramics of the Han, Five Dynasties, Tang, and Song periods have been recorded as dredged from the Mae Klong in front of Wat Ko Nammathapathawalanchayaram at Ratchaburi.:9–10
Wat Khlong was registered as a historical site in 1962.
References
↑Higham, C., 2014, Early Mainland Southeast Asia, Bangkok: River Books Co., Ltd., ISBN9786167339443
ธิติพงศ์ มีทอง (2019). "การศึกษาโบราณสถานเมืองโบราณคูบัวของจังหวัดราชบุรี"[The Study of Archaeological Sites in Kubua Town in Ratchaburi Province](PDF) (in Thai). Nakhon Pathom Rajabhat University. Archived from the original(PDF) on 25 April 2024. Retrieved 26 April 2024.
