The swampy, sparsely populated location provided an ideal setting for meditating monks. Access was only by river or along the klongs bordering the compound emphasizing the isolation and desolation of the marsh. Outside the temple lay the charnel ground for the disposal of the dead too impoverished to afford a cremation. As they decayed the monks meditated on the impermanence of life. When Ayutthaya fell the temple too was decaying, abandoned to the swamp.

King Taksin established a new capital at Thonburi on the western bank of the Chao Phraya River. Under his patronage Chinese merchants set up a trading community on the opposite bank on what would later become the site of the royal palaces of Bangkok.

When King Rama I (1782 to 1809) relocate the capital to Bangkok the Chinese vacated their settlement and accept the marshy swamp just north of Wat Sampheng. The king’s brother, Prince Surasi, restore the temple and its status was raised to a royal temple of the second rank and granted a new name, Lotus of the Ganges Temple or Wat Pathum Khongkha.

Being situated down stream it was ideally suited to become the resting site for royal ashes. The remains of bones were enshrined while the remaining ashes were placed in clay bowls, wrapped in white cloth and rowed on the royal funeral barge to the temple where they were solemnly lowered into the water and allowed to sink. This honour was also extended to the king’s revered white elephants. They were either buried in the adjoining fields or submerge in the water.

Most who made their final journey to the temple were already dead before they embarked, though some were not so fortunate because the fields flanking the temple served as the royal execution ground. The courts of Burma and Siam shared a tradition which forbade spilling royal blood on the earth when errant nobility were executed. The condemned were placed in a velvet sack; a blow from a sandalwood club smashed their skull or broke their neck. Those of lower rank were simply beheaded by sword.

In 1804 the first recorded royal executions to be carried out at Wat Pathum Khongkha. Prince Lamduan and Inthapatm, sons of the recently deceased Prince Surasi, were found guilty of plotting with palace officials to overthrow Rama I. They died at the temple rescued from oblivion by their father, renovated to honour their grandfather and renamed and awarded royal status by the man they had hoped to depose.

Next was Prince Katsatranuchi in 1809 who was a son of the former King Taksin and the grandson of Rama I, his mother being a royal consort to Taksin and daughter of the then Prince Chakri (Rama I). He was accused of plotting against the king and executed along with his six sons, a brother and sister. Forty co-plotters of lower rank were decapitated on the same day.

The last was in 1848. Late in the reign of King Rama III, Prince Rakronnaret tried to place himself in a powerful position to claim the throne. Found guilty of treason by plotting against Prince Mongkut, who later became King Rama IV, and accused of taking bribes and misappropriation of funds he died on the execution stone in December.

Once an isolated temple bordered in by lonely marsh and canals, Wat Pathum Khongkha is hemmed in today by the side streets of Chinatown. Step off the crowded, noisy lanes into the temple and the visitor enters a world of relative calm. Outside an old Bodhi tree (Ficus Religiosa), brought as a sapling from Sri Lanka in 1862, stands near the exit.

Nearby, a sala houses the execution stone upon which Prince Rakronnaret died. The slab now on end has a smooth, polished front while the back is unfinished. Placed neatly in front are clothes in the style worn by the prince on that fateful day.

Today little remains of the klongs, charnel fields or execution grounds, yet in a way the area has kept a link with the past. Along the nearby narrow streets there are still dismembered carcasses and body parts piled high upon each other or crammed into open fronted shop houses, for this area of Chinatown is where old vehicles are broken up. Here they are expertly stripped down and dissembled, their parts salvaged and reassembled for further use. Considering the history it may seem rather irreverent but in a way it is a contemporary continuation of the original charnel fields with machines replacing man in metallic mortality.

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