Study of the Site
Excavations by Pierre Dupont
Wat Phra Men in Nakhon Pathom was excavated for the first time by Pierre
Dupont and his team during two missions in 1939 and 1940, before the Second
World War put an end to those campaigns. He had aimed at constructing a picture of
the architectural remains of Dvāravatī and developing a methodological framework
for the study of the abundant Buddhist sculpture—which Dupont then labeled as
“indo-mône”—already unearthed but deprived of any archeological context. Some
Buddha fragments seated in the so-called “European fashion” (bhadrāsana)3 were
reported to have been found and removed from the site prior to the excavations. In
addition, the presence of a vast hillock at the site signaled the possibility of further
discoveries.
The excavations of Wat Phra Men thus inaugurated the strictly archeological
work of the École française d’Extrême-Orient in Thailand. In contrast with the repair
work and anastylosis of the Khmer monuments, the excavations here were different
because the monument was deeply buried. Dupont (1959, 27)5
describes the general
composition of Wat Phra Men after his excavations as follows (figure 2):
The monument of Wat P’ra Men is built out of bricks and consists primarily
of:
- A full square central core made of bricks;
- A square gallery surrounding the central core;
- An intermediate space located between the gallery and the external
enclosure, corresponding to a part of the building perhaps occupied
by a terrace;
- An external facing which comprises three successive stages,
of square plan, supported by a broad plinth and one or two
platforms.
Dupont noticed three different stages of construction or renovation at Wat
Phra Men. Basically, state III, the most recent, was an enlarged and indented version
of the original square basement (states I and II) that bore different moldings and two
lateral secondary projections on each face (1959, 32–42; Piriya 1975, 285–286).
From the ground plan it is not clear whether the circumambulating gallery and the
16 “cave-like niches” around the central structure—the functions of which remain
to be elucidated—were later additions or part of the original plan. Moreover, Dupont
thought that four colossal seated Buddha images had been installed against the
central core at the four cardinal directions.