This shrine encloses a golden statue of
Buddha that sprang up from beneath the earth long ago.
The story is of a young boy who tied his buffalo to
what he thought was a post; it was in an area at that
time given over to the raising of animals. After doing
so, he fell down in agony and died. The father of the
boy dreamed that the reason his son had died was for
the sin of tying a filthy buffalo to a sacred object,
that what the boy thought was a post was in reality
the golden peak of the Buddha's conical cap. He told
his neighbors the dream and they all went out to dig
up the statue but had no success.
Later, at the time of Thao Thep Kasatri's heroic defense
against the Burmese in 1785, the invaders tried to succeed
where the villagers had failed; their intention was
to take the statue back to Burma. Sacred objects and
slaves were then the most sought after spoil for armies:
Holy statues brought good luck to their possessors,
and the slaves were used for work, and to populate places
that lacked inhabitants - a frequent problem four rulers
in Southeast Asia, who had a great deal of land but
very few subjects. The Burmese, hewer, were unable to
retrieve the golden Buddha despite several attempts;
they were finally driven off by a swarm of angry hornets.
After this the villagers decided to protect their miraculous
statue by covering the part that stuck up from the ground
with a plaster cast of Buddha's head and shoulders which
is the way it is today. Located north of the traffic
light on the outskirts of Thalang Town. A large sigh
shows the entrance.
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