Luang Pho Khong and monastic life in the Mae Klong basin
Phra Upatcha Khong Dhammachoto, commonly called Luang Pho or Luang Pu Khong of Wat Bang Kaphom, was a major abbot in Samut Songkhram. Collectors now associate him most strongly with his B.E. 2484 portrait medal, but the Provincial Office of Buddhism and local histories preserve a much broader career. From B.E. 2448 to 2486 he administered and restored Wat Bang Kaphom, worked in wood, stucco, painting and Buddha-image construction, served as a preceptor and meditation teacher, and connected monastic and lay knowledge across the Mae Klong basin.
Birth and early years
The fuller biographies place him in the Chanprasoet family. His father was Ket, his mother Thongyu, and he was born at Bang Samrong, now in Tambon Rong Hip, Bang Khonthi District. Accounts disagree over his exact birth date. One strand gives 3 April B.E. 2407; others give 2 or 3 April B.E. 2408 while also calling the day Saturday. Calendar checking shows that 2 April 1864, B.E. 2407, was Saturday; 3 April was Sunday, while the corresponding dates in 1865 fell on Sunday and Monday. Ordination at the age of twenty in B.E. 2427 and death aged seventy-eight in B.E. 2486 also fit B.E. 2407 more closely. Calendar calculation reveals the conflict but cannot replace an early family or Sangha register.
A local story says that he was born in a small room beneath a floating house and that a boy born there was expected to remain in the monkhood for life. At twelve, Khong became a novice at Wat Mueang Mai to learn literacy and Buddhist subjects. At about nineteen he temporarily returned to lay life to help his family, then entered the Sangha again when he reached full ordination age. This sequence—novicehood, a brief period at home and higher ordination—is consistent across several biographies.
Ordination and teachers
He received full ordination at Wat Mueang Mai in August B.E. 2427 and the monastic name Dhammachoto, “one who shines through Dhamma”. Achan Duang served as preceptor, Phra Athikan Chui as the act-announcing teacher and Phra Athikan Thim of Wat Mueang Mai as the instructing teacher. A biography gives the ritual date as a Friday on the sixth waxing moon but does not supply a complete solar date, so the exact solar date remains uncertain. Khong remained with his preceptor and studied texts, meditation and traditional subjects. A specific later account says that he studied the old Pali grammar *Mula Kaccayana* with a local lay teacher named Nok for thirteen years; the duration remains a later biographical claim awaiting an early memorial or teaching record.
A Chulalongkorn University thesis by Saipan Puriwanchana, supervised by Siraporn Nathalang, maps a large network of teachers attached to his biography. It associates Phra Achan Khong of Wat Ratchaburana Nam Om with traditional medicine, ritual knives and holy water; Luang Pho Rai of Wat Khao Yi San, Luang Pho Chun of Wat Chang Phueak, Luang Pho Iam of Wat Lat Dan, Luang Pho Tat of Wat Bang Wan Thong, Luang Pho Chu of Wat Dao Dong, Luang Pho Pan of Wat Rong Tham, Phra Khru Inthomphi (Si) of Wat Nam Om, a senior monk of Wat Arun in Bangkok, and Luang Pho Thong of Wat Nong Bok in Ratchaburi with other named practices. These accounts of study survive through biographies and oral traditions, linking monasteries across the Mae Klong basin.
A biography also associates Duang with sacred-powder preparation and Tat of Wat Bang Wan Thong with na pat talot. It names the Wat Chang Phueak teacher as Run, unlike Chun in the research transcription. The spelling difference needs original records; it does not establish two separate teachers.
Craft and temple restoration
Around his nineteenth rain Khong's health reportedly weakened, leading him to travel less and teach tranquillity and insight meditation more extensively. He also applied his craft skills within Wat Mueang Mai, repairing a damaged scripture library and, according to the biographies, modelling a Buddha image in the Pa Lelai posture. In his twenty-first rain, B.E. 2448, the abbacy of Wat Bang Kaphom became vacant and local residents invited him to take charge. The Samut Songkhram Provincial Office of Buddhism confirms his abbacy from B.E. 2448 until 2486 and explicitly connects his craft ability with the extensive restoration of the monastery.
Wat Bang Kaphom itself predates him. The official temple history traces its community memory to the late Ayutthaya or early Thonburi period. In the foundation legend, a refugee couple hid from Burmese soldiers inside a large woven bamboo grain container called a phom and vowed to build a monastery if they survived. The name Bang kap Phom was later said to have become Bang Kaphom. The monastery preserves a fourfold footprint shrine, a Chinese-influenced hall with round doors and relief sculpture, a reclining Buddha and a statue of Khong. Not all these features were created by him. His achievement was to revive and sustain an older but deteriorated religious site, not to originate every monument now within its walls.
He restored structures and used his knowledge of carpentry, stucco, decorative painting and image-making to supervise or personally undertake temple work. The provincial temple history dates the grant of its consecrated ordination boundary to B.E. 2471. The buildings and objects visible today include inherited monuments, work repaired under his administration and memorials added after his death. They reflect several generations of temple history, rather than the achievements of a single abbot.
Monastic office and daily practice
His administrative chronology contains a smaller unresolved conflict. Recent newspapers and biographies usually say that he became head of the Bang Kaphom subdistrict Sangha and a monastic preceptor in B.E. 2464. A later transcription even cites appointment document 3/2464, dated 5 January. Another account places his subdistrict appointment as early as B.E. 2455. The two offices may have been received in different years, or one year may be a copying error. The appointment paper and provincial Sangha archive are needed. Once he served as preceptor, accounts say he ordained large numbers of men each year, assisted by Achan Plong Brahmasaro and Achan Koet Gandhavile in the two formal teaching roles.
Despite administrative demands, tradition says that in the fourth lunar month each year he pitched a meditation umbrella in the cemetery beside the monastery for about a month. The practice was called rukkhamun beside the temple and was understood as a return to solitude after a year of worldly responsibilities. Disciple memories also portray him as receiving poor villagers, officials and wealthy patrons without favouritism. Phao Sakuntasut, whom Khong ordained, later became a major transmitter of these accounts in amulet magazines. His recollections preserve a picture of his teacher’s daily practice and dealings with visitors.
Disciples and education
His disciples worked beyond Bang Kaphom. The provincial tourism office’s temple history recounts how villagers sought Khong’s help for declining Wat Chulamanee. He sent his pupil Chaem Solot to revive it. The same history names Nueang Kovito as a student of both Khong and Chaem, not merely a later-generation successor.
A biography published under Wat Chulamanee’s name dates Nueang’s ordination to 29 July B.E. 2475: Khong was preceptor, Chaem the act-announcing teacher, and Plong the instructing teacher. It also records subsequent meditation and traditional studies with these teachers, distinguishing ritual roles from later instruction.
Sai Sumangkhalo offers another picture of discipleship. A later biography describes study under Khong, secretarial and temple duties, and involvement in his portrait medals. With Khong’s consent, Sai became abbot of Wat Chan Charoen Suk in B.E. 2483. This later account still needs temple-record corroboration.
Sai’s biography adds that he passed all three nak tham examinations, taught Buddhist studies at Bang Kaphom and occasionally primary pupils at Wat Nang Wang. In B.E. 2483 he opened a primary school in the halls of Wat Chan Charoen Suk. This was Sai’s work, not a school founded personally by Khong.
The portrait medal of B.E. 2484
The first struck portrait medal of B.E. 2484 is his principal lifetime metal issue. Collector histories say that Phraya Si Surasongkhram (Plueang Dilokayothin) encountered Khong during a major consecration at Wat Ratchabophit in B.E. 2481 and later obtained permission to make a medal when the monk reached seventy-seven. It is an oval darkened-copper medal with a soldered loop. The obverse bears a frontal half-length portrait and the legend “Phra Upatcha Khong, Wat Bang Kaphom, aged 77, B.E. 2484”, with a dok chan mark below. The reverse carries a five-Buddha yantra, three unalome forms, four lines of Pali-derived script, and the inscriptions “gain, fruit, increase, multiply” and “disciples made this in gratitude to Luang Pho”. The inscriptions, yantra, loop and edge are among the details collectors compare when studying this issue.
Collector literature commonly reports a mintage of 3,000: about 200 with a ridged coin-like edge and 2,800 with a normal raised edge. It further says that alloy from a B.E. 2481 Wat Ratchabophit ceremony was mixed into the copper sheets, that Khong inscribed them and consecrated the issue through the rains, and that donations supported a monastery in the Ayutthaya area, with one medal given for four baht. The repetition of these details across modern articles does not substitute for a production ledger, family archive or contemporary temple account. The numbers remain a collector tradition pending primary documentation; edge type alone cannot establish authenticity.
Final years and memorial objects
Khong continued working on Buddha images despite chronic illness. On 6 February B.E. 2486, the more specific narrative places him on scaffolding about three wa high at Wat Laen Hai, finishing the eyebrows of a new principal Buddha or having just installed its topknot. Feeling faint, he composed himself with his hands in a meditation posture and died peacefully. Disciples only realized what had happened after he had remained still for some time. Shorter modern accounts omit Wat Laen Hai and can leave the impression that the event occurred at Wat Bang Kaphom. The specifically named location is Wat Laen Hai; the posture-at-death detail remains disciple biography awaiting comparison with a funeral memorial. He was about seventy-eight completed years old and had completed fifty-eight rains.
The B.E. 2486 medal later called the pat tan issue was made after his death. Thai research and collector histories generally attribute it to his successor, Luang Pho Plong, for the funeral. Its popular name derives from a later story in which a palm-leaf trimming knife failed to injure a wearer. Whatever devotional importance that story carries, the chronology is decisive: the object was created after 6 February B.E. 2486. It is therefore a posthumous memorial, distinct from objects made or personally consecrated by Khong during his lifetime.
Stories among devotees
Alongside portrait medals, disciple traditions describe takrut, consecrated pills, cloth bands, the maha rangap flag, bags, wax preparations and blessings upon the head. Khong is said to have forbidden recipients to use sacred objects for robbery or harm; if they did, he recalled the objects or ordered them discarded. Wartime stories tell of houses bearing his flags escaping bombing, and of no aircraft passing above the monastery during his funeral. Devotees remembered these events as their teacher’s protection. Such stories must not be used as a reason to test sacred objects with weapons.
A retelling attributed to Chai Sai-anukun describes a blessed cord allowing a dying man to await his family. They refused to return it, prolonging his suffering. A red-clad messenger appealed to Khong; after the cord was removed, the man died. The account survives among devotees; it is not a method for prolonging a patient’s life.
Another story concerns a journey to Ratchaburi. Told that the riverboat had already passed, Khong said he could still catch it. According to the tale, its engine failed and it drifted back to his landing. As he boarded, the engine restarted, leaving passengers astonished at what they took to be his foreknowledge.
An enduring reputation
Collectors remember Khong in the mnemonic group “Chat, Chong, Khong, I”, associated with prominent wartime monks, and place his B.E. 2484 medal among a bencha phakhi of celebrated portrait medals. These are not orders or certification systems founded by Khong. Temple restoration, disciples and devotional stories carried his memory beyond his lifetime, while the price and reputation of a medal remain distinct from the authenticity of any individual example.