A Study of Buddhist Servey and Conservative Archaeological Sites of Nongkhai Province

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the following issues: (1) the historical background of belief and rituals in Buddhism historical places in Nongkai province, (2) the pathways of conserving the Buddhism historical places in Nongkai province, (3) the development of the Buddhism historical places as a cultural tourist attraction. The study collected data from three main fields such as (1) documentation and historical evidence, (2) the purposive sampling of twenty people concerning the maintenance of Buddhism historical places and objectives. The research instruments are: documentation analysis, interviewing and the data analysis is done mainly through the investigation of document and historical evidence under the inductive analysis. The study presents the
significant issues as follows: 1) the historical background of Buddhism places in Nongkai namely: (1) the biography of Venerable father Phrasai, Po-chai temple, (2) the history of Phra That La-Nong, Phra That temple, (3) the
history of Phra That Bang Puan, Phra That Bang Puan temple, (4) the history of Phra Ong Tue, Sri Chompu Ong Tue, (5) the history of Phra That Phone Jik Vieng Ngua. The second issue is related to the rituals in five Buddhism historical places, it was found that they associated Buddhism, beliefs, and local rituals. To the conservative ways, it reveals the problems regarding the structure since the misperception of beliefs. Thus the plausible elements to be maintained are the structure and the beliefs and local rituals. The last issue is concerned with the cooperative contribution from both government and private sectors to promote the ways of historical places development as
cultural tourist attractions under the concept of awareness encouragement toward historical place conservation, the job opportunity encouragement.