Tradition holds that the Phra Bang was cast in Ceylon in the first millennium and later carried into mainland Southeast Asia, giving the image the prestige of a Sinhalese, and thus doctrinally pure, origin. Art historians, judging by its form, favour a later Khmer manufacture. The image enters firm history in 1359, when the Khmer court is said to have presented it to Fa Ngum, founder and first king of the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang and son-in-law of the Khmer king, to underwrite the Buddhist legitimacy of his new state.
From that point the Phra Bang was the palladium of Lan Xang, and the capital that held it, formerly Muang Sua, took the name Luang Prabang in its honour. The image was twice seized and taken to Siam, in 1779 and 1827, and on both occasions was eventually returned to Laos, its journeys read as tied to the nation's fortunes. In the twentieth century King Sisavang Vatthana began, in 1963, a dedicated pavilion, the Haw Pha Bang, in the palace grounds to enshrine it; the 1975 revolution halted the work, and the pavilion was finished only in 2006, when the image was installed there.