The city of Anuradhapura is a huge ancient city – one of the greatest centres of Buddhism as well as one of the greatest cities of its age – established two thousand years ago and developed until 993 when it was laid waste by Indian invaders.
It’s difficult to convey the city’s size – it had dozens of monasteries populated by as many as ten thousand monks and it is still full of enormous dagobas (stupas) some of which were surpassed in scale only by the Great Pyramids at Giza.
The largest stood 120 metres high (just surpassed by two of the Great Pyramids) and, although it has lost its uppermost portion, it’s still the tallest and largest structure made entirely of brick anywhere on earth. It contains more than 90 million bricks!
When you see a standard picture, it looks big:
But it’s not until you get up close that you get a sense of scale: the three guys are cleaning off the stuff that encroaches all the time in this verdant climate:
The city has stunning artificial lakes in order to catch monsoon rain which provided water for the city and irrigation for the surrounding arid plains to grow rice. The first were developed around the third century BCE, getting bigger and bigger in the third and fifth centuries.
The system provided water for monasteries and for bathing pools through a system of hydraulics and gradients, some of which are still working today.
Engineering aside, we were fascinated by one of the kings – Dutugemunu the Disobedient (161-137 BCE) of the area who, we understand, at twelve refused his father’s request that he swear allegiance to a nearby Tamil king. Apparently he threw his rice bowl from the table and declared, furiously, that he would prefer to starve than declare loyalty to a foreign overlord. He then sent items of women’s clothing to his father to demonstrate his contempt for him!
Needless to say, in due course he gained the throne and went off to beat off the Tamil king with an army of monks and a spear which had a Buddhist relic set into its shaft. The battles went on for fifteen years …
Once he had captured the city, he went to bathe in the river and left his spear in the ground. But he couldn’t pull it out and believed it to be a message from heaven because he had once eaten a bowl of chillies without offering any to the monks. So he built yet another dagoba as compensation.
One can have too many dagobas – but we were lucky enough to see a village puja arrive at the first one we visited, complete with musicians and offerings:
We also saw a great example of collective volunteering outside the temple as men, women and children worked together to dig out the roots of an enormous tree that had fallen during last month’s cyclone:
As we toured round dagobas and monastic ruins in our air-conditioned car, we began to dread getting out of the car and walking in our socked feet (ie no shoes) to the next dagoba – the stones were heating up and there was little shade. We were glad, therefore, when our guide took us to our final destination – the Sacred Bodhi Tree.
In short, for those who don’t know about Buddhism, the Buddha received enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya in India. A cutting was taken and brought to Sri Lanka. When the original was destroyed, this one survived and cuttings were taken back to Bodhgaya; since then new trees from cuttings have been sent to temples throughout Southeast Asia.
You can’t get very near the tree but you can see its gold supports:
There were loads of pilgrims visiting the tree and the dagobas, all dressed in white. There were far fewer tourists than we expected, apparently put off by the earlier cyclone.
One final photo: at the massive temple (Jetavana dagoba), our guide pointed out some ancient graffiti on the pavement as well as stoneworker doodling on a game of noughts and crosses (or some such thing):
He believes that the doodling is an elephant’s foot. You can decide for yourselves!
Fantastic shots of the village puja and sounds like a fascinating place – always puzzled by war-mongering Buddhists but sounds like the young prince was never much of a Buddhist! Btw the graffiti looks more like an eroticised woman than an elephant’s foot to me, but then that might just be the Rorschach inkblot syndrome.
Yes, we found the guide’s repeated reference to non- violent Buddhists quite hard to reconcile with these tales of fury and battles but what do we know? In terms of the graffiti, I can’t see either an elephants foot or eroticised woman in the second one – the first one is clearly an elephant’s foot.
Ashoka sent his son and daughter to Sri Lanka with a sprig of the Bodhi tree. He also sent the Buddha’s collarbone, apparently. Did you see that? (New learning; I’m reading Dalrymple’s Golden Road.)
Not a word has been said about the Buddha’s collarbone though much is made of The Tooth ( see earlier posts). Please continue to share your new learning – v helpful!
This all looks really interesting. Reminds me unsurprisingly of Sanchi. When we went there were crowds of Sri Lankan Buddhists all in white.
I really like the fact they all wear white to go to the temple – it looks wonderful and feels very respectful. It’s only the inevitable monkeys that let the whole thing down by using any opportunity to eat the flowers and other offerings.
Wow that’s quite a sized dagoba– thanks for showing the 3 men for scale. How on earth do they keep themselves safe from falling.
Nice to see the volunteering round the tree.
Well, I’m more sure health and safety is a prime consideration but I think they were actually roped up ( harnesses etc). – I may be wrong and thankfully we didn’t see anyone fall off ( while, essentially, weeding).