Travels in Sri Lanka: Polonnaruwa's Ancient Civilization

The last of our visits to Sri Lanka's ancient sites took us to Polonnaruwa, a royal capital from the 10th to the 12th centuries which housed both a Buddhist Sinhalese dynasty and a South Indian Chola dynasty when the latter briefly conquered Sri Lanka.

Younger than Anuradhapura, Sigiriya, or Dambulla, Polonnaruwa has plenty of architectural details preserved which make it easier to imagine which this place would have looked like. There are moonstones--the name for stone thresholds decorated with animal figurines that show an Indian influence (bottom picture), great columned halls, shrines, and brick multistoried circular structures housing Buddha figures.

The most striking images, however, are of the Buddhas in what is called the Gal Vihara and is considered to be the height of Sinhalese sculpture in Sri Lanka. Shown here is the reclining Buddha entering into nirvana, his head leaving a charming, palpable indentation on his stone pillow, and imposing standing and sitting Buddhas wearing sorrowful expressions. All are cut from the same slab of granite, which enhances the impression of the group as a real ensemble, a Buddha family. And all leave one feeling as if their emotions are real--as if one, too, would like to comfort or fall asleep next to them. Such was the skill of the Sri Lankan artisans, as little known as they are in the wider world.

Travels in Sri Lanka: The Wildlife

No description necessary: these are the creatures that, no less than the few but wonderful architectural sites, make verdant, chill Sri Lanka a fascinating country: the monitor lizards, the stick insects, the various macaques and langurs, and the elephants whose hundred-some gathering we had the chance to witness.

Travels in Sri Lanka: Sigiriya and Dambulla: Courtly Ladies, Sleeping Buddhas

Still in Sri Lanka's Cultural Triangle, we reached the city of Sigiriya, another site of an ancient civilization that scholars can't date with much precision, but think was at the time of King Kasappa who ruled in the 5th century.

Going up on a steep rock adorned with lion's paws, we come across a ledge, inside which is hidden a site of wonder: delicate frescoes of courtly ladies bearing fruit, their half-naked bodies sensuous, their expressions self-contained and enigmatic. The colors are very well preserved, unlike the famous Ajanta Cave outside Mumbai, dating back to the same time, which the Sigiriya frescoes are said to emulate. No one quite knows who these ladies are supposed to be: apsaras (celestial dancers), King Kasappa's concubines, or aspects of the goddess Tara, a female form of the Buddha--in proof of this last point, their faces are remarkably similar.

And, at the nearby town of Dambulla, another enigmatic place: the Royal Rock Temple, which features several caves filled with Buddhas in various poses, dating back from the 1st century as a place of worship but with paintings and statues updated in the 18th and 19th. The most impressive of these is a true sleeping chamber, dark and low-ceilinged, with one colorful reclining Buddha looking particularly cosy on his pillow. As with the Buddhist portions of Ellora and Ajanta in India, these serene images draw you in and make you want to stay in their quiet, comfortable darkness.

But the less serene inhabitants of Sri Lanka await...

Travels in Sri Lanka: Anuradhapura, the City of Stupas

From Kandy, we went traipsing (or rather, driving along Sri Lanka's surprisingly clean and well-laid roads lined with Western supermarkets) to the "cultural triangle" comprising several of the country's ancient civilizations. The first was Anuradhapura, the capital of the country from the 4th to the 11th centuries and the site of a powerful and devout Buddhist community. It was both a ritual and an administrative center, but most of what seems to be left now is the ritual--above all its imposing stupas (Buddhist shrines which may contain relics). Since these stupas are not a site of prayer, their beauty is more in the sheer size of these structures, their tightly laid bricks a testimony to the labor of thousands.

Other highlights of this visit were a 4th-century statue of a meditating Samaddhi Buddha, said to have kept Jawaharlal Nehru cool and collected (via postcard image viewing) during his multiple jail visits.

And there was the original bodhi tree which grew from a cutting of the one in Bodhgaya--the place in India where the Buddha is said to have received his enlightenment. It's the oldest authenticated tree on the planet, dating back at least 2000 years, yes did not look a day older than any of the others to our untrained eyes. Strewn with multi-colored prayer flags, the leafy bodhi is attended by many monks peacefully strolling on the premises.

The hustle and bustle of India had left us completely by this point in our Buddhist induction--perhaps it is no surprise that this peaceful, serene religion died out in our adopted country almost entirely, despite originating here.

Yet, as elsewhere in Sri Lanka, due to its checkered Buddhist/sometimes Hindu history, Anuradhapura contains a rock temple with striking carvings from the 4th-5th centuries that are in typical Indian style--one of these was the man with the horse pictured here.

Travels in Sri Lanka, Sep. '11: Kandy

After India, Sri Lanka's ancient capital, Kandy, disappoints at first glance: it is just too clean, too quiet, too unprepossessing. Yet this hill station where the British grew tea and built their colonial mansions, enjoying the cool, leafy surroundings, is saved from genteel tedium by its excellent old temples and natural beauty. The first of these that we visited, seen here in dusky September light (bottom pictures), was the 14th-century Embekka Devale, an isba-like wooden building which presented a strange mix of Hinduism and Buddhism in the form of intricately carved pillars adorned with supernatural creatures. The syncretism was rather disorienting to see after the rigid delineation of Indian temples. (Buddhism came to Sri Lanka in 200 BC from India but Hinduism still held sway among some royal dynasties and in some parts of the country).

Next on our itinerary was the Temple of the Tooth Relic, the most famous one in the city, which has existed in some form or another since the 4th century as a shrine to Buddha's left canine tooth. As with Embekka Devale, the outside building was less impressive than what was found inside it. We attended a prayer ceremony which involved some men with what looked like a serious wardrobe malfunction blowing trumpets in front of the closed shrine and devotees filling the insides of the temple temple with heaps of fragrant jasmine flowers. Wooden carvings--evidently a specialty of Sri Lankan artisans--abounded.

But seeing Kandy means not just looking at its temples--which objectively paled in comparison with India's--but taking in its world-class botanical park, walking in the midst of the local macaques with coquettish golden peaked hairstyles, and being deafened by the screeches of flying foxes--the species of bats that live here. That was enough to realize that Kandy possesses charm in spades.