Herbarium

Blog Post #2 — A Little Bit of Culture: Dambulla & Sigiriya

Three meditating Buddhas from the Dambulla Cave Temples. The caves were first used for Buddhist worship circa 100 BCE, and have been repainted often over the centuries.

I guess our blog about Kandy really is like a box of chocolates, if you don’t mind mangling the saying — you never know exactly what you are going to get! It is a beautiful city that dates mostly from the 13th century, laid out out along some steep hills at the start of the serious hill country that is at the heart of Sri Lanka.

But it is also a gateway to some of the spectacular Buddhist monuments in the north of the island that rank among the best in the world.

So this time around we’ll head out of Kandy and start at looking at some of the sites that make Buddhist history in Sri Lanka so rich and deep.

A sketch of Kandy by a British artist from the early 1800s.

Kandy itself has some real Buddhist gravitas (the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic comes to mind) and showcases what they mean when they say location, location, location — for over a dozen centuries, as the great cities of the north and the coasts were conquered one after another by invaders (first south Indians, and then the Portuguese, and then the Dutch and then the British), local rulers kept retreating further into remote and remoter hill country. Kandy was the last kingdom to fall — to the British in 1815, just a year after the they had finished burning down Washington, DC — and today Kandy somehow still seems a little bit different — in a wonderful, laid-back way — from other parts of the country.

If you take the train south from Kandy you’ll end up in the high tea country, where people like Sir Thomas Lipton made their fortunes and made Ceylonese Tea so famous that here they still call it Ceylonese Tea — even after Ceylon became Sri Lanka! That’s for another blog. But going north from Kandy you are en route to some of the ancient ruined capitals of the island and some of the finest and most evocative Buddhist art to be seen anywhere.

Puppies napping in the afternoon in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka.
Monkey in repose among offerings at a stupa in Polonnaruwa.

Today we’ll cover some of these world-heritage sites, including Dambulla and Sigiriya. But first, we need to talk about …..puppies!

And, of course, monkeys! Sri Lanka is a mostly Buddhist nation, and as a result people are loathe to actually mistreat animals. You’ll see ‘street dogs’ all over the country, and at all the major public religious and archaeological sites. No one really takes care of these dogs, but no one actively seeks to control or harm them either (this is not the case in too many other countries around the world, unfortunately). The dogs then are mostly shy and deferential; for their part, Sri Lankan drivers are always alert for dogs roaming the streets, and even patient – to a degree – when the dogs want to rest in the middle of the lane.

Polonnaruwa has three kinds of monkeys — the purple-faced leaf monkey, the toque macaque, and this Grey Langur.
Double-click the image to see this toque macaque at work on some offerings in Polonnaruwa. They seem to prefer Tagetes!

Monkeys get the same treatment. You’ll find them tolerated almost everywhere, and there is the constant threat they will take a liking to an unguarded lunch or package. Most of the time they seem only slightly curious, or even a little bored!

And what about other animals roaming the environment, say elephants? That’s a very different story, and you can learn lots about what the professionals call Human-Elephant Conflict from this blog (cladue.org) maintained by our friend and fellow Fulbrighter Chase Ladue.

Dambulla is a busy, relatively small town dominated by a massive rock outcropping where you can see the World Heritage Site (check out this link) known as the Dambulla Cave Temples or the Dambulla Rock Temples.

This is the very modern, all-consuming Buddhist “museum” you’ll find at the base of Dambulla Rock. It is not part of the historical site. Enter if you dare!
Some of the life-sized plastic mannequins at the “museum,” representing some of the early Buddhist monks who followed the Buddha throughout northern India 2,500 years ago.

These painted caves date from over 2,000 years ago when a king from Anuradhapura fled from Indian invaders and took refuge in the Dambulla caves with Buddhist monks. When he finally re-conquered his kingdom he rewarded the monastery by sponsoring a stunning array of sculptures carved from the living rock, along with murals and paintings throughout the interiors of the caves. They been adding to them for almost 1,500 years.

Inside the five caves you will see lots of the classic depictions of the Buddha, including the image of the Reclining or Sleeping Buddha found everywhere in southeast Asian Buddhism.

This is one of several  Dambulla versions of the “Sleeping Buddha,” who is spending his last moments before death meditating. It’s carved out of the cave walls and the work is so fine that even the stone pillow looks comfortable!
The Buddha’s feet, from a cave in Dambulla. Early Buddhists resisted depicting the Buddha, instead using images (like foot-prints) to represent him. By the time of Dambulla, Buddha was being portrayed in full form.
An unusual expression from a Reclining Buddha. Note the traces of gold leaf still clinging on the right elbow.

Other scenes in the caves elaborate on this theme, with a focus on Buddha’s feet, or on his face, with the flame of enlightenment jetting from his resting head.

A stupa in a cave in Dambulla, showing the billowing murals covering the rock surface of the cave. At the top-center of the image you can just see part of a depiction of the planting of the Bodhi-Tree at Anuradhapura.
The flame of enlightenment crowning a recumbent Buddha in Dambulla.
More of the painted ceiling in Dambulla.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The same day we saw Dambulla we took a Tuk Tuk a little further north to visit Sigiriya, the city-palace built on top of and around an iconic outcrop that figures in almost all Sri Lankan tourist literature.

Approaching Sigiriya through the gardens and monasteries at the base.
One of the water gardens beneath the mountain palace.

The place dates from around the 5th century, and is carved out of the living stone on the top.

 

 

A Water Monitor Lizard at Sigiriya that is, well, monitoring the water (or at least the aquatic plants, Salvinia, Azolla, & Aponogeton).

At the foot of the mountain are all sorts of tanks and reservoirs and pleasure gardens, and of course wildlife!

Massive Lion claws carved out of one side of the cliff. Lions were and are important royal and national symbols in Sri Lanka.

And speaking of the foot of the mountain, Sigiriya is famous for a pair of titanic Lion claws carved out of one side of the cliff. Archaeologists speculate that the claws are all that remain of what was once a colossal structure that adorned the sheer stone face — it is thought that much or some of the mountain was fashioned to resemble a massive lion. Some of the speculative “reconstructions” — shown below — get a little fanciful!

  

And finally — we’ve been traveling a bit lately, and that is one of the reasons we’ve been slow to update the blog. We’ve been getting familiar with the rail system here, that connects Kandy with so much of the rest of the country. Here’s a little clip from when we were waiting at Kandy station last week. The soundtrack that you hear is nothing that we added — it’s the muzak piped in over the platforms that was playing in real-time. Next time more Buddhist architecture and more plants!

Double-click on the image for your train of the day!

 

 

 

 

 



6 thoughts on “Blog Post #2 — A Little Bit of Culture: Dambulla & Sigiriya

  1. Dave and Dixie, I am loving your blog. It really takes me back to my time in Sri Lanka. We’ve visited many of the same places- the botanical garden in Kandy was a high point for me. I was also fortunate to be there for Perahera in July- it was amazing and I hope you will be there for it! I also hope you are able to get to Kataragama and Galle- two of my other favorite places. Enjoy your time and thank you for sharing through the blog!

    1. Thanx, Shannon! Glad the blog brings back delightful memories of this wonderful place. We hope to visit the 2 areas you mentioned a little later. This week we are a bit more home-based, since the semester has begun at Peradeniya. But even if you don’t go far, every time you step out the door, there’s something amazing. 🙂

  2. Thanks for sharing these amazing sights with us. All the art work and statues are so different from what we usually see. I love all the colors and the intricate designs. I know ill never make it to the corners you are visiting so your blog is the only way I can experience these marvels. I’m looking forward to the next jewel.

  3. Dave and Dixie, thanks for the mini-vacation from work as I peruse your blog at my desk! I follow a couple of Sri Lanka accounts on Instagram now, but they seem to keep posting the same leopards, elephants and landscapes — beautiful, but repetitive. Your pictures are more interesting, and beautiful as well. It boggles the mind to think about how those massive stone carvings were created. Loved the puppy and monkey photos, and the train music, too. Love, Karen P.S. Inki is getting very comfortable roaming the house and doesn’t retreat to her safe space as often.

    1. Hey Karen, I’ve read that both the elephant fruit rinds are porous enough so that the elephant’s stomach’s HCL travels through the rind, liquefies the fruit’s innards which diffuse out of the rind & are absorbed by the GI tract, leaving the rind to pass through the elephant’s system as a whole. I should send the question to Chase Ladue, who is studying elephant behavior here in Sri Lanka on a Fulbright grant. He may not know either, since it’s diet, and not behavior, but it will give him something to ponder on.

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