The history of Sri Lanka is complex but can be simplified into an often violent dialectic between the Buddhist Sinhalese majority of the island’s centre and south and the Hindu Tamil minority of its northern and eastern areas. Added to these two major ethnic groups were the western traders: first Portuguese, then Dutch and lastly the British. Each one of these people have left their distinctive mark in the culture and architecture of the country.
My previous post describes the ancient city of Anuradhapura. We subsequently visited a further ancient city and world heritage site: Polonnaruwa. This city was founded by the South Indian Chola dynasty after their successful invasion of Anuradhapura in the tenth century.
Two things struck me as odd about these cities when compared with those in the western world. First was the utter obliteration of a conquered city and the construction of a new centre in a new site. This was rather different from what usually happened in Europe. For example, Lucca was conquered by the French under Napoleon; he did not destroy it but merely added to its beauty. In the East the total elimination of a city was commonplace in an attempt to deny that previous powers had ever been in existence. This trend has continued in modified form to this day: for example the former capital cities of Pakistan and Myanmar have both been replaced by new centres. The British, too, followed this trend when they founded a new capital of India at Delhi.
Second was the astonishing syncretism between Buddhist and Hindu religion. Statues of Buddha and Vishnu, for example, are to be found in the same temple. In India hinduism won hands down and Buddha was relegated as an avatar of Vishnu while in Sri Lanka the Theravada school of Buddhism continues to flourish.
The ruins of Polonnaruwa are very well presented and very extensive. We only managed to visit a part of the area they occupied but were impressed by the ruins of palaces, stupas, baths and shrines we saw. The city was clearly a flourishing place with particularly advanced irrigation systems which included the man-made Parakrama lake.
We first visited the informative museum and realised that we’d seen similar examples of the bronze statues during our visit to Chennai’s Government museum three years ago and described in my post at
Of the ruins five were particularly impressive.
First was the temple where Buddha’s tooth, perhaps Buddhism’s most sacred relic, was originally kept.
Second was the burnt out shell of the King’s palace with massive walls.
Third was a giant temple with a Buddha statue approaching the scale of the sadly destroyed Bamiyan ones.
Fourth was a shrine with an almost gothic arch form.
Fifth was the elegant King’s bath:
Sixth was a majestic trio of gigantic statues including one of the dying Buddha.
Polonnaruwa eventually suffered the fate of other ancient cities in Sri Lanka: the Aryacakravarti dynasty abandoned it in the thirteenth century and built yet another centre at Dambadeniya.
Before the evocative ruins of this once prosperous city I could not help picturing an apocalyptic vision of a world currently threatened by an unseen enemy from which there appears to be no respite.