Latest / What’s the Story: The Sri Lanka Podcast / The 7 Wonders of Ancient Lanka | Part 2
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- The 7 Wonders of Ancient Lanka | Part 2 A tree – and a trio of stupas are among ancient Sri Lanka’s greatest wonders. But why are any of these so important – not just to the island, but to the world? Two hundred fifty years after the creation of the island’s first great wonder – the reservoir of Panda Wewa, the second took root - literally. Strictly speaking, this wonder was not homegrown – but rather an import that, in going native, came to symbolise everything about the land, then as now. No building this, nor even a book or garden, but a tree, a single tree – the Sri Maha Bodhi, The Tree Of Enlightenment, an A-list celebrity tree to outshine anything anywhere else in the world; not just Sri Lanka’s oldest living tree, but also the oldest recorded tree on earth. As a tree, it traces its lineage to the bodhi tree in Bihar, under which Lord Buddha sat sometime around 500 BCE before attaining his enlightenment, a nirvana of not inconsiderable benefits, including a complete understanding of the true nature of everything. Its illustrious history aside, the near relatives of bodhi trees are arguably more beautiful, including figs, banyans, breadfruits, jacks, and mulberries. But history is rarely written by the beautiful. It is the survivors who get to tell the story, and although there is no such thing as an average lifespan for a tree, the bodhi tree squats confidently at the end of the spectrum, living for up to 3,000 years. It can tell stories that would put Scheherazade herself to sleep. The bodhi still growing in Anuradhapura dates back to 236 BCE. At the time of its arrival, the country was still taking tentative, if immutable, steps as an embryonic nation, and its appearance was to coincide with the reign of the island’s eighth recorded king, Devanampiya Tissa. It arrived just a few years after Buddhism itself arrived on the island, propagated by Mahindra, the son of the Indian Emperor Ashoka. Clearly, the young missionary had painted a compelling picture of his new island abode in his letters home, for his sister, Sanghamitta, soon joined him. She brought with her a golden vase in which grew a sapling from the original Bodhi Tree of Lord Buddha. Accompanied by nuns and an entourage of useful craftsmen, Sanghamitta landed in the north of the island and was met by King Devanampiya Tissa himself. With some ceremony, he escorted the party to Anuradhapura along a road said to have been softened with white sand (an enhancement that the present-day Road Development Agency might take note of), and the Bodhi sapling was planted in the city’s Mahameghavana Grove. The world that this tiny tree then looked out upon was already more than a little magnificent. From its plot stretched a new and constantly enlarging city, the creation of Pandukabhaya, a staggering construction by any measure. As the ancient Athenians were putting the finishing touches to the Acropolis and the nascent Roman Republic issuing its first tentative laws, the palaces and structures commissioned by Sri Lanka’s first great king rose through the jungle, a tropical Versailles. Beyond its walls and moats stretched the Rajarata, the land ruled by the king, extending from the northern tip of the island to incorporate most of the island, with the likely exception of the impenetrable hill country and the far south – Ruhana. The small bodhi tree’s very survival depended on all the components of a flourishing nation – a caringly and calibrated civil service, and phenomenally effective water management to feed the growing state. This, in turn, was enabled by international trade, culture, writing, and an evolving language – Sinhala; by roads, hospitals, horticulture, and an engineering capability capable of assembling large stone palaces and temples. Surrounded by such professionalism, it is little wonder it flourished, and, in a sense, arrived just as the party began. Many successive kings enriched the land on which it grew. Magnificent stone and later metallic statues were positioned around it, along with a fine canal and walls to protect it from wild elephants; a protective barrier, as recently as 1969, was mirrored by a golden fence. Now positioned on a high terrace, surrounded by four other terraces, its temple is one of the country’s most sacred sites, and from its vantage point it has borne witness to almost all of the island's recorded history: 2,300 years of it. The tree itself is managed by priests, supported by a committee, and a panel of experts and agencies within the government’s environment ministry. It has given rise to innumerable other direct descendants, thirty-two of which are notable trees in their own right. Three of the most prominent grow in temples in Colombo, Nuwara Eliya and Monaragala. One was planted near Kandy in 1236 by a minister of King Parakramabahu II, and several others by early Kandyan kings around 1635. Another, in 1472 near Colombo, was planted by a somewhat overwrought King of Kotte, Bhuvanaikabahu VI. Four in Trincomalee, planted in 1753, mark the moment Buddhism began to recover from the onslaught of colonisation. Two even have British associations. The future King Edward VII planted a bo tree in 1875 in Peradeniya Gardens during a state visit better known for big-game hunting and dancing girls; whilst in 1803, a British officer, Davy, hid in one to (briefly) escape a massacre in Kandy. The saddest, though, is one planted around 522 CE by a poet-loving king, soon to kill himself in grief for the murder of his friend, Kalidasa, a writer with a finer sense of poetry than he had for women. And although the Sri Maha Bodhi is in many respects a tamed and urban tree, it is also, by virtue of being a plant, an iconic symbol of the island’s remarkable biodiversity. Its very existence attests to the exceptional number of Sri Lanka’s endemic species; its wide array of climatic zones; and ecosystems that include vast forests that still cover almost a third of the entire land. Almost 100 years later, a start was made on ancient Sri Lanka’s third great wonder – one that was to comprise Asia’s equivalent of the three great pyramids of Giza – the three great stupas of Anduraupura: the Ruwanweliseya, the Abhayagiri, and the Jetavanaramaya. Stupas are a structure exclusive to Buddhist countries. The shape is made for perfect skylines. Bells, bubbles, pots, lotuses – even heaps of paddy: Sri Lanka’s many thousands of stupas were built in a range of related shapes, and in such numbers that it is unlikely that a five-minute car journey anywhere in the country will fail to take you past one. They are still being constructed to this day – in Kandy, Kalutara and Kotmale, to name just three. Whatever their shape or age, they are outstanding architectural creations, mesmerisingly graceful as they rise over their visiting pilgrims, providing them with a place to meditate and a home for the relics and religious objects they venerate. And its three most important ones are found in the island’s heartland - Anuradhapura. The oldest of the trees is the Ruwanweliseya, built between 161 and 137 BCE by King Dutugamunu, and it stands at 103 meters today. The first steps in its construction are told in extraordinary detail by the Mahavamsa Chronicle, which started “on the full moon day of the month of Vesak. King Dutugamunu had the workers dig a 7-cubit-deep excavation. He had soldiers bring in round stones and had them crushed with hammers. Crushed rocks were placed at the bottom of the excavation and compacted using elephants. The Elephants had their feet bound in leather to protect them. Fine clay was brought in from a nearby river. This clay was known as butter clay since it was very fine. King Dutugamunu ordered that butter clay be spread over crushed stones. After the butter clay layer was placed, King ordered that bricks be brought. Bricks were placed on top of the butter clay layer. On top of the bricks, an iron mesh was placed. Mountain crystals were placed atop iron bars. Another layer of stones was placed atop the mountain crystals. On top of the stones, an 8-inch-thick copper plate was placed. A copper plate was sprayed with Arsenic and Sesame oil. On top of the copper plate, a seven-inch-thick silver plate was placed.” And that was just the beginning. The king was to die long before the stupa was completed, and the Mahavamsa retells the story of the dying monarch being carried on a palanquin to see the works. Standing for centuries and now much restored, its fabled relic chamber has yet to resist all attempts at excavation. Within it is said to be a vessel filled with Lord Buddha’s artefacts, placed atop a seat of diamonds, encased in a golden container adorned with gems, and set inside a room decorated with murals and a silver replica of the Bo Tree. The Mahavamsa Chronicle notes its sovereign importance: “The relic-chamber shall not shake even by an earthquake; flowers that were offered on that day shall not wither till the end of Buddha Gotama's Dispensation; the lamps that were kindled shall not be extinguished; the clay that was mixed with perfume and sandalwood shall not dry; even a single scratch shall not appear within the relic-chamber; stains shall not appear in any of the golden goods that were offered.’” Just decades later, the stupas were to be joined by another, the Abhayagiri Stupa, built by King Valagamba in the 1st century BCE. Although it is only 70 meters high today (having lost part of its pinnacle), it once towered above its older sibling at 115 meters. But it was controversy, not size, that really marked out its creation, for the structure was built for the use of the Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist sects whose teachings were seen as profane by the competing and dominant Theravadin sect. Appalling though the views of Mahayana monks were to Theravadins, for their habit of putting the enlightenment of others before oneself, those of the Vajrayana were so far beyond the red line as to be heretical - for the Vajrayanas put great faith in mysterious and super-fast ways, paths to enlightenment – including mantras, mnemonic codes, symbolic hand gestures, spiritual diagrams, and divine visualisations. Made partially from material removed from the buildings of the Theravada-practising Mahavihara monks, the stupa’s bricks were plastered with lime mortar and sat on a vast platform enclosed by a rampart, with admittance guarded by four guardhouse entrances. And when the Tooth Relic of Lord Buddha first came to the island, it was housed here in the complex of this stupa. Centuries later, the well-travelled Chinese monk, Faxian, was to describe the site as hosting a 30-foot-high jade statue of Lord Buddha: “it glitters all over with those substances and has an appearance of solemn dignity which words cannot express. In the palm of the right hand, there is a priceless pearl.” Both of these stupas, however, were overshadowed by the Jetavanaramaya over 400 years later. Commissioned by King Mahasena sometime between 273 and 301 CE, this is the stupa that put Sri Lanka on the map, the stupa of all stupas, and at an original height of 122 meters, the world’s third-tallest building, eclipsed only by the Great Pyramid of Giza and Pyramid of Khufu; and much later by the Eiffel Tower. It is the class of building to which superlatives and statistics cleave like clams, together with its compound and related buildings; the site covered nearly 6 hectares, housing over 10,000 monks and standing on foundations that reached almost 10 metres deep. Even the relatively simple act of manufacturing the nearly 100 million bricks used in its construction turbocharged ancient Sri Lanka’s building capacity. Within its vast and elegant bulk lies buried part of a belt tied by Lord Buddha. But Mahasena’s blatant favouring of the Mahayana sect set the kingdom on a perilous path. Indeed, it even sparked a civil war, the fighting only ending when the recalcitrant king recanted his errors and re-empowered the much disgruntled Theravada monks. Thereafter, however, all, or nearly all, was sweetness and light in the kingdom. The old king was to end his days having earned the sobriquet Minneri Deviyo – the God of Minneriya - for building, no doubt in further repentance, the 4670-acre Minneriya Tank, whose 230 billion gallons of water turned the dry east of the kingdom into a paddy paradise. Quite apart from their sheer seismic might and beauty, these three great stupas stood as a reminder, if ever needed, of Buddhism's dominance across the island. When the religion first arrived, its royal adoption ensured it caught on quickly, rapidly replacing the Hindu, animist, and Aboriginal cults of the original or other early islanders. But as Buddhism spread, it took hold amid the ever-stronger political reach of the Singhala kingdom, expanding its authority and character, embedding a common language that would become known as Singhala and a standard script that evolved from ancient Brahmi. Religion became the glue of an unusually early unified state that, for well over a thousand years, would extend right across the island, despite invasions, rebellions, and occasional competing statelets. Four hundred years of colonialism later, it failed to stop it. As the centuries pushed Buddhism into the corners of Asia, leaving it to survive in just a handful of countries such as Bhutan, Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Mongolia, and Laos, in Sri Lanka, it stayed strong, a flourishing rarity. That was a production written and recorded by David Swarbrick at The Ceylon Press, based in the jungle north of Kandy, at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel, and set up to tell the story of Sri Lanka.