Latest / What’s the Story: The Sri Lanka Podcast / Secret Kandy Part 3 | Five Forgotten Stories
Transcript
- Secret Kandy Part 3 | Five Forgotten Stories Kandy is much more than its city. And in an arc of land that spreads to the north are five places that tell stories of the kingdom that are almost entirely forgotten. What are they, and why do they matter? This episode is dedicated to an arc of land that fans out to the north of Kandy, first connected to the ancient Anuradhapuran kings and their successors, before passing under the control of the Kandyan kingdom, whose own borders ebbed and flowed in response to European invasions. This neglected northern section of the Kandyan kingdom centred on three provinces: Anuradhapura in the far north, Matale in the northeast, and the Seven Korales in the northwest. From the arrival of the Portuguese to the British annexation of the kingdom in 1815, control over these three distant provinces fluctuated. But regardless of who was in actual power, nothing could blur the fact that in almost all respects of topography, climate, history, geography, resources and economy, these areas were utterly different to the high hilly and mountainous character of the rest of the kingdom. Although ruled in the main by the Kandyan kings, their own ancestry was much older, dating back to the first Singhalese king in 543 BCE. To walk through their fields and forests and witness their surviving ancient buildings is to see how the last Singla stronghold grafted itself onto the most ancient part of Sri Lanka like a limpet. And probably one of the best ways to experience it is to take a circular tour of 5 of the most significant temples that dominate this elusive land, to places long lost to modern travellers. The circuit starts at the Vilbawa Rajamaha temple, which legend connects to Kuveni, the wife of the island’s first king, Vijaya. But Kuveni was not simply a wife, nor even a weaver of cloth, a mother, lover, or queen. She was also a demon, a metamorphoser, an outcast, an avenging fury, a suicide, a traitor, a murderess, a ghost, and a mistress of deception. A descendant of the gods, she is also a goddess to the country’s still-living Aboriginal peoples. Kuveni and her husband Vijaya were the pin-up lovers of their generation, the Bonnie and Clyde of 543 BCE. Only theirs was a more unorthodox passion - more akin to Dido and Aeneas, with the queen immolating herself. But whilst it is hard to find a corner of Sri Lanka that is not branded “Vijaya,” in besotted memory of the country’s founding paterfamilias, it is much harder to find similarly smitten organisations that bear the name “Kuveni.” Coming from a nation that boasts the modern world’s first female head of state, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, in 1960, this seems a monumental omission. But delve a little further, and it becomes increasingly clear why Kuveni is the queen that the country is too alarmed by to acknowledge adequately. Kuveni was to confound and challenge all ancient ideas of womanhood, and has continued to do so to this day. Her story starts as she sits trapped in her modest palace, a pawn in her father’s political armoury. She is, naturally, no ordinary princess. Descending from King Ravana, the ten-headed evil demon king who fatally kidnapped the wife of the Supreme Being, her bloodline offers a clue, if ever one were needed, to a family proclivity for violence, chaos, and injustice. But in Vijaya, she spots a way to escape the prison of her family. Vijay, a shaved-headed fugitive with a penchant for what The Mahavamsa calls “evil conduct and … intolerable deeds,” was exiled by his father and arrived in Sri Lanka as a man in need of friends. Friends, land, food: in fact, at the time he came on Sri Lanka’s shore, he was a man in need of pretty much everything. And in Kuvani, he found just about everything. Overcoming some immediate disagreements in which she almost eats him and imprisons his entire band of feckless followers, she performed a faultless volte-face, gave them food and clothing, and, according to the ancient Mahavamsa Chronicle, beaming with broad indulgence, if Chronicles can be said to beam, “assumed the lovely form of a sixteen-year-old maiden.” Although marriage was what Vijaya and Kuveni agreed on, they also executed a plan to annihilate her Yakka tribe. But much good did any of this do her? In using Vijaya, she was, in turn, to be even more devastatingly used by him. Soon after inaugurating his new kingdom at Tambapanni and fathering two children, Vijaya abandoned her, sending for a more respectable princess, one who was drawing-room perfect, and banishing his native wife to the wilderness. Rejected by both her husband and the people she came from and had betrayed and killed, Kuveni climbed or was forced to the top of a mountain and hurled down, cursing her disloyal husband as she died. Her husband was to die without heirs. A (presumably related) disease struck down his successor, and his entire children were demented by bloodshed, civil war, and familicide. Across the entire island, a lonesome scrap of haunting folklore offers a hint at the final resting place of Queen Kuveni. There is nothing to verify it except the curious behaviour of the local people. Visitors to the village are welcomed to its little temple, the Maligatenna Raja Maha Viharaya, but not permitted to walk to the top of the little hill above it, where the queen’s crypt is said to lie. About 15 miles from here is the Ridi Viharaya. Although substantially restored in the 18th century by the Kandyan king, Kirti Sri Rajasinghe, the temple dates back to the 2nd century BCE – roughly the same time as the Rosetta Stone was chiselled into a basalt slab in distant pharaonic Egypt. To better understand the supreme importance of this ancient temple, take a look at pictures of the oldest of the island’s three most incredible stupas, the Ruwanweliseya, built between 161 and 137 BCE by King Dutugamunu. The first steps in its construction are told in extraordinary detail by the Mahavamsa Chronicle. “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 stones 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 laid, the King ordered bricks to 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 before the stupa was completed, and the Mahavamsa tells of the dying monarch being carried in 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.’” The money for all this construction came from silver ore mined beneath the Ridi Viharaya, a serendipitous discovery by monks and merchants. On an island famed for gemstones that seem to pour from its rivers, silver deposits are so rare as to be almost non-existent. This one, able to finance so significant an undertaking as Ruwanweliseya, would have turbocharged the local economy for a period, a more modest version of the California Gold Rush that helped build California. Or the one in ancient Athens, where the discovery of silver in Laurium funded a navy that, in turn, turned Athens into a superpower. That the ore was used to build a temple in Sri Lanka is a telling comment on the very different priorities encountered here. In thanks for this, the king built Ridi Viharaya over the mine. Seen today, it comprises 25 caves, inhabited by (naturally) unseen Arhat monks; the entrance to the entire complex is marked by a rock and a stupa, which is thought to be the site of the original temple and where the king once stood to be appropriately dressed before beginning his devotions. Also visible is a Polonnaruwa era temple decorated with Kandyan paintings and carvings of dancers in a distinctly Hindu style; a pavilion for drummers; the main temple within the original cave from which the silver was extracted and now filled with ancient statues and tiled in Dutch porcelain Bible tiles; and the Uda Viharaya, or the upper temple, dating to the Kandyan era, and decorated with mythological animals. Twenty miles, and over 500 years, on from here is the Arankele Forest Monastery established by one of the island’s most fabulous kings, Dhatusena. With him, a new dynasty had come to power in the land, seizing the state bank from a band of invading Pandyan Tamils in 459 CE and rebuilding its crumbling infrastructure. The new king encouraged, cajoled, and persuaded many of the people displaced by the Pandiyan invasion to return from their refuge in Ruhuna and repopulate the abandoned regions of Anuradhapura. And he secured his kingdom’s food supply, repairing water infrastructure and buildings, and constructing at least twenty-six new tanks, half of them so vast and robustly made that they are still in working order today. A good example is the Maeliya Wewa tank, just north of Kurunegala. One of a series of none smaller cascade tanks, it still provides harvested rainwater to 202 farmers, across 155 acres. Another, near Mannar, was described by Sir James Emerson Tennent in 1860 as a “stupendous work.” So it is – with an embankment of seven kilometres and a capacity today of carrying thirty-nine million cubic metres of water within its 4550-hectare bowl. But perhaps the greatest of all his works was the double-reservoir complex, Kala Wewa and Balalu Wewa, near the Avukana Buddha statue. Together, these tanks store 123 million cubic meters of water. Their central slice feeds into an eighty-seven-kilometre canal that descends in perfect meters to deliver its water to Anuradhapura, whilst feeding thousands of acres of paddy land on the way. Sadly, he was less capable of navigating the minefield of family politics, and he inspired his son, Kasyapa, to commit patricide, making him every bit the equal of Oedipus. Having killed the great king Kasyapa, he was to create one of Asia’s most sensational pleasure places at Sigiriya. But Sigiriya and all it stood for was a universe or two away from Dhatusena’s forest monastery at Arankele. As secretive a place today as it was then, Arankele was the home of forest monks, subscribers to a distinctive tradition within Buddhism that emphasises a simpler, more hermit-like existence than other monastic chapters. Even so, the site, at its heyday, housed over 1,000 forest monks. The remains of the buildings they used still lie scattered among vast hardwood trees: a hospital, stone walls, moats, medical wards, meditation halls, paths, herb grinders, baths – and, of course, scores of caves in which the solitary monks lived. A further short drive, this time heading back south, takes you to the Maraluwawa Rajamaha Viharaya, built by Prince Pussadeva, the nephew of King Dhatusena, and remarkable for the copper plates it houses. The Kandyan kings lovingly copied these from the disintegrating originals that described this as the place where the prince listened to the preaching of the island’s last great saint, or Arhath, Mahadeva Thero. A further short drive on from here takes you to the last temple, this one at Nathagane, which dates back to the 2nd century BCE and was a hundred years later to provide a welcome hideaway for the remarkable king Walagamba, known by some as the boomerang king for his fantastic ability to bounce back from even the most disastrous encounters. Valagamba’s older three brothers had been kings before him. Still, the last of the trio, Khallata Naga, managed to get himself murdered by his army chief, who did his best to marginalise and even kill Valagamba. He failed. Valagamba won the ensuing fight, killed the murderous general and took over the throne by 103 BCE. But within months, the new king was defeated by the armies of 5 Pandyan Tamil chiefs. Deposed a second time, the king evaded capture, and his many escapes and hiding places illuminated the map of Sri Lanka like a Catch-Me-If-You-Can treasure hunt; this cave temple in Nathagane and the one in Galagedera itself were among his most famous safe houses. Eventually, grappling his way back to power in 89 BCE, Valagamba retook his crown through a series of minor, successful incremental skirmishes - although, given the murderous incompetence of his Dravidian interlopers, it may have been like pushing on an open door. His second reign lasted over a dozen years. Under his patronage the Pali Canon, the largest and oldest compendium of Buddhist practices, was commissioned, putting into writing the teachings that had until then been passed on orally. This commission was carried out in the Aluvihare Rock Temple, itself barely 30 30-mile drive from The Flame Tree Estate and Hotel. Eighty times larger than the Bible, the Pali Canon reveals much more than the importance of Buddhism itself. It embodies the island’s enduring attachment to rules, regulations, and laws. The country’s legal system today is a mixture of Roman-Dutch law, English law, Kandian law, Thesavalamai and Muslim law. Overwriting all this is its constitution. But even this is most commonly accepted as correct, and that is primarily dictated by Buddhism's mores, its paramount religion. Under his patronage, 500 monks assembled in Aluvihare to begin the task. It was to be a momentous moment for the challenge they had set themselves, which was immense. Firstly, they had to recite the doctrines. That would have taken many years. Then they had to agree on an acceptable version of the teachings before transcription. That must have taken even longer. Finally came the lengthy work of transcribing them, using ola leaves from talipot palms. The resulting Pali Canon became the standard scripture of Theravada Buddhism. It was written in the now-extinct Pali language, an ancient Indian language thought to have been spoken by the Buddha and used in Sri Lanka until the fifth century CE. Scholars argue (as they do) about how much of the work can be attributed to one person or to Buddha himself – but believers are mainly free of such elaborate debates. The Canon lays out, in unambiguous terms, the doctrines and rules of conduct that Buddhists should follow. It consists of three parts. The first, the Vinaya, concerns itself mainly with the rules for monks and nuns. The second, the Sutta Pitaka, is the Canon’s practical heart, comprising around 10,000 teachings and poems by the Buddha and his close companions that focus on the everyday challenges of life. The last, the Abhidhamma Pitaka, is where the higher teachings sit – the ones most focused on Enlightenment. The monks were probably still hard at work on the Pali Canon when Valagamba died in 77 BCE, bringing his adopted son, Mahakuli Mahatissa, to power. But under his patronage, copies were dispatched across the kingdom and to other Buddhist countries. Aluvihare Rock Temple still exists, its caves dotted with ancient inscriptions, but its great library was burned down during the Matale Rebellion in 1848. That was a production written and recorded by David Swarbirck 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.