The Ruanweli (or Gold-dust) Dágoba, which rears its unshapely form close to the present village, gives one a notion of the massiveness of these ancient structures, and at the same time of the ravages which lapse of years has wrought upon them. In outline it resembles a gigantic but ill-made circular haystack, 150 feet high. All the upper part of it is covered with thick grass, except where recent lapses have exposed the close yet rather soft brickwork of which the whole is compacted. The more accessible lower parts and surrounding terraces have lately been cleaned of undergrowth; and at the foot, among some well-executed carvings, stand four or five fine statues, about eight feet high—one of King Dutugemunu who is said to have begun the building about B.C. 161, the others apparently of Buddha, and all dignified and noble in conception, if not anatomically perfect in execution.
But the dágobas which best show the gradual effacement of human handiwork by Nature are the Jetawanarama and the Abhayagiria, both of which stand some distance out in the woods, and tower above the foliage to the heights of 250 feet and 300 feet respectively. The former of these (see plate at beginning of this chapter) presents a vast cone of brickwork some 200 feet high, surmounted by a cylindrical column of the same; and the conical portion is simply overgrown by dense masses of trees, which inserting their roots into the crevices of the bricks are continually dislodging portions of this artificial mountain. Cactuses, varieties of fig, and other trees climb to the very base of the column, and here, where the brickwork is too steep to be covered with foliage, the omnipresent wanderoo monkey may be seen disporting itself on the very summit.
The Abhayagiria is of similar shape, but only covered at present with a shrub-like growth. Originally it was the largest dágoba in Ceylon, being 405 feet high—or as high as S. Paul’s—but time has reduced it to somewhere about 300 feet. A rather precipitous path leads from the base to the summit, which has recently been restored in some fashion, and from thence a fine view may be obtained.
As you roam through the woods by jungle paths, or along the two or three roads which have been made in late years to open up the ruins, you come upon innumerable smaller remains. Most frequent among these are groups of columns still standing, twenty or thirty together, sometimes only rough-hewn, sometimes elegantly shaped, with carven capitals, which either formed the foundation storeys of wooden buildings, or being themselves covered with roofs constituted porticos for the resting-places of the gods in their processions, or habitations for the use of the priests. There are very few remains of walled buildings, stone or brick, but plentiful foundation outlines of what may have been public or sacred enclosures of one kind or another—some with handsome flights of steps and balustrades leading up to them, and for the lowest step the frequent half-moon stone carved with elegant devices of the elephant, the lion, the horse, the brahman bull, the goose, and the lotus-flower. Here among the tangle is a flight of half-a-dozen steps, springing from nowhere and apparently leading nowhither. There is a gigantic stone trough, sixty-two feet long by four feet four inches wide, over which the learned are in doubt whether it was used to contain food for the royal elephants or boiled rice for the priests! Here at any rate is a cistern ten feet long by five wide, elegantly carved out of a single block of granite, which, tradition says, served for the priests’ rice-dish; and which only a few years ago was, by the subscription of a neighboring country side, filled full of food (see S. M. Burrows’ Buried Cities of Ceylon; London, Trübner & Co., 1885) for the pilgrims of the June full moon. There again is one of the numerous flat slabs which may be found, bearing an ancient inscription on its face; and in almost every direction are solid stone swimming baths or tanks, ten, twenty, or thirty yards up to (in one case) fully 100 yards in length. Two of these pókunas, so-called—the twin pókunas—stand near the northern circular road, and are still in good preservation; the one given in the illustration on [next page] is forty-four yards long, the other about thirty, and both have handsome flights of steps at each end by which to descend to the water, and step-like tiers of stonework round the sides. They were of course not covered, but open to the sun and air.
A RUINED BATHING TANK, ANURÁDHAPURA.
As you go along the road after leaving these tanks, at a turn you suddenly come upon a seated image of Buddha—by the wayside, under the trees. The figure is about seven feet high as it sits. It is of dark-colored granite, and though slightly defaced is still by far the best thing of its kind in the place. Most of the images of Buddha in the present temples of Ceylon are painfully crude productions; but this has caught something of the grace of the great Guru. The eyelids are just shut, yet so slightly as to suggest that the figure is not lost in the ordinary material sleep, but only in that luminous slumber which, while closing itself to the outward and transitory world, opens on the eternal and steadfast consciousness behind. A deep calm overspreads the face—so deep that it insensibly affects the passerby. He involuntarily stops and gazes, surrendering himself to its influence, and to that of the silent forest. His thoughts subside, like waves on water when the wind ceases. He too for a moment touches the well-spring of being—he swims into identity with the universe; the trees flicker in the evening light, the Buddha just gives the slightest nod, as much as to say, “That’s it”; and then—he is but stone again, and the road stretches beyond.
Curious that one man should so affect the world that he should leave his bo-trees and his dágobas and his images in thousands over half a continent; that he should gather vast cities round his name, and still, when they have perished and passed away, should remain the most glorious thing connected with them; yet Buddha could not have had this ascendancy had not other people in their thousands and hundreds of thousands experienced in greater or less degree the same facts that he experienced. We must forgive, after all, the dirty yellow-robed priests, with their greedy claws and stinking shrines. It was Buddha’s fault, not theirs, when he explored poor human nature so deeply as to invest even its lowest manifestations with sanctity.
Where this image now sits perhaps once it looked down upon the busy turmoil of a great street. The glories of the capital of the Cinghalese kingdom unrolled before and beneath it. Hear how the chronicler of the seventh century (quoted by Emerson Tennent) describes—with justifiable pride—the splendor of the city in his day: “The temples and palaces whose golden pinnacles glitter in the sky, the streets spanned by arches bearing flags, the ways strewn with sand, and on either side vessels containing flowers, and niches with statues holding lamps. Here are multitudes of men armed with swords and bows and arrows. Elephants, horses, carts, and myriads of people pass and repass—jugglers, dancers, and musicians of all nations, with chank shells and other instruments ornamented with gold. The distance from the principal gate to the east gate is four gows, and the same from the north to the south gate. The principal streets are Moon Street, Great King Street, Hinguruwak, and Mahawelli Street—the first containing 11,000 houses, many of them two storeys in height. The smaller streets are innumerable. The palace has large ranges of buildings, some of them two and three storeys high, and its subterranean apartments are of great extent.”
Fa Hian, the Chinese traveler, who visited Ceylon about 413 A.D., also says: “The city is the residence of many magistrates, grandees, and foreign merchants; the mansions beautiful, the public buildings richly adorned, the streets and highways straight and level, and houses for preaching built at every thoroughfare.” Nor was the civilisation of Anurádhapura merely material in its scope, for Tennent tells us that beside public gardens and baths, halls for music and dancing, rest-houses for travelers, almshouses, etc., they had hospitals in which animals as well as men were tenderly cared for. “The corn of a thousand fields was set apart by one king for their use; another put aside rice to feed the squirrels which frequented his gardens; and a third displayed his surgical skill in treating the diseases of elephants, horses, and snakes.”