A Tour of Sri Lanka Buddhist Sites

We vis­ited Sri Lanka in Novem­ber, 2007. Sri Lanka has been a Bud­dhist coun­try for the past 2000 years, 2nd only to India. Bud­dhism was intro­duced to Sri Lanka by the Indian Bud­dhist Emporer Asoka’s pen-pal, King Tissa of Anu­rad­ha­pura. 236 years after the death of the Buddha.

Sri Lanka, a stun­ningly pic­turesque island nation, boasts hav­ing the old­est writ­ten his­tory in the world and this is derived from a Bud­dhist canon and his­tor­i­cal epic Mahavamsa begun dur­ing the reign of King Tissa. It was con­tin­u­ously updated up until about 1959, a feat of coop­er­a­tion through the ages that feels amaz­ing to even contemplate.

We hired a dri­ver for the entire ten days we were there through a com­pany called Bou­tique Sri Lanka. Our driver’s name was Aslam and we would rec­om­mend him in a heart­beat. He was not only a won­der­ful dri­ver, always hook­ing us up with the best tour guides at each site we vis­ited, but he was also just a dear, hon­est young man mak­ing a liv­ing as best he can in a coun­try cur­rently torn apart by war and a non-supportive con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment. It seems they often go hand in hand.

We chose to do a tour of The Cul­tural Tri­an­gle, a 6 site project cre­ated by UNESCO in 1978 to pre­serve the ancient ruins and cul­tural his­tory in Sri Lanka. The Cul­tural Tri­an­gle is bounded by Anu­rad­ha­pura, Polon­naruwa and Kandy. The other three sites are Dambulla, Jeta­vana and Sigiriya. We vis­ited all except Anu­rad­ha­pura, due to the ongo­ing con­flict in the north, and Jeta­vana. One day we plan to return.

I have writ­ten (and am cur­rently in the process of com­plet­ing) four posts on the Bud­dhist sites we vis­ited. I have pro­vided links to each post here.

Dambulla Cave Tem­ples or Tem­ple of the Golden Mountain

Polon­naruwa, the 2nd ancient cap­i­tal of Sri Lanka

Sigiriya Lion Rock

Tem­ple of the Tooth in Kandy

Tagged as: Buddhism, Buddhist, Buddhist Sites, Sri Lanka