Sri Lanka Holidays

Jetavana Dagoba (Stupa), Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka

East of the Golden Sand Stupa (Ruwan Weli Saye)

Enough bricks for a great wall from London to Edinburgh
The Jetavana stupa looming impressively from the plain is the highest brick-built dagoba in the world. The paved platform on which it stands covers more than 8 acres (3 hectares) of land & has a diameter of over 100m. In its original form the dagoba stood 120m high, & was the third-tallest structure in the world, surpassed only by the two great pyramids Khufru & Khafra at Gizeh, Egypt. It was also the world's biggest stupa & is still the tallest & largest structure made entirely of brick anywhere on earth. It took 27 years to build & contains over ninety million bricks.

In 1860 Emerson Tennent, in his book Ceylon, calculated that it had enough bricks to build a 3-m high brick wall 25 cm thick from London to Edinburgh, equal to the distance from the southernmost tip of Sri Lanka at Dondra head to northernmost point in Sri Lanka at Point Pedro & again back down to the coast at Trincomalee. Although it had stood over 120m high in its days of glory, today it is about 70m, similar height to the Abayagiri Stupa.

Ongoing restoration
UNESCO sponsored restoration began in 1981 but is still far from finished: A part of the structure is still encased in scaffolding & restoration work hasn't been continuous.

Four entrances to the courtyard
The dagoba stands on an enormous but rather overgrown platform. Only two of the dagoba's four vahakadas (entrances to the courtyard) have so far been excavated; the one facing the entrance on the southern side is the finest. It is studded with eroded elephant heads, with Nagaraja (cobra king) guardstones to either side & an unidentified goddess.

Semi nude: lissome women of matchless grace
The Jetavanarama's eastern vahalkada was decorated with beautiful figures of lissome women of matchless grace: they appear to be moving, even dancing, and wearing elaborate but scanty attire.

Lost to the sword & fire of marauding Dravidian invaders
The size of the Patimaghara (image house) here shows that King Mahasena (276-303 AD) had an enormous Buddha image built herein, even larger than the famous Aukana Buddha Statue, facing the dagoba. A tall, slender door leads between eight-meter high surviving sections of wall into a narrow image chamber, at the end of which is a lotus base which once supported a standing Buddha image. The image was destroyed by the marauding Dravidian invaders from South India.

A little south of the Jetavanarama Dagoba, & on another side of the road, there is a stone railing built in imitation of a long wall. It encloses a site 42m by 34m, but the building within too was destroyed by the marauding Dravidian invaders from South India.

The remains of the monastery
The area south of the dagoba is littered with the Jetavana monastery's extensive remains of impressive scale. All ruins are carefully excavated & landscaped. The monastery would once have housed some 3000 monks. The first monastery buildings were constructed during the third century in the area north of the dagoba (which remains largely unexcavated) & gradually spread south & east as the monastery expanded until the tenth century.

Jetavana Museum
The interesting Jetavana Museum holds a striking collection of objects recovered during excavations since 1981 at the 300 - acre site monastery. Among the unearthed are fragments of decorative friezes & carvings from the site, including Buddha statues & guradstones, some of great delicacy & fine jewellery, ivory carvings, ear ornaments & bangles, all of extremely fine workmanship, as well as stones such as amethyst & garnet, collection of pottery & the skillfully crafted three-tiered urinal pot. A pavilion outside has more stone sculptures: friezes, elephants & guardstones.

Buddhist Railing
Immediately behind the Jetavana museum lies a latticed fence pierced with four entrances oriented towards the cardinal points; the three tiers of the fence are claimed to represent Buddhism's "triple gems" (the Buddha; his teachings; & the Sangha). The building which the railing formerly enclosed was an image house.

The Roman Connection (The Jetavana treasures)
The treasury of objects from the Jetavanaram complex has become known as the Jetavana Treasures. They show how far-reaching were Anuradhapura's foreign connections. There are Roman & Indian coins, ceramics from North & West Asia, & fragments of Islamic & Chinese ware. Huge numbers of beads made of clay, glass, silver, ivory & carnelian have also been found, as have intaglio seals made in semiprecious stone & gold, & bronze religious statuettes.