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Updated: May 27, 2025
Buddhism, after a life-and-death struggle, captured it and erected in it structures for worship, which for grandeur and beauty rivaled those of Burma. Two pagodas, or dagobas, of solid brick, each of them more than two hundred feet high, tower up before one as he enters the town.
These are of two kinds, the topes or stupas proper, which were erected to commemorate some striking event or to mark a sacred spot; and the dagobas, which were built to cover the relics of Buddha himself or some Buddhist saint.
The Dagobas, or shrines of relics, which abound in such numbers in Thibet, have also been found in India and other countries. Some of them when opened have been found to contain what appears to be remains of a funeral pile, also vessels of stone or metal, and, occasionally, caskets of silver and gold, curiously wrought.
As our eyes grow accustomed to the light we see a building like a snow-white bell. It is small compared with the gigantic dagobas we have examined already to-day, for the very tip of the pinnacle, rising above the bell-shaped part, is only sixty-three feet, but it is very graceful and is considered the most sacred of all the dagobas, for it was built to enshrine Buddha's collar-bone!
One more flight of stairs leads up to the gallery, surrounding the Mahaseya dagoba. The view from this highest gallery is magnificent; the great plain gave a wide vista, while beyond was an outline of the distant mountain range; nearer we saw great masses of green, through which shone the three great dagobas of Anuradhapura.
On the afternoon of our arrival we took the outer circle and went past towering ruined temples called dagobas, remains of palaces once spacious and imposing, long rows of stately columns covering a wide space, ruined towers, statues, some headless and some showing traces of their former skill, immense tanks, and remains of buildings of many descriptions which are awaiting the patient investigation of the archæologist.
Buddha must have been a giant, for his footprints are four feet long, and his tooth is as large as the tooth of an alligator, and surprisingly like one. The grounds in the neighborhood of these towering dagobas are strewn with ruins. Sixteen hundred pillars of stone, seven feet high, remain to show the vast foundations of an ancient Buddhist monastery.
In 1532, on the landing of the Portuguese at Colombo, the last blow was struck, and soon the great cities of the Empire were deserted and left in the hands of foreigners. The best dagobas were crumbling, immense tanks broken, and general devastation succeeded where splendor had long reigned.
On either side of this road, stone pillars of about twelve feet in height stood in broken, rows, and lay scattered in every direction through the jungle. Ruined dagobas and temples jutted their rugged summits above the tree-tops, and many lines of stone columns stood in parallel rows, the ancient supports of buildings of a similar character to those of Pollanarua and Anarajahpoora.
Although Mahagam is the only vestige of an ancient city in this district, there are many ruined buildings and isolated dagobas of great antiquity scattered throughout the country. I observed on a peak of one of the Kattregam hills large masses of fallen brickwork, the ruins of some former buildings, probably coeval with Mahagam.
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