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Updated: May 27, 2025
"The Jewish porch is but the obelisk which the Egyptian placed beside his temple; the Boodhist pillars which stood all around their Dagobas; the pillars of Hercules, which stood near the Phoenician temple; and the spire which stands beside the Christian Church."
Then the men of Kusinagara collecting all the ashes of the burning, raised over them a Kaitya, and called it "the Ashes Dâgoba." The eight Stûpas of the eight kings, "the Golden Pitcher" and "the Ashes Stûpa." Thus throughout Gambudvipa there first were raised ten Dâgobas.
Opening the Dâgobas raised by those seven kings to take the Sarîras thence, he spread them everywhere, and raised in one day eighty-four thousand towers; only with regard to the eighth pagoda in Râmagrama, which the Nâga spirit protected, the king was unable to obtain those relics; but though he obtained them not, knowing they were spiritually bequeathed relics of Buddha which the Nâga worshipped and adored, his faith was increased and his reverent disposition.
The pyramids and dagobas are crude, barbaric embodiments of bulk and imposing loftiness; the other is a realization in marble of a poetic dream. The former are remarkable only for magnitude; the latter, for its exquisite grace. There is sufficient evidence still left us to show that the olden city of Pollonarua was laid out in a perfectly systematic way, and built up in the most regular manner.
Tall trees grow on their very summits, and their roots have wrenched and torn asunder the most gigantic and massive masonry, and hurled it crumbling to the plains below. Sir Emmerson Tennent, in his delightful work on Ceylon, describes one of these dagobas, that of Jayta-wana-rama, erected by Mahasen, A.D. 330:
This remarkable building was visible some time before we reached it, and is of the form peculiar to Bhuddist places of worship in other parts of the world, but more particularly in Anuradhupoora and the ancient cities of Ceylon, the ruins of which bear testimony to the existence of larger Dagobas than that before which the followers of the Bhuddist faith worship in the valley of Katmandu.
These peculiarly shaped dagobas are scattered all over the island, each being the receptacle of some saintly relic. Tradition says they are thus formed to resemble a bubble floating upon the water, but they are really bell-shaped, and most of them have a low, ornamental spire. Near the summit is the secret chamber wherein is deposited the sacred treasure. Time effaces all mundane things.
Above these alcove-chapels there are seventy-two small latticed domes, or dagobas, each with its statue of Buddha imprisoned within, as if he were preparing himself, by seclusion and meditation, for the final state in which the great chamber which crowns the structure represents him, I mean the state of passivity and bliss, which has escaped the evils of transmigration and has attained to absorption of personal existence of the impersonal world-force which the Hindu called Brahma.
At Dondra Head, the extreme southern point of Ceylon, the difference between the longest and shortest day of the year is only forty minutes. This interesting island is rich in prehistoric monuments, Buddhist temples, and lofty dagobas, some of which were originally over three hundred feet in height, exceeding that of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, in Paris, by sixty feet.
Temples stood upon the hill-tops; cities were studded over the land, their lofty dagobas and palaces reflected on the glassy surface of the lakes, from which their millions of inhabitants derived their food, their wealth and their very life.
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