Dambulla srilanka

Dambulla

Dambulla

 
he city of Dambulla in Sri Lanka is just 5 hours from the bustling Colombo. Located in the Matale District, Central Province, Dambulla is famous because it houses the Dambulla Cave Temple – the largest, best-preserved, cave-temple complex in the country. Also known as Golden Rock Temple, this World Heritage Site comprises of a cave monastery and five sanctuaries. There are more than 80 documents caves within the 2000 feet of the temple’s premises, but there are five main complexes that have paintings and sculptures of Lord Buddha including the beautiful 45-foot sleeping Buddha statue.\n\nThough tourists mostly visit the city just to see these caves, there are other beautiful sights around the city like the Rose Quartz Mountain, Iron Wood Forest and the Rangiri Dambulla International Cricket Stadium which was built in just 167 days. Most travellers combine a visit to Dambulla with a visit to Sigiriya’s ancient rock fortress. This 660-foot column of rock is in the middle of a thick green tropical forest and is called the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’. Everything in Dambulla is reasonably priced, including the delicious authentic Sri Lankan food that is made with generous amounts of herbs and spices.
Dambulla-Cave

Dambulla Cave Temple History

 

The Dambulla Rock Cave Temple had first been constructed during the rein of King Vattagamini Abhaya ( 103 BC and 89-77 BC ). The Sinhalese often call him as King Valagamba. During a South Indian invasion the king had to abandon his Anuradhapura Kingdom . For 12 years, King Valagamba was in hiding and had frequented these caves for his safety. After regaining the kingdom of Anuradhapura and becoming the King, to show his gratefulness for his safe place, he converted those caves into Buddhist Temples by constructing walled partitions under the rock overhang which spans the entire area as a single large cave. He got drip ledges made along this large cave and made it suitable to withstand rainy weather and avoided water seeping inside the caved areas. The three cave temples named as Devarajalena, Maharajalena and the Paccimalena were constructed by him.

After King Vattagamini Abaya’s rein, for several centuries this cave temple had not come under the patronage of any other Kings until Vijayabahu I (1055-1110 AD ), who made Polonnaruwa his kingdom. He had done renovations to the Cave temples and it is believed that there were Buddhist monks dwelling in this and nearby caves at that times. King Keerthi Sri Nissankamalla (1187-1196 AD ) was much involved in uplifting the place with many additional Buddha images being constructed and gold plating some seventy three Buddha images in the Dambulla Cave Temple.

King Buwanekabahu (1372-1408 AD), King Vickramabahu III (1360-1374 AD), King Rajasinha I (1581-1591 AD) and King Vimaladharmasuriya I (1592-1604 AD ) are the other Kings merited with the uplifting of the status of the Dambulla Cave Temple at various times of the years gone by.

Another interesting fact is that the Archeologists state that this cave and other numerous caves around the main rock had been in use for dwelling in pre historic times too from the evidence found so far.

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