THE BURIED CITY OF CEYLON 



By John M. Abbot 



COMPARATIVELY few people 

 outside of Ceylon realize that 

 on that little island in the Indian 

 Ocean was once a civilization which 

 when Christ was born was at its height. 

 After all these centuries little of it re- 

 mains except a few imperfect ruins of its 

 most famous city, Anuradhapura. 



At one time, about 200 B. C, this was 

 the capital of the island. No estimate of 

 its population has ever been made, but 

 some idea of its size can be gathered 

 from the fact that it harbored 96,000 

 Buddhist priests. In area the city occu- 

 pied about 100 square miles, and it was 

 divided into two parts, the inner, wherein 

 are the remains of the temple and the 

 monasteries, and the outer, where lived 

 kings and the laymen. 



The city was built in the wave of re- 

 ligious enthusiasm which struck Ceylon 

 with the advent of Buddhism. Succes- 

 sive kings vied with each other to erect 

 monuments worthy of themselves and 

 their faith. But the hand of time and 

 successive invasions by the Hindoo 

 Tamils, who took pleasure in destroying 

 what they could not replace, have left of 

 this once mighty city of Anuradhapura 

 nothing but a few granite posts in the 

 thick jungle. 



Thirty years ago these even were not 

 visible, but from the Mahavansa, the one 

 literary document in Singhalese history 

 running from B. C. 542 to nearly our 

 own day, the site of the ancient city was 

 known, and so the British government 

 set about the work of excavation. The 

 greater part of the city was found about 

 six or eight feet underground, and it is 

 hard to realize that nature alone has ac- 

 complished this task. 



Two thousand years ago the city was 

 situated on a fertile plain. Water was 

 brought from the mountains, forty miles 

 distant, in a huge canal and stored in 

 large artificial lakes, from which it was 



distributed to tanks in various parts of 

 the city. One of the first acts of the 

 Tamils was to destroy this system of irri- 

 gation, and with that ended the pros- 

 perity which the country had enjoyed. 

 For four months of the year Ceylon is 

 deluged by rains ; for the rest of the time 

 there is practically a drought. The tanks 

 and lakes serve the same purpose for 

 which the great dam of Egypt has been 

 constructed — to keep back the water in 

 time of plenty for use in time of need. 

 Agriculture was brought to a standstill, 

 and it was only by practically replacing 

 these ancient works that the British gov- 

 ernment has made cultivation in this dis- 

 trict possible. 



The Tamils destroyed the city, and 

 Nature completed the work by conceal- 

 ing the remains. Like Jerusalem after 

 its final destruction, not one stone re- 

 mained above another. 



The most imposing objects in Anurad- 

 hapura are the Dagobas, of which there 

 are four. They are huge mounds of 

 solid brick shaped like beehives and from 

 three to four hundred feet high. They 

 were erected by kings to commemorate 

 different events — one to celebrate the 

 conquest of a rival, another to the glory 

 of Buddha, and so on. 



In the hot, dry atmosphere of Egypt 

 they would be as perfect as two thousand 

 years ago, but in Ceylon the hot summers 

 and the rainy winters have very nearly 

 proved too much for them. 



Birds have dropped seed in their flight, 

 and these, taking root in the cracks and 

 crevices of the Dagobas, have grown 

 until they have dislodged huge masses of 

 brick, making frequent restorations nec- 

 essary. 



Originally these mounds were painted 

 white with a composition called chunam, 

 but now they resemble wooded hills from 

 which in places the sides have fallen 

 away, showing the bricks beneath. 



