About 205 km north of Colombo is Anuradhapura, the first capital of Sri Lanka established in the 4th century BC that remained the Royal Capital for over ten centuries. Several magnificent dagobas, buildings, monasteries, ponds, irrigation tanks spanning one thousand five hundred years bear testimony to a glorious and technically advanced civilization. Ruvanveli, Jetavana, and Abhayagiri are huge dagobas that stand majestically having withstood the battering of elements for over fifteen centuries.
Foremost among the numerous historical monuments in Anuradhapura is the Sacred Bo Tree - Sri Maha Bodhi, grown from a branch of the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. A mass of stone pillars close to the Sri Maha Bodhi identified as the Brazen Palace was once a nine storied building. Isurumuniya is famous for its beautiful stone carvings. Samadhi Buddha image is a masterpiece of sculpture. Among the extensive ruins covering the city of Anuradhapura are Buddha images, temples, palaces, bathing ponds, monasteries, hospitals, alms halls and beautiful stone carvings and irrigation tanks.
Precincts were set aside for huntsmen and scavengers and even heretics and foreigners. There were hostels and hospitals, separate cemeteries for high and low castes. A water supply was assured by the construction of reservoirs.
Anuradhapura was to continue for six hundred years as the national capital. But internecine struggles for the royal succession grew, and it became more and more vulnerable to the pressures of South Indian political expansion. The city was finally abandoned and the capital withdrawn to more secluded areas.
But the monuments of Anuradhapura's heyday survive, surrounded by the solemn umbrage of trees, scions of an ancient parkland.
This sacred city was established around a cutting from the "tree of enlightenment", Buddha's fig tree, brought there in the 3rd century B.C. by Sanghamitta, the founder of an order of Buddhist nuns. Anuradhapura, a Ceylonese political and religious capital that flourished for 1,300 years, was abandoned after an invasion in 993. Hidden away in thick jungle for a long time, the splendid site, with its palaces, monasteries and monuments, is once again accessible.


Kings History of Anuradhapura

Anuradhapura, according to legend, was first settled by Anuradha, a follower of Prince Vijaya the founder of the Sinhala race. Later, it was made the Capital by King Pandu kabhaya.

King Pandu kabhaya,

According to the Mahavamsa, the epic of Sinhala History, King Pandukabhaya's city was a model of planning. Precints were set aside for huntsmen, for scavengers and for heretics as well as for foreigners. There were hostels and hospitals, at least one Jain chapel, and cemeteries for high and low castes.
Water supply was assured by the construction of 'tanks', artificial reservoirs, of which the one called after himself, exists to this day under the altered name of Baswak Kulam.

King Devanampiya Tissa

It was in the reign of King Devanampiya Tissa that the Arahat Mahinda. son of the great Buddhist Emperor Asoka, led a group of missionaries from North India to Sri Lanka. With his followers he settled in a hermitage of caves on the hill of Mihintale, (literally, Mahinda's Mountain).
The new religion swept over the land in a wave. The King himself gave for a great monastery in the very heart of the City his own Royal Park - the beautiful Mahamegha Gardens.
The Buddhist principality had but a century to flourish when it was temporarily overthrown by an invader from the Chola Kingdom of South India. The religion, however, received no set-back.

King Duttha Gamini

At this time far away on the southeast coast, was growing up the prince who was to become the paladin of Sinhala nationalism: Gamini, soon to be surnamed Duttha, the Undutiful.
The Mirisavati Temple and the mighty Brazen Palace nine storeys high, he presented to them. But he did not live to see the actual completion of the Ruvanveliseya Dagaba (picture at top right), his most magnificent gift
Two more, at least, of the Anuradhapura Kings must be mentioned; if only because some of the greater monuments are indisputably attributable to them.

King Vattagamani Abhaya

The earlier of these was Vattagamani Abhaya Valagam Bahu in the first year of whose reign Chola invaders again appeared and drove him temporarily into hiding. For fourteen years, while five Tamil Kings occupied his throne, he wandered often sheltering in Jungle caves. It is recorded that as in his flight he passed an ancient Jain hermitage, an ascetic, Giri called and taunted him. 'The great black lion is fleeing!' Throughout his exile the gibe rankled.
Winning the Kingdom back at last, he razed the Giri's hermitage to the ground, building there the Abhayagiri Monastery. The name is a wry cant on his own name and the tactless hermit's as well as (meaning mountain of fearlessness) a disclaimer of his cowardice!

King Mahasena

Next came the heretic king Mahasena. He alienated to the Abhayagiri vast spoil from the Maha Monastery, Devanampiya Tissa's original foundation. But he had more substantial claim to notability than his heresy; not only did he build (for the heretics) Sri Lanka's vastest completed Dagaba the Jetavana Ramaya, - but he was also the greatest irrigationist of the Sinhala Kings, building 16 major tanks and a great canal.

Atamasthana

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