Thiriyai still is an off-the-beaten-path destination, although its worth visiting indeed: It’s both the most important and the most beautiful archaeological site of the Eastern Province. Along with Kudumbigala 250 km further south, Thiriyai is certainly one of the most charming ancient temples along Sri Lanka‘s eastern coastline, just due to its location on a hill overlooking the sea, which is only four kilometers away. In terms of cultural history, Thiriyai is unrivaled in eastern Sri Lanka, because of its classical circular temple. It would deserve more than other Sri Lankan candidates to be included in the list of World Heritage Sites. This somewhat brisk introduction already reveals that Thiriyai is one of our favorite places, we highly recommend travellers to visit it when staying in Trincomalee District. The following presentation also serves to make aware of both the beauty and significance of this historical site, which is still off the beaten path. Though not being a proposal for UNESCO listings, our article may serve as a suggestion for itineraries of study trips.
A village on the east coast of Sri Lanka, 42 km north of Trincomalee. On a hill in the interior of Thiriai is a Buddhist temple and archaeological site that includes Sri Lanka's best-preserved watadaga from the Anuradhapura period. Vatadageya are circular temples in which small stupas are enshrined. This particular form is typical of classical Buddhist architecture in Sri Lanka. The Thiriyai Vatadaga is 400 years old but the outer ring wall is better preserved than the more famous Vatadaga at Polonnaruwa. Legend has it that a hair relic was deposited by the merchants Tapusa and Bhallika, the first two lay followers of the Buddha. Thiriyai Archaeological Site is one of the most interesting archaeological sites in Sri Lanka. Apart from the special mentioned for today's tourists interested in cultural history, ie. The circular temple at the top of the hill has excavations of an entire medieval monastery.
Remarkably, Tamils played a crucial roles in the construction of the ancient Buddhist temple of Thiriyai. Though this seems to be almost forgotten in today's guidebooks, which tend to project a modern dividing line between the Buddhist Sinhalese culture and the Hindu Tamil culture into the classical periods of these two neighbouring civilizations, in fact many Tamil merchants trading along the shores of the Gulf of Bengal during the entire first millennium were Buddhists and not Hindus. It is noteworthy that this Buddhist sanctuary in today's Tamil area was once not only co-founded by Tamil Buddhists but also influenced by the Pallava style, which marks the period of the classical Tamil art in mainland India. Decoration elements, particularly the oldest Nagaraja doorkeeper sculptures of Sri Lanka, are indicative of a transfer of elements of southindian art to the island.
Ancient stone bridge
Not far from the car park and within the compound of the new monastery, there is an an ancient stone bridge at the foot of Thiriyai Hill. These seemingly stone-age-constructions were actually built during the Anuradhapura period.
Sri Lanka once was home to several dozens of such stone bridges. They are usually called Gal Palama, which is just the Pali term of the same meaning as stone bridge. Sri Lanka’s Gal Palamas resemble stone age bridges or at least bronze age bridges (e.g. Tarr Steps in Exmoor in southwestern England). But, as said, they are from a historical period, namely the first millennium AD. Such bridges were constructed all over the island. However, only a few are as well preserved as this small one in Thiriyai.
Visiting Thiriyai Sanctuary
The main sanctuary on the summit is still a travel destination of Buddhist pilgrims. As mentioned, the location of the temple on a hilltop is also one reason why it‘s an attractive destination for modern tourists interested in the island’s heritage.
The stairway to the ancient site begins just behind the two ponds separating the hill from the compound of the new monastic buildings and the stone bridge.
The well-built staircase to the hill sanctuary is said to habe 280 steps leading to the hill sanctuary. Maybe, the hike is a little bit exhausting in the tropical heat, but it’s certainly not an extreme physical challenge, the level of strenuousness is comparable to that reaching the Dambulla caves.
Halfway to the tip the visitor can find Brahmi inscriptions, just above a narrow rocky outcrop. The style of the characters as ell eas the content allow to attribute the inscription to roughly the time of Christ's birth.
Reaching a small platform after three-quarters of the flight of steps, the steep upper part of stairway is on the left, this very last section of the stairs leads to the circular temple enclosing the main dagoba on the summit. Instead of going there directly, the visitor can can walk a narrow path running straight ahead at this turn of the staircase, then arriving at a deep artificially widened waterhole in the rock, it’s almost always filled with water, even during the local dry period in northern hemisphere summer months. It may also have served as a bathing pool of the ancient monastery, a so-called Pokuna.
Northern monastic complex of Thiriyai
The center of the monastery is a veritable courtyard, with shirt stairways down into it from all four sides down, flanked by small guardian steles. The staircases to the image houses of the monastery are flanked by very simple Makara balustrades.
On the northern side of this courtyard is a quite peculiar building, the two platforms of which are connected by a broad and flat monolith, which, like the other paving stones, is massive and nevertheless levelled and slightly burnished. This elaborate works of stone carving are striking within this complex of otherwise not very large-sized and almost undecorated buildings. The said building looks like an en-miniature version of meditation platforms from the same period which are also designed as double platforms. The latter are known from forest monasteries. Their specific architectural form can be studied at another building just next to the said group surronding the coutyard.
Padhanagara of Thiriyai
On the western edge of the central monastic area there is a typical meditation platform, more precisely: a double platform with a stone bridge, a so-called Padhanagara.
Small mountain top
Let's finally turn to Thiriyai’s main attraction, the terrace on the top, where the well-preserved circular stupa-house is situated. It’s accessible also from the above-mentioned monastic abbey ruins on the north slope, as a restored ancient stairway leads to the summit plateau of the sacred hill, which definitely was and is the most sacred site of the temple complex .
The artificially leveled summit of the hill of Thiriyai covers an area of about half a hectare. The entire terrace is enclosed by a wall.
The circular temple of Thiriyai is also known by the poetic name "Akasachetiya", meaning "heavenly stupa", obviously an allusion to its location on a peak - albeit this heavenly mountain is not very tall. Nonetheless, the location of the circular temple is a charming site deserving celestial names inded. It’s also a good vantage point. overlooking the surrounding plains, the wilderness of Trincomalee District to the west and the village and agricultural area to the east.
the summit terrace, the Vatadage (circular temple) is surrounded by six sparsely recognizable remnants of ancient image houses. Such temples containing statues are called Pilimages in the Sinhalese language or Patimagharas in Pali, which is the sacred language of Theravada Buddhism.
The longest one of these image houses enshrined a reclining Buddha. It was not carved out of granite, instead, it was made of bricks like most large Buddha statues in Sri Lanja. The recumbent Buddha of Thiriyai is weathered. That‘s why there is hardly anything which could give a glimpse of the original form of this sculpture.
In a smaller statue house, to the west side of the Vatadage, there is still an original Buddha image in situ, though fallen and lying on the ground now. The figure made of granite is life-size, but the limbs are missing and the facy and the garment folds are severely weathered.
The Pilimage structures enshrining the statues were once built of brick. But only the quarrystone parts are preserved, this is why only foundations and thresholds and columns are still in situ. In a smaller statue house, to the west side of the Vatadage, there is still an original Buddha image in situ, though fallen and lying on the ground now. The figure made of granite is life-size, but the limbs are missing and the facy and the garment folds are severely weathered.
VATADAGE OF THIRIYAI
The said main temple of Thiriyai rises in the very center of this fenced plateau. In Sinhala, yircular temples are called Vatadages, which literally means "round house". The circular temple of Thiriyai is one of the most beautiful and best-preserved structures of this typical Sinhalese type of architecture, which is a sacral building surrounding a stupa. It’s not an exaggeration to claim that among all constructions of the Anuradhapura period, the round temple of Thiriyai gives the best impression of how such a Vatadage originally looked like.
Even more magnificent Vatadages may be those of Polonnaruwa and Medirigiriya. But the Vatadage of Thiriyai is the only one the outer wall ring of which is still intact. In Polonnaruwa the circular wall around the stupa terrace is preserved, too, but not as completely as in the case of Thiriyai, as the Vatadage of Polonnaruwa is made of bricks, whereas the ring wall of Thiriyai consists of large stone blocks. Furthermore, the world-famous Vatadage in Polonnaruwa also is from much later period. To a certain extent, it‘s a successor to the circular temple of Thiriyai, which had been constructed several centuries earlier.
The walls of the Vatadage of Thiriyai consist of chiseled large stones, which is all the more elaborate, since the stones form a curved line, whereas other precisely cut stones from the Anuradhapura period, for example, at the large bathing ponds, are merely cuboid, arranged in straight lines and at right angles.
Thiriyai Watadagei Moonlight
Magnificent staircases with moonstones and makara balustrades can be found at all four directions of the Vatadage aka Chetiyagara. These two kinds of stone carvings plus the Nagaraja steles are the typical ensemble of sculptural art at the entrance of a Sinhalese temple.
In Thiriyai, the so-called moonstones are relatively simple and plain, they are decorated only with an exterior ring of flames. Strangely enough, the only known example of such a sculptured moonstone in India is designed in exactly the opposite way, as its carvings are in the centre of a semi-circle that is undecorated at ist edge.
The carvings of the moonstone in front of the northern access staircase is extraodinarily thick, much higher than a common Anuradhapura moonstone. The almost three-dimensional moonstones of the northern entrance seems to be more than only a pad.
Even more noteworthy is the lotus motif of the exterior garland. The Anuradhapura moonstone depicts lotus ornaments in the central innermost part of the concentric rings of reliefs. In other words, usually the lotus motif of a classical Sinhalese moonstone is placed directly at the bottom of the first step of the attached staircase. It’s a symbol of purity. Being marginalized here in Thiriyai, where it borders on the realm of the earthly instead of the sacred, can be interpreted in this way: The entire moonstone, not only it’s centre, is the lotus pedestal of the staircase.
Nagaraja-Muragala
Thiriyai’s most beautiful works of art can be seen at the entrances of the Vatadage alias Chetiyagara, too. The guardian figures, known as Muragals or Murugals, correspond the gate keepers known as Dvarapalas in Indian art. The most elaborate form of such guardian sculpturs flanking the temple entrance is the Nagaraja, a snake god in human form. In Thiriyai, the number of surviving Nagarajas in situ is extraordinarily high. The specimen here are well-preserved, though not as lavishly decorated with garlands as the famous Ratnapasada Nagaraja in Anuradhapura. The simpler form of this classical steles in Titiyaya suggests that the large Murugals of Thiriyai are created even earlier than the equally large ones in Anuradhapura and other parts of the island. But all the elements of a classical Anuradhapura guardian sculpture can already be seen in Thiriyai, viz. the multiple cobra hood above the head and the earthly fertility gnome at the feet, the arabesque garlands in one hand, and the vessel of abundance from which the wish-fulfillment tendril grows in the other.
There is only one archaelogical site in Sri Lanka that has more Nagaraja stelae than Thiriyai, namely Polonnaruwa. However, the guardian stones of Thiriyai display still original from the late Anuradhapura period, which is a few centuries earlier than the Polonnaruwa period (the latter is mainly the 12th century).
Interestingly, the Murugals of Thiriyai have features of the art of the Southindian Tamil Pallavas of the 7th and 8th century. This is why the Archeological Department dates the Nagarajas Thiriyais as earlier than those found at the Thuparama and the Ratnapasada in Anuradhapura, the latter being the most elaborate one. This is why t makes sense to see Thiriyai on the northeastern coast of Sri Lanka as a kind of intermediary of this significant element of Indian sculptural art on its way from southeast India to Anuradhapura. This is to day, Thiriyai is not only the site with most Nagarajas from the Anuradhapura period, but it furthermote has the oldest specimens of this kind of guardian relief, which became typical of Sinhalese temple decorations.
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