Velgam Vehera, situated near Trincomalee, is known as Natanar Kovil to Tamil Hindus. It belongs to the village of Kanniyai, which is otherwise famous for its hot wells. The rarely visited ruins of Velgam Vehera are remarkable as rare example of remnants from the Chola occupation of Sri Lanka. The history of this specific Buddhist temple contradicts a widespread opinion among Sri Lankans, shared by many others who believe in deep-rooted religious antagonisms, that the Cholas, who were Tamil Hindus from mainland India, systematically destroyed Buddhist heritage when conquering Sri Lanka. On the contrary, in Velgam Vehera they restored a Buddhist temple. Presumably, the reason was the existence of a highly influential Buddhist minority among Tamil seafarers and merchants. Velgam Vehera’s large-scale image house, indicating that the hall with a Buddha statue has become the major place of worship instead of a stupa, inspired classical Sinhalese architecture of the Polonnaruwa period.
HISTORY OF VELGAM VEHERA
A monastic complex existed here throughout the Anuradhapura period. According to the inscription, the first Buddhist king of Sri Lanka, Devanampiya Tissa, planted an offshoot of the bo tree from Anuradhapura in Velgam Vehera. A rock inscription uphill towards the reservoir dates from the time of the Anuradhapura king Batiya Maharaja (Bhatika Tissa, 141-165) and mentions the place name Velgama in connection with a land donation from a general Abhaya to the local monastery. Many other kings of the middle and later Anuradhapura period are considered to have been restorers and donors to this maybe most important monastery in the northeast. Three old inscriptions prove the supra-regional importance of Velgam Vehera.
When Anuradhapura was occupied by South Indian invaders and came under the rule of the Chola dynasty in 992, the island's administrational capital was soon moved drom Anuradhapura to Polonnaruwa. The Velgam Vehera monastery, located near Trincomalee, the important connecting port of the Cholas, was affected by the invasion, it was perhaps even deliberately damaged by the Tamil conquerors. However, the Cholas rebuilt the Buddhist monastery and named it after their famous South Indian king Rajaraja, namely “Rajarajaperum Palli” according to inscriptions. They also attest to the old Sinhalese name “Velgam Vehera”.
A 70 cm tall bronze chandelier was also unearthed, which contained a Tamil inscription identifying it as an eternal light. Further inscriptions report donations to maintain the eternal lights in the monastery. In this context, a Tamil inscription reports a donation of 83 cows.
The archaeologists even found an inscription at the Velgam Vihara that names the notorious destroyer of Buddhist shrines Kalinga Magha (13th century) as the founder and restorer. If this corresponds to historical facts, it would contradict the prevailing opinion that Magha's war of conquest was inspired by a fanatical hatred of Buddhism. By the way, Magha was not a Tamil, but came from the area futher north that is now Odisha (Orissa).
The Archaeological Department became aware of the Velgam Vehera ruins in 1929 and placed it under protection in 1934. But it was only after Ceylon's independence that excavation work began, during which the stupa and the statue house, the two main architectural attractions of today's Velgam Vehera, came to light under two conspicuous mounds. Many sites, it turned out, had already been broken into by treasure hunters long time ago.
Archaeological site
The excavation site is a walled complex with old entrance gates. The walled area was certainly only the ceremonial center of the monastery. As with the Pabbata Viharas of the late Anuradhapura period, the cult buildings were located in their own area in the middle of the monastery. In general, such ceremonial buildings of the walled center of the temple were the monks' meeting hall, the image house, Bo-tree shrine and the stupa. Hardly anything can be made out of the monks' ceremonial hall in the case of Velgam Vehera.
The hill on which a Bo-tree stood still stands in the southwest corner of the Tree Temple near the south gate. The image house and stupa are better preserved.
However, the floor plan of the ceremonial center of Velgam Vehera differs significantly from the older Pabbata Viharas in that the image house clearly forms the very center of the area and is also by far the largest structure. To a certain extent, this anticipates later developments: In the Polonnaruwa period the image houses became monumental, in the Gampola period they finally became the main buildings of a temple.
The said image house (statue house) covers a rectangular area 26m long and 12m wide. The shapes of the temple with a high main hall, a larger vestibule and an enclosed courtyard for converting the shrine have their models in South Indian Hindu temples, although here the building material is not quarry stone, but local brick.
However, what is remarkable about the walling of the courtyard is the quarry stone paneling that is still clearly visible. One of the side rooms of this complex is lined with particularly large stone slabs.
The main object of worship in the large central image house is a 2m high Buddha statue that was found in the excavation site. It's a very elegant and finely crafted sculpture.
To the west of the statue house you can see the foundations of another, smaller image house with a narrow, elongated shape, which contained a reclining Buddha. The bricks, such as those in the large statue house, could be dated to the 11th or 12th century, although isolated bricks are older and came from previous buildings and were reused.
The stupa in the southeast corner of the ceremonial precinct stands on a one and a half meter high platform with a length of 21m in the north-south direction and 19m in the east-west direction. The flat stupa itself has a diameter of 11m.
The outside of the stupa terrace is decorated with relief panels. Pictures of dancers on the terracotta panels are quite unusual for a stupa decoration. You can clearly see the drummer accompanying the dancer; groups of three are typical for dance performances.
But terracotta paneling alone is stylistically unusual on a stupa platform. One would actually expect elephant heads made of brick or quarry stone as reliefs on the terraces. The dancer motif is otherwise known, for example, from fountain decorations, but it only became a very popular genre of decoration of sacred structures in the 13th century under South Indian influence. These dancer reliefs might be a small stylistic reference to the Chola influence in the design of the monastery complex.
Of the entrances to the sacred precinct with the ritual buildings, the one on the east side is the most magnificent because it is not a pillared portico as a passage as is usual, but rather a staircase building on the slope of the hill. The large “vessels of abundance” that often flanked stairs can be easily recognized as balustrade decoration. To the side of the staircase entrance is another small image house.
Near the enclosed main excavation, a museum was set up in the new buildings of today's monastery to commemorate the recent past. In an attack by LTTE terrorists in October 2000, 23 soldiers and 20 civilians were killed.
Only 500m behind the Velgam Monastery is the actually medium-sized tank Periya Kulam, which translates to “Big Lake” or “Old Tank”, and is actually of great importance and venerable age for the local dry region. The British had the historic tank from the Anuradhapura period rebuilt in 1868 in order to reestablish cultivation this dry region in the hinterland of Nilaveli Beach.
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