Around The Base Of The Dagoba On The Upper Terrace Are Eight
Small Entrances With Highly-Ornamented Exteriors.
These are the
doors to eight similar chambers of about twelve feet square, in
each of which is a small altar and carved golden idol.
This
Dagoba forms the main centre of the city, from which streets
branch off in all directions, radiating from the circular space
in which it stands.
The main street from the entrance-gate continues to the further
extremity of the city, being crossed at right angles in the
centre by a similar street, thus forming two great main streets
through the city, terminating in four great gates or entrances to
the town - north, south, east and west. Continuing along the
main street from the great Dagoba for about a mile, we face
another Dagoba of similar appearance, but of smaller dimensions,
also standing in a spacious circle. Near this rises the king's
palace, a noble building of great height, edged at the corner by
narrow octagon towers.
At the further extremity of this main street, close to the
opposite entrance- gate, is the rock temple, with the massive
idols of Buddha flanking the entrance.
This, from the form and position of the existing ruins, we may
conceive to have been the appearance of Pollanarua in its days of
prosperity. But what remains of its grandeur? It has vanished
like "a tale that is told;" it is passed away like a dream; the
palaces are dust; the grassy sod has grown in mounds over the
ruins of streets and fallen houses; nature has turfed them in one
common grave with their inhabitants. The lofty palms have faded
away and given place to forest trees, whose roots spring from the
crumbled ruins; the bear and the leopard crouch in the porches of
the temples; the owl roosts in the casements of the palaces; the
jackal roams among the ruins in vain; there is not a bone left
for him to gnaw of the multitudes which have passed away. There
is their handwriting upon the temple wall, upon the granite slab
which has mocked at Time; but there is no man to decipher it.
There are the gigantic idols before whom millions have bowed;
there is the same vacant stare upon their features of rock which
gazed upon the multitudes of yore; but they no longer stare upon
the pomp of the glorious city, but upon ruin, and rank weeds, and
utter desolation. How many suns have risen and how many nights
have darkened the earth since silence has reigned amidst the
city, no man can tell. No mortal can say what fate befell those
hosts of heathens, nor when they vanished from the earth. Day
and night succeed each other, and the shade of the setting sun
still falls from the great Dagoba; but it is the "valley of the
shadow of death" upon which that shadow falls like a pall over
the corpse of a nation.
The great Dagoba now remains a heap of mouldering brickwork,
still retaining its form, but shorn of all its beauty. The
stucco covering has almost all disappeared, leaving a patch here
and there upon the most sheltered portions of the building.
Scrubby brushwood and rank grass and lichens have for the most
part covered its surface, giving it the appearance rather of a
huge mound of earth than of an ancient building. A portion of
the palace is also standing, and, although for the most part
blocked up with ruins, there is still sufficient to denote its
former importance. The bricks, or rather the tiles, of which all
the buildings are composed, are of such an imperishable nature
that they still adhere to each other in large masses in spots
where portions of the buildings have fallen.
In one portion of the ruins there are a number of beautiful
fluted columns, with carved capitals, still remaining in a
perfect state. Among these are the ruins of a large flight of
steps; near them, again, a stone-lined tank, which was evidently
intended as a bath; and everything denotes the former comfort and
arrangement of a first-class establishment. There are
innumerable relics, all interesting and worthy of individual
attention, throughout the ruins over a surface of many miles, but
they are mostly overgrown with jungle or covered with rank grass.
The apparent undulations of the ground in all directions are
simply the remains of fallen streets and buildings overgrown in
like manner with tangled vegetation.
The most interesting, as being the most perfect, specimen, is the
small rock temple, which, being hewn out of the solid stone, is
still in complete preservation. This is a small chamber in the
face of an abrupt rock, which, doubtless, being partly a natural
cavern, has been enlarged to the present size by the chisel; and
the entrance, which may have been originally a small hole, has
been shaped into an arched doorway. The interior is not more
than perhaps twenty-five feet by eighteen, and is simply fitted
up with an altar and the three figures of Buddha, in the
positions in which he is usually represented -the sitting, the
reclining and the standing postures.
The exterior of the temple is far more interesting. The narrow
archway is flanked on either side by two inclined planes, hewn
from the face of the rock, about eighteen feet high by twelve in
width. These are completely covered with an inscription in the
old Pali language, which has never been translated. Upon the
left of one plain is a kind of sunken area hewn out of the rock,
in which sits a colossal figure of Buddha, about twenty feet in
height. On the right of the other plane is a figure in the
standing posture about the same height; and still farther to the
right, likewise hewn from the solid rock, is an immense figure in
the recumbent posture, which is about fifty-six feet in length,
or, as I measured it, not quite nineteen paces.
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