HISTORY

   Sigiriya: Monastery or pleasure palace?

By R. Wijewardene 

Long ago in the great kingdom on the island’s northern plain, Kasyapa — the son of King Dhatusena by his second wife — murdered his father and placed himself on the throne at Anuradhapura.

The legitimate heir to the throne, Mogalana, fled to India in order to raise an army and reclaim his kingdom from his usurping half brother.

Kasyapa, having made himself king, feared the imminent return of Mogalana with an accompanying army of Indian mercenaries.

To secure himself against the threat of invasion, Kasyapa abandoned the Sinhala kings’ ancient abode at Anuradhapura and installed himself in a palace at the summit of the spectacular orange-streaked rock at Sigiriya.

At the summit of this inaccessible natural monolith, he set about creating what many claim is a genuine wonder of the world — a fantastic pleasure palace at the top of a virtually unscalable rock.

Focus on pleasure

Confident that the rock’s sheer walls would allow him to withstand any siege, the parricide prince began to focus his attention less on defence and more on pleasure.

He laid out vast pleasure gardens at the site and had thousands of labourers toil for decades to turn the living rock of Sigiriya into a succession of galleries lined with images of heavenly maidens.

So secure was King Kasyapa in his fortress that he began to see himself not as a low-born usurper but as a god king — an avatar of the ancient god of wealth Kuvera, whose palace is said to be perched on the summit of Mount Kailasha.

He even began to lay out the garden and architectural features of the fortress to imitate mythological description of Kuvera’s palace, but before his megalomaniacal designs could be completed Mogalana, the rightful heir to the kingdom’s throne, returned with an army.

A pitched battle ensued at the foot of the fortress, but when his elephant failed him Kasyapa committed suicide, leaving Mogalana victorious.

The tale of Vijaya

The rightful order of things was therefore restored and a deviant, decadent monarch who had abandoned Buddhism to establish a debauched ego-centric cult was defeated by the pious, dutiful and Buddhist Mogalana.

This ancient story, along with the tale of Vijaya — the mythical ancestor of the Sinhala race — and the story of Siddhartha Gauthama should be immediately familiar to anyone educated in Sri Lanka.

 The tale of Kasyapa the parricide prince has been told and retold. Originally discovered in translations of the Mahavamsa, today it is recounted in everything from children’s storybooks and history textbooks to tourist brochures.

Unfortunately, however, the gripping and elaborate tale that has captured the imagination of generations of Sri Lankans and visitors to the island, like so many of history’s finest stories, is very unlikely to be true.

Over a century of archaeological exploration at Sigiriya has uncovered almost no evidence that supports the romantic claim that a palace once sat atop the flat summit of the rock.

Never a palace

Having conducted decades of excavation at the Sigiriya site, former Archaeological Commissioner Raja de Silva has stated categorically that a palace never sat at the summit of Sigiriya.

The limited archeological remains at the top of the rock indicate that the structure that stood at the summit did not posses either a tiled roof or the doors and windows that would typically be associated with a royal palace.

Ultimately, Raja de Silva claims, the low terrace of Sigiriya could not possibly have served as the foundation for a structure as significant as a palace.

Fundamentally, De Silva takes issue with the logistics behind erecting a palace at the summit of a 1000 ft. rock, and claims that it simply would not have been possible during the 20 years of Kasyapa’s rule.

He also discounts the claims that Sigiriya was employed as a fortress, arguing that the site was, in fact, indefensible; an isolated and easily-surrounded spot well away from the men-at-arms and supplies available at Anuradhapura, and further points out that Sigiriya has several entrances, which is inconsistent with fortresses, which are invariably designed to have a limited number of entrances.

A defensive fortress

De Silva claims that even the celebrated historian Paranavitharana, who argues in favour of Sigiriya being the abode of Kasyapa, admitted the site could not have been a defensive fortress, and presented the site more as a pleasure palace.

There has always been debate as to whether Sigiriya served primarily as a fortress or a pleasure palace. If Kasyapa feared being deposed enough to build a palace on top of an inaccessible rock, why did he lavish his attention on art sculptures and gardens, which are not remotely relevant to defence? And why, if Sigiriya was indeed a fortress, did he immediately come out to battle Mogalana on the low plains beneath the rock?

Ultimately, the extravagance visible at Sigiriya simply does not appear to be compatible with the theory that Kasyapa was an insecure monarch whose reign was characterised by his fear of being deposed.

Whether Sigiriya was a fortress or a pleasure palace has been debated for decades, but Raja de Silva claims that it was neither.

He claims that the rock that towers over the plains of Dambulla and Habarana served for several centuries as a monastic complex. And that many of the site’s features — its isolation, its indefensibility and its art work (all incompatible with theories that view the site as either a defensive fortress or pleasure palace) can easily be explained if Sigiriya is viewed as a religious site.

Sigiriya’s rock-hewn galleries

At the heart of the issue, of course, are Sigiriya’s iconic frescoes. Different historians at different times have made various claims as to the provenance of the maidens that adorn Sigiriya’s rock-hewn galleries.

It has been suggested that they are essentially portraits of the pleasure-seeking Kasyapa’s wives and concubines, or that they are celestial beings — Apsaras painted to confirm Kasyapa’s vision of himself as a god-king in a heavenly abode.

While many theories ascribe their origins to Kasyapa, it has also been claimed that the sheer number of frescos originally at the site was such that they could not have been completed during Kasyapa’s reign alone.

Estimates of the age of the frescoes also suggest that they were completed as much as several decades apart. If that is the case, it is impossible that they could have been completed during Kasyapa’s 20 year reign.

Graffiti on the mirror wall

It is difficult to explain how some frescoes could have been completed long after the others, as it is unlikely — given the circumstances of Kasyapa’s rule — that his successors would have wanted to continue his work.

The frescoes continued to be visited for centuries — as attested to by the graffiti on the mirror wall — and were not immediately defaced by Kasyapa’s successors. This suggests that the paintings had little connection with the king.

Raja de Silva, in arguing that the Sigiriya site was a monastery, claims that, rather than Apsaras, the frescoes depict the goddess Tara.

Tara, a tantric goddess and the female aspect of the Bodhisattva Avalokatissera is commonly rendered in Mahayana art and iconography. Images of Tara have been found at several sites that date from in and around the Sigiriya period — Veragala, for example.

The claim that the figures at Sigiriya depict Tara’s celestial abode are central to De Silva’s broader claim that Sigiriya was in fact not a palace but a centre of Mahayana Buddhist worship.

Mahayana monastery

He cites the scale of the complex, the elaborateness of its frescoes and the prevalence of monastic sites around Sigiriya as evidence that the rock was in fact a major Mahayana monastery.

He also claims that it continued to be a significant religious site for several centuries, and as such interprets the famous graffiti on the mirror wall as the remarks of visitors to a sacred site.

Ultimately, de Silva argues in favour of the view that Mahayana Buddhism was reasonably prevalent in 6/7th century Sri Lanka, and that Sigiriya was perhaps the main centre of the Mahayana faith on the island. This, it is claimed, explains the depiction of the site as a pleasure place in the Mahavamsa.

The Mahavamsa was a chronicle maintained by Theravada monks who disdained Mahayana practices, and the portrayal of Sigiriya as the palace of a parricide was a deliberate attempt by Theravada historians to erase the memory of a once-flourishing rival movement.

Raja de Silva’s claims regarding the function of Sigiriya do not discount the Mahavamsa’s basic tale. There may well have been a King Kasyapa who killed his father and was deposed by his brother. What de Silva claims, however, is that Sigiriya could not have been the site of Kasyapa’s palace.

Seat of power

In all probability, Kasyapa, like his forefathers, would have ruled from Anuradhapura. It is possible, however, that Kasyapa was sympathetic to Mahayana Buddhism — hence his negative portrayal in the Mahavamsa and the fact that he might have made lavish donations to the monks at Sigiriya. However, Sigiriya was not the seat of his power.

Ultimately, De Silva’s interpretation takes issue with the Mahavamsa — the great chronicle on which so much of our understanding of this country’s history is based.

Fundamentally, he claims that the only support for the view that there was ever a palace on top of Sigiriya expressed by Paranavitharana, Senake Bandaranayake, and several others, lies in the Mahavamsa.

However, he maintains that the Mahavamsa’s Theravada chroniclers had, in this case, a vested interest in distorting history.

Like so many other major debates in Sri Lankan history, the controversy regarding Sigiriya centers around arguments regarding the accuracy of the Mahavamsa as a source of historical information.

Ultimately, Raja de Silva’s argument regarding the monastic origins of Sigiriya suggest that the stories recounted in the Mahavamsa are just that — stories with little basis in history.

This, however, is a controversial claim, and one that will continue to be debated — perhaps for centuries to come.