KAMALIKA PIERIS

Kurundi Vihara, situated in Mullativu district, is today at the centre of a battle for supremacy between the crafty Tamil Separatist Movement and the sleepy, lethargic Buddhist lobby. The Tamil Separatist Movement is objecting to any extension of the Kurundi Vihara forest reserve. Tamil Separatists have been objecting to Kurundi since 2018, but work is going on at Kurundi and soon the boundaries will be set and Kurundi declared a huge archaeological reserve. Therefore, in June 2023, Tamil Separatist Movement asked the President to intervene in the matter and put a stop to Kurundi expansion.

 President Ranil Wickremasinghe convened a meeting with the Archaeology Department authorities and gave them orders, with the TNA MPs  listening. He said some inacceptable things, including howlers and the debate went viral.  The Director of Archaeology promptly resigned in retort and that went viral too. Kurundi vihara’s future has now gone public. The Buddhists have been rudely woken up to what is happening in the north to the Buddhist viharas there. It is not pretty.

 Kurundi vihara belongs to the Anuradhapura period of Ceylon’s history. The vihara was originally Kurundavashoka Viharaya or Kurundashoka Viharaya. Kurundawashoka was a shortened form of Kurundavapi Ashoka, which means that the monastery was built near the Kurundu wewa or tank, said Ellawala Medhananda.

Kurundi temple is mentioned in the  Mahavamsa. According to Mahavamsa, the Kurundavashoka Monastery has been built by king Kallatanaga (109-104 BC) and received donations by king Aggabodhi I (575-608) and king Vijayabahu I (1070-1110).  Agbo  I had set out  a  coconut plantation   ‘thun gawwa’  in extent and had appointed  100 employees to the vihara.  Mahinda III (801-4) had visited to settle a problem in the area.

Three British officials have recorded their observations of Kurundi vihara. Henry Parker, an irrigation engineer, speaks of Kurundi   in Irrigation in the Northern Province: Mullativu and Vilankulam” (1886). J.P. Lewis, Government agent, Northern Province, wrote about Kurundi in his Manual of the Vanni districts (Vavuniya and Mullaitivu), of the Northern Province, Ceylon” (1895).  H.C.P. Bell, Commissioner of Archaeology has described the Kurundi site in the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon, Northern Province” (1905).

 Kurundi has been the largest monastery in Mullaitivu. The ruins indicate that    hundreds of Buddhist monks had lived in the monastery. J.P. Lewis said in 1895 that the most extensive ruins in the whole Province are those at Kuruntanurmalai. Bell said in 1905 that Kurundumale had the most extensive ruins in the Province.  Ellawala Medhananda said the same thing in 2003. Medhananda said that Kurundammalai was the place where he saw the most ruins.  I have not seen so many ruins in any other place I have gone to, he said.

Kurundi has been an important monastery in the Anuradhapura network of monasteries. It has had close   scholarly links with Anuradhapura. Kurundi Attakatha was written in Kurundi vihara.  Kurundi Attakatha are now lost but there are many references in the literature to Kurundi Attakatha.  Pussamitta thera   is mentioned in   Manorathapurani     as Kurundaka Wasi, which means he was a resident monk of the Kurundi temple. 

Kurundi was an active monastery. Lewis had found an Inscription by Mahinda III (937-1013), who visited the tank with his mother and daughter in the eighth year of his reign. He had come there to settle a dispute relating to the use of use of water in Kurandagama Reservoir.

 It is on a large slab, and is one of the largest inscriptions in the Island. It is chiefly a series of rules like those on the Mihintale tablets, to be observed by the monks who were stationed here, but a few references of more general interest are included in it, and allusion is made to Tannirmurippu Lake, said Lewis.

It appears that the king himself had carved the inscription. That is probably another first for Kurundi. The king appears to have had some doubts regarding his  rock carving ability, observed Lewis. He commands that the rules given in the inscription  shall continue in force, and not be upset or reconstructed if letters are missing in the inscription . However, Lewis said the letters on it are very fairly and evenly cut, each one separated by horizontal lines cut as straight as if they had been done with a ruler, and there is a raised border round the stone.

Kurundi  had been   populated in the early ancient period. The  black and red  ware of the early historical period has been found.   In 1905,  Bell  said Kurundi area was the largest settlement he had seen in the province.  He estimated it to be about 100 acres.  The ruins showed that there was a   huge settlement at Kurundi in the   middle Anuradhapura period, said Ellawala Medhananda.. There was a town, Kurundagama.  The area has been prosperous, he said.

Kurundi  was not simply the site of an important monastery, it was also an industrial zone. A Rajarata-Peradeniya research team  had explored the area  over a period of two years. They stated in a video presentation  on July 2022, that  there had been an industrial zone  of around  1000 square meters, south of Kurundi wewa. This has been a metal manufacturing zone. [1]

This industrial zone had been destroyed  by the Tamil Separatist Movement when they enlarged the wewa, bulldozed the forest and converted the area into paddy fields. The soil from this cleared area has been piled up against the tank bund. This soil provides clear evidence that there was metal manufacture in the area.

 In 1905  HCP Bell gave  a detailed report on the   layout  of  Kurundi monastery .Many of the ruins lie within a quadrilateral space perhaps 200 acres in extent, which is surrounded on three sides by a bund that was topped by a wall of stone blocks, the fourth being the bund of the tank, said Bell.

The top of the hill covering about 20 acres is filled with ruins of ancient buildings. There has been a kabok wall encircling the top of the hill and remains of this wall are still seen at some places. Below the hill, on the south-west, stretched the thousands of acres of the tank called Tannimurrippu.

North, south, east, and west lies a fertile country of tanks and rice fields innumerable, .But in place of the great tank and the pleasant fields there is only forest, which reaches the horizon on all sides but the east, dark and unbroken. By climbing the dagoba, and thus rising above the jungle, one can gain a beautiful prospect even now. Far to the east lay the pale blue waters of the shallow Nayaru lagoon and beyond it the bright line of the sea, said Bell.

Bell reported that the buildings are placed approximately one in each corner, as follows. The Dagoba in the north-east, the Vihare in the north-west, the Wata-da-ge in the south-east, and a large building of good finish in the south-west. This last is probably a Pilima-ge. Bell had also I found a long deep pokuna about 80 ft. by 60 ft. From the edge of the terrace a grand flight of 100 steps, cut out of stone, each 17 ft. by 1 ft. 4½ in. by 6½ in., descends the hill unbroken into the forest below , said Bell.

I have never at any place seen so many large fragments of pottery. They stick out of the banks and bed of the stream everywhere. One very nearly complete pot I picked up was of very thick heavy make, and measured 8 inches across ; another fragment had a design of flowers stamped on it, concluded Bell.

The present day  investigators said much the same thing. They confirmed that Kurundi monastery  is located on a hill, and its building follow the Pabbata Vihara  pattern. There are also buildings on the sides of  the hill, around it and below. 12 buildings were found in the  second level.There is a large pokuna, with lots of viharas by the pokuna..  

There were  cells for monks, and a long  flight of  steps   going down to the Kurundi wewa. Each step  is about 14 feet in length said the present  archaeology team.  It will look a lovely  flight of steps when  conserved. Three inscriptions  were found on a stone bridge, one was dated to the 9^th  century .

Archaeologists found an exquisitely carved octagonal Yupa Gala, at Kurundi, but  broken  with some parts  missing.The Yupa Gala  was part of   the central pillar  in the early stupas. They also found a vajrasanaya, which was used to  depict the Buddha  through symbols, in the days when they did not depict Buddha in human form. These two elements indicate that Kurundi  was built  in very ancient times.

But  several bodhisattva heads were  also found   at least one was Avalokiteshvara.This shows that Kurundi had later became a Mahayana monastery. It would have been part of the chain of Mahayana  temples on the East coast. This means a continuous history for Kurundi monastery from Anuradhapura to the medieval period.

Architecturally too, Kurundi is special.   The Kurundi stupa, 75 feet tall,  is in the Padmakara style (lotus flower). This is a  rare style. Kurundi is said to be the only monastery which is built fully out of Kabok.  All buildings, including dagoba  and   aramaya   were built of kabok. The pond  also had kabok wall. The kabok blocks were    about 10 in. by 12 in. by 4 1/2.   The only source of kabok available at Kurundi was in the forest reserve and therefore could not be used. Present day kabok blocks are nowhere near the old ones, they break easily, said the conservationists , they  appear reluctant to use brick .

The Pilimage delighted the archaeology team. Almost all the pillars were available and it would be possible to do a complete reconstruction of the building, including the roof,  they said . The pillars showed that it was a wooden roof.  Some pillars, which were not load bearing, were filled with shells inside. These shells could be seen  inside the broken pillars.

Kurundi showed exceptional skill in sculpture. The few pieces of the broken Buddha  image  that they were able to recover showed that the whole statue would have been very special in style and execution.A beautifully carved door lintel was found.  One wall had a frieze of elephants  at the bottom.

 Earlier,  Bell  had found a fallen lintel with a double row of carved ganas quite unlike the ordinary ganas of the Sinhalese carvings, and have what appears to be high brimless hats on their heads. The  archaeology  team found    terra cotta heads similar to these.  They could be  seen  in the Youtube clip on  the Bauddhaloka Foundation seminar  (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSdj7YRjbDM). They look like the dwarfs in the Disney film Snow White.

The excavation team said that   they had found  a  lot of  small items at Kurundi, some were in metal and  one in marble. The marble plaque  carving is in a  style that   has not been seen before. ( Continued)

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJmWd43QIxk&t=368s 2022 ජූලි 23  වසර දෙකක පමණ කාලයක මුලතිව්, කුරුන්දි විහාරය හා තදාසන්න කලාපයේ සිදු කල පුරාවිද්‍යාත්මක අධ්‍යයනයේ ප්‍රථිපල. සම්පත් දායකත්වය චන්දිම අඹන්වල, ශ්‍රී ලංකා රජරට විශ්වවිද්‍යාලය සුමේධ වීරවර්ධන, පේරාදෙණිය විශ්වවිද්‍යාලය නදීර හර්ෂජිත් දිසානායක, පුරාවිද්‍යා පර්යේෂක ඉන්දික රුවන් ජයසේකර, ශ්‍රී ලංකා රජරට විශ්වවිද්‍යාලය සංවිධානය හා මෙහෙය වීම පුරාවිද්‍යා හා උරුම අධ්‍යයන ආයතනය