Anuradhapura is the name of the massive archaeological ruins of an ancient city, the original capital of what is today Sri Lanka, built at least as long ago as the 4th century BC. Note: despite my earlier post, it is not the name of the current capital city or any modern city in Sri Lanka, for which I deeply apologize.
Brick-built Jetavana Stupa, 450-680 AD, Anuradhapura. Photo by A Zwegers
Covering an area of some 100 hectares, Anuradhapura boasts enormous stupas (megalithic monuments like the 160 meters [524 feet] tall Jetavana stupa), palaces, monasteries, and an extensive hydraulic system. It was a focus of both international trade throughout the Indian Ocean region, and a center for religious studies and pilgrimage for some 1,500 years.
- Read more about Anuradhapura
Comments
While thanking you immensely for inclusion of the ancient city of Anuradhapura in your about.com archaeology, I should say here that Anuradhapura is not the current capital of Sri Lanka. It was the capital in the island from BC period to 10th century AD. (Current capital of Sri Lanka is Colombo.) And the photograph you have included there is from a building of Polonnaruwa, which is about 48 miles away in the south east direction of Anuradhapura. Polonnaruwa florished in the 11th and 12th centuries AD after the fall of the Anuradhapura kingdom. The huge stupas you mentioned are namely Ruvanveli, Jetavana and Abhayagiri, all three belonged to Anuradhapura period.
Huh? Name of the CURRENT capital city?????
Anuradhapura is not the current capital of Sri Lanka.
Budhas original tooth was first kept here.
Good to see that others commented on the error regarding the capital city of Sri Lanka. Colombo has been the capital for a very long time. Find it hard to believe that such a basic bit of information could have been gotten so wrong. Must have been a bad day for you Kris. Otherwise I enjoy reading your posts and look forward to them. Cheers.
Thanks so much to everyone for correcting my foolish mistake!
Kris
Thanks Kris for your response to the comments made. However, I do not know on what grounds you now say that Anuradhapura is a modern city. Presumably you made this assumption after reading Honarary Sri Lankan’s comments. He simply said that Colombo was known for a long time (to the merchants etc in the western as well as Mediterranian world) and it does not necessarily imply that Anuradahpura was relatively modern. Anuradhapura is actually the most important ancient Sri Lankan city in terms of archaeology, which existed most probably from the 4th c. BC to the 10th c. AD. You had better use the time period (if you can get such information) rather than using ambiguous words like ‘modern’ as a responsible archaeologist. If you go through the articles written on both Anuradhapura and Colombo you can get a clearer idea about these places. I do not at all underestimate the importance of what you keep writing on archaelogical site and they are very informative and interesting.
What I understood, and please correct me if I’m wrong, was that Anuradhapura is indeed an ancient capital, but that it is located on the edge of a modern city, which I thought was named Anuradhapura as well.
My complete article on ancient Anuradhapura is here:
http://archaeology.about.com/od/apthroughasterms/qt/Anuradhapura.htm
and I certainly would agree that it is one of the most important archaeological sites in South Asia, maybe in the world.
To bit a bit pedantic, maybe, Colombo isn’t quite the nominal capital now of Sri Lanka either: it is Sri jayawardenapura, which is an outer suburb of Colombo.
You have written a comprehensive article on Anuradhapura having researched a lot. You are correct in saying there that the ancient city of Anuradhapura is located on the edge of the modern city, named after the ancient one. However, when you made the correction for the first time in the text, it denoted indirectly that you implied to say that the sacred city of Anuradhapura was more modern than the (commercial) capital of Colombo. I am terribly sorry if I misunderstood what you were trying to say !
Let me, however make the following observations on the information given in your detailed article. Although you say there that Senarat Paranavitana conducted in 1970s , he actually conducted excavations after 1940, in which year he became the Commissioner of Archaeology. He retired from the Department of Archaeology in 1956 and undertook the research professorship at the University of Peradeniya. He died in the year 1972. Although the Buddhist fraternities were named in a different way in your article, there were two main fraternities called Mahayanist and Theravadin in Anuradhapura. Mahavihara is not a name of a group but it used to be the center of the Theravadins. Thanks again for your very valuable articles produced and the consistent effort made to make the readers aware of the ancient past of the word.