ANURADHAPURA

Anuradhapura was settled by Anuradha, a follower of Prince Vijaya, the founder of the Sinhala race. Later, King Pandukabhaya was converted into the capital around 380 BC. According to the Mahavamsa, the epic of Sinhalese history, the city of King Pandukabhaya was a model of planning. Awards were given to hunters, hunters and heretics, as well as to aliens. There were hostels and hospitals, at least one Jain Chapel, and high and low caste cemeteries. A water supply was secured through the construction of reservoirs, artificial reservoirs, of which the king's own name exists to this day with the altered Baswakkulam name.

It was during the reign of King Devanampiya Tissa (250 - 210 B.C.) that Arahat Mahinda, son of the great Buddhist emperor Asoka, led a group of northern India missionaries in Sri Lanka. With his followers he settled in a cave hermitage on Mihintale Hill, a name derived from Mahinda's. The new religion devastated the earth in a wave. The king himself donated land for a large monastery in the heart of the city, which was also his own royal park, the beautiful gardens of Mahamegha. The Buddhist principality only had a century to flourish when it was temporarily overthrown by a Chola invader. Kingdom of South India. The religion, however, received no setback.

At this time, far away on the southeastern coast, there was a growing prince who would become a paladin of Sinhala nationalism: Dutugamunu (161 - 137 B.C.)

For all his martial power, King Dushta Gamini must have been a man of singular sensibility. He built the MIRISAVETI DAGOBA and the mighty Brazen Palace, which was nine stories high and presented to the Mahasanga (order of the monks). But RUWANVELI DAGOBA, his most magnificent creation, did not live to see its completion. 

Two at least of the Anuradhapura kings should be mentioned, only because some of the most important monuments are attributable to them. The first of these was Vattagamani Abhaya (Valagamba) (103 and 89-77 B.C.), the first year of his reign the Chola invaders re-emerged and temporarily hid him. For fourteen years, while five Tamil kings occupied his throne, he often wandered in shelters in the jungle caves. It is known that, from his crudeness when an old Jain hermitage passed, an ascetic, Gin called him and mistreated him. "The big black lion is running away!" Throughout his exile the gibe was placed. At last gaining the Kingdom, he demolished Giri's chapel on the ground and built the ABHAYAGIRI monastery. His name is a little unknown and the hermit was tactless, as well as (a mountain without fear), a discharge of his cowardice!

Next came the heretical king Mahasena (274 - 301 AD) who built the largest JETAWANARAMA in Dagoba in Sri Lanka (World Heritage Site), a very complicated irrigation system and 16 large tanks (tank) such as MINNERIYA, Even today, thousands of hectares of rice land are irrigated. .

Anuradhapura continued for six hundred more years as a national capital. But as the protected prosperity diminished and the prosperity and internal struggles for royal succession diminished, they became more and more vulnerable to the pressures of the expansion of South India; and finally the city was abandoned and the capital retired to the farthest parts.