Rough Guide: Sri Lanka by Gavin Thomas; Rough Guide Staff

Author:Gavin Thomas; Rough Guide Staff
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Travel
ISBN: 9781848360693
Publisher: Rough Guides
Published: 2006-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Kandy and the hill country - Part 1 | Kandy and around | The City | The devales |

Vishnu Devale

Directly ahead of here stands a wooden pavilion, through which steps lead up into the third of the devales, the Vishnu Devale (also known as the Maha Devale, or “Great Temple”). The first building you come to is an open-sided digge pavilion, in which drummers and dancers would formerly have performed in honour of the deity – you can still occasionally see trainee dancers being put through their paces here. Past the digge, further steps leads up to the main Vishnu shrine. The Vishnu image here is thought to come from Dondra on the south coast, though it’s usually hidden behind a curtain; ceremonial objects used in Esala Perahera stand ranged along the sides of the shrine. Behind and to the left of the Vishnu shrine stands a subsidiary shrine to Dedimunda (a local god of obscure origins), his image framed by a gorgeously embossed gilded arch featuring the ubiquitous sun and moon motif.

Kandy and the hill country - Part 1 | Kandy and around | The City |

The rest of the city

Just north of the tourist office lies St Paul’s Church, a quaint, ochre-coloured neo-Gothic structure built in 1843, which offers a homesick and thoroughly incongruous memento of rustic English nostalgia amidst the myriad Buddhist monuments which cover this part of town – indeed the irreverent insertion of such a large Christian building into such a sacred Buddhist precinct says much about British religious sympathies (or lack of). The interior is a piece of pure English Victoriana, with beautiful wooden pews, floor tiles decorated with floral and fleur de lys patterns, wooden rood screen and choir stalls, naff stained glass, brass eagle lectern and a grand piano, all tenderly preserved. The various monuments date back to the 1840s, recording deaths in parts of the empire as far flung as Bombay, Port Said, Wei-Hai-Wei and South Africa. Opposite here, the walls of the buildings are all but buried underneath a surfeit of signs in English and Sinhala advertising the services of local lawyers, whose offices stand along the street, occupying a former Victorian-era army stables and barracks.

West of here lies the city centre proper, where you’ll find the fourth of the city’s principal devales, the Kataragama Devale, entered through a lurid blue gateway on Kotugodelle Vidiya (though it’s surprisingly easy to miss amidst the packed shopfronts). This is the most Hindu-influenced of Kandy’s temples, right down to the pair of resident Brahmin priests who serve here. The attractive central Kataragama shrine is topped by a broad wooden roof and protected by two intricately gilded doors, with a pair of Buddha shrines behind and to the left. The right-hand side of the enclosure has a very Indian flavour, with a line of shrines housing images of Durga, Krishna, Radha, Ganesh and Vishnu – those at the back have ornate gold doors with tiny bells on them which devotees ring to attract the gods’ attention.

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