Stupa Extravaganza '09

Mahiyangana Stupa

Buddha hair-relic and collar bone

Built: 5th century B.C.

Visited 14/2/09

Kiri Vihara, Polonnaruwa

Built: 12th century A.D. by Queen Subhadra 

(the second King of Polonnaruwa Parakramabahu's wife)

Visited: 13/2/09

Jetawanarama Stupa, Anuradhapura

Built: 3rd century A.D. by King Mahasena

Visited: 10/02/09

Stupa at Mahintale

Visited: 10/2/09

Rankot Vihara, Pollonaruwa

Built: 12th century A.D. by King Parakramabahu

Visited: 13/2/09

Ruwanveli Seya, Anuradhapura

Built: by King Dutugemunu (hero of the Mahavamsa)

Visited: Poya Day 9/2/09

Sanchi Stupa (replica), Anuradhapura

Built: 1980s by President Ranasinghe Premadasa

Visited: 10/2/09

Small stupa at Ruwanveli Seya

Visited: 9/2/09

Abhagiri Stupa, Anuradhapura

Built: 2nd century B.C.

Visited: 9/2/09

The following excerpts are from The Sybolism of the Stupa by Adrian Snodgrass.

"Each and every form of the stupa is centred by a vertical axis.  The axis is its fundamental and indispensable element.  In the context off symbolic significance the axis is the stupa; the stupa exist to emphasis the presence of a perpendicular; it is the celebration of a vertical.  The stupa's other components are so many developments, embellishments and adornments of the meanings contained within the axis.

"The cenre governs the geometry: the plan shape and the volumes of the stupa expand symmetrically and centrifugally[...] These complementary phases of movement, centrifugal and centripetal, comparable to those of respiration or the action of the heart, give the image of the successive manifestation and reabsorption of existences.  From the centre as nucleus proceed the cosmic tendencies of emergence and divergence, of expansion and emanation: the One gives forth the multiple, the most inward proceeds outward, the unmanifest becomes manifest and the eternal unfolds to reveal the cycles of time.  In the complementary phase the cosmic forces of reintegration and convergence, of concentration and conjunction, tend back towards the centre: multiplicity returns to Unity, and outward turns wholly inward, manifestation is occulted and time is absorbed into the still point of the timeless.

"The stupa, as every other form of traditional architecture, materializes man's most fundamental intent, that of a return to his own true centre.

"The ambient of the wheel is Non-Being, theologically Godhead, and in Buddhist parlance, the Void (sunyata), which is simultaneously immanent and transcendent.

"The stupa plan is a diagram of the diurnal and annual movements of the sun.  The cycles of the sun are pinned to the four directions and in this way the circle of the sun's rotation is squared[...] The plan of the stupa is the circle of earth and space squared by the fourfold-divided cycles of time.

"The characteristics of the mandala are those of the stupa plan: like the plan, the mandala is laid out by a ritual "squaring of the circle," is centred, is square, and is strictly oriented in accordance with the directions of space[...] the mandala is the means whereby Buddhahood is attained."