Almost two centuries before the birth of Christ, an Indian prince embarked on a journey that would change the course of history. His name was Mahendra — Mahinda in Prakrit. He was the firstborn son of Ashoka, the Mauryan emperor who ruled over vast swathes of the Indian subcontinent from Afghanistan in the north to Bangladesh in the east during the 3rd century BCE.
Ashoka wanted Mahinda to succeed him as monarch. But as the Buddhist son of a Vaishya mother, Mahinda was unacceptable to the orthodox Hindu nobility as the Crown Prince. To avoid a war of succession and safeguard his beloved son, the Emperor sent Mahinda on an overseas religious mission to spread the Buddha's teachings. According to the Buddhist chronicles Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa, Mahinda — with a delegation of six arhat or Buddhist saints — arrived at Mihinthale in Sri Lanka on the full moon of Jettha, or June, in 247 BCE.
For the next four decades, until his death in 205 BCE, Mahinda — by then a Theravada Buddhist bhikkhu or mendicant — lived in a cave at Mihinthale and helped spread Buddhism across the island nation. He wrote commentary on the Tripitaka, or the teachings of the Buddha, and translated the scriptures from the original Pali to the vernacular Sinhala, turning the latter into a literary language; and established several vihara or Buddhist monasteries in Sri Lanka. When he died in 205 BCE, King Uttiya of Anuradhapura Kingdom constructed a funerary stupa at Mihinthale to inter his holy relics or remains.
Only — according to an inscription discovered in 2012, Mahinda's relics are not in Mihinthale, but in the ancient Ariyakara Viharaya in Rajagala, a lesser-known centre of Buddhism across the island.
Once a massive monastic complex spread across 400 hectares on the Rajagala Hills, the Ariyakara Viharaya was home to a congregation of more than 500 Buddhist monks between 1st century BCE and 10th century CE. According to ancient texts, as well as inscriptions found in Rajagala, the monastery was commissioned by King Lajjatissa between 167 and 137 BCE, and handed over to the Buddhist monks between 116 and 109 BCE.
The Vihara, located on a flat plain on the mountain 346 meters above sea level was accessible by two stone stairways through the dense forest. It had common buildings such as several stupa, a dining hall, an uposathagra or prayer hall, a hot water bathhouse, two large stone reservoirs built to collect spring water for cooking, and several residential structures. Today, all that remains are ruins.
The Vihara was vacated because of invasions by the South Indian Cholas in the first millennium BCE, and remained abandoned until the 19th century. Since the establishment of the Archaeological Survey of Sri Lanka in 1890, there had been many attempts to explore the site, but systematic archaeological activities could not be carried out due to the site's close proximity to the theatre of Sri Lanka's Civil War, which raged on from 1983 till 2009. The Rajagala Archaeological Reserve was formed in 2011, and exploration and conservation efforts finally commenced in 2012. The site was nominated to the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2020.
Learn more about the Rajagala Archaeological Reserve here.
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