By the 12th century, however, overall control of Sri Lanka progressively weakened. Various cities held the status of capital after Sigiriya, such as Polonnaruwa. The photograph shows what remains of the monumental Lion Paws Gate at Sigiriya. In the Sinhalese tradition, the lion is the mythical ancestor of kings and a symbol of royal authority. From their union was born the Sinhalese race ( sinhala means “of lions”). He traveled to the island of Sri Lanka and married Princess Kuveni. The Mahavamsa, a fifth-century Sri Lankan epic, tells how the Indian prince Vijaya was the grandson of a lion. (Watch: An ancient palatial fortress overlooks this barren desert in Israel.)Īfter Kashyapa, dynasties rose and fell, their fortunes shaped by internal power struggles and conflicts between native Sinhalese and outside invaders from India. The imposing fortress was the capital of the Sinhalese kingdom until Kashyapa was defeated in A.D. Sigiriya was built by the fifth-century king Kashyapa I, who ruled the native Sinhalese dynasty, the Moriya. British historians rediscovered its astonishing buildings and frescoes in the 19th century. Outsiders used knowledge of its past, preserved in Buddhist texts, to search for the ancient site. The fortress was later swallowed by the forest, and only familiar to local villagers. Meaning “lion’s rock,” Sigiriya (designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1982) is accessed by way of passageways cut into the rock face between a monumental pair of lion paws. Perched on a slab of rock that juts dramatically over the forests of central Sri Lanka, Sigiriya is as imposing a sight now as it must have been when it was first built by a fierce king in the fifth century A.D.
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