Lions Rock Sigiriya sri lankaThe God king
Prince Kashyapa wasn't done yet. Not until for another 17 years of reign on the summit of the spectacular citadel of Sigirya (Lion Rock), a huge rock of hardened magma plug from an extinct & long-eroded volcano, a gneiss abruptly rising 200 meters out of the flat, irrigated plains of dry zone landscape. The imagination, planning & construction of a vast city in an abode of deified mythological Yakka King, Rawana (one of the two main protagonists of Indian epic Ramayana in which Lanka was the battlefield) of the era prior to the recorded history, must have driven flamboyant Prince Kashyapa to leave the traditional Sinhalese capital, the nerve center of the isle, Anuradhapura.
It is also believed flamboyant Kasyapa aspired to be The god king with the Sigiriya palace as the very personification of his divinity, to rule his kingdom up high, like the god king Kuvera up on the Mount Kailash of Hindu mythology.
Rock
The Lion Rock Citadel Sigiriya stands high above the surrounding plain, visible for miles in all directions. The rock rests on as steep mound that rises abruptly from the flat plain surrounding it. The rock itself rises 200m & is sheer on all sides, in many places overhanging the base. It is elliptical in horizontal plain with its flat summit spreading an area of 1.5 hectares taking a gradual slop along the long axis of the ellipse. The site is at once a palace & fortress. A vast spectrum of intact monuments remains to provide the visitor with a stunning insight into the ingenuity & creativity of its builders of ancient Sri Lanka.
"The rock, then, was the sign of a sacred mountain: it was Meru itself, the Cosmic Mountain at the center of the world, where the symbolic planes of heaven & earth intersect, & Appearance for the single endless moments disappears into Reality. Progress through the complex constituted a true initiatory passage extending from western end of the pleasure gardens up to the palace on the summit" John Lindsay Opie, Island Ceylon (1970)
source:http://www.mysrilankaholidays.com/sigiriya.html
Prince Kashyapa wasn't done yet. Not until for another 17 years of reign on the summit of the spectacular citadel of Sigirya (Lion Rock), a huge rock of hardened magma plug from an extinct & long-eroded volcano, a gneiss abruptly rising 200 meters out of the flat, irrigated plains of dry zone landscape. The imagination, planning & construction of a vast city in an abode of deified mythological Yakka King, Rawana (one of the two main protagonists of Indian epic Ramayana in which Lanka was the battlefield) of the era prior to the recorded history, must have driven flamboyant Prince Kashyapa to leave the traditional Sinhalese capital, the nerve center of the isle, Anuradhapura.
It is also believed flamboyant Kasyapa aspired to be The god king with the Sigiriya palace as the very personification of his divinity, to rule his kingdom up high, like the god king Kuvera up on the Mount Kailash of Hindu mythology.
Rock
The Lion Rock Citadel Sigiriya stands high above the surrounding plain, visible for miles in all directions. The rock rests on as steep mound that rises abruptly from the flat plain surrounding it. The rock itself rises 200m & is sheer on all sides, in many places overhanging the base. It is elliptical in horizontal plain with its flat summit spreading an area of 1.5 hectares taking a gradual slop along the long axis of the ellipse. The site is at once a palace & fortress. A vast spectrum of intact monuments remains to provide the visitor with a stunning insight into the ingenuity & creativity of its builders of ancient Sri Lanka.
"The rock, then, was the sign of a sacred mountain: it was Meru itself, the Cosmic Mountain at the center of the world, where the symbolic planes of heaven & earth intersect, & Appearance for the single endless moments disappears into Reality. Progress through the complex constituted a true initiatory passage extending from western end of the pleasure gardens up to the palace on the summit" John Lindsay Opie, Island Ceylon (1970)
source:http://www.mysrilankaholidays.com/sigiriya.html
Sigiriya Rock
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