Dambegoda statue: In awe of a spectre of a curious, esoteric past
After the long drive from Colombo, it is a relief to pull up at Maligawila where the glades are green and shady and the cicadas’ cries are added to by the chatter of the macaques, the langur and jungle fowl. Here amidst jungle you feel the invigoration of the dry zone breezes, and a calm sense of heritage and history for these areas were indeed part and parcel of our Rajarata civilization.
We had stopped by Maligawila in Moneragala, to make acquaintance with a majestic figure from our past – a princely figure today banished from our religious and cultural landscape.
While to our left was the path to the Maligawila Buddha, the gigantic awe-inspiring rock statue whose ambition seems to be to pierce the sky, to our right snaked the path to the Dambegoda statue, lesser known and understood, with hints of unfathomable secrets etched on its visage.
After a short walk to the right you come to a long flight of steps, and it is only after reaching the top that your breath is clean taken away by the sudden presence of the statue- gigantic (as much as 10 metres tall), looming on a lotus pedestal and staring imperturbably at the distance.
This statue of a bodhisattva (Maitri or Avalokitesvara?) is shorter than the Maligawila statue but given it stands on very high ground it dominates the skyline and jungle, striking a strange fear in someone who sees it from far away, looming above the jungle canopy.
The Mahavamsa seems to give us a gleaning that this was the statue built by Aggabohdhi IV, also author of the Maligawila statue. However while Aggabohdhi reigned in the Seventh Century, the statue has been dated to 9 to 10th Century by historians. It has also been suggested to be the Maitri bodhisattva statue built by King Dappula, mentioned in the Culavamsa.
The contention as to whether this is a Maitri or Avalokitesvara statue is superfluous for some; given that a miniature Buddha in the crown of the statue (as this bodhisattva happens to have) occurs only in an Avalokitesvara.
When it was discovered in the 1940s amidst jungle tide, the majestic statue was broken into a hundred pieces, blasted by treasure hunters. It was fastidious restoration with help from Germany that has led the giant bodhisattva to stand exuding that Mahayanist enigma one feels in these climes that are now alien to them.
The intricate workmanship on the statue includes royal jewellery of pearls and intricately carved metal, a dhoti that is beautifully frilled and worked with stays, girdles and ornaments.
It stands in the Sambhanga posture and both hands are in the kataka-hastha gesture, a rare depiction.
The eyes that give an eerie haunted feel to the statue have sockets and must have had eyeballs of precious stone.
The statue is the largest bodhisattva in our shores and harks back to a history kept out of the textbooks and considered heretical, a sentinel of those colourful, magical doctrines that nonetheless have left their mystic tinge in the Theravada which we practise even today.
The Dambegoda statue is worth a visit, even if just to feel those spectres of a curious, esoteric past.
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