Abhayagiri Vihara

The ruins spread north of Anuradhapura behind the line of the old walls — bathing ponds, carved balustrades, moonstones worn smooth, and at the centre a great humped dagoba. The dagoba was one of seventeen religious units in the city and the largest of its five major viharas. The monasteries here once rose several storeys and were roofed in gilt bronze or in clay tiles glazed in bright colours. None of that survives. The bricks do.

King Valagamba founded it during his second reign, between 89 and 77 BC, after a Brahmin named Tissa declared war on him on the strength of a prophecy. By the first century AD it had grown into an international institution, drawing scholars from across the Buddhist world and holding every shade of the philosophy at once. It was the island's first custodian of the Tooth relic, and it spent the next thousand years as the great rival of the Mahavihara.

Three fraternities argued here for a millennium about what the Buddha meant. The brick they left behind takes no side.