Aluvihare Rock Temple

Caves in a hillside thirty kilometres north of Kandy, hung with wall and ceiling paintings and holding statues of the Buddha — one reclining, others standing and seated. In the entrance to one cave, the afterlife that awaits sinners is painted in some detail, and the detail is not gentle. Another cave is given to Buddhaghosa, the Indian monk-scholar who is said to have worked here.

The tradition places its founding in the third century BC under Devanampiyatissa, who is held to have built the dagoba and planted the bo sapling. But this is where something larger happened. The Pali Canon — the whole of it, held in memory and recited for four centuries — was written down here for the first time, on ola leaves.

Five hundred monks are said to have sat in these caves and spoken aloud what they knew, while others cut it into palm leaf. Everything Theravada Buddhism has said since rests on that fortnight's work.