Aththaragama Raja Maha Viharaya

Aththaragama Raja Maha Viharaya stands in Aththaragama village, in the Harispattuwa Divisional Secretariat of Kandy District, north of Kandy along the Madawela road. Its image house is built in Kandyan style, entered through a makara torana arch; inside, a seated Buddha statue is flanked by two standing figures beneath twenty-four Suvisi Vivarana paintings, under an arched ceiling with floral motifs said to be unusual for temples of the period.

According to temple tradition, the vihara was first built by King Valagamba (Wattagamini Abhaya) in the 1st century BC; the temple's name also appears in the Nampotha, a Sinhala text compiled after the 14th century, which points to origins earlier than the temple's better-documented history. One account holds that the temple fell into ruin during the Dutch occupation and was later renovated under King Kirti Sri Rajasinha (1747-1782); another account instead describes the temple as having been established, or formally endowed, during his reign. The surrounding land was at one point set aside as a "village of the royal widows," to support the kingdom's dowager queens. The last widow recorded there was Udamale Devi, a consort of Kirti Sri Rajasinha, during the following reign of Rajadhi Rajasinha.

The complex also includes a stupa, a pothgula manuscript library, and an Atu Vihara-geya for resident monks. The pothgula -- dated to the 18th century by one source and to roughly the 1880s by another -- combines Hindu and Dutch decorative traditions in its masonry reliefs of human, animal, and floral figures, and is capped by a small stupa. Carved stone Siri Pathul Gal, or Buddha's footprint slabs, on the grounds are cited as evidence that some structure here predates 1750. A monk associated with the temple, Aratagama Bandara, later instructed Ven. Velivita Saranankara. The site was declared a protected archaeological monument by government gazette in November 2002.