Hendeniya Rajamaha Viharaya

Hendeniya Rajamaha Viharaya, also known as Galgane Vihara, is a cave temple built beneath a large rock shelter in Udunuwara, on the Kandy–Daulagala road via Peradeniya, about 12 kilometres from Kandy. The site holds three image houses from different periods rather than one: a fourteenth-century Gampola-period cave shrine, a Kandyan-period structure raised on a low granite podium with a round moonstone, and a modern image house. The stone doorway of the old cave shrine carries a Makara Thorana archway, an entwined-swan Hansa-Puttuwa motif, cobra-king guardian figures at the sides, and a simple vine-patterned moonstone.

Local tradition credits the original shrine to Henekanda Biso Bandara, consort of King Vikramabahu III, who reigned from 1357 to 1374; she is said to have had it built as a resting place on her journeys to Lankatilaka Viharaya and Embekke Devale nearby. The temple later drew patronage from King Sri Vikrama Rajasinghe, the last king of Kandy, who issued a copper-plate land grant for it in 1812. The temple also keeps a golden Bodhi-Pooja bowl said to be a gift of King Rajaadhi Rajasinha, along with his portrait on an image-house wall.

The current image house dates only to the mid-twentieth century: built by the monk Ambanwela Gunaratne Thera, with statues and murals finished in 1986. What survives from the fourteenth century is compact — a single cave shrine's worth of stonework — with the two later image houses added on the same site since.