Suriyagoda Tampita Rajamaha Viharaya

Suriyagoda Rajamaha Viharaya stands in Yatinuwara, along the Kandy-Colombo road. Its principal building is a tampita image house, with a wattle-and-daub shrine room where a seated Buddha image sits beneath a Makara Torana. A stupa, a Bo-tree enclosure ringed by a gold-plated fence, and a parapet wall in the cloud-shaped walakulu bemma style typical of the Kandyan period complete the compound. Tradition traces the founding to the 15th century, to a Rajaguru named Seneviratne Wijakoon Rajakaruna Attanayaka Bandara, appointed royal teacher under King Parakramabahu VI of Kotte. The temple was renovated generations later under King Vira Parakrama Narendrasinghe, and for a time carried the name Narendraramaya after him. Temple tradition also links the site to Weliwita Saranankara Thero, the monk behind the 18th-century revival of higher ordination in Sri Lanka, said to have studied here under a Rajaguru Bandara and to have been ordained under a teacher called Suriyagoda Maha Thero, though other accounts place a Suriyagoda-linked Rajaguru, patronized by Narendrasinghe and executed for treason in 1715, leaving it unclear whether one figure or two carried the Suriyagoda name across the temple's history. Interior walls carry paintings of the Buddha's life attributed to an artist named Deldeniye Chitra Naide, and the temple holds a bronze Maitreya Bodhisattva image, a relic casket, and manuscripts said to have belonged to Weliwita Saranankara Thero. Some of the roof timbers are half-burnt; local tradition blames Portuguese forces retreating past the nearby village of Danthure, though this is not verified beyond what is told at the site.