Dambulla Cave Temple, Sri Lanka

Dambulla Cave Temple, Sri Lanka (30 August 2005)

Dambulla Cave Temple is a famous cave temple and World Heritage Site in Sri Lanka. It is located in the town of Dambulla, in the middle of the arid Northern Plains. Dambulla is about 148 km east of Colombo and 72 km north of Kandy.

Dambulla Cave Temple is the largest and best preserved cave temple complex in Sri Lanka. The rock towers 160 meters over the surrounding plains, and is also called the Golden Temple of Dambulla.

Reclining Buddha, Dambulla Cave Temple (30 August, 2005)

There are more than 80 documented caves in the Dambulla region, but the major attractions are spread over 5 caves. These are the ones containing some of the finest statues and wall paintings in Sri Lanka.

The paintings and statues of the Dambulla Cave Temple tell the story of Buddha and his life. All together, there are a total of 153 Buddha statues, 3 statues of Sri Lankan kings and 4 statues of gods and goddessesm including two statues of the Hindu gods, Vishnu and Ganesh. That's what I was told - there were so many statues everywhere, I couldn't count them all! The murals covers an area of 2,100 square meters. Depictions in the walls of the caves include Buddha's temptation by Mara (demon) and Buddha's first sermon.

Dambulla is believed to be inhabited from as early as the 3rd Century BC. The statues and paintings date back to the 1st Century BC. They were repaired and repainted in 11th, 12th, and 18th century AD. The caves have been either inhabited or been used continuously for the past 22 centuries. Most of this time it served as a site of a Buddhist monastery.

The Dambulla caves provided refuge to King Walagamba, also called Vattagamini Abhaya, during his 14 year exile from Anuradapura. Buddhist monks meditating in the caves of Dambulla provided the exiled king protection from his enemies. When King Walagamba returned to the throne at Anuradapura in the 1st century BC, he had the magnificent rock temple built as a gratitude to the monks in Dambulla.

Dambulla Cave Temple (30 August, 2005)

Murals on the walls of Dambulla Cave (30 August, 2005)

Standing and Seated Buddhas, Dambulla Cave (30 August, 2005)

Present-day visitors to the Golden Temple of Dambulla will find that the façade appears quite recent, at least dating from the colonial period. The loggia of arched colonnades and gabled entrances were built over the cave temples in 1938. Entering through these elegant passageway is like stepping into an ornate tent hung with bright carpets. Except that, it is the ceiling of the caves, which were meticulously painted with frescoes. In one of the caves you can find the last Kandyan king.

The Golden Temple of Dambulla was inscribed by Unesco as a World Heritage Site in 1991, during the 15th session of the World Heritage Committee in Carthage, Tunisia. The site was inscribed under criteria (i) and (vi).

Reclining Buddha, Dambulla Cave (30 August, 2005)

I visited Dambulla with a group of AsiaExplorers members one afternoon on August 30, 2005. Our coach is parked at the base, which has a pavilion with a colossal seated Buddha statue. From there, we had to climb a little bit to reach the temple. As with other tourist sites in Sri Lanka, t-shirt vendors were on to us as soon as we arrived. We did get very good deals on the t-shirts bought there.

Location of the Dambulla Cave Temple on map

Getting there

If you are not part of a tour group, you can take a bus to Dambulla from Colombo and Kandy. The bus stop is along the Kandy-Jaffna Highway (Route A9).