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Mingalaba – “greetings to you” in the Bamar language! Recently I spent three weeks in Myanmar, escaping at least a bit of an unusually cold Toronto winter. As well as a week on my own to explore Yangon and some nearby … Continue reading
Last revised on October 23, 2022.
Previous Post: Up Wabakimi’s Raymond River To Cliff Lake
Cliff Lake is one of Wabakimi’s – and the Canadian Shield’s in general – premier pictograph sites. We spent some time paddling along the perimeter of the lake and checking out some dramatic stretches of vertical rock face – and found all the rock paintings which Selwyn Dewdney had highlighted in his classic study of the mostly-Anishinaabe (i.e. Ojibwe) pictographs of the Canadian Shield.
Cliff Lake – Dewdney’s Face III – the Moose Panel
Click on the post titles below to access pix and discussion:
The Pictographs of Cliff Lake -Part One: Selwyn Dewdney Takes Us on A Tour
The Pictographs of Wabakimi’s Cliff Lake – Part Two
Cliff Lake pictographs – south end of the lake
It was time to move on. We were down from twenty to three days of food, and while it definitely meant a lighter load for the remaining portages, it was also a sign that our trip was almost done. We were about 27 kilometers from the take-out point at the Bear Camp on river right of the Pikitigushi just above the logging road bridge.
We had originally arranged for a shuttle back to our vehicle at the Mattice Lake headquarters of Mattice Lake Outfitters from there on Thursday. However, a couple of emails sent via my Spot Connect from Cliff Lake had requested that the pick-up happen a day early. It was Tuesday, and we now had a day and a half to knock off the last 27 kilometers!
At the south end of Cliff Lake, just across from the best-preserved collection of pictographs on the lake, we left Wabakimi Provincial Park and entered Whitesand Provincial Park. (The stretch from Bad Medicine Lake down to the north shore of Pikitigushi Lake is all within the boundaries of Whitesand P.P.)
We also dealt with the first of the five or six portages on this section of the Pikitigushi. Over the next couple of days, we’d do another four, with the 1400-meter haul from Derraugh Lake to Pikitigushi Lake as the longest and mushiest.
Cliff Lake to Gort Lake
Gort Lake to Pikitigushi Lake
From Cliff To Ratte
The portage out of Cliff Lake is a 90-meter and pretty obvious trail that takes you up and over a small hill to a put-in on the edge of a small pond. A quick paddle across the pond, and you get to experience the Bad Medicine Lake portage for yourself- and decide whether it deserves its reputation! (See here for some canoe trippers sharing fond reminiscences at the Canadian Canoe Routes forum!)
It is undoubtedly an easier portage if you come from the north. We found a 525-meter trail that starts off rather steeply but is dry. After a dramatic middle stretch where you are walking on a ridge just a few meters from the edge of the gorge, the trail takes you to a challenging and winding descent to the lake itself.
Cliff lake -Bad Medicine Lake Portages
The last few meters involve an almost vertical drop to the shore. Here is a shot – I should have stepped back a few more feet to get the complete slope to the water’s edge in – but it’ll give you an idea of what it looks like. We actually had lunch at the top of the final drop.
the east end of the 450-meter Bad Medicine Lake portage
A bit more time, and we might have tried walking up the river through the mess of bush you see in the pic below in search of a photo that would show some of the 20-meter drop in elevation from Cliff Lake to where our canoe was sitting.
the ‘Gushi as it comes tumbling into Bad Medicine Lake
The pics below show the north side (river left) of the impressive gorge that runs the distance of the portage.
the shoreline across from the put-in on Bad Medicine lake
looking down to the east end of Bad Medicine Lake from the put-in
Instead of bushwhacking a bit upriver, we headed off for the next portage, which would take us out of Bad Medicine and into Ratte Lake. The take-out is on a sandy beach on river left; 265 meters later, we were at the other end. Shortly afterward, we paddled by a cow moose and her calf as we approached Ratte Lake.
Down Ratte To Wash
Down Ratte Lake and through a meandering narrow-river section, and we were back on a more open stretch – the two-part Gort Lake. At the south end of Gort Lake, just above the rapids, we went on shore to check out a potential campsite; it was serviceable, but we didn’t feel like stopping for the day yet, so we pushed off again.
The rapids themselves rate a Class 1; it was an easy run into Wash Lake. As we paddled down the lake, we passed an established campsite – fire pit and all – on the east shore (see map above for approximate location). It would have been a good place to stop – but we pushed on!
First, we paddled by the shell of the downed airplane at the south end of Wash Lake –
airplane shell at the bottom of Wash Lake
As to how the plane got there, Don Elliot of Mattice Lake Outfitters tells it this way –
The aircraft on Wash Lake is a Beechcraft 18 on wheels. About 40 years ago it was flying south from Fort Hope (on the Albany) to Thunder Bay when one of its engines quit. The pilot belly landed on Wash Lake and the aircraft floated while the pilot and all passengers go out. Everyone was rescued and the airplane was pulled up on shore. The company that owned the airplane salvaged the engines and some parts at the time. About 15 years ago another group went in and salvaged the wings for another aircraft that was being rebuilt.
On river right about 1.5 kilometers SE of the airplane comes the portage out of Wash and into Derraugh Lake. It is a 150-meter carry. Our map indicated a campsite at the put-in but we didn’t see anything that resembled a place to put our tent for the night so we headed down Derraugh Lake. We stopped twenty minutes later at the site indicated on the map above. With a bit of trimming, sawing, and rearranging, we created a nicely sheltered spot tucked into the bush with a sloping rock face patio.
the afternoon view from our Derraugh Lake patio
Max getting the late afternoon fire going
You can barely see the tent and tarp behind the canoe in the pic below. With the chores done, we’re getting ready for a cup of coffee!
Derraugh Lake Campsite – definitely tucked away!
Distance: 10 km. over three and a half hours – with half of that for the portage!
Weather: another beautiful sunny day in the Greater Wabakimi Area
Portages: 1 – 1400 m.
(The Chuck Ryan post of their 2009 trip has some images of the last day’s brief paddle here. He and his partner Dave Phillips had also camped on Derraugh Lake on their final night.)
The Origin of the Name Derraugh For The Lake
We paddled to the end of Derraugh Lake and looked for the portage take-out. We were in the general area where prospectors had located a 200-meter gold-bearing quartz vein in the mid-1930s. In fact, it had been J.E. Derraugh, then the vice-president and manager of Jedder Gold Mines Ltd., who had made the discovery. Nothing ever became of what they hoped would be another Red Lake gold strike, but now we have a Derraugh Lake.
One wonders what the earlier- i.e. Ojibwe – name for the lake would have been. In some cases, we have reverted to the older Ojibwa names. For example, before the 1930s, the Pikitigushi River was still known as Mud River and Pikitigushi Lake as Round Lake.
The two lakes on this stretch that I am most curious about are Cliff Lake and Bad Medicine Lake – their Ojibwe names might reveal something about their significance to those who used to paddle these waters. Their English names may just be translations of their previous Anishinaabe ones.
Just to the west of Derraugh Lake are two small lakes – one named Haile and the other Selassie – like Derraugh Lake also given their names in the 1930s when the Ethiopian Emperor embraced his moment of statesmanship on the world stage. In the 1970s, Haile Selassie would become the Jah Rastafari, the God figure in the Rastafarian mythic world!
Back to the Gooseneck Rapids portage – an hour and a half later, by a unanimous decision, the Trip Highlights Committee had awarded it the prize for “the most poorly maintained portage”. Finding it was problem #1 – it was a bit further up from the rapids on river right than we thought it would be.
Pikitigushi River – Gooseneck Rapids
Our portage routine has Max take two packs right to the other end and then come back halfway for the other two I have dropped off while I go back for the canoe. I still have no idea how he could sniff a trail all the way to Pikitigushi Lake out of the dense bush we walked through! In fact, after I dropped off the packs and went back for the canoe, I got lost as I tried to redo the “trail” I had just walked twice! Long stretches were also quite mushy, and we were happy to see the end of it.
Given the state of the portage, we wondered what locals were doing to get up or down the river on this stretch. Perhaps staying on the river instead and lining their way down? Looking at the Google satellite image below, locals going up the river might use McKinley Road running up the west side of Pikitigushi Lake and put in somewhere above the rapids.
Update: We walked this portage in July of 2013. Since then, in August of 2014, to be exact, Phil Cotton and the Wabakimi Project Crew have given the portage some of their tender, lovin’ care – so the trail should be easier to follow for at least the next few years!
Derraugh Lake to Pikitigushi River take-out point south of the Lake
Once on the shores of Pikitigushi Lake, it was an easy paddle to the south end of the lake and then 4.5 kilometers down the river with the beginnings of the high sandy banks that undoubtedly gave it its first English name, Mud River.
The end of the trip – note the high sand banks on the other side
Not in the picture – for some reason, we stopped taking pictures at this point! – is the Quonset Hut that the Bear Camp owners (the Boucher Bros.) use to store vehicles and equipment. We walked up a gravel road to the large clearing on the side of the road to Armstrong Station. A half-dozen canvas tents on wooden platforms were set up, as well as a few trailers. We had arrived the day before the opening of the season’s bear hunt, and there was a bit of activity since the first of the guests had already arrived. This satellite image gives a clear idea of what it looks like.
We briefly chatted with one of the Boucher brothers while we waited for our Mattice Lake Outfitters shuttle. Not too long after we arrived, so did Annette Elliot and we were on our way.
It is a little under 40 kilometers back to Armstrong Station from the take-out point at the Bear Camp. Another ten kilometers to Mattice Lake, we were back to where we had started our 17-day canoe trip around the northern perimeter of Wabakimi Provincial Park. If you’d like to go back to the start of what was a truly excellent adventure, the following post, Canoeing Wabakimi’s Misehkow River, is where it begins.
The Logging Road from the Pikitigushi River to Armstrong Station
Not attempted, but an intriguing possibility for a future trip is the stretch of the Pikitigushi from the Bear Camp to Mud River on the CN rail line and then maybe all the way to Windigo Bay and Lake Nipigon. It looks like it would take a good day or two, and it is difficult to say exactly what you’d deal with since information on rapids, log jams, and portages is pretty scarce.
Update: In September of 2018 Max and I paddled the Pikitigushi from The Bear Camp down to Windigo Bay and then across Lake Nipigon to Undercliff Island and Echo Rock. The river section took us two days and was not difficult. See this post for maps and info –
The Pikitigushi River – From The Lake to Windigo Bay (Lake Nipigon)
the four log jams on the lower Pikitigushi
Down The Pikitigushi River From Cliff Lake To Lake Nipigon: From The Bear Camp To Windigo Bay
The Federal Government (Natural Resources Canada) 1:50000 topos for this stretch can be downloaded from my website here –
You can access the entire collection of NRC topos from the Government of Canada website here. The sheets are available in PDF or tif format.
For another trip report – and lots of pix – on the section of the Pikitigushi from Cliff Lake to just before the logging road bridge, see the entries for Days 20 and 21 in CIIcanoe’s (aka Chuck Ryan) epic 21-Day Canoe Trip To The “Little North.” Finding his report online is what gave us the idea to take on the 350-kilometer route ourselves. We are really glad we did.
Click on the header to access the VIA home page
During the canoe-tripping season, the VIA train only passes through Mud River twice a week. For the westbound VIA “The Canadian” train schedule, see here – and here for the eastbound one. It would be necessary to purchase your ticket before you set off on your trip since it is no longer a flag stop. However, since it is a designated stop, you do not need to know the mileage marker.
Once we got to Mattice Lake, Don and Annette Elliot of Mattice Lake Outfitters handled all of the logistics and park permits. We left the vehicle in their parking lot (totally safe) and flew up to the Misehkow River start point on one of their de Havilland Beavers. At the end of the trip, we were picked up at the Boucher Bear Camp on the Pikitigushi for the 50-kilometer ride back to our vehicle. I’d highly recommend MLO. They’ve been doing this for a while and know what they’re doing. They do have all sorts of other services that they offer – see here for the full list.
The first touch of winter came in much more gently this year. Instead of the drama of 2013’s “Snowmageddon”, the ice storm that knocked out electric power for whole sections of Toronto and had tree branches crashing down on vehicles and sidewalks, we just got seventeen centimeters of snow.
I took advantage of the fresh snow covering to let Viggo do some off-leash rambling down along the stretch of the Don River which runs through our Riverdale neighbourhood. Knowing that meeting cyclists and joggers is close to zero makes it that much more enjoyable as I walk with my Icelandic Sheepdog on the riverside trail.
one happy Icelandic Sheepdog
Here are some pix from our walks – starting with the overcast first morning of snow. We walk up our Riverdale Avenue to Broadview, head for the footbridge that goes over the Don Valley Parkway, and then take the steps down to the trail that runs along the river.
the Don Valley Expressway on a snowy morning
Viggo coming down the footbridge to the Don River Valley trail
underneath the Riverdale Footbridge
the Belt Line tracks crossing the Don
Viggo waits at the tunnel underneath the Belt Line tracks
Where In the world is Viggo?
Viggo’s trail through the bush to the river
Viggo on the riverbank
The snow fell most of the first day. We returned the next day – and as the pix will show – the snow had stopped falling and the sun was out. So were the kids making use of two of the city’s best hills for tobogganing (i.e. snow sliding).
the south end of the Broadview hill
The Broadview Hill – most sliders have yet to arrive!
Viggo being chased by a Bernese
Viggo stirring up the snow
We headed over the bridge to the steps that take us down to the valley trail. I looked over to the other excellent sliding hill – the one by the Riverdale Farm – and could see a few kids already at play. Here is what my camera captured as I pointed the lens at the sun!
downtown Toronto in the background and the hill by the Riverdale Farm
on the valley trail – Viggo looking for the ducks
Viggo in the snow by the river
ducks heading south on December 12!
the Riverdale Footbridge as dusk approaches
looking south from the Riverdale Footbridge
tobogganners on the hill by Riverdale Farm
Mike, Viggo, and Clarence – the chase is on!
Viggo meets his buddy Clarence as we near Broadview Hill
the sun sets on another great day in Riverdale
the dusk view from Broadview Avenue near the Rooster Coffeehouse
One thing about the sun in December – when it sets, it sure does so in a hurry. As we approached our front steps I looked back up the street and saw a stunning red sky. The afternoon’s ramble was done.
looking towards Broadview from the front of our house
Update: Well, so much for the snow! It stayed for less than a week. And the forecast for Christmas Eve? Plus10°C and rain! So we can forget about that postcard “white” Christmas. It looks like we’ll have to wait until the New Year for the next installment of snow.
Here are some other pix of our walks along the river and the neighbourhood on the following days –
mud, water, snow – what’s not to like!
Viggo on duck patrol on the Don River
A little secret revealed here – to get Viggo into the picture I sometimes toss a treat in the spot where I want him to be. Well, this time the treat got lost in the snow and the Veegs is looking none too happy about it. He got a replacement morsel!
Viggo is not amused – no treat to be found!
Broadview Hill a week later – snow all gone!
Viggo at Withrow Dog Park a week after the snowfall
the neighbourhood skating rink – the only ice around!
kids playing on the Canadian version of the “Field of dreams”
See Viggo’s Den on more of our Icelandic Sheepdog Viggo – “Born to herd and be heard!”
Sri Lanka’s National Museum is located at the south end of Viharamahadevi Park not far from Galle Road and the Fort and Pettah districts. As the repository of many of the moveable artifacts from the area where the country’s pre-modern history was played out ( the so-called “Cultural Triangle”), it houses some impressive examples of Sri Lanka’s cultural legacy.
a seated Buddha figure awaits at the entrance to Colombo’s National Museum
The collection is housed in a Neoclassical-style building that goes back to British times, having been built in the early 1870s and opening its doors in 1877. From a humble initial collection, its holdings now number over 100,000 artifacts. None is more dramatic than the very first one you see as you approach the entrance lobby.
the seated Buddha in meditation pose at the entrance of Sri Lanka’s National Museum in Colombo
An unadorned seated Buddha carved out of limestone awaits – exuding both serenity and strength. Created in the Anuradhapura area around 1300 years ago, it survived the collapse of that great Sinhalese capital. The elongated ears, the curly hair, the bump on the top of the head (the ushnisha), the hands in the classic meditation mudra (position) – but no attempt by the artists at creating the folded monastic robes that other Buddha figures sometimes are provided with.
looking up to the Buddha at the main entrance
The ground floor is divided into several rooms or galleries – each with its own theme. What follows is a highly selective – that should probably read “subjective”! – sample of exhibited sculptures that caught my eye. Room 1 deals with the island’s pre-history; rooms 2 and 3 have some Hindu and Buddhist statues of various sizes; rooms 4 and 5 concentrate on the more recent Kandy kingdoms before the British established complete control of the island in 1815. The second floor was not open for public viewing when I was there; a verandah on the ground floor has more examples of stonework rescued from various ancient sites on the island, but many are in poor shape.
I spent a very enjoyable hour and a half with the artifacts – mostly in Rooms 2 and 3! – before I returned to the seated Buddha in the front lobby. The lighting and the glass, which is often between the lens and the various artifacts, can pose a real challenge to someone intent on taking better pix; I ended up shooting everything with a 35 mm prime lens on my Sony DSLR; the results were – as you will see – not the best!
the Hindu goddess Durga – from Anuradhapura 10th C
One thing the collection brought home was the presence of Hindu religious objects among the ruins of the ancient kingdoms. Clearly, the notion of an ancient Sri Lanka staunchly following the conservative Theravada path is the result of modern Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism and not really a true reading of the past.
the Hindu god Surya – a sculpture from 10th C Anuradhapura
The Vedic deity Surya holds a lotus in each and; behind him is the solar disk (partly broken off) associated with this sun god. Not far from this piece from Anuradhapura, with its three major Buddhist monasteries, was this depiction of the multi-armed Hindu goddess Durga, a consort of the god Shiva, one of the three gods who make up the Hindu “Trinity” – the Trimurti – along with Brahma and Vishnu.
another Durga sculpture from 10th C C.E. Anuradhapura
More evidence of Hindu – as in Tamil – presence in the Cultural Triangle a thousand years ago can be found in the following images, beginning with a skillfully done version of Shiva as Nata Raja, the Lord of the Dance, his dreadlocks flowing as he dances on the dwarf of ignorance.
Shiva – the Lord of the Dance
More Hindu imagery followed with the following stone sculptures. One was of Nandi, a bull figure associated with Shiva.
stone sculpture of Nandi
The Hindu god Ganesha, son of Shiva and Parvati, was also represented in some sculptures. Two of them are below, both depicting a seated elephant-headed figure and sharing some similarities, including a rather full belly.
Ganesha in stone – 12th C Polonnaruwa
Ganesha – gneiss – 12th C CE.
The standing Buddha below, unlike the one in the entrance lobby, has been provided monk’s robes (which may show the influence of the Graeco-Indian Gandhara style of Buddha depiction). He stands there very solidly and stiffly with his right shoulder uncovered – an apparent trait of Sinhalese Buddhas.
bronze standing Buddha figure from Kurunegala
Anuradhapura was not only the home of the conservative Theravada school; to the north of the ancient city was the Abhayagiri Monastery which embraced a more liberal kind of Buddhism – the Mahayana school which would become so popular in China and Japan.
The statue below depicts one of the three major bodhisattvas, the one associated with “Protection”. Along with Avalokitesvara (“Compassion”), Manjushri (“Wisdom”), and some others, this bodhisattva is recognized for selflessly postponing his own nirvana so that he can help others get closer to the goal first.
Bronze solid cast Vajrapani Bodhisattva figure from Kurunegala – 800’s C.E.
I was surprised to find this silver alloy cast figure of Tara among the gods and buddhas. I had always associated her with Tibetan Buddhism but given that Buddhism had barely arrived in Tibet when she was being created in Sri Lanka, I need to find out more about her story and origins. She is regarded as a bodhisattva with the quality of compassion, which connects her with Avalokitesvara. This may help explain why in China the male Avalokitesvara became the female Kuan Yin.
silver alloy solid cast Tara figure – 800’s – 900’s C.E.
Below is a better photo of a sculpture of a standing Buddha figure, his right hand in the abaya (“No Fear”) mudra. Like the one above he wears his form-clinging robes with the right shoulder bare.
bronze solid cast – from Medavachiya near Anuradhapura – 9th C C.E.
The next two pieces were two of the ones I spent some time appreciating. The first depicts Buddha seated on a lotus in the meditation mudra (his hands resting in his lap). The ushnisha as a flame of fire on the top of his head is a touch that would find its way to Burma and Thailand in the centuries to come.
Seated Buddha from Veheragala near Anuradhapura – 9th C C.E.
The next piece – while not as imposing – rivals the Buddha in the front lobby for the skill of artistic execution. The pose was often copied by Buddhist sculptors and painters in other lands.
Avalokitesvara bronze from Veheregala near Anuradhapura – height 49.8 cm. 800’s C.E.
Below is a standing Tara figure. It is followed by a guard stone taken from Polonnaruwa, the capital of a Sinhalese kingdom for a couple of centuries after the collapse of Anuradhapura. Three cobras provide a hood for the central figure, who is holding a tree branch and a vase (the punkalasa or pot of plenty). On his left foot is a dwarf figure.
female standing Buddha figure
Guardstone – Polonnaruwa – 12th C CE
There were still more Buddha figures to contemplate. I came to this rather dour seated Buddha exhibiting all the usual characteristics. And then I found a display that finally made clear to me how Sinhalese and other artists through the years had been able to maintain such uniformity of form even though each Buddha was made on its own.
seated Buddha in meditation posture – Polonnaruwa 12th C C.E.
Navatala Plumb Scale System used to create seated Buddha figure
diagram of Caturmana system applied to a seated Buddha figure
Navatala system applied to the Buddha figure
I returned to the entrance lobby and the seated Buddha with a newfound appreciation of the “science” behind drawing the Buddha out from a large chunk of limestone.
one last shot of the seated Buddha at the entrance of Colombo’s National Museum
And that was my quick tour of the National Gallery – not a long one and certainly not one that did justice to all the rooms – but it had been worth the visit. I should mention that the entrance fee was 500 rupees and there was in all likelihood an additional 100 rupee fee for camera privileges.
It was followed by a late afternoon walk through Viharamahadevi Park up to the Town Hall, passing the large modern take of the seated and gilded Buddha on the way. Odel’s Department Store was still open so I dropped in and did some gift shopping. It had been a very enjoyable day in Colombo and I was glad that I had left three days in my travel plans to explore parts of the city. See below for some other related Sri Lanka posts:
Seema Malaka: Colombo’s Serene Island Buddhist Vihara
Buddhist Baroque: Colombo’s Gangaramaya Vihara Complex
The Ruins of Ancient Anuradhapura – Part One
The Ruins of Ancient Anuradhapura – Part Two
central Colombo – Seema Malaka on the small lake just south of Beira Lake
It began with a pleasant early morning walk from my guesthouse (The Wayfarers’ Inn) on Rosemead Place in Colombo’s Cinnamon Garden District. I walked along the path which traces the northern edge of a beautiful green space called Viharamahadevi Park.
National Museum and Viharamahadevi Park to the south of Beira Lake
The previous afternoon I had visited the National Museum on the south side of the park; today I was headed to the Gangaramaya Vihara or Temple. The map below will make clear my destination – the east side of the small lake just below Beira Lake.
Seema Malaka and Gangaramaya Vihara Complex – click here for the interactive Google map
Colombo’s Fort District is perhaps 1.5 kilometres to the north, and Galle Face a little less. Both seem a world away from this serene little corner of the city. My first destination was the structure you see in the image below – a set of three pods built in the 1980s on a design by Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lanka’s most famous contemporary architect.
Seema Malaka on Beira Lake in Colombo
Known as Seema Malaka, this serene “island” is part of the Gangaramaya Vihara complex about two hundred meters away. The vihara’s monks are ordained here. It also provides a place for other rituals as well as an everyday meditation retreat.
To reach the central pod, you walk across a wooden pontoon bridge past the footprint of the Buddha and the reclining Buddha figure you see in the image above. Note the coins left by merit-seeking visitors in the footprint’s indentation!
Thai Buddhas line a Seema Malaka wall
Saving a visit to the central pod for later, I turned to the left and visited the second of the pods – the one with the Bo Tree and some Buddha statues, large and small. Often in my viewfinder were the bronze Buddha statues donated to the Vihara by the government of Thailand. They illustrate nicely the various mudras (hand gestures) used by Buddhist artists to convey the Buddha’s story.
approaching the Bodhi tree buddhas at Seema Malaka
the Bodhi Tree Buddha at Seema Malaka
Seema Malaka’s Bodhi Tree Buddha in the meditation (dhyana) mudra
For a moment, I let the various Buddhas slip from my consciousness as I looked northwest to the ring of high-rises, a sign of better economic times for Sri Lanka now that the brutal civil war that scarred a generation has ended.
Looking towards Galle Road and Downtown Colombo]
And then it was back to my meditation on the bronze Thai Buddha statues and their various mudras. This spot is a serene little island that lends itself perfectly to contemplation and photography! I was there at about 9:00 a.m.; it would have been nice to return near dusk for the very different light that a setting sun – and the lights of the city beyond – would have provided.
refocusing on the Buddhas!
Seema Malaka – three Buddhas, three mudras
Thai Buddhas and the dagoba or stupa
Finally, I approached the steps that led into the main shrine room – the large building covered with a blue roof. The image below shows the moonstone and the two guardstones that mark the entrance. Spend any time in Anuradhapura or Polonnaruwa and you will become very familiar with these classic Sinhalese architectural touches! The fearsome Nagaraja figures, each with a halo of six cobra heads, stand guard.
concrete version of classic Sinhalese architectural elements – guardstones and moonstone
Seema Malaka – the interior of the main shrine room
On the way out of the shrine room, I passed by the third and smallest island pod. With its signboard reading “Treasury of Truth”, the small building on the pod once served (and perhaps still does!) as the library for the monastic community and was not accessible the morning I was there.
Seema Malaka – the wooden bridge to the smallest pod – “The Treasury of Truth”
Once over the pontoon bridge and past the Parinirvana Buddha figure and the gigantic footprint (over a meter long!), I looked back and thought -“That was a great way to spend an hour”.
Seema Malaka and the Gangarmaya Vihara cimplex
An hour and a half later, I would have to revise that thought to include what was coming up – my visit to the main Gangarmaya Vihara complex just around the corner. I didn’t know it yet, but if the Seema Malaka was simple, uncluttered Zen, then the main vihara was sensory overload Buddhist Baroque to the max!
the Seema Malaka from the entrance
Next Post – Buddhist Baroque: Colombo’s Gangaramaya Temple Complex. The image below is of the vihara’s large central Buddha statue…
the main shrine of Gangaramaya’s Temple
Sri Lanka – What Caught My Eye
Walking In Sri Lanka’s Hill Country & The Cultural Triangle
Sri Lanka’s Dambulla Cave Temple: A Buddhist Treasure Trove
Sri Lanka’s Dambulla Cave Temple – A Buddhist Treasure Trove
Before Machu Picchu Was, There Was Sri Lanka’s Sigiriya
Colombo’s National Museum: Some Of What You’ll See
Buddhist Baroque: Colombo’s Gangaramaya Temple
The Ruins of Ancient Anuradhapura – Part One
The Ruins of Ancient Anuradhapura – Part Two
Up The Steps Of Sri Lanka’s Mihintale (Mahinda’s Hill)
A Visit To The Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Ancient Polonnaruwa – Part 1
A Visit To The Ruins Of Sri Lanka’s Ancient Polonnaruwa – Part One
A Visit To The Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Ancient Polonnaruwa – Part 2
A Visit To The Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Ancient Polonnaruwa – Part Two
The Aukana Buddha: Sri Lanka’s Colossal Standing Rock Statue
The Aukana Buddha: Sri Lanka’s Colossal Standing Rock Statue
Sri Lanka’s Horton Plains and The View From World’s End
A Train Ride Across The Highlands of Sri Lanka
Previous Post: Seema Malaka: Colombo’s serene Buddhist Island Vihara
panorama of the Gangaramaya temple front – click on image to enlarge
To say I was overwhelmed does not even come close to capturing the initial breathless moment of stepping inside the main temple at the Gangaramaya Vihara complex. I had just walked over after spending a very restful hour contemplating the mostly Thai Buddha sculptures at the stunning Seema Malaka. As the image below slows, it is built out onto Beira Lake on three connected platforms. As a modern “take” on Sri Lanka’s forest monasteries designed by Sri Lanka’s renowned contemporary architect Geoffrey Bawa, it has an almost Zen-like feel to it.
Seema Malaka on BeiraLake in Colombo – used for various monastic ceremonies by the main temple – the Gangaramaya which is perhaps 300 meters away
Passing through the open gate I took off my shoes and sun hat and headed to one of the two side doors of the main temple. To my right as I approached the door was a Chinese bronze statue of Kuan Yin and an even larger bronze of the Hindu deity Ganesha, the son of Shiva and Parvati. The elephant-headed god is known as the remover of obstacles and the patron of those about to embrace a new beginning.
While I am not a believer, I am still moved when I visit holy places, whether humble village shrines or massive cathedrals and stupas. What I experienced as I stepped into the Gangaramaya temple I can only call Buddhist Baroque. It is the opulent grandeur of ten thousand Buddhas looking at you thanks to effort of the temple planners to have artists and sculptors fill up every available space with different aspects of the Buddhist narrative. I’d never seen anything like this before in my limited travels through the Buddhist world.
Gangaramaya Temple – side view of seated Buddha…see two pix down for front view
I spent over an hour in the temple, inhaling the atmosphere and taking in all the details. It was all but empty most of the time I was there and I was able to take my time framing shots of the various tableaux and shrine areas. I made major use of my ultra-wide angle lens – shooting mostly at the 35mm equivalent of 15mm – and the digital spirit level of my Sony dslr helped prevent the keynoting effect. At other times I just accepted the inevitable distortion as I framed the shot. I upped the iso to 3200 or 6400 and avoided the use of flash.
pointing my camera up in the Gangaramaya Temple
looking up at the second massive bodhisattva figure
another shot of the above Bodhisattva figure – this time after using perspective correction in Adobe Lightroom!
Buddhas and bodhisattvas at the Gangaramaya Temple
two small Buddhas in Dhyana (“meditation”) Mudra
Buddha and bodhisattvas – a different angle
close-up of Buddha figure in abhaya (“have no fear”) mudra
Gangaramaya ceiling sculpture above the side door I entered
close-up of ceiling corner buddha
the Buddhist equivalent of angels hovering around central figure
meditating monks and bodhisattvas at Gangaramaya temple
the main shrine of Gangaramaya’s Temple
the temple’s central Buddha figure in “earth witness” pose
small parinirvana Buddha figures in front of the main seated Buddha sculpture
The Buddha depicted at the moment of his enlightenment, with his right hand touching the earth in what is called the Bhumisparsha (“Earth Witness”) mudra or posture. the Buddhas at his feet are associated with the moment of his death at the age of 80, when he slipped off into what is called parinirvana.
Chinese Buddha surrounded by disciples and bodhisattvas
two of the figures from the above image
I continued my clockwise tour of the temple complex grounds by stepping out of the shrine room and into a large courtyard with a stupa (called a dagoba in Sri Lanka). More buddha figures lined the stupa and the surroundings. Guardstones – with depictions of the Nagarajas or Snake Kings – and the moonstone in front of the altar emphasized the classic Sinhalese style of Anuradhapura.
dagoba (i.e. stupa) at the Gangaramaya Temple complex
main shrine at the Gangaramaya dagoba
side view of the Gangaramaya stupa – with copy of the famous bronze statue of Avalokitesvara – see here for a Wikipedia-sourced image
The mini-stupas above and the ones you see below are done in Borobudur style. The bronze seated Buddhas in various positions. One is the Vitarka (“discussion”) mudra, with the index finger and the thumb of the right hand forming a circle. the other is the Dhyana mudra which we have seen already; it has the two hands placed together in the lap and is associated with the Buddha in a state of meditation.
mini-dagobas in the Gangaramaya courtyard
Thai Buddhas – row on row
Chinese bronzes inside the artifacts collection room
As i wandered around the room of artifacts, I noted Buddha figures that seemed to come from all over. I am guessing that the one above is from China and the one below in from Japan. Who they are exactly i cannot say. The intellectualized Buddhism that I have been attracted to throughout my life is devoid of the statues and rituals and the Jataka stories that are the bread and butter of Buddhist artists. My loss!
I am intrigued by the symbolism behind the eight-armed Buddha below, holding an axe (maybe to cut through ignorance?), a dharma wheel, a flag of victory, perhaps a conch, and symbols of the moon and sun – but what does it all mean? What is the story behind it? Let me know in the comments section below if you are familiar with the details.
eight-armed seated Buddha figure
just a few statures of the massive Buddha collection
The temple is active in community affairs, providing technical training courses to over 7000 students daily at the various schools it has established. Its website details a new project to be launched in the Hambantota district on the south side of the island. Given that the current President of Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa, is from this region, he and the head monk have even more to talk about than the temple’s general contributions to the community.
photo of current Sri Lankan president and head monk of Gangaramaya
overview of the back of artifact collection room
Along with the massive elephants tusks, the temple complex also has its own elephant, appropriately named Ganga. She is nine years old and has spent the past seven years at the temple, after being born in the Kattaragama district. For the past three Februarys she has appeared in the annual Nawam Perahera, a procession of monks and elephants carrying sacred relics which makes its way through the streets of this area of Colombo. Google Nawam Perahera and you’ll be treated to dozens of colourful images of the event. The day I was there, Ganga was apparently off for a walk with her mahout in a nearby park. Some visitors are distressed on seeing her chained to a pillar on a very short metal leash. Others don’t seem to see the chains and are delighted by her presence!
display cases and elephant tusks at Gangarama Temple complex
My visit to Gangaramaya was an unexpected highlight of my visit to Sri Lanka. I entered the gates not knowing anything about the temple. i emerged over an hour later dazzled by the rich – and yes, sometimes a hodge-podge and sometimes kitschy, collection of Buddhist statues and images. And while I am sure I missed most of the symbolism and identities of the various figures as they looked sympathetically at me, it was still a great experience.
Now I know what Japanese tourists with a solid Buddhist background must feel like as they stand in the middle of the Sistine Chapel and try to make sense of all the awe-inspiring Biblical images from the Old Testament they are surrounded by!
Useful Links:
The Temple has its own website and provides ample evidence of an extensive community outreach program.
Trip advisor has a string of comments from visitors to the temple complex. See here for a variety of views and the overall score. It currently ranks 8th for things to do in Colombo!
Wikipedia has a short article on the temple, as well as more links which delve deeper into certain related topics.
Obviously the more you know about Buddhism before you wander into the temple, the more you will recognize and appreciate. Two things that will help you along are these:
the basic life story of the Siddhartha Gautama who became the Buddha; and
the various poses used by sculptors to convey various moments in the Buddha’s story. See this Wikipedia article on mudras for a quick introduction.
Related Post: Early Autumn Canoe Tripping In the Heart Of Temagami
Max framing the north arm of Diamond Lake from the previous night’s island tent spot
After the portage from Bob Lake to Diamond Lake, we originally planned to paddle up the lake’s north arm that afternoon to check out the pictographs. Having done a less-than-satisfactory job of documenting the rock painting site on our last visit in 2009, we planned on doing better this time! However, the wind and the waves had their own agenda, so we ended up camping on a small island at the south end of the arm. We hoped there would be less wind and no rain by the next morning.
looking up the north arm of Diamond Lake
Morning came, and the weather for the next three hours would be the best of the entire five days of our early October trip. We paddled the 2.6 kilometres to the pictograph site on the west side of the arm on completely calm water. In my thoughts was the withering conclusion about the meaning of the Diamond Lake pictographs delivered by Canada’s then-pre-eminent archaeologist, David Boyle, over a hundred years ago.
The Annual Archaeological Report for 1906 (Being Part of the Appendix to the Report of the Minister of Education Ontario) included an article titled “Rock Paintings At Temagami District”. Near the end of the article, attributed to W. Phillips but with Boyle as the editor, Boyle writes this –
Overview of Diamond Lake Pictograph Site
This article (published in 1907) represents the first scholarly record of the Diamond Lake pictographs. Doing the recording was W. Phillips, a “temporary Assistant” in the Archaeology Department at the Ontario Provincial Museum. As the Museum’s Superintendent, Boyle had sent Phillips up to Temagami to check reports of rock paintings. Here is Phillips’ own account of his visit –
The Diamond Lake Pictograph Site – view from the north
As Phillips noted in his report, the ochre markings are spread out over a ten-meter length of the white quartzite surface. Overhead ledges protect the painted markings from the worst of the run-off water. They face east/south-east and are thus spared the worst of the winds from the NW. The above photo shows the site from the north end, with the dot in the circle as the last of the pictographs.
Phillips does not note any insights about the pictographs’ purpose or meaning he may have received from “Steve Ryder, the Indian guide” or from other Anishinaabeg living near the H.B. Co. post on Bear Island.
Frank Speck with Timagami band members on Bear Island in 1913
In 1913, F.G. Speck visited Bear Island in Lake Temagami while working for the Geological Survey of the Canadian Federal Government’s Department of Mines. He was an American anthropologist whose main focus was Eastern Woodlands cultures (Algonkian and Iroquoian); at the time, he was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He recorded this statement (which sounds like it has been edited and polished somewhat) by Aleck Paul, who was one of the estimated 95 members of the Temagami band on Bear Island at that time. He was also serving as the second chief that year. His family had moved to the Temagami area from Fort Mattagami after the 1850s.
from F.K. Speck. Myths and Folk-Lore of the Temiskaming Algonquin and the Timagami Ojibwa. 1915. p.76.
If one were to take the above account as reliable and accurate, it would mean that (almost all of) the pictographs in the area are not Anishinaabe but rather Iroquois (i,e. Haudenosaunee) in origin. It would also date them back to no older than the 1780s when the Iroquois, led by Thayendanegea (known to us as Joseph Brant) left the Five Nations territory of Upper New York State for what was then Upper Canada (i.e. Ontario), having picked the losing British side in the rebellion of the Thirteen Colonies. Since the Iroquois do not have a pictograph tradition, the story is not supported by any facts, and the reason offered for why they were painted does not really make sense.
There is anecdotal evidence of Iroquois raids in the lands north of Lake Nipissing in the 1830s. However, these accounts do not have the raiders from south of the French River searching for a new permanent homeland in northern Ontario.
In the end, some supporting evidence from nearby Hudson Bay Co. post journals that these supposed fur raiders were indeed upsetting the local fur trade would make for a stronger case.
If nothing else, Paul’s account of the pictograph origins shows that the Ojibwe living with the pictographs in 1913 had no idea of who put them there and why. Speck concluded from his conversations with the Bear Island Ojibwe that their not-so-distant ancestors had migrated from the Lake Huron area in the early 1800s, not long before the 1830s Iroquois fur raids.
As regards the history of the Timagami band itself, evidences seem to support the assumption that these people are part of a steady northward drift of Ojibwa-speaking tribes from the Great Lakes. The Timagami themselves say that their ancestors came from near Sault Ste. Marie (Pawatiri “at the rapids”). See here for the source – p.11
The Temagami-area pictographs were already there when the dozen or so Ojibwe families migrated to the area. The Anishinaabe people who painted the images were not Ojibwe but Algonquins. Their spring/summer settlements would have been at locations like
Sometime before the Ojibwe migration into Temagami, the handful of Algonquian families who thought of Temagami as their long-held fall/winter hunting grounds stopped coming.
Perhaps Boyle got something right when he wrote in that 1907 Report discussed above, “Even the Indians of today are unable to give the least hint with respect to the meaning of anything in such pictographs.”
Click on the title to download a 5 Mb pdf copy of the booklet Speck wrote for the Department of Mines – Myths and Folk-Lore of the Temiskaming Algonquin and the Timagami Ojibwa. It was published in 1915. Speck does not mention having visited any of the pictograph sites in the Temagami area, of which the Diamond Lake site is by far the most impressive. One of his main sources of information was Aleck Paul, the second chief, who was born in Temagami but whose ancestors had moved into the area from the Lake Mattagami area further north after the 1850s.
In The Unspoiled Wonder, an article about the wonders of Temagami in the August 1919 issue of Macleans (see here for the text), Harold Lowrey also explains the pictographs as an Iroquois piece of work. Lowrey had spent some time in the Lake Temagami area and would have spoken to many people, Ojibwe and others, during his time there. While the Iroquois explanation seems to have been accepted at the time, Lowrey’s account differs in the purpose of the pictographs and when they were put there. Raiding Five Nations Iroquois war parties were a feature of the mid-1600s, not the 1830s.
Lowrey also provides a fanciful explanation of the pictographs as tribute by Iroquois warriors to one of their princesses (travelling with a war party?) who apparently drowned near the rock. It is as unhistorical as its inspiration, Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha!
And, like Boyle before him, he understood the collection of pictographs to have been put there at one time by one person to tell a coherent “hieroglyphic story”! What we actually see are individual, unrelated painted images put there over generations by many “painters,” all drawing from their shared Anishinaabe cultural image bank.
It would be fifty-three years before the next visit from the museum (now named The Royal Ontario Museum) would check out the pictographs. It was Selwyn Dewdney, then at the start of his decade-long quest to document the pictograph sites of the Canadian Shield. The Diamond Lake Site would be #40 of the more than 260 he would eventually visit. In the 1962 first edition of the book Indian Rock Paintings of The Great Lakes (click on the title to access), he writes the following –
Diamond Lake/Lady Evelyn South Arm – clink on the image to enlarge
The flooding that Dewdney noted was the work of the A.J. Murphy Lumber Company. In 1942, it had built a dam just north of the pictograph site at Lady Evelyn Falls, the point where Diamond Lake’s outflow tumbles down into Lady Evelyn Lake. These falls had seen their height decrease by some 3 meters when an earlier (1926) dam had raised the water level of Lady Evelyn Lake itself. An insightful Ottertooth article provides a detailed history.
Of the dam at the outlet of Diamond Lake, the writer (Brian Back) notes this:
This explains why a part of the Diamond Lake pictograph site was underwater when Dewdney visited in 1959. The Dewdney sketch below shows which pictographs were underwater. Strangely enough, they are the ones that seem most vibrant these days! [I added the blue waterline and the text.]
In 1973 the dam at the outlet of Diamond Lake was removed. In 1976 Dewdney would visit with Thor Conway and Gilles Tassé and a CBC film crew working on a potential episode for the This Land series. According to Dewdney’s measurements, the water level had lowered by 1.37 meters!
I wonder what happened to the film footage shot by that CBC crew in 1976 for that episode of This Land. It would make for a fascinating look a half-century later.
Related Post: Selwyn Dewdney, Norval Morrisseau and the Ojibwe Pictograph Tradition
Selwyn Dewdney, Norval Morrisseau and the Ojibwe Pictograph Tradition
Since Dewdney, with a few exceptions, there has been very little discussion and research on the Diamond Lake pictographs – or of the pictographs of the Temagami area in general. One exception is the work of Thor Conway. It was Conway who, as a young archaeologist, visited the Diamond Lake site with Dewdney in the mid-1970s and who continues to publish material on pictograph sites all across the Canadian Shield area. For example, his book on the Agawa Rock pictograph site stands as the definitive study of that Ojibwe rock painting location.
Conway first visited the Diamond Lake site in 1974. As luck would have it, the year before, the dam had been destroyed by a work crew from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, and the water had come down to its natural level. Two years later, he was there again with a CBC film crew. Along for a visit were Dewdney and Gilles Tache, a Quebec archaeologist who also focused on the pictograph quest. During their visit, they were able to determine that water levels were lower by about 4.5 feet (1.37 meters) from where they had been on Dewdney’s 1959 visit. The dynamiting of the dam in 1973 made that much of a difference.
Conway’s book Discovering Rock Art In Ontario’s Provincial Parks (2009) has a chapter on the Diamond Lake pictographs. Though the 2009 book is impossible to find, the fall of 2016 saw the publication of a revised edition of the book with 35 pages of introductory material followed by 240 pages of discussion of twelve rock art sites across Ontario. (See here for the chapter titles.)
Titled Discovering Rock Art: A Personal Journey With Tribal Elders, it claims to preserve the ” traditional knowledge” of Ojibwe elders from across northern Ontario, which the Conways had gathered in their years spent in various First Nations communities. Any reader will come away with a bit more of an understanding of the Anishinaabe culture behind the images painted with hematite on rock faces across Ontario – and of the Canadian Shield in general. Clearly, the locals Conway spoke to in the 1970s had abandoned the notion of the Iroquois origins of the Temagami-area pictographs. No mention is made by Conway of the Iroquois origin stories.
The book is available on Amazon and from Thor Conway himself. The very first site Conway examines in detail is the one on Diamond Lake.
In December of 1984, after months of testimony and evidence from Gary Potts, the chief of the Bear Island band, a few other Temagami band members, and numerous non-Indigenous academics, Justice Steele of the Ontario Supreme Court dismissed the land claim brought forward by Chief Potts and the Bear Island Foundation. While the entire decision makes for interesting reading, here is what Steel concluded after hearing various statements made about the pictographs:
Dr. Noble’s evidence is that pictographs have not yet been identified in any time frame. In addition, Mr. Conway’s evidence itself was conflicting as to the uniqueness of pictographs to the Temagami area. He stated that the upright canoe pictograph was distinctive to the area, but he gave more examples of upright canoes from outside the area than from inside it. His evidence about other unique pictographs was not supported archaeologically.
The oral Indian evidence is conflicting as to who made the pictographs. Some Indian witnesses believe they were made by the Iroquois. Others say they were made by their ancestors. Two Indians who were called made no reference to rock art having any relation to folklore. Michael Paul stated that he had been told by his father that his people had painted some of the pictographs and that, even now, some old people know the meaning of them but will not tell. The only “old person” called was William Twain and he gave no evidence relating to rock art.
Mr. Conway, in an article written in 1974, stated that he had been told that rock art was made by the Iroquois during the Iroquois wars. Now he says that they were made by Algonquins. However, he also stated that the oral traditions of the defendants had not changed from 1913 to today because even now Chief Potts believed them to be painted by the Iroquois, while others believed them to be malevolent to the Iroquois. Chief Potts’ evidence was that all except one had been painted by his own people. Alex Misabi said they were made by the Iroquois. Michael Paul, Sr. said some were made by each group.
I find that the pictographs have not been proven to show any continuity between the defendants and whoever made them, or that any conclusions can be drawn from them.
The full report: ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR ONTARIO V. BEAR ISLAND FOUNDATION ET AL. Ontario Supreme Court, Steele J., December 11, 1984
The site begins with some indecipherable ochre marks and concludes some ten meters or so further north with the most well-known of the Diamond Lake rock paintings.
We approached the pictograph from the south. The following sequence of images follows the ten meters of rock face in the order that Phillips numbered his drawings of the various ochre markings. Conway counted 77 individual ochre marks or paintings on the entire site. We were not as successful!
They were “painted” with a mixture of ground haematite (i.e. iron oxide) and perhaps fish oil or bear grease and then applied to the rock surface, not with a brush, but with a finger or two. The figures are usually no more than an inch (2.5 cm) wide and up to five or six inches long.
People are sometimes disappointed when they see them since, in the grand scheme of things, these are admittedly very rudimentary expressions of the values and beliefs of a Paleolithic culture. However, even if they are not the Lascaux Cave paintings, they speak to anyone who has experienced the rugged beauty of the Canadian Shield and how Indigenous Peoples survived in such unforgiving terrain.
Ochre on rock at Diamond Lake
The photo above is of the first of them, three ochre marks of which what may be a star pattern or a figure with outstretched arms is the most visible. Phillips did not make drawings of these indecipherable smudges.
T mark- #1 on Phillips Plate IV – and other ochre marks at Diamond Lake
The next evidence of ochre comes just a meter further north. Still visible is what looks like a T. It is with this pictograph that Phillips began his drawings of the Diamond Lake pictographs; it is #1 in his inventory. There is an ochre smudge above and to the right of the T, but it is badly eroded.
Phillips – Plate IV top
Phillips also passed by the slash mark below. The faint upward-pointing arrow just below it and to the right may be his drawing #2. There is more badly faded ochre, but it is impossible to say what they might have been.
Diamond Lake – ochre slash
We have now moved up about four meters of the site. In the image below, we have two pictographs corresponding to drawings #3 and #4 on the top of Phillips’ Plate IV above. #3 is on the bottom left, and #4 is quite visible on the right side of my photo. Is #4 a very rudimentary Thunderbird image?
Diamond Lake – Thunderbird pictographs or Crane footprints?
Bloodvein River shaman – and medicine bag?
As for #3, Conway comments that it may represent an otter skin. If so, it certainly would be an abstract rendition of the otter’s skin laid out flat. A shaman’s “medicine” bag would typically be made of otter skin.
If, as the quote above by the Bear Island elder from 1913 seems to indicate, the painting of the pictographs predated the Ojibwe arrival in Temagami, then seeing Ojibwe otter skin bags and totem emblems in the images may be the wrong interpretation. More information on the Algonquins’ shamanic medicine bags might clarify the question.
Diamond Lake Pictograph Site – The Core
And then we come to the core of the site – the stretch beginning to the right of the deep cut into the rock face. The first pictograph we see is of the moose (#6).
To the right (i.e. north) of the moose painting are three other clearly visible pictographs. On the Phillips Plate, they are numbered
Looking more closely at the panel, other faint lines can be seen, with the highest one looking like Phillips #8 with the five fading vertical lines. All that is missing these days is the moss!
Diamond Lake – overview of the moose panel and #9 and #10 to the north of it
Phillips #9 – and canoe pictograph (#10) – note the impact mark between the two
The moose is #6 on Phillips’ Plate IV. Underneath the moose image is evidence of an impact or two – most likely from a bullet. However, Conway states this in his book –
It would seem that Conway locates the “removed” pictograph in the space immediately below the moose image. If Conway is right, the Phillips plate IV should include a drawing of it. His assumption is based on something he claims Dewdney saw in his earlier visit – i.e. in 1959 – that was no longer there when he visited in 1974.
He is not the only one to make this claim about a removed rock painting.
In a transcript of a CBC radio program called Morning North, “Backroads Bill” (Bill Steer) makes this comment in “Glimpses of the Past”:
Instead of Conway’s exact 1959 to 1974 time frame, Steer states that the supposed theft of the pictograph on the rock below the moose occurred between two of his visits. No dates appear in his article, but his two visits would presumably have to fall within Conway’s ’59-’74 timeframe. Steer does not include a description of the pictograph that he claims was removed.
Diamond Lake – moose (#6) and vertical lines (#7)
If there was an image there, it is also possible that the slab of rock just broke off from the rock face and fell into the water below, though the impact marks below the moose image do not fit with that scenario.
However, we do have Phillips 1906 drawings! Drawings #4 to 7 are all visible on the rock face. So are #8 to 10. So where is the missing pictograph? If a pictograph was striking enough to motivate someone to remove it from below the moose image, Phillips presumably would have included it along with all the others.
In an Ottertooth forum thread, the topic turned from Temagami environmental activism to the story of the claimed theft of a pictograph chiselled off from under the moose image. The debate was effectively ended with Brian Back’s rebuttal of all the supposed evidence. He provided an image from 1954 taken by a guide at the Keewaydin camp. It shows the rock face looking exactly as it does now.
1954 image of the area around the moose pictograph at the Diamond Lake site
Conway says the pictograph was stolen sometime between 1959 and 1973; Bill Steer says it was vandalized between two of his visits, presumably within Conway’s time frame. However, the blurry image above shows the empty space below the moose pictograph five years before Dewdney supposedly recorded an image in that now-empty space.
[See here for the Ottertooth discussion. What is most noteworthy about the comments is that people will continue to believe what they want to believe, even when presented with clear evidence that they are wrong. The photo above fits in with Phillips’ 1906 drawing of the site.
One last thing – in his book Discovering Rock Art, Conway includes the Dewdney sketch sheet of his Temagami area visits (Sites #40, 41, 42). However, he only includes the left half of the sheet. Had he shown the entire sheet, we would have seen the drawing that Dewdney made of Face III – i.e. the area with the moose on it. Dewdney drew the area underneath the moose with the same jagged lines as that blurry 1954 photo! His sketch sheet of the Diamond Lake site shows that nothing was removed after his visit. What Dewdney saw is what Phillips saw and what you and I see when we stop to take a look.
The conclusion?
Re: the impact marks. There are a few, and they are probably the result of hunters (Indigenous or non-) firing at the moose image, perhaps an expression of magical thinking – i.e. hitting the moose image to ensure success in the actual hunt they were about to undertake.
Here, for example, is a pictograph grouping from Darkwater Lake in Quetico. It also has an impact mark close to the moose figure. It may be a coincidence; it may support my point.
canoes, Mishiginebig, the two-horned snake, and a moose figure
And here is another moose pictograph from the site on the east end of Lac la Croix in Quetico. A section of the moose’s head is missing, the probable result of a bullet impact.
The 1954 Diamond Lake image above shows some of the bullet impacts. There are other bullet impact marks, including one at the site’s north end below the canoe and the circle with a center dot.
After Dewdney visited the Diamond Lake site (#40 on his list – see here for the complete list), he went down to Bear Island to check out some pictographs on the island’s west side (his site #41). The seeds of the Diamond Lake stolen pictograph legend can perhaps be traced back to what he wrote – 
Then we arrive at the last three panels of the site, as pictured in the shot below. Plate V (see below) of the Phillips drawings contains all of them.
Dewdney devotes very little space to the Diamond Lake pictographs in his book. I get the feeling he really was not all that bowled over by what he found here. The one quote above, along with the sketch of the core of the site, and the quote below, are pretty much all he had to say about this site.
See the entire Dewdney passage on Diamond Lake here.
#13 (double arrow or otter skin); crane (#14) and bird tracks (#15)
Looking at Phillips’ Plate V above,
Picking up on Conway’s comment, #11 and #13 possibly represent the otter skins associated with the shaman’s medicine bag if we can accept an Ojibwe origin of the images.
the Diamond Lake Site – the Three Northernmost panels
Surprisingly, Dewdney did not identify Phillip’s #16 as the horned snake of Anishinaabe myth.
Phillips #16 – horned snake pictograph at Diamond Lake
Another stick figure is #17, looking very much like a square root symbol. Not mentioned by Dewdney are the three dots, what looks like a canoe with two paddlers, more crane or heron footprints, and other impossible-to-say-what marks. Here is the drawing that Dewdney included in his write-up –
Diamond Lake pictographs – sketch from Dewdney’s book Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes
Diamond Lake – the last two panels
the northernmost grouping of Diamond Lake pictographs
Diamond Lake Pictographs – northernmost grouping
As if to point out the problem of saying exactly what it means, Dewdney concludes his comments on the site by noting this about the circle with the dot –
Ending the statement with an exclamation point does point out that these two inventories, both from the mid-1800s, come up with very different meanings for the same image!
The lost (i.e. flooded) nearby Lady Evelyn Picto Drawings Plate VI
Included in the report that Phillips submitted was Plate VI. It is his record of the Lady Evelyn pictograph site just below the used-to-be Lady Evelyn Falls at the outlet of Diamond Lake and is about three kilometers north of the Diamond Lake site. While people have looked, they have not found it due to the higher water level caused by the Mattawapika Dam built in the mid-1920s.
Brian Back’s Ottertooth article “The Lady Evelyn Lift-Over” provides some historical background on the impact of dams on water levels on Lady Evelyn Lake and on Diamond Lake.
one last look at the Diamond Lake Pictograph site
David Boyle’s statement near the end of the 1907 article “Rock Paintings At Temagami District” was already noted. He wrote: “It would be utterly vain to look for any interpretation.”
In spite of that, Boyle could not resist offering an interpretation and ended up proving his own point!
Rather than see the site as it is – associated in Anishinaabe tradition as the home of the maymaygwayshi and other powerful medicine spirits to which a number of shamans came over an extended period of time – he sees it as a tablet on which one person has written a “sentence” or two using the pictographs as a picture script.
This one person, he writes, has written a “story.” Boyle is able to state quite categorically that the first sentence ends near the top of Plat VI! Oddly enough, the article ends with that assertion. I flipped the page, expecting to see a continuation somewhere, but that statement is it – a peculiar way to end the report. To conclude, Boyle seems to be a victim of the notion that the pictograph site represents an application of a coherent Anishinaabe writing system. Such a system did not exist.
There is no Rosetta Stone to help us unravel the meaning of the Diamond Lake pictographs, as shown by the conflicting mid-1850s inventories of symbols and their meanings left by Schoolcraft and Copway and by the conflicting views as to who even put the pictographs there.
However, those who have visited over the past 100 years have provided a bit more insight into pictographs’ nature and significance. Boyle’s “utterly vain” can be amended to “much is still puzzling.” It will probably remain that way! However, thanks to some of the more recent visitors, we can now better see elements of the Anishinaabe world-view in the ochre, from possible references to their clan (doodem) system and their religious beliefs.
As we paddle past the dramatic quartzite rock face, the least we can do is stop and appreciate the fact that maybe two or three hundred years ago, Anishinaabe shamans stopped at this same spot. As a part of a visit to the home of the maymaygwayshi for powerful medicines, he left the rock paintings as part of the ritual. Perhaps others were left by young men at the end of their arduous vision quest ritual, leaving a record on a sacred-to-them stretch of rock where generations of his people had come to leave their marks.
From their birch bark canoes, they reached out to the rock and created enduring marks with their specially prepared mixture of finely ground haematite (iron oxide) and fish oil. The pictographs of those with better formulations of the “paint” have fared better over the two or three centuries since they were put there.
While we will never completely understand the significance of all the ochre paintings, we still stop briefly and enter another cultural space.
Diamond Lake Pictograph site – a view from the other side of the lake’s north arm
Looking south at the site from near the Lady Evelyn Lift-over – what was once Lady Evelyn Falls
You can access a pdf file of W. Phillips’ “Rock Paintings At Temagami District” from my WordPress site. If you want to see where it came from, look here – The Annual Archaeological Report for 1906 (Being Part of Appendix to the Report of the Minister of Education Ontario) published in 1907.
The 1962 first edition of Selwyn Dewdney’s Indian Rock Paintings of the Great Lakes is available for online reading or download. It documents the first 109 sites he visited. A second edition came out in 1967 with documentation on an additional 155 sites. By this time, his quest had taken him far beyond the field of study, as stated in the title!
Thor Conway’s Discovering Rock Art: A Personal Journey With Tribal Elders can be purchased directly from the author.
The Thor and Julie Conway article on the Lake Obabika pictographs – “An Ethno-Archaeological Study of Algonkian Rock Art in Northeastern Ontario, Canada” – provides background to the Diamond Lake pictographs, which are briefly mentioned in the article published in issue #49 of Ontario Archaeology in the mid-1980s.
Dewdney mentions Cuttle Lake in his discussion of the Diamond Lake rock paintings. Grace Rajnovich’s article “Paired Morphs At Cuttle Lake” is in the Jan/Feb 1980 issue of Arch Notes, the newsletter of the Ontario Archaeological Society. It includes drawings from one of the panels and provides a point of comparison.
Another collection of Diamond Lake pictograph photos can be seen at the temagami.nativeweb.org site. The pix show some of the pictographs from a better angle than our shots do. Go here – Ancient Pictographs at Diamond Lake in Temagami. How ancient they really are is an open question. My guess would be no more than three hundred years.
Last revised on March 2, 2024.
Previous Post: The Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Ancient Anuradhapura – Part One
With our tour of the Abhayagiri Monastery precinct done, we headed directly from one stupa to the other – from the Lankarama to the Thuparama. On reviewing my pix in my Lightroom image processing app, I did not initially notice the transition and wondered why I had thirty shots of the Lankarama!
A closer examination of the pix of the two stupas cleared up a classic Homer Simpson Duh! Moment! In case you are not coming from Part One of this look at ancient Anuradhapura, here is what the Lankarama just north of the Thuparama looks like:
Lankarama and pillars
There are three circles above the base of the stupa; there are a few shrines surrounding it, and no pillars scattered about on the platform. Meanwhile, the Thuparama looks like this –
Thuparama – up close
The root word “thupa” is the Pali equivalent of the Sanskrit “stupa”; as the info board below states, the Thuparama was the first of the brick relic mounds built in Anuradhapura and it is believed to hold the right collarbone of the Buddha. The Mahavamsa, literally “The Great Chronicle” of the ancient kingdom of Anuradhapura, draws a direct connection between the location of the Thuparama and the Buddha himself. In the very first chapter, we read that on the Buddha’s legendary third and last visit to the Blessed Isle of Lanka –
…the Great Sage proceeded to the site of Mahameghavanarama, which today we call Anuradhapura. The Savior, along with his disciples entered into meditation, and thus consecrated the site where the sacred Bodhi Tree would be planted during the reign of Devanampiyatissa. Likewise, the place where the stupa of Thuparama in Anuradhapura would one day be built.
We were now in the part of ancient Anuradhapura known as the Mahavihara. The “Great Monastery” was the first of three great monastic complexes that flourished in the city under the patronage of the ruling dynasty. Its monks championed the most conservative interpretation of Buddhist doctrine. As in the Christian world, such doctrinal rigidity eventually prompted dissent: some monks left the Mahavihara to pursue a more liberal understanding of the Dharma.
These dissidents moved to the area just north of the city, where they founded what would become Abhayagiri. As compelling as the physical ruins of Anuradhapura are, it is equally fascinating to contemplate the intellectual architecture that took shape here—the competing interpretations of Buddhism that were debated, refined, and challenged. Visiting scholars absorbed these discussions and carried them back to their homelands, spreading Anuradhapura’s influence from China and Japan to Thailand and Kashmir.
Thuparama and platform
The vatadage is thought to be an architectural structure unique to Sri Lankan Buddhism. While the wooden roof has not survived, the pillars do give a clue as to how it would have looked. It seems likely that the pillars currently standing were put back up by restoration crews in the past hundred years.
A model of the Vatadage of Anuradhapura’s Thuparama
Thuparama pillars on the platform – evidence of a former vatadage
Thuparama and the Buddhist flag
Fluttering all over the Anuradhapura site – and indeed all over Sri Lanka – are colourful flags characterized by six vertical bands. The five colours and the composite of all five colours symbolized in the sixth band are said to represent the six colours of Siddhartha Gautama’s aura which came from his body at the moment he attained Enlightenment and became the Buddha.
This Wikipedia article provides images of the flag as it is used in various other Buddhist countries.
offerings in front of Thuparama shrine shown in the image below
Thuparama overview
humble mini-stupa in the vicinity of the Thuparama – exact name unknown
Sometime around 12:30, Mahinda pulled up to a roadside stand where we had a cool drink and a quick rice and curry. I was definitely starting to sag a bit thanks to the heat – but twenty minutes later we were on our way to the #1 attraction of the ancient city – the Sri Maha Bodhi or Sacred Bodhi Tree.
a rice and curry stop at the junction
My approach to the Sri Maha Bodhi was from the walkway that runs down the middle of the map (see below). Leaving a visit to the stupa on my right for my return, I headed down the path. When you are almost at the entrance to the Sri Maha Bodhi, you pass by (on the right) the ruins of what was once supposedly a nine-storey monastic residence housing a thousand monks and attendants. Given the bronze roof it used to have, it is called the Brazen Palace. All you see now are pillars, lots and lots of pillars!
Mahavihara:Jetavana area
looking down the walkway from near the Sri Maha Bodhi to the Ruvanvalisaya Stupa
the Brazen Palace – some of the many pillars
Chimps guarding a food source from a dog
The walkway ends at a guardhouse and entry gate—lingering nervousness about Tamil Tiger bombers still in evidence here—and from there I entered the grounds of the Sri Maha Bodhi temple complex. When it comes to seeing the actual Bodhi Tree—believed to have grown from a shoot taken from the very tree under which Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha—it would undoubtedly help to be a devout Buddhist. Otherwise, the experience is rather underwhelming. As the photo two down shows, the tree itself is inaccessible, sealed off behind gates and walls.
My experience in Bodh Gaya, sitting beneath the supposedly original Bodhi Tree, was completely different: a definitive feeling that I was somewhere truly significant. The presence of three hundred Tibetan Buddhist monks chanting their sutras that evening may have had something to do with it. Still, within the context of Sri Lankan Buddhism, this site is Ground Zero—the very center of Sinhalese Buddhist faith.
Temple and The Sri Maha Bodhi
pilgrims facing the Sri Maha Bodhi
doors into temple
visitors inside the Sri Maha Bodhi Temple
flower offerings at a shrine at the Sri Maha Bodhi temple
flowers left in front of Buddha images at the external shrine area at Sri Maha Bodhi
close up of Buddha statue at Sri Maha Bodhi Temple
seated Buddha at the external shrine area at the Maha Bodhi Temple complex
Guardhouse – entrance (and exit) of the Sri Maha Bodhi complex
With my visit to the Sri Maha Bodhi complex done, it was back down the walkway to the Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba that I had walked by on the way up. From afar, I could already see the workers on the steeple of the dagoba, clinging to the bamboo ladders.
approaching the Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba from the walkway from the Sri Maha Bodhi
watching the workers on the steeple of the Dagoba
tourists approach the Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba
approaching the Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba base terrace
some of the hundreds of elephant heads on the wall surrounding the Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba
As I watched them scamper down the ladder – no safety harnesses, no shoes, nothing to stop a fall – I held my breath. It brought to mind an image from the day before when I had come up to Anuradhapura from Colombo on the train. At one of our stops, I glanced out the window to see a rail crew doing some construction; all the workers were wearing flip-flops as they did the shovelling and hauling away of some gravel. The only guy wearing shoes looked like the boss! And now these guys on the stupa were using the same techniques that their ancestors had two thousand years ago as they came down the bamboo ladder.
workers on bamboo ladder
one last look a the Ruvanvelisaya Stupa
stray cat siesta near the Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba
By this time I was ready to join the cat in the pic above for an early afternoon nap. However, there was still a bit more to see! Off we went in Mahinda’s gas-powered chariot to the next “must-see” site. It would be our sixth stupa of the day – the Mirisavatiya Dagoba, which is about a kilometre to the west of the Sri Maha Bodhi Complex I had been at an hour before.
pathway leading to the Mirisavatiya Dagoba
the Mirisavatiya Dagoba up closer
Leaving our sixth stupa of the day, we now headed south to the Vessagiriya Monastery area, where massive boulder formations provided cave-like shelter used by monks who once lived there. Also hinted at in the surrounding ruins were the other buildings associated with a monastery – an image house, a refectory, and a dormitory. In the pic below you can see Mahinda’s red tuk-tuk in the shade on the top left corner of the image. Meanwhile, it is 1:30 and I am being fried on top of the rock formations that overlook the site.
ruins in the Vessagiriya area – and a staircase going up to the boulders above
some of the boulders at Vessagiriya
Vessagiriya boulders
shady pathway at Vessagiriya
Below are a couple of rock carvings you see from the steps to the entrance of the rock temple. they are carved into the rock face above the pond. Both exhibit a certain playfulness and naturalness. According to this source, their style shows “the influence of South Indian Pallava sculptural art of the seventh century”.
carving of a seated man with a horse at Isurumuniya Vihara
Isurumuniya Vihara rock carving of an elephant head
The two following pix are all that I took during my brief visit to the Vihara. I didn’t even think of framing a decent shot of the admittedly modern stupa now found at the site. “Stupa-ed out” is the word that came to mind to describe how I was feeling.
I walked back down from the viewing platform by the stupa to the parking lot where Mahinda was waiting and, without knowing if there was yet another site to head to, I said, “That’s it for today, Mahinda. Let’s head back to the guesthouse.”
evidence of written scripts at Isurumuniya Vihara
my last stupa shot of the day – Isurumuniya Stupa
We were not the only ones who were done. As we were heading back we passed groups of students heading home. And each time we came to a major intersection there was yet another in-your-face billboard reminder of the existence of Sri Lanka’s “President-For-Life”.
Sri Lanka looks to become a Rajapaksa family business if the billboards do their job! I await news that, like the illustrious kings of old, he has commissioned the construction of a new stupa.
students on the way home at the end of the school day in Anuradhapura
the inescapable El Presidente on two billboards at one intersection
While I was quite fatigued at the end of it, the day had been worth it. All told, I spent $50. US for the ticket and for Mahinda’s services for the six hours he drove me from site to site. He had quoted me $20 US; with the $5. tip he ended up getting a bit more. His knowledge of the site and how to sequence our various stops made the day a success.
Budget travellers will undoubtedly balk at the notion of spending $50. for the day’s sightseeing. They can walk if they want but given how I felt – and I was being driven around – I cannot imagine how one could see even half of what I did by foot. The bicycle is another option – bike rental may be in the $7. to $10. range. A bit more and you have a tuk-tuk!
And, as I mentioned in Part One, you could try to see the site without paying. You would have to avoid certain sites like the Sri Maha Bodhi and some of the stupas – and you would have to plead ignorance or be defiant or indignant way more than I would want to waste my energy on.
My quick one-day visit to the site of the ancient city was an excellent introduction to the glory that was ancient Anuradhapura. The level of technological accomplishment attained by its inhabitants puts it on the list of great cities of the ancient world. I also left curious about the intellectual ferment that on occasion led to monks battling monks about what the Buddha really said. I was also reminded about how little I – Mr. Ancient History teacher! – know and how wrong, in the case of the nature of Sri Lankan Buddhism, I was about what I thought I knew. Perhaps I will eventually learn that I am wrong about Mahinda the Vainglorious. too!
a stele exalting the leadership of Mahinda Rajapaksa – click on to enlarge
Sri Lanka’s Dambulla Cave Temple: A Buddhist Treasure Trove
Sri Lanka’s Dambulla Cave Temple – A Buddhist Treasure Trove
Before Machu Picchu Was, There Was Sri Lanka’s Sigiriya
Colombo’s National Museum: Some Of What You’ll See
Up The Steps Of Sri Lanka’s Mihintale (Mahinda’s Hill)
A Visit To The Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Ancient Polonnaruwa – Part 1
A Visit To The Ruins Of Sri Lanka’s Ancient Polonnaruwa – Part One
A Visit To The Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Ancient Polonnaruwa – Part 2
A Visit To The Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Ancient Polonnaruwa – Part Two
The Aukana Buddha: Sri Lanka’s Colossal Standing Rock Statue
The Aukana Buddha: Sri Lanka’s Colossal Standing Rock Statue
Last revised on February 4, 2026.
This post is one of two on the ruins of ancient Anuradhapura, the capital of a Sinhalese kingdom which once controlled north-central Sri Lanka. Following my tuk-tuk driver Mahinda’s itinerary, it will cover our morning visits to the great dagoba of Jetavana and the Abhayagiri Monastery district on the northern end of the ancient city.
Table of Contents:
Next Post: The Ruins of Ancient Anuradhapura – Part Two
Part Two will deal with the afternoon tour of the rest of the site, including more amazing stupas and the Sri Maha Bodhi. It is the temple complex built around what is believed to be the tree which grew from a transplanted branch of the Bo Tree. It was under the Bo Tree in northern India that Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha.
Abhayagiriya Stupa – pilgrims approach
Sri Lanka’s “Cultural Triangle” represents the core of the once-impressive Sinhalese kingdoms, which flourished in Sri Lanka before external forces (first from southern India and then from western Europe) overwhelmed them. Spanning two millennia, the ruins, still-intact statues, and reconstructed stupas offer an introduction to a little-known yet impressive cultural achievement.
Sri Lanka’s “Cultural Triangle” – see here for an interactive Google map
Anuradhapura, located on the plains of what is now called North Central Province, was the capital of the first of these Sinhalese kingdoms. At its peak, the kingdom’s economy generated such wealth that it could support a community of more than eight thousand Buddhist monks and surround them with massive religious structures that, next to the pyramids at Giza, were the largest human-made structures of the ancient world.
The city was also one of the great centres of Buddhist learning. Visitors came from throughout the Buddhist world, from Kashmir to China, seeking copies of canonical texts and scholarly works. To visit Anuradhapura is not only to enter a major tourist attraction but also an ongoing archaeological site and a living pilgrimage destination for Buddhists worldwide.
For non-Sinhalese visitors to the site, the sheer span of the history – from the 400s B.C.E. to about 1100 C.E. and their almost total unfamiliarity with it – will occasionally result in feeling completely overwhelmed. It’s a feeling I will admit to as I wandered around the site – and I say that as one who earned a living trying to make history come alive for mid-to-late teenagers for thirty-five years.
The ancient city is the greyed area is to the west of New Town
Another issue you have to deal with is the site’s actual size. Given the oppressive heat after 10:30 a.m., it is too large to be tackled on foot. There are two better options.
The first is renting a bicycle. There is little traffic on the roads joining the various parts of the ancient city, and you can make your way at your own pace. As the morning passes, however, it gets very hot, and cycling loses much of its allure! Having spent the day cycling around the ruins of Polonnaruwa three weeks before, I was not too keen on doing the bike option again!
A Visit To The Ruins Of Sri Lanka’s Ancient Polonnaruwa – Part One
Ruwanwelisaya from the walkway
Mahinda and his tuk-tuk had taken me to Mihintale the afternoon before. Now his offer to drive me around the twenty square kilometres of the ancient Anuradhapura site for 2000 SL rupees was accepted. This allowed me to focus entirely on the various locations and leave the navigation to Mahinda, who has visited the site hundreds of times over the past twenty years.
He picked me up at the guesthouse – The French Garden Tourist Rest in New Town – at 8:00 a.m. For the next six hours, we zipped along from one end of the site to the other – he knows the place intimately, so no time was lost trying to figure out where we were or how to get to where we (that should probably read “he”!) wanted to go. He would sit in the cab or socialize while I walked around the stupas or through the remains of monks’ residences, dining halls, and other structures.
Our first stop was the ticket office, where I paid the $25. U.S. for the day pass. It certainly isn’t cheap, and its cost has encouraged budget travellers to resort to ways around it. One way is not paying at all and just bicycling around and pleading ignorance if stopped by the occasional uniformed guard. Another popular way is hiring a tuk-tuk driver who will assure you that he can deliver you to all the sites for less than the ticketed price.
Mahinda and his tuk-tuk, top left, wait as I ramble around the Isurumuniya Vihara site at the end of the day
When faced with a situation like this, I ask myself: How much would I consider a fair entry fee? In this case, $15. sounds reasonable. So – we are now really arguing about $10. ($25. – $15.) When I think about the $2000 in airfare I spent to get here and all the other expenses, this $10. fades into relative insignificance.
I am also assuming that most, if not all, of the money goes to the upkeep and continued uncovering of the site, so with my entry ticket, I am making a contribution to something positive. One issue that annoys non-local visitors is that Sri Lankans do not pay to enter the site; it’s forgotten that they also earn one-tenth of what the typical foreign tourist does.
A fellow traveller at the guesthouse assured me that the entry ticket was only necessary if you wanted to visit the various museums on the site. If that were so, the US$25 entry fee would indeed be a rip-off, given their so-so quality. The fact is, he was dead wrong about what the ticket pays for. In the end, visitors will do whatever they feel is right for them.
my “generous contribution to develop and maintain the world heritage sites” – four or five guards would scribble on it during the course of the day
After purchasing the ticket, I hopped back into the tuk-tuk, and Mahinda headed for the north end of the site; over the next six hours, we would work our way down to the south end and get to see most of the major sites and a lot of things I still can’t identify!
My guide for the day was my copy of The Rough Guide to Sri Lanka. Reading the relevant sections while seated in the shade gave me a rough idea of what I was looking at.
As we drove up to the Abhayagiri Monastery area, we passed by the first of the many stupas I would be walking around that day – the Jetavana Dagoba. (Dagoba is a Pali term which can be traced back to the Sanskrit root words dhātu (relics) and garbha (womb, inside). As for stupa, it is a Sanskrit term meaning heap or mound. What Anuradhapura certainly has is some of the finest examples of colossal Buddhist relic mounds anywhere. The relic believed to be contained within the Jetavana Dagoba is a piece of the Buddha’s belt.
See here for the CNN Travel article about Jetavana (February 4, 2026), where I found the above image.
Amazing to think that when it was completed, it was, other than the great pyramids at Giza, the tallest man-made structure in the world – and yet few (including me) before my visit have even heard of it. It was the focal point of a monastic community which not only preserved Buddhist doctrine but also helped spread it through Southeast Asia.
The above-mentioned article includes a couple of historical images, showing the state of the dagoba in 1926 and in 1965. [Note: the article mistakenly provides a historical photo of the Abhayagiri Stupa. This collection of images of Sri Lanka labels it as such and gives the date range of 1880-1890 for when the photo was taken.] Here is an image of Jetavana, dated 1880-1890, from the Lankapura website, a collection of historical images of Sri Lanka.
The image below is of Jetavana from 1965:
source: CNN artcile
What follows is what I saw as I approached it fifty years later!
Jetavana Dagoba – front view
All day, it would be a challenge to frame the various stupas from up close without distorting the images by tilting the camera to get them all in the viewfinder. I used the electronic spirit level on my Sony A57 frequently to make sure things were level; the Tamron 10-24mm lens also helped. I was usually shooting at the ultra-wide 10 mm end (the equivalent of 15mm on a full-frame sensor). As you can see, I still had some bad composition choices!
Jetavana Dagoba – the rear view … I really needed to walk back another fifty meters and then perhaps crop the brick out of the image when I got home!
Do note that visitors must leave their shoes or flip-flops at the bottom of the steps before walking onto the base terrace of the stupa or other sites. The earlier in the day you do your clockwise-direction walk around the stupa, the cooler it will be on your feet! I did notice some Western tourists with sensitive feet leaving on their socks.
stray dog enjoying the cool tiles at Jetavana Dagoba’s side temple
a Buddhist narrative brought to life
elaborate figures on the inside of Jetavana’s side temple – Buddhism goes Baroque!
Before I left the Jetavana Stupa, I used my thirty-word Sinhala vocabulary to say good morning to a young woman and the boy she was taking care of. They were waiting for the rest of the wedding party to arrive at the back of the dagoba for pictures.
I did something I rarely do in my travels – I took a shot of her and the boy, having asked her, mostly in sign language and with a smile, if she would mind. More people shots would definitely add an extra dimension to my portfolio of pix! Looking at my effort, I really should have had the stupa as the backdrop, not what you see!
Before we drove up Vata Mandana Road to the first of the Abhayagiri Monastery district sites, we stopped within the confines of what was once the Citadel, the high wall and moat-protected royal palace area. None of this is evident now. Rambling through the ruins does require a bit of imagination and previous knowledge if the visitor is to be successful in reconstructing the scene as it was fifteen hundred years ago. I supplied my imagination and used the guidebook to help me understand what I was looking at. Here is what you’re given to work with –
the Citadel – ruins in the vicinity of the Temple of the Tooth
Citadel ruins – lintels and doorposts repositioned
Included in the Citadel zone was the original Temple of the Tooth – the Tooth being one which belonged to the Buddha. It is believed to have been brought to Sri Lanka in the early 300s C.E. Along with the Buddha’s footprint on Sri Pada and the Sri Maha Bodhi Tree in the Mahavihara district, about two kilometres to the south, the Tooth is one of the most prized talismans of Sri Lankan Buddhism. Over the centuries, the Tooth became a visible political symbol of Sinhala sovereignty.
This makes sense of its location in the Citadel area and helps explain why its current home in Kandy was a justifiable target in the minds of Tamil Tiger bombers in 1998. Twenty people died when a truck bomb exploded near the temple.
presumed ruins of the original Temple of the Tooth (Dalada Maligawa)
Next, we were off to the north end of the ancient city to the ruins of the Abhayagiriya Monastery area. At its prime, there were apparently as many as 6000 monks living here in one of the ancient city’s three main monastic centers. If you are really big on doing things in chronological order, then the way to approach the ruins is by doing the monastic areas in order of age – first comes the Mahavihara area with the Sri Maha Bodhi, then the Jetavana Monastery district, and after a brief diversion the ruins of the Citadel district, a visit to the latest addition to the ancient city – Abhayagiri. I put my tour in the hands of my charioteer, Mahinda, and trusted him to hit all the high spots in the most logical order!
Abhayagiri Monastery Area map created by Philg88 and found on Wikipedia here
First up on our list was the Kuttam Pokuna (Twin Ponds), used by the monastic community for ritual bathing. Built in the 700s C.E., it shows the Sinhalese mastery of channelling and storing water. This came from centuries of refinement of the irrigation systems that enabled Anuradhapura’s rise as a centre of civilization. As the overview map of the city above illustrates, the city was surrounded by man-made water reservoirs (tanks or wawas) that enabled the dry plains to produce two crops a year.
one of the two bathing ponds at Abhayagiri Monastery in Anuradhapura
the steps of one of the Kuttam Pokuna
looking over both of the ponds
I eventually made my way back to the tuk-tuk you can see at the far end of the ponds and we were off. We pulled up in front of the everyday bathhouse, a decidedly less elaborate structure than the Twin Ponds.
Abhayagiri bathhouse ruins
Abhayagiri Bath House detail – purpose unclear to me
Nearby were the stone remains of the sleeping quarters – anything made of wood had obviously burned or rotted away long ago. Walking through the site reminded me of looking down on Machu Picchu and seeing the stone walls of the weekend retreat that the Sapa Inca Pachacuti had constructed there. Both require a bit of imagination to reconstruct in one’s mind. Perhaps one day, there will be a 3D virtual reconstruction map of the ancient city to help visitors as they walk around? There’s got to be an app for that!
a small section of the residential complex ruins
Abhayagiri Residential Quarters
residential area – a tree has found a home in the center of one building
Samadhi Buddha (early 1900s) – note the broken nose – click on to enlarge …no, not the nose!
Next up was a visit to the Samadhi Buddha, a stone sculpture of the Buddha in the Dhyana meditation pose. It dates back to the 300s C.E. and was originally open to the elements. It now sits under a concrete shelter built to protect it, but it somehow spoils the effect. Also worth noting is that the statue was apparently painted upon completion. As with those beautiful paint-free marble statues of Greek antiquity, we forget that the ancients saw something a bit different! Another thing to be pointed out is the crude job of creating a new nose for the Buddha.
The Samadhi Buddha on Anuradhapura’s Abhayagiri Monastery grounds
flower offerings in front of the Samadhi Buddha
During the day, you will occasionally encounter reminders about proper behaviour. The two signs below point out important things to keep in mind as you approach or enter various areas –
no hat/no shoes sign in Anuradhapura ancient city
No Photograph with Back To The Buddha sign at Anuradhapura – well, so much for “selfies”!
Next was the focal point of the Abhayagiri Monastery district of the Ancient City – the stupa or dagoba. Thanks to the legends promulgated by the Mahavamsa, a chronicle of the various dynasties of ancient Anuradhapura, local pilgrims believe that the relic mound is built on the spot where the Buddha (in one of his supposedly three visits to the blessed island of Lanka) left a footprint.
Abhayagiri Dagoba in Anuradhapura’s ancient city – see the first pic of this post for another view
To the left is a shot found online that shows the dagoba before it was reclaimed from the grass and bushes that had taken hold in the spaces between the bricks. After the ancient city was abandoned about eight hundred years ago, the jungle filled any available space, and the site was forgotten. (I’m not sure how that fits in with the story about the Sacred Bodhi tree, which you think would never be abandoned.)
A photo from the Lankapura website shows the state of the dagoba circa 1880-1890. While the text indicates that it is the Abhayagiri Dagoba, the URL labels it Jetavana!
When the British stumbled upon the site in the early 1800s, it did not take them long to realize they had “discovered” a major archaeological site – and this during the golden age of archaeology from Greece to Mesopotamia to India. Thanks to the end of the twenty-five-year civil war in 2009, Sri Lankans can now focus on building their country and, if they are Sinhalese, reconstructing the glorious past of Sinhalese civilization.
Bringing ancient Anuradhapura back to life is also a political statement by the Sri Lankan government that says, “This island is fundamentally Sinhalese.”
As I walked around the dagoba – clockwise is the conventional way – I noticed the new brickwork, which helps restore the stupa to most of its original glory. Visible in some places, however, was new plant growth in the cracks between the bricks. Short of spraying the exterior with some sort of herbicide, there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution in this battle between man and nature!
Abhayagiri dagoba – shrine room at the main entry point
Entering the shrine room on the side of the dagoba at the end of the main entry walkway, I found a Buddha figure in the parinirvana pose (the reclining Buddha just before he died at the age of 80):
the Buddha in parinirvana pose inside the shrine room
close up of the Buddha’s face in the Abhayagiri shrine room
the parinirvana Buddha’s feet
Nearby was another statue of the Buddha in the samadhi (meditation) pose. Time has not been quite as kind to it as to the one shown above in this post.
Abhayagiri monastery the second Samadhi Buddha statue
close up of Abhayagiri’s second Samadhi Buddha statue – click on images to enlarge
guardstone in front of Abhayagiri shrine house
Nagaraja (mythic snake king) guardstone with seven-headed cobra crown
Abhayagiri Monastery ruins
remains of another structure in the Abhayagiri district
Abhayagiri building foundation and pillars
Abhayagiri moonstone with elaborate carving
moonstone detail
A bit further along the foundation and little else of another shrine room. However, the finely detailed dwarves holding up the steps leading to the shrine have survived, with the moonstone in front of them.
dwarves supporting the stone steps up to the shrine
moonstone in front of the above steps
walking through the ghostly pillars in the ruins of Abhayagiri Monastery
the third of four Abhayagiri “Buddha in Samadhi pose” statues
Burrow’s Pavilion information sign
Burrow’s Pavilion (Stone Canopy)
Abhayagiri’s Et Pokuna (Elephant Pool)
the foundations of the refectory with stone food troughs on the right
the larger of the food troughs at the Abhayagiri Monastery refectory
statuary on display at the Abhayagiri Museum
guard stones from one of Abhayagiri’s buildings
the fourth of Abhayagiri’s Samadhi Buddhas
Before we headed south to the rest of the site, we had one more destination – the Lankarama. The pillars, some still standing, are taken as evidence that the dagoba once stood at the core of a vatadage that stood here. If this is so, it would have looked something like this model recreation of another vatadage that we would visit in the afternoon – the Thuparama pictured below. What is sometimes not clear as one walks around the ruins is what has been reconstructed in the past one hundred years and to what extent the modern work truly reflects the original structure.
A model of the Vatadage of Anuradhapura’s Thuparama
Lankarama from a distance
another view of the Lankarama from afar
Lankarama dagoba and pillars
We had started our whirlwind tour of ancient Anuradhapura at about 8:30. Now it was a bit past 11:00 a.m., and we had only visited the northernmost district of the old city. Even then, it had been a bit of a rush.
You really could spend an entire day just rambling around the ruins of Abhayagiri – but, given the steep entrance fee, you move on and try to see as much as possible. The energy-sapping heat of the midday was starting to make itself felt.
Next Post: The Ruins of Ancient Anuradhapura – Part Two
Sri Lanka’s Dambulla Cave Temple – A Buddhist Treasure Trove
Sri Lanka’s Dambulla Cave Temple – A Buddhist Treasure Trove
Sri Lanka’s Sigiriya – A World Wonder Before Machu Picchu
Toronto skyline from above the Brickworks
It is autumn in Toronto and that means fall colours. Over the past few days my dog Viggo and I have been up and down the Don Valley – i.e. the eight kilometers from Lake Ontario all the way up to Moore Park. It has been mostly overcast but every once in a while the sun manages to poke through. On the days I had a camera with me we stopped for some photos. Spoiler alert: what you’ll see as you skim through are lots of pix of Viggo and lots pix of fall colours, and sometimes both at the same time!
fall colours at Withrow Park in Riverdale
On Sunday we made our way down to the beach at the foot of Cherry Street – it is the ultimate off-leash dog park in the city and Viggo’s favourite place since “Fetch” also involves going into the water. This was the morning the little p & s camera was giving out bogus “Charge the battery” messages so not a lot of pix were taken. But here are a few of Viggo at work!
Viggo at the Cherry Street Beach Dog Park – my current desktop image!
it’s all about the ball!
Viggo ready to exchange the ball – for a treat!
The lack of maple trees down along the waterfront meant that the colour palette was somewhat muted – the above shots were about all the camera would work for.
The next day I had better luck with another camera as we walked the streets of Cabbagetown, a residential area just on the other side of the Don Valley from our Riverdale home. The housing stock there dates back to the 1880s; what was once a very working-class area of Toronto has been gentrified over the past forty years and is now a highly desirable and expensive address!
one of the many simple cottage homes of Cabbagetown
Cabbagetown front yards
Cabbagetown fall colour
classic Cabbagetown – right down to the lace curtains!
another Cabbagetown front yard
Once back on our side of the Don Valley, we paused for some water when we reached the picnic tables. I got a few shots of the dog we call “Mr. Happy Yappy” as he stood on top of the table we usually sit on.
Viggo on a park picnic table – Riverdale Park East
Viggo still seemed “full of beans” so I figured we might as well go up to the skating rink and play fetch for a while. Given V’s chase drive, I like being able to shut the door to the rink. The previous night’s rain meant there was a bit of water covering the concrete but we managed to get a few throws in.
Viggo checking out the ice condition
Viggo at the ice skating rink – ice is usually in by December
As you can see from the background of the previous shot, there is not a lot of fall colour happening in the woods by the skating rink yet. It turned out that the day’s most amazing colour was on our own street! Here are just a couple of shots of what we saw that day as we walked back home –
Riverdale Avenue maple leaves
more Riverdale maple leaves on display
This morning was another overcast day but since the forecast was for rain in the afternoon, I figured we may as well make use of the morning. I had an ulterior motive at play; my new Polar H7 heart rate sensor – it pairs with my iPod Touch via Bluetooth – was just asking to be tested and what better way than a two-hour outing with Viggo!
I had heard rave reviews of the colours on the trail running up behind the Brickworks (aka the Moore Park Ravine) so that was our target for the morning. First we bicycled up the Don Valley bike trail to Pottery Road and over to Bayview Avenue where I locked my bike to a utility pole. Then we scampered up and over the hill to the most fantastic view of Toronto – the one you see in this post’s first photo. The following pix will give you an idea of what the Moore Park Ravine looks like this week.
[While the Ravine is always a great place to be, right now it is especially pretty – and you don’t need a dog to visit! Just park your car at the Brickworks and go for a walk.]
I tied Viggo’s leash to my bicycle seat post and off we went. Up the street, down into the park, down the flight of stairs to the bike trail, over the footbridge and through the tunnel you see below, past more than one reminder that our quest for fall colours is unfolding in a gritty urban environment.
the footbridge across the Don just north of the Riverdale Bridge
The tunnel underneath the old Belt Line rail tracks
a reminder that this is not a nature preserve
And then, after a bit of work, we get to THE View – we are on the ridge above the Brickworks, looking at the immense cavity that provided the raw material for the brick homes that are so characteristic of a certain period of Toronto building.
Viggo surveys his domain from the Stone of Viggo above the Brickworks
Viggo responding to his name –
And the Stone of Viggo. Well, it is the large boulder that sits up on the ridge . Too much time spent reading LOTR led to creating a mythic world for our Viggo, Prince of Iceland.
The Stone of Viggo – he hops up, he gets a treat, I take a picture. Familiar routine!
And then it is a bit of a scramble down a muddy hillside to take us to the trail which goes up the Moore Park Ravine. I use the exposed roots of trees to provide some footing as we make our way down. Down in the valley, there is lots to explore…
Mud Creek running down the ravine – Viggo checks it out
down along the creekbed
Viggo wading in Mud Creek – Moore Park Ravine
And then it was back to the path and the occasional encounter with other dogs and dog owners and, with my sincerest apologies, Viggo’s most recent giving chase to a bicyclist. She appeared before I could put V on a leash – but not before he had already morphed into his urban job as Icelandic Bicycle Dog. Amazingly, she apologized for the incident; I told her it was definitely my “bad”. In the hour that we were down there, she was the only cyclist we saw. We do avoid the trail on weekends when all the joggers and cyclists are out in full force.
Viggo and a bed of fallen leaves
a short stretch of the ravine trail
another section of the Ravine pathway just before it ends south of Mount Pleasant Cemetery
Viggo watching a couple of dogs in the distance
Viggo giving me that smile of his
more leaves – and another “smile” from the Veegs
And then it was time to head on back down to Riverdale. When we got home, Viggo was pretty mellow for a good chunk of the afternoon. We really have to do this more often!
I was keen to upload the heart rate information from the Polar Beat app on my iPod Touch. Our almost two-hour adventure had burned up 1000 calories and had my heart getting a good workout. While the time spent in the two lowest heart rate zones hardly constitutes exercise, the hour I spent in zones 3 and 4 definitely qualify as my aerobic exercise of the day.
walking the dog – heart rate graph
As I looked at the various peaks where my heart rate approached the red zone (zone 5) I wondered which peak was the one where I ran to get Viggo back on leash as he chased after that cyclist down in the ravine!
Withrow Park maple hiding the sun
Just a few minutes after finishing this post, I surfed my way to this Globe & Mail photo collection published today – a collection of fall colour shots from across Canada. See here for some truly creative images that capture the magic of a Canadian autumn.
