Anuradhapura..."Those great assemblages of pillars, the storied Mahawansa, the humped dagobas, are not excessively beautiful in themselves, in spite of carved balustrades,
carved moon-shaped stone slabs, sculptured Buddhas and ele-
phants; what gives them aesthetic charm is their situation, jungle-
surrounded, barely reclaimed, the green sward on which they
stand, the scattered lakes, the delicious stone baths, the clammy,
swooning climate which lies like warm, scented flowers on forest
and clearing, the frisking monkeys, and, above all, the long reaches
of the mysterious, exotic past, winding like a dimly seen river
through green enjungled silence to the gorgeous heyday of
royal and priestly magnificence of two thousand years ago, and
beyond that to the earliest beginnings, when the bo-tree took
root." -The Pleasure of Ruins, by Rose Macaulay
I felt no clammy, swooning climate or warm scented flowers- just raw, dry, baking heat. I heard no enjungled silence, only a pilgrim’s inner voice saying Ouch! Ow! Ouf! as he hurried in bare feet along the hot bricks of the sun-drenched path. The green sward was parched to brown dead grass, the delicious stone baths were half evaporated, and the fresh lime plaster of the humped Ruvanvelisaya dagoba blazed dead white under the midday sun.
Rose Macaulay was the queen of overstatement on the subject of the best and biggest of all the world’s ruined building, but she did not personally visit everything she wrote about. Not Anuradhapura certainly, for even sixty five years ago when she was writing The Pleasure of Ruins the jungle had been cleared and the ruined stupas had been fully reclaimed.
To walk from the shaded precinct of the bo tree to the Ruvanvelisaya stupa takes only ten minutes, but each step seems an eternity with bare feet on the brick paved path’s heated iron griddle. I should have worn socks or even better five finger running shoes. That may have fooled the watchful monks enforcing the stupa’s visitation rules, and certainly made it easier for a visitor such as I, so easily distracted from the highest sublime towards my lowest bodily part, to concentrate on the Buddha’s sacred footprint rather than on my own scorching feet.
