MAHINDA's CAVE

Herbert Daniel Gebauer - 06/01/2018

What appears to be a modified natural rock shelter is used as a temple cave dedicated to Mahinda. SITUATION: LONELY PLANET (2003: 250 -Mihintale- location map) indicates with the number 9 (Mahinda's Cave) a spot about 500 m on foot approximately north-east and uphill from the Ambasthale Dagoba at –>Mihintale. LONELY PLANET (2003: 252 -Mahinda's Cave- paragraph): There is a path leading north-east from the Ambasthake Dagoba down to a cave where there is a large flat stone. This is said to be where Mahinda lived and the stone is claimed to be where he rested. The track to the cave is hard on tender bare feet. CAVE DESCRIPTION: KEYSERLING (1914): … the wonder of wonders in Ceylon is the rock of Mihintale, where Mahinda … spent and ended his days. This retreat, a narrow reatreat on the highest point of the mountain, hewn by the hand of an artist out of the rock, is more regal than anything I have yet beheld. It is overshadowed by steep cliffs which descend abruptly to the valley in frnt of it. Beneath, the infinite primeval forest expands, whose holy silence is only broken now and again by the trumpeting of elephants. … It is impossible to spend even the briefest time in this place without progressing inwardly. CULTURAL HISTORY - religious folklore: Mahinda, son of the great Indian emperor Ashoka, converted in 247 BC King Devanampiya Tissa of Anuradhapura to Buddhism. COOK (1931: 12) quotes from KEYSERLING (1914) to give a tenths example of records of travellers which … amuse the reader, especially if he be an inhabitant of Ceylon but show not only how each man looks with different eyes upon the same land … but also reveils not a little of an irresistible temptation on the part of the inhabitants to nourish their sense of humour at the expense of credulous strangers in search of marvellous things and strange antiquities.