Ritigala - The monastic complex Kandy

Ritigala - The monastic complex Kandy

• Ritigala: Hanumans piece from the Himalayas (Legend also has it that when Lakshman, Rama s brother, was wounded, Hanuman was sent to the Himalayas to bring a particular medicinal herb for his cure. But on his way it is believed that Hanuman had forgotten the king of plant. He then got hold of a range of herbs with a fragment of soil from the Himalayas and brought it to Sri Lanka. Ritigala is one such fragment brought by Hanuman, according to legend. )
• Ritigala: myth and mystery (Pandukhabaya, the legendary pre-Buddhist founder of the Anuradhapura civilization, hid out at Ritigala for eight years as a young prince hunted by his uncles who wanted the throne of the northern kingdom. According to legend, he gathered together an army consisting of the mythical Yakshas, now identified as a grouping of indigenous hunter-gatherers )
• Ritigala: The Enigmatic Mountain (Hanuman, the warrior monkey-god, came to Lanka in search of Lord Rama s wife, Sita, who had been abducted by Ravana, the king of demons. After Hanuman had tracked down Ravana to his stronghold, he used the Ritigala Mountain as a launching pad to take a great leap across to South India in order to convey the news to Lord Rama.)
• Ritigala: The monastic complex( The first the Lanka Vihare, was founded near Ritigala at the foot of the mountain in the second century BC. The Aritta Vihare was founded a century afterwards. Later in the, in the ninth century AD, King Sena made additions by constructing a larger complex higher up the slope for a group of ascetics-priest called the Pansukulikas. )