Munidasa P. Ranaweera writes about the great brick monuments of ancient Sri Lanka from the position of an engineer. He is attached to the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Peradeniya, and his published work addresses the stupa as a built structure — a question of materials, mass and construction rather than of iconography alone.
That engineering interest runs through his writing on the subject. In his paper "Ancient Stupas in Sri Lanka – Largest Brick Structures in the World", Ranaweera describes the stupa as a monument raised in honour of the Buddha, enshrining relics or marking a sacred spot, and follows the sequence of great stupas built by Sri Lankan kings: Thuparama, then Ruwanveli, Abhayagiri and Jetavana, and later Rankoth Vehera. He gives attention throughout to their dimensions and to what those dimensions imply about the people who raised them.
The present title, Stupas of Sri Lanka: A Technological Study, belongs to the same body of work, and is cited among scholarly writings on Sri Lankan stupas in a Department of Archaeology proceedings volume. It is published in English by Godage International Publishers, an established Colombo house with a long list in Sri Lankan history, archaeology and the sciences.
Readers who come to the Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa monuments through archaeology, Buddhist history or heritage conservation will find here an author approaching the same remains from the technical side — the side concerned with how such things were made to stand. It will suit students of civil engineering with an interest in historic construction, archaeologists working on monastic sites, and visitors who have stood at the base of one of these domes and wondered what holds it up.
Godage publishes a substantial range of Sri Lankan scholarship in English for readers inside and outside the island, and this is a slim technical study rather than a general introduction to Buddhist art. Those wanting narrative history of the Anuradhapura kingdom should look elsewhere; those wanting the structure itself examined as a problem in brick and earth have the right book.
- Author: Munidasa P. Ranaweera
- Publisher: Godage International Publishers
- Language: English
- Pages: 112
- ISBN: 9789553095633
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