Saturday, 27 July 2013 00:00
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By D.C. Ranatunga
Sigiriya dominates the National Engineering Heritage Gallery with detailed descriptions of numerous aspects of the rock fortress and the surrounding area. Much effort has gone into projecting Sigiriya as a site depicting our ancient engineering ingenuity covering areas like construction, water management, construction and landscape planning.
A site plan of the City of Sigiriya outlines the key features which are explained in panels giving the visitor much more to look for during the next visit there. We have been used to admire the rock, do the trek through the lion’s paw, reach the summit, come down and walk to see the frescoes. We don’t, of course, miss the graffiti wall making an effort to identify the letters in the poems written by admirers several centuries ago.
Identifying Sigiriya as one of Asia’s major archaeological sites, renowned archaeologist Senake Bandaranayake describes Sigiriya as “a unique concentration of fifth-century urban planning, architecture, gardening, engineering, hydraulic technology and art.” Sigiriya is centred on a massive rock rising 200 metres above the surrounding plain.
As a panel in the Gallery explains, in designing the Sigiriya complex, the architects would have considered and taken care of natural forces such as rock movement, high wind speed, roughness and shape of the rock, and structures causing wind drag, turbulence and the like. By providing water bodies at strategic locations, the designers have shown concern on the aspect of making the occupants comfortable. These water bodies would have minimised the hot air generated by the heated rock surfaces. The two palaces, for example, are totally surrounded by moats.
Large size boulders have been used either as base or wall segments of the buildings and pavilions. A major problem faced by the engineers would have been the provision of adequate bonding between the brickwork and the boulders. This has been partially solved by making cuts along the interface between them. Sometimes the boulder surface itself had been converted into a building. The Audience Hall is quoted as an example.
Explaining the planning and landscaping technology, it is mentioned that the site plan had been done according to a fixed measuring system. Overall lengths, widths and inner structural relationships denote a specific space pattern. This proved that Sigiriya was an ancient planned city.
Sigiri gardens are unique being earliest landscaped gardens in Asia. The most distinctive features are the combination of symmetrical or geometrical elements with asymmetrical or organic elements, and its use of micro-hydraulic and rock associated architecture.
The basic geometrical pattern followed in Sigiriya space planning is the rectangular shape. The entire city is oriented in East-West direction in a space of approximately 1500 metres. The width in the North-South direction is around 1000 metres. The centre line goes through the East-West entrance gates, dividing the city into two symmetrical parts. Other panels describe wind speed profile, movement of water, and water management technology.
Sigiriya, one of the sites in the Cultural Triangle, is recognised as one of the best preserved and most elaborate surviving urban sites in South Asia from the first millennium A.D.
Discussing some of the key features, Senaka B writes in ‘The Cultural Triangle’ that the palace stands about 360 metres above mean sea level and 200 metres above the surrounding plain. On the plain below, extending east and west are two fortified precincts, 90 and 40 hectares in extent. Around the rock itself is a walled ‘citadel’ or inner royal precinct, covering an area of about 15 hectares.
This citadel presents an irregular, broadly elliptical plan, more or less defines the outer limits of the hill slopes around the base of the rock. This boulder-strewn hillside has been fashioned into a series of terraces forming a terraced garden around the rock. It also incorporates rock-shelters and rock-associated pavilions which form the distinctive architecture of the boulder gardens both to the west and the east of the citadel.
The area to the west of the citadel is laid out as a symmetrically-planned royal park or pleasure-garden with elaborate water-retaining structures and surface and sub-surface hydraulic systems. It is surrounded by three ramparts and two moats forming a square, whose inner dimensions are about 900 by 800 metres.
To the east of the citadel extends the ‘eastern precinct’ or ‘inner city’, a rectangular form whose inner precincts measure about 700 metres from east to west and 500 metres from north to south with a high earthen rampart, gateways and vestiges of a moat.
