← All articles · Sri Lanka · 8 July 2018

Girihandu Seya, Sri Lanka: The hilltop stupa that says it got here first

Girihandu Seya at Thiriyaya: stone steps up a rock hill, a ruined vatadage ringed with pillars, and a board claiming the island's first stupa stood here.

Girihandu Seya sits on a low rock hill at Thiriyaya, inland from the Trincomalee coast road, and it doesn't advertise itself. We got there on the afternoon of 8 July 2018 and had the hill more or less to ourselves. There's no ticket window, no queue, no coach park, just a flight of stone steps going up through the trees and a hand-painted board at the bottom making one of the biggest claims in Sri Lankan Buddhism.

Up the steps

A steep flight of worn stone steps climbing between green trees at Girihandu Seya, with a woman in white walking down them — The stone stairway up the rock. Steep, uneven, and shaded the whole way, which is the only reason we made it up in July heat.

Inga in elephant-print trousers resting a hand on a small ruined brick stupa about her own height, grass and scrub behind it — One of the smaller stupas near the top, weeds growing out of the brick courses. Nobody has tidied it, and that's part of the charm.

The vatadage on top

The main structure up here is a vatadage, a circular relic house built to shelter a stupa, and it's the reason people who care about old stone make the detour. Stumpy stone pillars still ring the outer wall, the roof they once held up is long gone, and a set of steps flanked by carved guardstones leads through a doorway to a white Buddha figure sitting where the original stupa stood.

The stepped entrance to the circular stone vatadage at Girihandu Seya, flanked by two carved guardstone slabs, with an oil lamp stand smoking in the foreground — The entrance, with a rack of oil lamps still smoking. Somebody had been up before us that afternoon.

Inga standing on the bare rock in front of the vatadage, with a small white seated Buddha statue framed in the stone doorway behind her — The white Buddha framed by the doorway. The pillars around the rim are all that's left of the roof.

Wide view of the circular stone vatadage at Girihandu Seya, its outer wall ringed with short stone pillars and bare rock in the foreground — The whole drum of it, sitting straight on the bedrock. You can count the pillars from here if you've got the patience.

A ruined brick stupa at Girihandu Seya with its dome partly collapsed, small white Buddha and disciple statues placed on the brick steps in front — Newer white statues placed on much older brick. The site is a ruin and a working shrine at the same time.

A weathered grey stone seated Buddha with hands together, standing under a spreading tree with marigolds laid at its base — Marigolds under a tree, in front of a stone Buddha that the lichen has clearly claimed.

The claim on the board

On the way down we stopped at the board, which tells the story in Sinhala, Tamil and English. Two merchant brothers, Thapassu and Bhalluka, are said to have received a hair relic from the Buddha himself, carried it here and enshrined it, all within 75 days of his enlightenment. The board doesn't hedge: it calls this the first stupa built in the world and the first Buddhist temple built in Sri Lanka. The vatadage and the stone steps came much later, credited there to the kings Girikandisiva and the sixth Aggabodhi.

An information board at Girihandu Seya with text in Sinhala, Tamil and English telling the story of the merchants Thapassu and Bhalluka and the hair relic — The board that makes the claim, in three languages, propped against the temple wall.

Whether or not you buy the "first in the world" line, it's a strange and lovely place to stand: a 2,000-year-old story on a rock hill in the middle of nowhere, with nobody selling you anything. Thiriyaya is roughly an hour north of town, so it pairs neatly with the rest of the district: Trincomalee itself, the reef at Pigeon Island, or the long sands down at Pasikuda.