The Ranmasu Uyana or “Gold Fish Gardens” are not named for having the actual cyprinid goldfish in the ponds built on-site. Rather, the whole park, essentially an Anuradhapura-age water park, was for the use of the royal family. Most other communal bathing pools were for the Buddhist clergy, but this one, a miracle of hydraulic engineering was different.

It was also much more complex than many of the other bathing ponds in the massive Abhayagiri Monastery site, with numerous ponds built on numerous levels of the land.

It is also technologically superior by far, one of the most innovative historical places in Sri Lanka. The whole park covers about forty acres, and all the ponds are preserved in beautiful detail. With the stone foundations and steps leading into them. The whole park itself is quite modern and forward-thinking for its time, especially in terms of communal bathing areas and public pools today. The Ranmasu Uyana complex features showers and even changing rooms to give the royalty privacy of a sort.

The ponds get water out of the Tissa Weva via underground canals and pipelines. The water outlet guided the waste water into the rice fields outside the Isurumuniya Monastery. The changing room itself is a rather rectangular or squarish building, mostly stone but with bricks on top. Another perplexing albeit rather overlooked detail of the park is the so-called “Bawa Chakraya” or “Sakwala Chakraya”. It is a pteroglyph carved into a boulder in Ranmasu Uyana. The whole “chakra” is about six feet in diameter and is detailed with rich descriptions of astrological and cosmological signs and symbols. Or so they say, even though the actual glyph has been redrawn and reconstructed several times today.

In truth the drawing is rather difficult to make out at times. The untrained eye often misses this unique and minute detail while passing through this historical site.

It might not be much though. On the one hand, conspiracy theorists and would-be paranormal researchers might be tempted to think of it as a “stargate”. While in reality it might just be a map of the heavens as per Buddhist cosmology. Whatever the case, it is not the first conspiracy theory attached to a major site in Sri Lanka. The three large stupas in Anuradhapura, the Ruvanveliseya, Jetavanarama and Abhaygiriya are thought to have an alignment that corresponds exactly with Orion’s Belt. The same theory is also applied to the three main pyramids in Giza, Egypt.

Written by Vasika Udurawane for Travel Lanka Compass