PILGRIMAGE TO KATHARAGAMA

Pilgrimage to sacred god village Katharagama, Sri Lanka

On the April holiday in  2018,  we decided to pilgrimage to  Katharagama.  The southern highway was the easiest and fastest route to reach our final destination the scared town of Katharagama. It took 2 hours of the undisturbed drive along the highway to Mathara the exist to southern main road run along with the sea. We stopped near to beach to have our breakfast which we brought from home. Stretch ourselves from aches made by sitting for a long time. We had our breakfast sitting on a rock admiring the beauty of the stunning view of the sea. The cool breezes relax our tired bodies. The sounds of breaking waves continuously hummed against our ears. After breakfast we dipped our feet into refreshing seawater, it’s tempting to put the whole body into the water. A few minutes later we continue our journey along the southern coastal way.

Southern high way

 view of southern coastal road

The fastest development of the area changed most of the places which had been very rural years ago but still, the hot climate of the dry zone has never been changed. The dusty bushes, thorny trees, dried paddy fields after the harvest, and the herds of buffaloes grazing on the dried grassland remain as same. The huts build with sticks and clay; the roof is covered with hay or dried coconut leaves are seen alongside the road. The villagers selling fruits, vegetables, corn, curds, and sweets in those huts were unique in this part of the country. You can see people buy from these stalls, which help the villagers with little income other than the selling of their paddy. Down south of Sri Lanka is the major province that produces salt for the country.

buffaloes  grazing grass on drylands of Hambantota

The facilities enhanced with development in the area, restaurants and even the houses have been built to a standard. But we found it difficult to find a place to take the lunch till around 2.00 pm because of the Sinhala Tamil New year Holidays. Finally, we found a place near a lagoon to dine. The foods were hot and felt tastier to our hungry stomachs. The place was quite cool with the lagoon around the restaurant. But still, the warmth of the hot sun made us sweat.  After two hours of driving along the isolated road the dry bushy jungles we reached the Thissamaharama Town. The Tissa lake, the boats near the bank of the lake, and the huge trees add beauty to the town. From distance, the huge Tissamaharam dagoba stands solemnly above all.  Katharagama is few kilometers from Tissa. We reached our hotel by 3.00 pm and rest for half an hour, refresh with a bath put on white clothes go to Katharagama temple.

Restaurant near the lagoon 

Tissa wewa (lake) at Tissamaharama Town

Despite the differences in caste and creed. Many Sri Lankan shows great reverence for God Katharagama. They honor him as a very powerful deity and beg divine help to overcome their personal problems or for success in business enterprises etc., with the fervent hope that their requests will be granted. They believe that God Katharagama exists and is vested with extraordinary power to assist those who appeal to him with faith and devotion in times of distress or calamity.

Bo tree in Katharagama

Shrine of God Katharagama 

Thirty years ago the last stage of the pilgrimage to Kataragama was to be covered on foot through a jungle infested with wild elephants, leopards, bears, and poisonous reptiles. The twelve-mile walk was then a memorable experience and a test of faith and devotion. Groups of pilgrims would set out from Tissa usually before dawn and make a leisurely journey through the jungle singing hymns or shouting praises of the god. Hindu belief Katharagama god is an incarnation of god shade mentioned in the sacred book of Sanskrit literature. They undergo all sorts of hardships and perform all sorts of penance for they believe that salvation can be gained by rigorous self-mortification and extreme penance to the body.

pilgrims taking footpath to Katharagama

First, we went to the Kiri Vehera. The Buddhist Kiri Vehera Dagoba which stands close to the Katharagama Devalaya was built by King Mahasena. According to the legend, the Buddha, on his third and last visit to Sri Lanka, was believed to have met king Mahasena, who ruled over the Katharagama area in 580 B.C. it is said that king Mahsena met Lord Buddha and listened to his discourse. As a token of gratitude, the Dagoba was built on that exact spot where it now stands.

The path to Kiri Vehera runs through a shaded road with trees and a bridge across a stream. We heard the scream of peacocks living in the dry bushy forest beside the road. Anthills witness the habitat of snakes.  The road to Kiri Vehera was decorated with Buddhist flags. Streams of the crowd in white cloths walk through the flag-waving path towards the Dagoba. The smells of burning oil lamps and incense sticks fill the entire surrounding with spiritual existence. People arranged colorful flowers on the stands around the Dagoba with faith as an offering to the Buddha. Some walk around worshipping and others sit on the grounding staring their eyes towards the dagoba.  We sat on the ground after offering flowers and incense and close our eyes to experience a spirit of calmness despite the crowd.

Flower stalls along the roads to Kiri Vehera

Worshiping Kiri Vehera

Manic River

Then we walk towards Katharagama Devalaya and spend some time under the Bo tree. A jingle of bells from Devaya signaled the offering time to the god. A crowd of pilgrims lined up with baskets of fresh fruits, a coin wrapped in red cloth, and a colorful artificial garland or necklace on top of the fruits as an offering to God Katharagama. Most of them come to pay their gratitude to god after the prayers had been fulfilled. Scented smoke fill around the room unlike the quietness near the dagoba the Devalaya was noisy with chanting and jiggling of bells as the priest called to the god. The devotees stared at the statue with deep concentration. The priest wave a huge peacock feather on the head and smeared the ash on the forehead to bless and tie up the wrapped coin with a wish on a pole stand in the Devalaya. Keeping some fruits as a sign of acceptance, the priest returned the fruit basket. People share these fruits with others.  We wandered around the street and spent some time on the bank of the Manic River, even the night falls the place was crowded with pilgrims.

Entrance to the Katharagama Devalaya

The crowd of pilgrims

Governor Leonard Woolf was in the Ceylon Civil Service when the British ruled Sri Lanka in 1904. The naval he written  “the village in the jungle” well explain how the pilgrim took place in the early 19’s. Here is an extract from the naval, still it can be applied the same with little moderation. Some pilgrims take the footpath and follow all the traditions to pay their devotion to the god Katharagama.   “ The pilgrimages at least six days. The road the whole day led them through thick jungle, villagers were few, and what otherwise consisted only of a few squalid huts. They carried their food with them and slept at night on the bare earth under bushes or trees. The woman carried large bundles of food and chatting, wrapped up in cloths, upon their head. It is the hottest time of the year when the jungle is withered with drought, the grass had died down, the earth is caked and cracked with hand eat, the trees along the paths and roads are white with dust. The pools had dried up, and the little streams were mere channels of gleaming sand. The sun beat down upon them fiercely, the quivering heat from the white roads beat up into their faces, and the windswept them with its burning gusts and eddies of dust. Their feet were torn by the thorns and swollen and blistered by the hot roads.

They continually met little bands of pilgrims, the majority of them were Tamils, Hindus from India, from tea estates, and from North and east of the island. Strange looking men, very dark, with bodies naked to the waist, with lines of white and red paint on shoulders, their foreheads smeared with ashes, and the mark of God’s eye between their eyebrows. They wore clothes of fine white cotton, caught up between the legs, and they carried brass bowls and brass tongs. Their women, heavy and sullen-looking, followed, carrying bundles and children.

There were, however, also little bands of Buddhists Sinhalese like themselves. They were taking a blind child to see whether, if they called upon the god, he would hear them and give him sight. There were a fisher and his wife from the coast, they were childless, and the woman had vowed to go to the festival and touch the heel of the so that order the god might remove from her the curse of barrenness. There was an old man walking reading or chanting from a large religious book. The rest of the party did not understand a word of what he read, but they felt that he was acquiring merit, and they would share a little of it.

It was the tank and village of Maha Pothana (Thissamaharama) and when the weary band of pilgrims suddenly saw the monotony of the trees and of the parched jungle give place to the water, and the green fields, and the white dagobas, the shrine build by kings long ago to hold the relics of the Buddha. They raised their hands, slamming and cried aloud, ‘Sadhu! Sadhu!’. They picked lotus flowers, and went to the great dagoba, and laid the flowers upon the shrine as an offering, and walked three times around, crying, ‘Sadhu!, Sadhu!’ and thus acquired merit.

They leave the village and for two days their path led them through a low thorny jungle. Then, once again the jungle parted suddenly they stood upon the bank of a great stream. Up and down the stream were innumerable pilgrims, washing from them in the scared waters the dust of the journey and the impurities of a lie, before they entered the village. They put on white clean clothes and climbed a path on the opposite bank which led them into the village of gods Beragama. (Katharagama).

They found themselves on a long, very broad street, on each side of which were boutiques and houses and larges buildings resting places for the pilgrims. The street was thronged with pilgrims, idling, buying provisions, hurrying to the temple. At either end of the broad street stood temples. The one at the north end belonged to the Beragama Deviyo. (God Katharagama) the temple itself was a small, squat, oblong building, above which at one end rose the customary dome-like erection of Hindu temples, on which are fantastically carved the images of gods. Around the temple was an enormous courtyard enclosed by red walls of roughly baked bricks. Just outside the wall of the courtyard on the east side was another and a smaller temple belonging to the god’s lawful wife. The only entrance to the shrine itself was through a doorway in the front, which was screened by a large curtain ornamented crudely with the figures of gods and goddesses. No one was allowed to enter behind this curtain except the Kapuralas, for the temple belonged to the mistress of the Beragama Deviyo.

The solemnity of the pilgrimage was intensified in the minds of the pilgrims, by the mystery which surrounds the god. On the road and around the fires at night, in the streets of the village, and in the very  courtyard of the temple, they listened to the tales and legends, and believing them all without hesitation or speculation they felt, through their strangeness, far more than they had ever felt with the Buddha of dagobas and viharas that this god was very near their own lives.”