Dambulla and Ajanta: Where Stone Sings and Prays

Dambulla and Ajanta: 

Where Stone Sings and Prays

A Dash to Dambulla

Dambulla, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was not in the itinerary of the weeklong Sri Lanka trip for senior citizens, but seven keen-type-tourists in the mood for a little adventure skipped the scheduled visit to a Tea Estate and decided on an impulse to make the day-trip to Dambulla.

The concierge at Raddison Kandy had hired for them a comfortable Toyota van  for USD 165. Jagat Pandare, owner-driver-tour guide picked them up after breakfast and reached Dambulla in two hours. After a refreshing cup of tea at  Heritage Dambulla - with quaint, colonial architecture and quiet old-world charm - they proceeded to Rangiri Dambulla (Golden Rock), the massive granite rock outcrop that shelters the cave temple.

The climb to the hill-top – about 170 uneven stone stairs – was not too demanding, but intermittent showers had made the steps slippery. The tourists moved slowly, almost meditatively, minding their steps, balancing an umbrella in one hand, and gripping the side-rails with the other while keeping an eye on the monkeys big and small who had an eye on their handbags for bananas or biscuits. 

Dambulla has five ancient caves dedicated to Buddhist icons, the largest of which houses a monastery for instruction and meditation; and the ceiling and walls of all the caves are filled with mural paintings.

The rock outcrop is massive and towering, but faith seems to have touched it with tenderness. Near the caves, blue and pink lotuses sway gently at the cute circular ponds framed in roughly-hewn stone blocks.

Standing tall and dignified, the Bodhi tree trembles with joy to hear the Golden Rock’s ancient whispers carried by the wind. Unlike the revered Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi of Anuradhapura—planted in 288 BCE from the Bodh Gaya tree—its lineage is undocumented. Its power lies elsewhere: as a living emblem of awakening, continuity, and the gentle faith that has sustained Dambulla for two thousand years.

Near the entrance to Cave 2 is  a Vishnu idol. Buddhists do not worship Hindu deities, but a standing Vishnu with gada and chakra is incorporated as Upulvan, a guardian deity and protector of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. Hinduism had similarly assimilated Buddha as the 9^th avatar of Vishnu.

Dambulla and Ajanta

Both UNESCO World Heritage sites – Dambulla and Ajanta caves– where history, religion, and faith are sculpted and etched on stone – seemingly mute yet eloquent oracles of a time gone by.

High above the Sri Lankan plains, where wind murmurs prayers from the treetops and time moves unhurriedly, the Dambulla caves quietly beckon the pilgrim and the lay tourist. They do not announce themselves with the theatrical flourish of Ajanta, nor with the architectural bravado of Ellora. Instead, they wait—patient, inward-looking, suffused with the stillness of long devotion.

Across South Asia, Buddhist cave complexes mark a unique civilisational impulse: the vow to withdraw from the world and yet inscribe it in stone and pigment. Ajanta, Ellora, Karla, Kanheri, Bagh—each tells a different story of belief, patronage, and artistic excellence. Dambulla, however, tells a subtler story: not of artistic climax, but of continuity.

A Refuge That Became a Shrine

The Dambulla Cave Temple, in central Sri Lanka, traces its sacred origin to the first century BCE, when King Valagamba, driven into exile, sought refuge in these natural caverns. When he regained his throne, gratitude took architectural form. What began as a sanctuary became a shrine; what was a hiding place turned into a holy site. Over the centuries, successive kings expanded and embellished it, until Dambulla grew into one of the most extensive and best-preserved Buddhist cave temple complexes in Asia.

Unlike Ajanta, which was abandoned and later rediscovered, Dambulla never slipped out of memory. Monks chanted here, lamps were lit, ceilings repainted, statues renewed. It remained—unbroken, inhabited, alive.

When the group entered Cave No. 2 – the largest cave which functions as a Vihara -  a bhikshuni was delivering a barely audible sermon to devotees seated on the floor, the silence of the ancient cave nearly overpowering the whispered instruction. The visitors stood in silence with their palms effortlessly folding into a salutation to the Awakened One.

(Dambulla-Cave 2, Sleeping Buddha with Bhikhuni with devotees in foreground. Photo by the blogger)

Ajanta and the Art of Storytelling

Ajanta, carved into a horseshoe bend of the Waghora river in Maharashtra, is rightly celebrated as one of the greatest achievements of world art. Its murals are narratives in motion: Jātaka tales unfurl across walls, princes renounce kingdoms, queens grieve, monks meditate, and common people populate the painted universe with startling humanity. The Buddha, often idealised yet approachable, moves through these scenes like a moral axis around which life turns.

Ajanta’s painters were artists of rare sensitivity. They understood anatomy, emotion, rhythm, and light. Their work speaks of a Buddhism still deeply engaged with the world, eager to persuade through story and empathy.

(Bodhisattva Padmapani*, Cave - 1, Ajanta. Source- Wikimedia Commons)

Dambulla and the Language of Devotion

Dambulla featuring over 2,100 m² of murals—the world's largest antique painted surface—using reds, yellows, and earth tones on rock ceilings and walls, speaks differently. Its murals do not seek to narrate; they seek to immerse. Ceilings and walls are covered in rhythmic repetition—rows of Buddhas, lotus patterns, celestial beings, and symbolic episodes from the Buddha’s life and Sri Lankan Buddhist history. The figures are flatter, the outlines bolder, the palette restrained. Perspective yields to pattern; drama yields to devotion.

Here, the Buddha is less a prince among men and more a cosmic presence—unchanging, eternal, serenely removed from worldly turbulence. The effect is not cinematic but meditative.

Buddhism in India and Sri Lanka

There is a deeper historical irony at work. Ajanta marks a high point of Buddhism in India—artistically rich, philosophically mature, institutionally supported. Yet within centuries, Buddhism would largely vanish from the land of its birth.

Bharhut fell into ruin, Ajanta fell silent, Nalanda was plundered and torched.

Sri Lanka, by contrast, became a custodian. Theravada Buddhism took firm root, emphasising discipline, preservation, and ritual continuity. Dambulla reflects this role perfectly. Its paintings may lack the sensuous finesse of Ajanta, but they carry something equally rare: unbroken memory.

Stone, Paint, and Time

To walk through Dambulla caves is to experience the solemn reverence of the devotees for the Buddha. The statues bear marks of touch; the murals show signs of repainting; the air smells faintly of oil lamps and incense. This is not a museum. It is a breathing space.

Ajanta dazzles the eye and moves the mind. Dambulla steadies the soul.

Together, they frame a civilisational arc—from artistic flowering to spiritual preservation. One shows how Buddhism imagined the world; the other shows how it learned to endure without it.

In the end, stone remembers differently in different lands. At Ajanta, it remembers beauty. At Dambulla, it remembers belief.

And both, in their own way, remind us of the ancient search for peace and happiness, and our continuing quest.

***

*“Padmapani is another name for Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva (“buddha-to-be”) of infinite mercy. The meditational quality of Padmapani is emphasized by the fullness of his lips, the slender waist and nose, the sinuous elongated eyebrows, and the almond-shaped eyes, and he is depicted holding a lotus flower. Although the divinity is extremely idealized, the realistic approach is conspicuous.” (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica)