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 Parakrama SamudrayaThe king of wewas - Parakrama Samudra
The Parakrama samudra is always lovely. Its shimmering sheets of water taking on the moods and colour of the times and seasons. Once we watched it in rain when we could not make out the opposite bank which was veiled in a thick mist. The water was gray and sullen. In contrast in the quiet of the morning its waking silver waters teem with vibrant bird life. A fisherman is out in his boat. An endless variety of the feathered all splashing diving and screeching, or contentedly sun bathing on the stumps of knurled drift wood or tiny islands. Towards noon only a few birds will bear the hot sun for the sake of a late breakfast. At dusk the birds return to feed and possibly you would see elephants feeding on the opposite bank. And finally at night the impenetrable darkness is ghostlike thrilling. Parakrama Samudra was no doubt King Parakramabahu's crowning achievement. The magnificent wewa was built in close proximity to the city, extending to the south and west of the ancient city and was so extensive that it was referred to as the sea of Parakrama translated as the Parakrama Samudra. The Kings intentions were to provide water for his subjects; water for growing rice, grazing for cattle, livelihood for the fisherman, and a haven for the thousands of birds. The Mahavamsa chronicling the conclusion of this colossal achievements says: to put away famine from living creatures that most excellent of men ….created the king of reservoirs. R.L. Brohier in his works on the Man made lakes of the dry zone explains that what King Parakrama's engineers actually did to bring into being this sea. was to link up a congeries of five small tanks - with Topawewa near the city and Dumbutullawewa near the Ambanganga, or Kara ganga of old, - by constructing nine miles of embankment across the shallow valleys in which the small tanks nestled and to anchor this to four miles of rocky escarpment on a section of high ground. When the first flood was impounded and the bed of the tank was submerged, the artificial lake mingled with the waters of numerous streams flowing down from the Sudukanda range of hills to the west, with a river flow led to it from the Amban ganga along a channel. Brohier writing in the 1960's is of view that even by standards of today, and construction by the aids now made available by science and mechanization, this would be considered a major undertaking. He says that as we look on the magnitude of the Parakrama samudra we can visualize the pristine greatness and the highest achievement in the art of the ancient hydraulic engineer. This gigantic wewa is estimated to cover an area of more than nine square miles and the bund itself is eight and a half miles long and forty feet high. Even today it is said to irrigate many square miles of rice fields. by Kishanie S. Fernando
February 11, 2007
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