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The  Miniature  Water  Garden  

           To the west of Water Garden I, recent excavations have revealed a miniature water garden very different in character from those described above.

          There are at least five distinct units in this garden, each

 combining pavilions of brick and limestone with paved, water-retaining structures and winding water-curses. The two units at the northern and southern extremities are badly eroded, but the general layout of the major portion of the garden and of the three central units is clear.

             A striking feature of this ‘miniature’ garden (it is in fact about ninety metres long and thirty wide ) is the use of these water-surrounds with pebbled or marbled floors, covered by shallow, slowly-moving water, These, no doubt, served as a cooling device and at the same time had great aesthetic appeal, creating interesting visual and sound effects.

           Another distinctive aspect is the geometrical intricacy of the garden layout. While displaying the symmetry and ‘echo-planning' characteristic of the water-gardens as a whole, this miniature garden has a far more complex interplay of tile-roofed buildings, water-retaining structures and water-courses than is seen elsewhere in Sigiriya, even more intricate, in fact, than the beautiful ‘Fountain Garden .

         This newly-discovered garden seems to belong to more than one phase of construction. As far as we are able to say at this stage of our investigation, the garden seems originally to have been laid out as an extension and ‘miniaturized ’ refinement of the Kasyapan macro-plan and therefore belongs in essence to the last quarter of the fifth century, But it seems to have been added to later and remodeled and then finally abandoned and again partially built over in the last phases of the post-Kasyapan period, between the tenth and thirteenth centuries.

            It seems very likely that a similar garden lies buried beneath the lawns of the unexcavated parallel sector in the northern half of the water-gardens, an ‘echo’ or ‘twin’ of the present garden in the south.

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