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The  Water  Gardens

The water garden are, perhaps, the most extensive and intricate, and occupy the central section of the western precinct. Three principal gardens lie along the central east-west axis. The largest of these, Garden I, consists of a central

island surrounded by water  and linked to the main precinct by cardinally-oriented causeways. The quartered or char bhag plan thus created, constitutes a well-known ancient garden form, of which the Sigiriya version is one of the oldest surviving examples. The entire garden is a walled enclosure with gateways placed at the head of each causeway. The largest of these gateways, to the west, has a triple entrance. The cavity left by the massive timber doorposts indicates that it was an elaborate gatehouse of timber and brick masonry with multiple, tiled roofs.

Garden 2, the ‘Fountain Garden’ is a narrow precinct on two levels. The lower, western half has two long, deep pools with stepped cross-sections. Draining into these pools are shallow serpentine ‘streams’ paved with marble stabs and defined kerbs. These serpentines are punctuated by fountains, consisting of circular limestone plates with symmetrical perforations. They are fed by underground water conduits and operate on a simple principle of gravity and pressure. With the cleaning and repair of the underground conduits, the fountains operate in rainy weather even today.

        Two relatively shallow limestone cisterns are placed on opposite sides of the garden. Square in plan and carefully constructed, they may well have originally functioned as storage or pressure chambers for the serpentine and the fountains. The eastern half of the garden, which is raised above the western section, has few distinctive features, a serpentine stream and a pavilion with a limestone throne being almost all that is visible today.

      Garden 3, on a higher level consists of an extensive area of terrace and halls. Its northeastern corner is a large octagonal pool and terrace at the base of a towering boulder forming a dramatic juxtaposition of rock and water at the very point at which the water garden and boulder garden meet. A raised podium and a drip-ledge for a lean-to roof from the remains of a ‘bathing pavilion’ on the for side of the pool.

     The eastern limit of Garden 3 is marked by the wide entrance and massive brick and stone wall of the citadel. The citadel wall forms a dramatic backdrop to the water gardens, echoing the even more dramatic vision of the great rock and the palace on its summit to the east. When viewed from the water gardens, the wall extends from the towering boulder of Garden 3 to a matching bastion on the south-east, formed by wide brick walls and a series of boulders which surround a cave pavilion housing a rock-cut throne.

The three water garden from a dominant series of rectangular enclosures of varying size and character, joined together long a central east-west axis. Moving away from this to the wider conception of the western precinct as a whole, we see that its other dominant feature is a sequence of four large moated islands, arranged in a north-south oriented crescent, cutting across the central axis of the water garden. These, once again, follow the principle of symmetrical repetition, the two inner islands, on the one hand, and the two outer islands, on the other, forming pairs.

The two inner islands closely abutting the Fountain Garden on either side, are partially built up on surfacing bedrock. They are surrounded by high rubble walls and wide moats. The flattened surface of the island was occupied by ‘summer palaces’ (Sinhala : sitala maliga or cool palaces ) or water pavilions. Bridges built of cut into the surface rock, provide access to these ‘ palaces ‘. Further to the north and south, almost abutting the ramparts, are the two other moated islands, still unexcavated but clearly displaying the quartered or char bagh plan.

           Intricately connected with the water gardens of the western precinct are the double most that surrounds it and the great artificial lake that extends southward from the Sigiriya rock. Excavations have revealed that the pools were interlinked by a network of underground conduits, fed initially by the Sigiriya Lake and probably connected at various points with the surrounding moats.

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