Archaeological Ruins at Kotte Ananda Sastralaya
The ruins of several underground structures (probably the ruins of an underground residence of a Buddhist monastery) made of " Kabok " (laterite) have been unearthed from the school premises of Ananda Sastralaya in Pita Kotte village in Colombo District, Sri Lanka (Welandawe & Weerasinghe, 2016). (Sinhala: කෝට්ටේ ආනන්ද ශාස්ත්රාලය නටඹුන්) Without certain identification, these ruins are popularly called by the locals as an ancient tunnel complex belonging to the Kingdom of Kotte (1412-1597 A.D.). History
Folklore says that Prince Veediya Bandara who had been held inside the fort of Colombo by the Portuguese was rescued by his wife by having a tunnel dug underneath the walls of the fort (Rajapakshe et al., 2018). The tunnel entrance, according to folklore, was somewhere in Kotte and the rest was extending towards the Colombo Fort and Borella Cemetery (Manathunga, 2016; Welandawe & Weerasinghe, 2016). The ruined structure with a door-shaped cavity exposed within the p…
