Welipillewa Purana Viharaya or Welipillewa Sri Maha Purana Viharaya (Sinhala: වැලිපිල්ලෑව පුරාණ විහාරය) is a Buddhist temple in Welipillewa village near Ganemulla in Gampaha District, Sri Lanka.
Image house
The image house is the main attraction of this temple with an archaeological significance. It consists of an inner shrine and a narrow ambulatory around it. The main statue of the inner shrine is a seated Buddha in meditating posture. Four standing Buddha statues are also found facing each other on both the left and right walls.
The walls as well as the ceiling of the ambulatory have been adorned with murals depicting Buddhist themes. Of them, the earliest paintings belonging to the Kandyan tradition are found on the inner walls of the ambulatory. They include murals depicting certain incidents from the life of the Buddha and Jataka stories (stories of past births of the Buddha) such as Vessantara, Dahamsoda, etc. Solosmasthana (16 sacred Buddhist sites), Suvisivivarana (24 assurances predicting Buddhahood), and Mara Parajaya (conquest of Mara) are among the other paintings found here.
A protected site
The image house situated in Velipillewa Purana Vihara premises in the Divisional Secretary’s Division of Gampaha is an archaeological protected monument, declared by a government gazette notification published on 22 November 2002.
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References
1) The Gazette of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. No: 1264. 22 November 2002.
Location Map
This page was last updated on 10 June 2022
