Ancient Stone Bowl in Hulftsdorp

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Ancient Stone Bowl in Hulftsdorp Court Complex (අලුත්කඩේ උසාවියේ පැරණි ගල් බඳුන)

If you have ever visited the Hulftsdorp Court Complex in Colombo, you may have noticed a large ancient stone bowl positioned in the middle of a small pond in the courtyard. It is about 35 inches (89 cm) high and 48 inches (122 cm) in diameter at the rim.

Ancient carvings, now very indistinct, run around the circumference of the bowl, and there are four projections with carvings resembling rudimentary handles. This bowl, intricately carved from a single block of stone, was undoubtedly part of a Buddhist monastery near Colombo and was brought here by the colonial rulers. The original location from which it was taken has been lost to time.

An attempt was made around 1919 to find the history of this stone bowl which was already placed on a cement block at Hulftsdorp. Dr P.E. Peris states that he has been searching in vain for 37 years about the history of this bowl. He also writes ;

“You have put to me a question for the answer to which I have been searching in vain these 37 years. That the bowl belonged to a Buddhist Temple, and that it was used there for the purpose of collecting offerings. I have no doubt. A smaller but somewhat similar bowl brought from Tiruketisswaram near Mannar is now at Jaffna, and a still smaller one is I believe, at the Colombo Museum near the cadjan shed with the Buddha. There can, I think, be little doubt that it came from one of the temples at Cotta, in the same way as so much granite work now in Colombo was brought from there. Or it came from Kelaniya, where there is a great mass of granite work still to be found. We know as a matter of fact that the Portuguese, the Dutch, and our own P.W.D. removed a lot of granite from Cotta. Beyond that, I can offer no explanation. I do not think it belonged to any Colombo temple, as there does not seem to have been any temple of importance there when the Portuguese came in 1505.“

In the 1840’s there was another long-shaped trout in addition to the stone bowl. Both have been used as drinking troughs for roaming deer in Hulftsdorp. It is interesting to note how these vessels had been sneaked out by the Public Works Department (PWD) from the Supreme Court premises and the appearance of the current bowl Queen’s House Gardens (President’s House today) after some time. The second vessel has disappeared without a trace and has not been discovered up to today. Mr. J. R. Loos writes ;

“The site on which the present Supreme Court stands was once the site of the residence of the Dutch Governors in the time of the Dutch occupation of Ceylon. The Dutch Governor, – Hulft, when he resided there—the locality taken its name from his—had a large number of deer roaming about the grounds and the urn in question with another were used as drinking troughs for the animals;—a large well, which was in existence, till fairly recently, and which stood 40 feet from the present roadway, in a quadrangle- supplied the water for this purpose and also supplied the needs of the neighbourhood.
During the time of Sir George Anderson or Sir Henry Waid in 1852 or 1854 an officer of the Public Works Department, during the vacation of the Supreme Court moved the two drinking troughs without the permission of the Judges of the Supreme Court. and for a long while the whereabouts of the urns were not known indeed, one has not been heard of since. The Judges were indignant at their removal and complained of this vandalism to the Governor. A visit by the Chief Justice Sir W. C. Rowe to the Governor casually disclosed one urn in the Queen’s House Gardens!. The Governor promptly ordered it to be returned and the P. W. D. officer in question was censured and made to pay the cost of the removal and apologise to ‘My Lords.’ No one to this day knows, what happened to the second urn.—It was long shaped and resembled the dyeing vats used by Buddhist priests for dyeing their robes, the remains of which are still lo be seen at Anuradhapura.”

References

Bertram, A. (1919). The Ancient Bowl at Hulftsdorp. The Ceylon Antiquary and Literary Register, IV : 1918:1919, 166–167.

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